I’m not sure what I was expecting coming into my first semester of college. I have learned that unlike high school, it takes a lot of time outside of class to make sure that I am keeping up with my busy schedule. I was worried that I wouldn’t have time for work and any extra curriculars that I decided to participate in but I’m glad that is not true. I have been able to balance my schoolwork, my job, and join the Christian Student Fellowship worship team at IUPUI. I have a feeling that every semester will be different with different workloads dependent on what classes I am in. As I planned my schedule for my second semester, I realized that it was going to be a different pace than first semester and that’s ok. Starting my first semester with an honors contract for my required honors credit was not my original plan, but I felt that it was the best option for my schedule. I learned how to start with a problem and find a solution all on my own. For my project I decided to create a website that would inform parents and caregivers of children with autism of ways that their children could meet their physical activity goals. I really enjoyed that this allowed me to have complete creative freedom with a topic that interested me. The project helped me think of different ways of completing a task than writing an informative essay like I had always done in the past for projects. I learned that I had different options when starting this ePortfolio, I had never known where to begin to create a website before this and it helped me with my honors contract. It is true that skills learned on assignments can help you with future projects in other classes.

Since starting college, I have learned that my ability to adapt is much stronger than I thought. My entire weekly schedule has changed along with many other things, and I have had to quickly fall into my new schedule to not fall behind. The hours that I attend school have changed and the early mornings are difficult, but I know that if I continue to put in my best work, it will pay off in the end. Time management is a weakness of mine; I struggle to decide how much time I will need for an assignment and end up not blocking out enough time to complete it. I have gotten better since I have started using a planner, but there are times when I forget to add an assignment and realize that the due date is closer than I thought. I have become much more decisive; I am quicker to realize what I want to do. Having the freedom to plan my own schedule has allowed me to take the classes that I am interested in, and feel would best suit me for where I want to steer my life. I have found that my communication skills have gotten better since starting college, I have the confidence to speak up when I have a question or reach out when I need help. I don’t feel the fear of being a judged for having a question like I used to in high school, I am at IUPUI for my education, and I don’t want the worry of the way others view me to stop me from understanding my education.

I have learned to focus on my own goals instead of those around me. I want to see others succeed but I have spent much of my life worried about others and their wishes rather than my own. This is my chance to focus on what I value in life and build a path for myself to reach my goals. I will always value others’ opinions, but it is not the prime driver in my actions, I know that I want to complete my undergraduate degree and continue my education with graduate school and that is what I intend to do. The advice I give myself for next semester is remember what you are working for, and it would be boring if it weren’t a challenge.

The global learning project was a way to show how communication is possible across countries. IUPUI students partnered with students from Newcastle University and compared their dietary patterns using Course Networking for communication. The students had to answer discussion questions about their own dietary patterns and comment on the responses of their partners from the other country so they could further compare their differences and similarities.

I learned that our diets and recommendations are not as different as I had originally thought. The different measuring systems made comparing the recommendations a little difficult because I did not know a good conversion for the UK measurements to measurements that I would recognize. I was more surprised to hear that the UK depends more on what food can be grown within their country than the US was. I had not thought about the limited options of food because that is not something that is as regulated in the US. I had not realized that the UK has many more regulations on food than the US does. I wished I could have had more information from people that lived in the UK rather than research that I had completed, but I experienced everyone’s worst nightmare when completing a group project, very few of my group members from the UK contributed to the discussions. This made completing this project a little more difficult, but I was able to use the other people that had done their work to find my needed information. Global learning is more difficult than I was expecting with our current technology access and the time difference was more of an issue than I had originally thought. When working on a global project like this you should be mindful of what time it is in the other country and for other peoples’ deadlines that I had never had to worry about before. I enjoyed the opportunity to reach out and learn about college students from a different country, I had never gotten a chance to do anything similar.