How I Functioned over the school year

Here's why I don't blog during the school year:

My strengths: listening and taking good notes in class, doing smaller assignments on time (watching videos/ responding, doing journal entry assignments, studying for tests and quizzes)

My weaknesses: reading for class and projects and papers. Here's why, this is the process of completing a paper for me

1. Get assignment, usually pretty far ahead of time

2. Make minimal progress on the assignment within a few days of it being given

3. Think "hey I got a pretty good start, I'll focus on other stuff now or putz around and watch tv"

4. A few weeks later, when work starts getting heavier, think "oh gee I should start working on that assignment"

5. start working on the assignment again

6. Get immediately annoyed or frusterated with the assignment (at this point I am far in enough to have to do annoying things like research or re reading texts)

7. After leaving it for a few more weeks, I start freaking out about the assignment, and think about doing the assignment on top of all the other responsibilities I have, get insanely stressed out and take a lot of naps because I find myself too tired to focus on homework

8. Tons of assignments build up from napping too much

9. Last week/ few days until assignment is do I will marathon work and complete it. During this time I am really anxious and can't really focus on anything else

10. Turn in the assignment at the last minute, or if I can get permission, late

This is an awful thing to do to myself and I need to change my habits somehow. I end up not giving myself time for crafting or blogging because I feel guilty putting effort into these things when I should be putting that energy into homework. So instead I break down and sleep or hang out. I think I also have a fear of getting too caught up in a blog or a project and lose focus on school. I think that this may be a good thing though because as much as I have trouble doing my work, I never have trouble focusing on what I learn in class. I'm always thinking about concepts and terms that I learned and applying them to life experiences that I have. Anyways, all this is to say that this stress and anxiety was worth it because my worst grade this semester was an A-. Now, bring on the summer and the fall semester!!!

Group Project

 What is social work? What do social workers value? 

These are two questions that we were assigned to answer in a five minute video based on content and creativity. Leslie Sattler allowed us to pick our own groups of four, and like everyone else in the classroom, we just picked the people closest to us. 

As with all of my schoolwork I thought critically about the two questions and came up with an idea for the project. The problem is, I didn't really voice my full idea of what the project could be when I had the chance. First of all here was my idea:

It's like ocean's 11, where you're being introduced to the different thieves and their specialties and how they can are going to help the cause of stealing from the casino. But instead of thieves, it's four college students and instead of breaking into a bank, we're trying to make a video project worthy of an A grade. We have a big task ahead of us and we all can contribute even though we're not actually social workers. This relates to the project because there is a big task of helping society and anyone can contribute as long as you have the values that social workers have. These values are conducive to getting the task done. The values that I was hoping to hi-light were:

• being able to work with different types of people: whether it be marginalized people in society or people with different ways of working
• helping people to help themselves: like teaching someone how to use a simple video editing program so that they can help with the project
• recognizing strengths: a social worker should not only see the hardships someone is going through, but recognize and play off of the strengths that they have to help them succeed. You can do this in a group project by delegating tasks

Then for the video, we'd just act like we were working on planning the project/ doing the project and i'd freeze the frame on a person after they exemplified a quality, and i'd do text that said the value. Anyways, those were just some of the few I was thinking of, I figured that other people would have ideas that we could use too, but my group wants to do something TOTALLY DIFFERENT from what I am used to/ comfortable with doing.

What my group wants to do is to make a sort of power-point with the words/ values they feel answers the two questions. They want to add pictures of social workers, people holding hands, diversity ect. with background music about people helping each other. I AM NOT SAYING MY IDEA IS BETTER, but i'm just nervous because no one has really given any of us a real vision of what the outcome will look like and what we all need to do to achieve that. I'm also nervous because their ideas of what they want the project to me clash with mine, so I am worried that contributing will be really hard for me to do, and I don't want to get points off or be a quitter :(

Anyways, what I'm getting out of all of this, is that I am going to make like a good little social worker and try to use the resources and creativity I have to try to help my group make this project what they want it to be. 

Life Goals

I think that I would make a really good parole officer, therefore doing something along the lines of a parole officer is my goal for school. I haven't read up on it yet but I am not sure if being a parole officer requires me to go to a police academy and become a police officer first. I'm guessing yes because the title has the word "officer" in it. If that is the case, assuming that I can become a police officer (from what I learned in my police community and society class becomng an officer is very exclusive and difficult to achieve) I need to go to a police academy. I think that I will wait until after college to do this, as opposed to going during a summer.

It's likely though that I will not even be able to serve as a police officer because I have been diagnosed with depression and am medicated for it. Even if my depression somehow dissappears and dealing with life gets easier, I think that it is a point against me because the background checks are naturally really intensive.

If not, I'm sure I have other options. Hopefully I will be able to find some of those options once I start doing my community service for my social welfare class.

First Day Back!!

And it was awesome! Both my teachers seem very nice and pleasant and respectful and the curriculum (curriculi?) look like they will be really interesting! My Intro to Social class seems like it will be alot of work. We don't have any exams but we do have a few projects and a bunch of little homework assignments. Oh ya, did I mention THIRTY HOURS OF COMMUNITY SERVICE?!!!! Thats going to be stressful but I know I will enjoy the hands on learning experience.

After I got out of class I am proud to say that I did not go straight to Hilda's to nap! If I had I'm sure I would have stayed there for too long relaxing instead of being on campus in the school state of mind. I hung out in the pride center while I ate lunch and then spent an hour or so in the computer lab as I waited for Monika. I added my professor's emails, office hours and phone numbers to my contacts on my google account and I also picked up a form to declare my minor. Next up tonight is to at least do half of my reading for my intro class and start looking for an article to do my journal entry on for next week!

I'm really really sleepy now so i'm going to just rest my eyes until 8:30 and get on that homework train!

Excitement

I've basically been waiting all vacation for school to start again. I had a really stressful end to the semester because I got myself in a position where I had to study insanely hard to get a decent grade in two of my classes, and I let myself get anxious. Christmas was a nice break from school, I got to buy things for people and see them happy about it, I got presents and I got a few new pieces for my wardrobe. But now I feel like I have everything that I need for now so I can't stress shop to pass the time. I've felt like that for about two weeks, and I've been ready to get back to a schedule and ready to get things done.
Last semester taught me that if I apply myself, I can do really well. Not only did I get two good grades, but I felt really strongly like I had earned them and even weeks after my classes have ended I still have information that I know I retained and that feels so great! Now that I know what I have the potential to do I want to do it all again!!!