College_Admissions

College Admissions To begin with this semester has been really challenging for me, more challenging than that of last semester, for several reasons. The weather for one, it is very hard to stay focused when t is nice and hot outside. I also felt like my classes were more challenging than last semester's. Most of my classes involved reading, my art of dance class especially. We didn't have a set text for this class, but the teacher handed out packets ofreading assignments from several different books that she had, with these readings we had to keep reading journals. In these journals we wrote about what we read and how we felt about what was said in the text. This is mostly where my Selecting Main Idea Skills came in handy. Before learning skills that would develop my SMI, it was very hard for me to elaborate on what I had just read, even if it was right after I had read the material. I would usually have to go back and find the answers to wha the questions were asking, before I could of answer them. After I began practicing my SMI skills the quality of my work became better, the answers to my questions were more thorough and accurate than before and completing assignments became much eaier for me. So my assignments were passed in on time and I was able to keep up with my classes, and as a result my grades are just as good as last semester or maybe even better. When I read assignments that required answering questions, I read the qustions through first and then read the passage so that when I came across one of the answers I would recognize it, without too much hesitation. This helped because all of the answers were all ready marked so when I read the questions I didn't have t go back and read through, or skim the material. Being able to do this also cut my frustration rate down allot. It helped me to complete my assignments on time, I felt as though if I didn't learn these new skills, I would be stuck trying to complee one task, and as a result have no time left to complete other assignments, which would lead to work being passed in late. Skimming and surveying didn't really work out much for me, because I never really knew what to look for when doing it. I did i once and it didn't really help much, so I ruled it out as being too time-consuming and at the same time a waste of my time. I would usually recognize the central theme, or more the subject, of the piece but it really didn't help in any of the tasksthat I had to complete for my classes. Reflecting on the other hand did help when used, but was used very rarely. When I read something that was appealing to me, I paused and thought about it, I even asked myself all sorts of questions that may have elped me arrive at the answer to the question; why' This, when used helped me to understand what I was reading better. And again helped with keeping the good grades rolling in. I think choosing to develop my SMI skills was a good decision for me becase I think it helped me more than any of the other skills would have. As I said before in College your ability to read and comprehend is one of the most important aspects of success, so after these last couple of weeks, I think that my ability to dothis is much Overall I would say that I accomplished all of my goals, I came up with A good study plan that I stuck with most of the time and I kept good grades. Maybe even better grades than last semester. Although I wasn't able to compleely keep up with my classes most of the time, I had a good hang on things. Bibliography: