Monthly Archives: February 2022

Say Hello to Axel

Posted on by

The person I interviewed is a classmate of mine named Axel Gordillo. He has been in Georgia State University for one full semester. He began right after graduating high school, the reason being ambition. Because of his need for close proximity to home, he takes classes from the Clarkston campus of Gsu, majoring in Business administration. He aspires to own his own construction company in the future with the knowledge and opportunities he gains in school.

Through multiple casual face to face meetings, as well as text, we discussed how one considers their academic self;  and have come to understand how it is both a reflection of their personality, as well as their self-awareness of how they function in a school setting.

The three words that Axel chose to reflect his academic self are adaptable, well-behaved, and determined.

He chose adaptable due to a previous experience in his sophomore year of high school. He began to fail geometry, and in order to pass, he had to adapt to a new study format. By taking more time for studying, and staying after school for tutoring, he adapted his schedule to his needs in school, brought his time and attention to his classes, and improved his grade.

Axel was not one to cause trouble in high school, and typically kept to himself. His well-behavedness was decided as an understood but important personality trait in school.

Determined was his third due to his willingness to complete his senior year off strong. In the midst of virtual learning, it was imperative for him to stay ahead of due assignments and zoom meetings. He succeeded and graduated. His determination showed sucess past high school and into his first semester in college, as he earned president’s list for his academic acheivements.

Overall, his experiences in high school, as well as his first semester in GSU have prepared him for his future years in college. Upon asking him how, he stated that they prepared him by showing him what to expect. His first semester taught him that there’s a decent amount of work to do, and that it isn’t like high school. It also taught him that college teachers aren’t how people make them out to be. He realized that they aren’t mean, they’re actually nice and helpful, and it taught him that he can talk to them it he needs help, and not feel as if they may give him a bad reaction.

Academic Profile of Chloe Richey

Posted on by

On this assignment I will be making an academic profile of Chloe Richey. This information was retrieved from meetings I had with her during and after class, and interviews made during phone calls where we both worked on each other’s profiles throughout the two weeks that the assignment took place.

Chloe Richey was born on October 26th of 2004. She was born in Greensboro, Georgia and lived there until her family decided to move to Atlanta when she was in the third grade. Her dad is a truck driver and her mom works as an assistant nurse. She wanted to be a choreographer from a very young age, but due to her mom being a nurse and hearing stories about her mom’s patients, she realized she wanted to follow her mom’s path and become a nurse. Chloe is currently a dual enrollment student. She attends Dekalb Early College Academy and is taking four classes at Georgia State University. She is to graduate high school in 2023. 

The words Chloe used to describe herself were: determined, hardworking, and overanalyzing. When she was younger, she never struggled with grades. Her mom never had to worry about her not getting her homework done or failing a class because she was always determined to do well academically and every other aspect of her life. Chloe mentioned that when she started with dual enrollment her family would question if it was too much for her, but she always replied no because she knew that she needed to work hard to achieve her goal. Nevertheless, overthinking may sometimes get a little too much. Chloe talked about how she used to feel that if she made a mistake, there was always time to make up for it. But now that she is experiencing college, she feels that every minute counts, and that she can’t afford to make a mistake.

Chloe has categorized herself as a “visual” and “hands-on” learner. She said that if she were to watch a video, she would be able to learn enough from it, but that she prefers to work out a problem herself.

Overall, Chloe is a very hardworking and determined person that will do whatever is necessary to achieve her goal. Many people graduate high school not having a single clue of what they want to do with their life. Meanwhile, Chloe has not graduated yet and is already working towards her future. While working on this assignment I realized how many things we have in common, and I believe that she will overcome any obstacle that comes her way and become a successful woman one day.

Academic Profile For Keith Stettedahl

Posted on by

My partner Keith Stettedahl like myself, is a first-generation college student. Keith is a musician, and his major is psychology. He attended some junior college for a while straight out of high school, but he enjoyed playing music more. Since he moved here from his hometown Los Angeles, He has been trying to find what piques his interest and Georgia State University is where he landed. He describes himself as a perfectionist and a very prepared person. He takes pride in his willingness to learn, and his genuine interest in the material. I am going to go into detail about who Keith is as a student, what are the motivations behind his success, what his expectations were and if they were met. 

Keith went to a good high school and did well all the way up until his senior year. He began partying and making music during his last year of high school and slacked off. College was not really on his radar and his family was not really pushing the idea. After graduating he enrolled into a junior college, but he was more interested in music, so he took that route. Keith’s major is psychology, but he is not sure if he wants to pursue the major and he has no definite plans he just wants to learn new things.  

Keith is a slightly untraditional student, so the things that motivate him may be different than the average student coming right out of high school going into college. He has a loving family that motivates him to be successful in college. Keith is also motivated by his genuine willingness to learn and his authentic interest in the material. He appreciates learning more than he did when he was younger. He feels in high school he did work for the sake of getting a grade, but in college he has a real interest in the subjects and assignments. When coming into secondary education Keith looked at it as an adventure which made him enthusiastic to learn.  

Before coming to Georgia state University, Keith had not been in an educational setting since 1993. He did not know what to expect, especially starting school in the middle of a pandemic. He expressed how the learning curve is completely different than what he expected. He had never even used Microsoft software before starting at GSU. Although the transition was different than what he was used to, he has learned a lot about himself as a student. He has learned that he enjoys learning and he loves the atmosphere of professors and students. Coming into an unfamiliar environment he did not know what to expect but he always had a positive mindset to be present and to do an excellent job.  

Being a first-generation college student is tricky. You do not really have a lot of people around you to guide you through the process. This is not because they do not want to, but because they do not know how to. This just means you do not have that voice in your ear telling you to fill out applications, do community service and join extra-curricular activities to boost your chances of acceptance. When you finally get through the process of enrolling and getting accepted you still have a lot of adapting to do, especially if you have been out of school for some time. Eventually you get the hang of it and start to enjoy learning new things and it opens the curiosity in you. This is what happened in Keith’s story, he had been out so long that he is still adjusting to simultaneously being an adult and a student. He is learning new things about himself every day. 

Meet Samira Abdi

Posted on by

Hello, my name is Louis Tran, and today I’ll be relaying an interview I had with my classmate Samira Abdi. Samira and I both decided to have our interview at the Georgia state Clarkson liberty around 5:00 pm on Friday. There we talked about a variety of things relating to our personal and academic life. 

Samira is a 16-year-old high school student who is in our college class for dual enrollment at Georgia state perimeter college. She was born here in Georgia, but her parents and heritage come from Somalia. I first started by asking her about her majors and goals in college. Samira is a biology major, and her college goal is to finish college at Georgia state university with good grades and transfer to medical school. Her profession goal is to become a physical therapy doctor. I then asked her why she wanted to go to college. Samira talked about she is one of the first people in her family to go to college. 

We then went on talking about what it was like in college. Both Samira and I have the same college experience. Both of us enjoyed and said our favorite class was psychology and both of us agreed that any math classes are usually the hardest class in any term. We also agree that both of us don’t have a fruitful social life while in college. Both of us would take classes on campus then would go straight home to study or work a part time job. 

I later asked Samira how she views herself as a student. She describes her academic self as a hardworking, dedicated, and organized student. She works hard in college to get the best grade and to create a secure future for herself. She set high expectations on herself to get good grades and pass her classes. She is very confident in herself about her grades and academic self but said she could always do better. 

Samira and I are very different people in how we view ourselves academically and how we conduct ourselves as students. However, something we can both relate to is that we are both first generation American and have immigrant parent. This similarity in our life helps us feel connected as we both have very high expectations placed on ourselves. Samira is the first in her family to go off and enroll in college and I was the first born and the first of my parents’ children to go to college.  

Samira was a nice person to talk to. From our interview I gather that she is an intelligent and driven person. She has a lot of expectations placed on her by her family and herself, but she doesn’t let that hold her down or crush her. Besides our conversation about academic subjects, we also had some time to share some stories of our personal life and crack a few jokes. I’m glad to have had the time to meet and get to know Samira Abdi and hope her future is as bright as she is. 

Getting to know Soufian Carson

Posted on by

Academic Profile of Soufian Carson

This essay is based on an interview with Soufian Carson about his academic identity. We make our discussion about our academic history, experience, and pathway through a combination of in-person and face time calls. We also used text messages for some questions we have. Soufian is 18 years old student who attends Georgia state university. He has been in Georgia all his life and also finished his K-12 in Georgia. He graduated high school in 2020. He is very young to attend college at this age and I asked why? He told me he was supposed to be in grade 12 but because of his dual enrollment in high school, he finished earlier. After he graduated from Highschool he directly went to Clarkston campus. He attended the Georgia state Clarkston campus specifically for the location (it is near to his house). Sofian was a very good student in high school with a GPA of 3.72. Soufian is a computer science major. I was excited when hearing that he has the same major as I have. He is obsessed with coding and programming. He also likes the fact that a Computer Science degree is promising in the future because nowadays everything is changing to Technology.

The 3 words that described Soufian academic self are procrastinator, work fast, and determined. Soufian is a procrastinator which he does all his assignments and schoolwork at the last minute. Even though he starts all his assignments late he is still determined. Once he makes a decision, he will stick with it and make the most out of his time. He was telling me how he did last semester’s English final paper. He said that his final paper was due the next day and start working on it. Imagine the paper was 14 pages long and got a 94 on the essay. You can tell how determined and fast he is. According to D.R chews video in order to retain information for long-term memory, we have to give time by repeating the concept, again and again, to be able to store the information for the long term. Even though he is very fast at completing things he has to start working earlier on concepts in order to retain the information for long-term memory. This technique may work on writing or other subject but if you want your studying to stay longer it is recommended to start earlier.

In the middle of our conversation, we were talking about the college experience That we wish we could change, and Soufian told me that he would have changed the number of classes that we are taking for our major courses instead of being two days and long he would rather do small class hours and do the class multiple times. It was interesting he got a good grade at such a young age in high school. But Soufian told me that his grade wasn’t good as he wanted in some specific courses. The reason behind this is that his motivation went down than it is used to be before. I was curious how his motivation was down and asked him why he replied that during the pandemic all his courses were online and were hard to follow up. They weren’t learning very much, and everything was hard to follow up. He specifically mentioned the math course. He really doesn’t learn some of the basics in high school which will result in difficulty for later courses in college.

In conclusion, I have learned a lot from Soufian during our interview. The biggest thing I have learned is students have different approaches to learning. Some people might prefer online classes, long hours, short hours, and some prefer face to face. But if they feel like they didn’t get any of the basics in their previous course before continuing the subject I would say to look over the courses back and do the work again.

  Work cited

Dr Stephen Chew” Developing a mind set for successful Learning”, uploaded by samford University,16, Aug 2011,Developing a Mindset for Successful Learning – YouTube

 

Davis Davian’s Student Biography

Posted on by
Decorative Picture

A nice picture of Davis Davian

Hello everyone. I’d like to introduce to you one of the nicest people I met three weeks ago. Her name is Davis Davian, and she was born and raised in Georgia, USA. In her K-12 years till now, she has always attended Dekalb County schools. I was paired with her for a project assignment in one of here dual enrollment course at GSU. When I got the opportunity to talk with and interview her through coffee and phone calls, I found her to be courageous and unique. After interviewing her, I learned that she is now highly focused on her academics and attempting to achieve in every subject she is currently enrolled in. She has encountered a variety of experiences throughout the years that appear to be typical for many of us yet unique to herself, which I will briefly highlight in the following paragraphs.

One of the most remarkable experiences she shared with me was her current stance on her academics in comparison to her earlier years. In previous years, she was constantly focused on the wrong areas and failed, but she did occasionally obtain good grades on a whim. However, when she joined college through dual enrollment, she had to carefully assess herself to see how she was doing, what her shortcomings were, what strengths she had, and numerous other areas that might be addressed in order to be a better student. Most importantly, she wanted to break her procrastination habit, which was holding her back, and she began to recognize when she should perform tasks and arrange her duties in a systematic manner. She has then improved as a student as a result of the evaluation and organizing of herself. She’s learned how to manage her time better, which was her largest challenge, and she’s also learned how to apply my metacognition, which has helped her comprehend more in class and remain on track.

Davian has been passionate about art since she was a child. She is also currently pursuing a bachelor’s degree in arts, despite the fact that she is indecisive and considering her choices. She is presently the senior high school yearbook coordinator and designer. I asked her what her favorite course was, and she informed me that she is really enthusiastic about English writing, which she also excels at. Aside from school, she does a lot more housework than she used to because her sister recently left for college. She always washes the dishes, cooks, cleans, and helps her mother with a lot more things than she would if her sister was there, it can be seen that she organizes her time effectively for housework and schoolwork

Lastly, what surprised me the most was her note-taking style, which was considerably different from the normal note-taking method that we all use. She no longer takes notes as she would have in high school rather understands the content being taught well and copies notes down directly after class in her own words that she can understand. Dr. Chew, a psychology professor, also stated that taking notes gives you a summary of essential points, memory cues, and helps you participate in class, and it also requires work and focus so that it can help you in your learning (Chew YT Video Part 4 of 5 ,4:07-6:02). Davian, I believe, is using a similar strategy to Dr. Chew’s in his video, such that her note taking can assist her enhance her comprehension and learning. If she had any questions concerning the notes, she would compile them into an email and send them to her teacher. This is her style of comprehension, and it has helped her a lot in understanding what certain things are. I hope this gives you a taste of what Davis is like as a student, and I can’t wait to meet more people, share stories, and learn from one another.

Work Cited

Dr. Stephen Chew, “How to Get the Most Out of Studying: Part 4 of 5, “Putting Principles for Learning into Practice”” YouTube, uploaded by Samford University , 16 , Aug 2011, https://youtu.be/E9GrOxhYZdQ

Posted in 304

Academic Profile of Thomesia Williams

Posted on by

Abass Salat
Engl 1102 + Section 312 – Weaver
Academic Self Analysis
Date Due: 9 February 2022
asalat2@student.gsu.edu

Academic Profile of Thomesia Williams

            Thomesia, who goes by Tee, is an ambitious, resourceful, and adaptive person in her academic life. She bettered and matured her academic self greatly since highschool. Her response to the Covid-19 pandemic and transition from highschool to college was not to depreciate or make her academic self less productive. Rather, she pushed herself to better her academic self and increase her capabilities. She gradually became more ambitious, adaptive to new circumstances, and resourceful.

            Ever since the first semester of college, Tee started to become academically ambitious. During her remote learning period, Tee was among the 80 percent of students that the article “COVID-Era College: Are Students Satisfied?” mentioned were unmotivated during remote learning (Ezarik 6). Tee’s story fits really well with the chemistry student that was quoted to have said, “It’s kind of hard because you can see your bed. They don’t mandate video and don’t know if you’re listening” (Ezarik 6). This environment promoted Tee to put in minimal effort. When Tee got to college and classes were mostly in-person, she was no longer in that low effort promoting environment. She had to increase the amount of effort she put into school, and she started to become ambitious. She began to make sure to be attentive to assignments and deadlines and even developed a system to avoid having late work. Tee works on assignments before the regular time to start to stay ahead of her class. This gives her a safety net that she can fall on incase she has to put off when to start an assignment. This increase in ambition made Tee much better off and boosted Tee’s productivity.

            Tee also takes advantage of all the resources given to her. For example, she takes advantage of office hours when she needs some talking time with a professor. She also studies with a network of other students which helps her understand and learn the material of that class better. In a situation where an assignment is confusing or there is a concept Tee did not fully grasp, these resources come in handy for her. Tee prevents herself from falling behind the class because of her full utilization of these support structures and resources. Overall, this leads to Tee having better grades and feeling less alone in class tasks.

            Tee is also very adaptive to circumstances when they change. She has the capability to change her schedule to accommodate for unprecedented changes to her free time and how much work she has to do. In a situation where her workload is increased or responsibilities take up more of her schedule, Tee does not crumble under pressure. Instead, Tee switches her schedule around, identifies windows of time, and plans work for those windows. Because of her adaptive skills, she avoids procrastination and does not go under system failure whenever her schedule is altered.

            Tee combines her ambitious character, her full utilization of resources, and adaptive skills to boost her academic productivity. With these abilities, her academic self can achieve the goals she sets out. They reduce the likeliness of Tee experiencing setbacks such as not having adequate time to study, failing an exam, and failing balance her academic life with the other parts of her life. Tee has a finely tuned academic self and it did not appear out of thin air. This academic self was built, and one has to appreciate the strategic creation of it.

 

Work Cited

Ezarik, Melissa. “Student Experiences during COVID and Campus Reopening Concerns.” COVID-Era College: Are Students Satisfied?, Inside Higher Ed, 24 Mar. 2021, www.insidehighered.com/news/2021/03/24/student-experiences-during-covid-and-campus-reopening-concerns.

 

Josh Green Academic Profile

Posted on by

This essay was written about the academic self of Josh Green and how he came to be. I found that the easiest part of this project was just sitting down and talking to Josh. We settled on a FaceTime conversation. We were in a group of three with another student, which made the conversation much easier. Josh Green is a first-year college student at Georgia State University Perimeter College. He went to Union Grove high school and graduated in the spring of 2021. When I asked why he decided to come to Perimeter college, he said that it was because it was closer to home, and it allowed him to self-explore. He claimed that he wanted to grow into the college experience. 

I asked Josh a little more about his academic life in high school and how his past teachers impacted his academic self. He responded that some teachers were good, and some were really bad. He told me a couple of stories about his bad teachers, the one where one math teacher told his students that they would fail was the one that surprised me the most. To lighten the mood, I asked him about a teacher that helped him. He then told me about his Spanish teacher who encouraged Josh when he was struggling, and although he didn’t walk out of high school being fluent in Spanish, he learned a lesson. He learned that whenever someone offers you help, you should take it and believe that you can accomplish anything. 

The three words that Josh used to describe himself were organized, determined, and cautious. He uses these words to motivate himself and be better in his classes. He believes being organized, determined, and cautious are the keys to being academically successful. When I asked him what he meant by “cautious,” he said he’s careful with the academic decisions he makes, but he also knows when to trust his gut. 

I learned that Josh and I are very different. Our majors are different, the way we describe our academic selves is different, and even the experiences we’ve had with past teachers are different (I hated my foreign language teacher). In trying to find a common ground, I asked about his family setting. What expectations did his parents have about his studies? He told me he felt no pressure from his parents to do well because they never set absurdly high expectations for him to meet. I found that this is something we had in common. 

With his sports medicine degree, Josh hopes to work alongside famous football and basketball teams. He hopes that this education will help him succeed in life. 

Our one-hour talk turned into an hour and a half when I asked both of my team partners how they felt about the idea of Georgia State going virtual. To this Josh explained that he would not enjoy it, and I would have to agree. He told me that during the digital learning era of his high school days, he did not learn as efficiently as he did in a face-to-face setting. It was easy to slack off and not do the work, as you only needed to close the computer to ignore it. He believes physically being in school is what will allow him to reach his academic goals in the long term. Alongside me, he hopes that the COVID-19 pandemic will get better so every student can enjoy being on campus without any fear of exposing themselves to this virus.

Academic Evaluation of Logan Minter

Posted on by

     Logan Minter is a second semester freshmen at GSU from Virginia. She takes care of all her responsibilities in and out of school, passionate about her learning, can work outside of her comfort zone, and plans on either being a travel nurse or a labor and delivery nurse.

     After graduating from Westside High School in Virginia, Minter decided to move to Georgia for better opportunities. She lives with her older sister Haley who has also been her biggest motivator. Minter just like Haley enjoys anything science related. Haley received her Bachelor of Science degree from Old Dominion University and plans on receiving her master’s degree from George Mason University.

     A typical school day for Minter, isn’t an average college student school day. She drives about 20+ miles to get to school, goes to her three classes, drives back home to take a nap, studies for her classes, babysits her six and two-year-old niece and nephew until Haley comes home, and then goes to work. Although Minter has a lot of responsibilities and is far from home, and she still takes care of all of them inside and outside of school. But of course, there are always the ups and inevitable downs in college.

     Logan’s first disappointment in college was failing her first semester math class. She was working, taking a full schedule of classes, missed a few weeks after having to go out of town with her family, had car problems that caused her to not have transportation and ultimately fail the class. Even though failing the class hurt and she dislikes math, this didn’t discourage her from her academics and responsibilities. She evaluated her first semester and decided she needed to bring it down to three classes her second semester. She decided that she needed to allow herself more time to put more effort into her classes. The goal she had for this semester was just simply understanding all the information she is being taught, so she started paying more attention to the professor, taking notes, and making it to all her classes on time.

     Like most people do after being far from their home, Logan gets homesick. She misses her biggest supporters, her grandmother and mother back home in Virginia. However, this doesn’t stop her from taking care of her responsibilities. She can be outside of her comfort zone and accomplish her goals. It took courage and strength to decide to move to another state.

            Minter is not an average US student nor is she an ideal student, but she takes the steps she believes are necessary to real her goals. Minter’s academic character shows progression despite all the downs she’s been through. Progression is not only how to become an ideal student but how to grow as a person as well.

Tuan La Academic Evaluation on Zion Culbreath

Posted on by

The academic evaluation I will be evaluating is on Zion Culbreath. Over several text messages, we text about how his biggest push in life, how would he describe himself, and how he was back in high school. Zion has a big push in his life from his had and is planning to graduate as a software developer. He is now in his second year of college and is planning on transferring to Georgia State to finish his degree in computer science. He said his biggest inspiration was seeing his dad becoming a software developer and he wants to follow in his dad’s footsteps.

Zion describes himself as a deep thinker, very expressive, and open-minded. From what I see Zion is a very deep thinker. He always thinks ahead before he does or says something. Even when I asked the question, it took him a couple of minutes to think of the answer before typing it down and sending it. He is also very expressive through his texts. I can see what his motives and back story were like from just reading and analyzing it. Through texts, I can’t see if he is open-minded or not but I can see that he appreciates what his dad is doing and pushing him to become a better student. 

Another question I asked him was what is his biggest influencer in life. He answered his dad and it was the biggest key to success. His dad pushed him in math and reading so much that in first grade, he was reading a senior-level type of reading. He also said without his dad and mom’s push, he would not have succeeded at the academic level today. I’d say he has very high expectations and high hopes because of the push he has from his family. The thing that he added was that they shaped his academic outlook. Personally, I relate to this because my family pushed me to go to college and get a 4 years degree to be successful in life. From his perspective, I can see that his family is trying to pave the road for him to go and has him on the right track right now. 

Overall I think Zion will be very successful academic-wise. He has everything laid in front of him and is currently following it on his own decision. His head starts in 1st grade and through high school give him an advantage in front of other students that are attending GSU. Before interviewing Zion, I thought that most students were like me and were going through school because they have to but he is doing it out of choice.