Fatoumata Diallo

February 10, 2022

Major project 1

English 1102

                                                              Cjay Thompson As A Student and Academic Self 

  Cjay Thompson class of 2023 graduated from Lithonia high school in 2020. Cjay decided to attend Georgia State University and is pursuing an associate degree in public health. He decided to attend one of Georgia states off campus/ perimeter campus. He chooses the Clarkston campus because not only was it affordable, but it was close to his parents. He is a full-time student, but he also works full time. He has found a way to manage school and work.

Over the years are academic self improves. We learn what learning styles are bad for use and the ones that are good. Cjay also learned his weakness over the course of his academic life. He learned his weakness and used that to improve as a student and as a person.  He found what made him a better student and understood his metacognition.

Cjay was asked to describe his academic self into three words and his response was, “I am a very aware, ethical and indecisive being when it comes to my academic self.”  In Cjay’s short essay about his academic self he explains his academic self and how it has bettered over the years. When explaining his awareness Cjay said, “I am totally knowledgeable on certain things and when discussing certain topics.” He also said he is very ethical and the way that he explained him being ethical is from respect. “I feel as though being a student is all about ethics and how morals play a major role in finding out who you are as a person in general.” He also spoke on turning in your assignment, especially for a class YOU paid for. For his third academic self-word that he thinks best describes him is being indecisive. He talked about how him being indecisive affects him as a student. He said, “I don’t have room  for error, so it is hard for me to compress my thoughts and explain them to the point that I feel is effective to others.”

Even though Cjay has found his academic self it can still change and improve. Our academic self is always changing and improving. We find new ways and better ways to learn. Cjay has learned more about his academic self in the classes he has taken and are taking.  The three words that Cjay would to describe his current academic self is being 

After interviewing  one of my fellow classmates Ishmel Oussiegnon we discussed and reflected on our academic history and how the journey as a student has impacted our lives, and how we got here today as Georgia State students. The interview allowed me to see a different perspective,while sharing a lot of the same feelings of concern and struggles throughout the years of being a student.

 Ishmel described his academic self as willing, capable, and reserved. Ishmel stated that he “if I make a plan to get my work done, it will get done”, and that he is fully capable of getting his work done or improving in his respective class subjects. Lastly reserved, Ishmel stays quiet, and focused in class, but would like to improve on his note taking skills. 

At a young age in elementary school Ishmel shared that he had “lot’s of energy and would have trouble focusing in class. Because of this him,and his parents decided that private school would be the best option for his education moving forward. Private school was able to provide him with better support, and help. Ishmel attended Arabia high school up until his senior year  and then transferred to Stephenson High school. He described the move as a “ difficult time” and stated that it was hard leaving all of his friends. Despite the move being a hard time he also shared that the move helped motivate him and allowed him to hit the reset button, and reevaluate his academics, and take them more seriously.

Post High School Ishmel started to look into colleges and narrowed his options down between Georgia State, and SCAD. Ishmel is a strong math and writing student and has a strong interest in becoming a video game designer. SCAD has a great arts program, but decided against going there due to how  expensive their tuition is. Currently Ishmel is a Sophomore and majoring in Computer science. He is very optimistic about his future as a student. He plans to continue the path of a computer Science degree and take his knowledge gained into a work environment that he is patient about.

After talking with Ishmel I’ve realized that a lot of college students are experiencing the same feelings of frustration, and uncertainty. He shared with me that his biggest frustration with college is that a lot of the time “there is a lot of time being wasted taking classes on things that don’t apply to what I’m interested in.” As well as learning content that could’ve been taught to us during high school. Despite these frustrations he is still understanding that it’s just a part of the process and will be able and willing to “work around, and adapt.”

​​https://sites.gsu.edu/jswank3/2022/02/07/james-swanks-blog/

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.

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. 

Introducing: Ranup Katwal.  

Ranup is a student at Georgia State Perimeter College whose family moved to the United States about ten years ago. Since the beginning of his academic journey, Ranup’s passion has been a career in Computer Science.  

While talking about our academic selves, I discovered that we have a few things in common that connect us. First, we are both in the same English class, which is a given similarity. Second, Ranup is a first-generation college student; and so am I. In the past, Ranup struggled with regularly making good grades, and frequently found it easier to meet the mark at the average point and stop there. After taking a step back and reflecting on his performance in high school, Ranup found that continuing his education would lead him to a field he would find passion in, unlike school had given him in the past.  

Education is a journey that leads to larger opportunities, like Ranup discovering that developing open-world games, rather than only playing them, would be the right career path he would enjoy partaking in. From what I learned while meeting with Ranup, open-world games offer endless opportunities for its players to enjoy. From an introspective standpoint, our experiences and academic selves push us onward to larger goals, similarly to the hypothetical characters in the games Ranup wishes to develop in the future.  

            I would like to introduce you to Abdulaziz Usman. He is a 15-year-old first year student here at Georgia state university. He spent most of his life here in Georgia. Abdulaziz attended many different k-12 schools, simply because the schools in his area wasn’t good, that it lacked good education. He chose Georgia state because it is close to him. He started college right after high school because he didn’t want to waste any time and to finish school early so he can have a jump start in his career. Abdulaziz is going to get his degree in computer science then later get his bachelors.       

         Three words that describes Abdlaziz academic self is Determined, curious and worrisome. He is determined to do his best in all his class and make all A’s and B’s. Although he wants to learn new things, he is worried because he is not so sure if he is doing the assignments right, or if he understands the materials that is given to him. Abdlaziz quickly realized that college isn’t the same as high school, where in high school he didn’t have to try harder, and the learning came easier to him. He wasn’t fully preparing for how different college was and the amount of adapting he had to do. Later he knew that if he wanted to do right in college, he needs to put in more time to study. Make more effort into doing his work and be engaged in class time.

         Abdlaziz said after learning about the 5-step study cycle he saw an improvement in his work, and he felt more confident. He stated working harder and continued to do his best. He realized if he wants to do his best, he got to put fourth all the hard work to not only make himself proud but his family. Abdlaziz determination made him a better student now. He is always looking for more opportunity to improve his academic self. He Is now looking at his academic self and he proud of it, this made him more motivated. The way he stared the semester off nothing was going right for him, all the work he did he felt as if it was worthless and wanted to give up, but he remember is family and all the hard work they did to make him have a better life and education. This made him not to give up but only to work harder.

      Although abdlaziz and I came from different background we are much similar. We both went through tuff times in school, where we wanted to give up, frustrated on how much college was hard. We didn’t let this small set back fail us, it motivated us to do better make ourselves and families proud. This is a lesson learned and we will continue to better in school.

Work cited

Usman, Abdlaziz. Interview. By Isatu Diallo 3 February 2022

                                          Academic Profile of Brandon Powell

  I’ve had the time to meet with Brandon Powell to talk about his academic profile. Our interviews included us discussing his goals, not only academically, but his goals in life as well. Brandon is 20 years old, and it is his second semester hear at Georgia Perimeter. He was born in St. Thomas and spent Kindergarten through 4^th grade in the Virgin Islands. In the middle of 4^th grade, he moved to Virginia for about two years. In 6^th grade, he moved to Georgia where he attended and graduated from Shiloh Highschool. Brandon’s major is Computer Science and hopes to have a career with programing video games. He enjoys creating content videos for YouTube with his friends.

     One thing Brandon is passionate about is school. He’s always been a great student and what keeps him going is the influence he gets from his mom. Growing up, his mom taught him that’s its important to put school first. Being academically successful is always a key aspect to have. Going to school and getting and education is important to him. His favorite subject in school is English. Brandon is a great writer and has a love for books. He loves to read and write about Greek Mythology and his favorite book series to read is the Percy Jackson’s books.

   Brandon’s music teacher also influences him. His music teachers taught him creativity and showed him another love for music. Being able to also teach a group of people music is another strong aspect Brandon has. Brandon had a passion for music and used to be a part of the choir program in school. While he was a part of choir, he used to teach the boys how to sing in the Tenor key. I asked Brandon why he decided to major in Computer Science rather than music and he said that he “lost his passion”. When his old high school got a new choir teacher, it just wasn’t the same to him.

   Three words to describe Brandon’s academic self is persistent, hardworking, and “very lazy”, or as I like to call it, a procrastinator. When he told me that he built his own computer, I was very shocked. Not a lot of people can say that they can create their own computer, so for Brandon to have a creative skill like that is amazing. Being a procrastinator might not be a good trait to have, but it never stopped Brandon. He has the skills to be academically successful in the technology field, and if he ever gets his passion back, he can also be successful in the music industry. I know whichever route Brandon goes with, he’ll be the best at it.

This is my take on the interview I had with my partner, Fatoumata Diallo on her upbringing to how she got to where is currently. We scheduled interview questions via text message due to both of our busy schedules and proceeded from there. Fatoumata is a 17 year old college attendee attending Georgia State University’s Clarkston Campus. I say attendee because Fatoumata is in the DECA program which allows her to take college courses as a high school student. She is the first in her family to go to college and she plans on graduating in the class of 2024 with her bachelor’s degree in Biology. She received her k-12 education in the state of Georgia at a variety of schools, which influenced her decision to stay within the state to pursue a higher level of education. 

I made it my responsibility to understand my partner and how she describes herself, academically. She described herself as a hardworking, visual, and flexible person. We share a common factor which is that we both attended the DECA program. This program is for scholars that are very hardworking to earn a chance to graduate high school with both a college associate’s degree and high school diploma which she is taking advantage of. She then mentioned that her best way of learning new material or reviewing past material is to see the material multiple times and make sure to quiz herself. I felt as though this was an amazing habit that she picked up and felt the need to take note of that for myself. Lastly, she mentioned that she is very flexible in the way that she learns so she is very open to new learning mechanisms and feel as though there is no one way to learn anything. 

Fatoumata presented to me that her main goal is to strive to be the best her she can be. She believes academic success is important, and goes on to show this through her work. With her being a first generation student and graduate, she must focus on the most important things for herself right now which is going to the next level. Due to Fatoumata taking advantage of the program that she is in, she is even closer to getting her bachelor’s degree and she plans on finding a job within that field immediately after graduating. During our discussions, she would mention the importance of this milestone for not only herself, but also for her family as well.