Essay 1 Preparing for College Success PDF

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Preparing for college sucess
Professor Garcia ...

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Professor Garcia English Essay 1: Preparing for College Success Santa Monica College is the first step towards my goal of transferring to a four-year university. SMC is advertised as the number one transfer college. I enrolled at SMC to elevate my chances to go to my dream school at Cal State University of Long Beach. As a first-year college student, I came to SMC with a comprehensive plan to earn my associate degree in studio arts and earn 60 transferable units in two years. In the 3 semesters, I have been at SMC the challenging obstacles I faced were in managing time for work, school, and extracurricular activities. At SMC, they provide students with resources like mental health, food stability, transfer counseling, and much more. My goal will be to use two of the many resources at SMC which are the Writing and Humanities Tutoring Center, the Welcome Center for first-year college students, and public transportation, I will also include strategies to help me be a successful student. Learning to delay gratification is a strategy I will use for my college success. Delay of gratification means to have self-control and understand the concept of waiting for a greater reward rather than a lesser reward. This concept is used in many types of research to predict if children will succeed in life, for example, the marshmallow task. A scientific journal by Cognition published an article called “Rational Snacking: Young Children’s Decision -making on the Marshmallow Task is Moderated by Beliefs about Environmental Reliability”. Kidd, Palmieri, and Alina point out that, ”young children’s decision during delay of gratification tasks often appear to do just the opposite… when asked to resist the temptation of an immediately

Orozco 2 available low-value reward to obtain one of the high valves after a temporal delay, 75% of children failed to do so, succumbing to their desire after an average of 5.72 min” (23). This shows that children at a young age would rather have the reward now than wait for it until later. Reading “Rational Snacking” has created a realization about problems I have been having throughout my schooling. When a writing assignment has been assigned, I have trouble coming up with ideas that result in me looking at the screen of my computer for 30 mins with only one line written down. My ignorance has stopped me from solving a problem I’ve had for years including the insecurities I have in my writing which has been a challenge for me. Over time it has affected my writing ability which is not at a college level and resulted in receiving average level scores. SMC has placed me in the correct level of writing which will help me learn at my own speed. The concept of waiting for a greater reward will be in my Santa Monica College advancement. At SMC, there will be obstacles in my course work and work. I won’t be able to advance to higher writing classes if my writing is still the high school level because of this, I will plan to go to the Writing and Humanities Center for my next essay for improvement and go to office hours. After watching the two Ted Talks and reading “Rational Snacking” about delay gratification it has reinforced me to go to tutoring and earn a 4.0 GPA. Motivation to learn is a strategery I will use in my college success. Motivation to learn means not to give up when you make a mistake, when doing challenging tasks, and when struggling. Carol S. Dweck author of “Brainology: Transforming Student Motivation to learn” points out, “these different beliefs, or mindsets, create different psychological worlds: one in which students are afraid of challenges and devastated by setbacks, and one in which students relish challenges and are resilient in the face of setbacks” (37). There are two different types of students one of them is afraid to fail and the other one fails but can grow and learn from their

Orozco 3 mistakes. Reading “Brainology” reminds me of my past high school coursework. During my senior year of high school, I decided to take AP government one of the hardest classes at my school. On the first day of class, the teacher assigned two essays that were due the next day. On that day I had color guard practice from 4 pm to 8 pm. I decide to drop the class because it was a challenge trying to fit it in my schedule and decided to give up. In high school, I had a fixed mindset of believing you were born smart because I was diagnosed with a learning disability since I was in elementary school. This disability has set me back in believing I can’t grow my intelligence. The concept of the growth mindset will be part of my Santa Monica College advancement. When I started college and taking my art class I was struggling. My fixed mindset was questioning my major in Graphic design because if I can’t draw why I am majoring in it. For that reason, I want to learn how struggling is fine because it’s my first-time drawing, and it will take time until I reach the level, I want to be in. Also, going to the Welcome Center for counseling to explore my major and seek job opportunities there are to reassure myself that I am going into a major that I love. Another resource is doing an internship with a company or museum for exploring majors. In Dweck’s Ted talk she referred to the brain being red which means action is going on in the brain when a challenge is shown. I want to be the person who is not afraid of a challenge and has a growth mindset. Santa Monica College has about 30,000 students and all of them uses transportation. I am one out of 30,000 that takes the Big Blue Bus, Metro Train, and Metro Bus to get to school. On the SMC website, there is a page called transportation at SMC that provides information on how about,” 70% of our students get to campus by alternative modes. They know that a bus, train, carpool, bike, scooter or walking trip saves money and is less stressful than driving” (SMC Transpiration). On the website, there are links to bus schedules, apps, and services to use. The

Orozco 4 strategy that I will be using is to memorize the bus schedule. Specifically, the 207 Metro bus on western to get to the train station, the exposition line at expo/western metro train to get to SMC train station, and big blue bus: 41,42,43 to get to school from the train station. In my personal experience, I have missed the bus to school in resulting in being late and having to wait about 5 to 30 mins for the next bus to come. As an impatient person, I get frustrated and mad when I am not on time for class. I always try my best to be 30 mins early to class in case of a bus being late or an accident happens, or La traffic starts early. To be a successful college student I need to download an app for the bus schedules and always check my phone when the bus will be at my bus stop. The two strategies I plan on using is delay of gratification, to have a growth mindset, and memorizing the bus schedule for college success. Also, the three resources I plan to use are internships, the Writing and Humanities Tutoring Center, and the Welcome Center. All of this will help me prepare for college success.

Orozco 5 Work Cited Kidd C, Palmieri H, Alin RN.” Rational Snacking: Young Children’s Decision making on the Marshmallow Task is Moderated by beliefs about Environmental Reliability” Cognition,2013 Jan Carol S. Dweck is the Lewis and Virginia Eaton Professor of Psychology at Stanford University and the author of Mindset: The New Psychology of Success (Random House, 2006). Goal cast. “How Marshmallows Predict Your Success | Michio Kaku | Goal cast.” YouTube, YouTube, 17 May 2018, www.youtube.com/watch?v=47DmUM7MW7s TED. “Don't Eat the Marshmallow! | Joachim De Posada.” YouTube, YouTube, 10 Aug. 2009, www.youtube.com/watch?v=M0yhHKWUa0g.. “I Am a Transfer Student.” Santa Monica College, www.smc.edu/EnrollmentDevelopment/NewStudents/Pages/I-am-a-Transfer-Student.aspx. “Writing & Humanities Tutoring Center: Drescher Hall Room 313.” Santa Monica College, www.smc.edu/AcademicPrograms/Tutoring/Pages/Writing-and-Humanities.aspx. “Transportation at SMC.” Santa Monica College, www.smc.edu/StudentServices/transportation/Pages/default.aspx....