Back To The Starting Line

The day I logged on to banner web to check my midterm grades was a very disappointing day.  Although I knew I wasn’t giving school my best effort, I thought that I would have higher grades than I did.  After viewing the grades, it made rethink the decisions I had made in the past couple months.  It allowed me to take a step back and remember why I was enrolled in Southern in the first place; make the grade.  Slacking was not something I envisioned myself doing.  Coming from the rough past I’ve had from questionable decisions I previously made, I saw that college was a new start. How can I allow myself to start off on the wrong foot when this may be my only opportunity to start over again?

As a whole, I am not where I want to be in terms of my midterm grades. I’m not where I want to be because of my lack of time management. I did not put enough time or effort into studying because I focused on other things instead and put off school for as long as possible. In order to do well in school in the future, I need to have better time management. I also need to refocus my energy into school, grades, and studying. Lastly, I need to re-asses my priorities. Instead of putting other things such as work ahead of studying, I’m going to do my schoolwork first and keep up with my assignments. The goals that I have for myself for the remainder of the semester are to get my grades up and maintain B’s or better.

Making a change to make more pocket change

Recently, I started a new and challenging job with a financial group.  I landed this job while working at my other job oddly enough.  The CEO is a regular customer at the restaurant I work at and from seeing him so frequently we developed sort of a business like relationship.  During the summer, I was looking for full time work outside of the restaurant.  I was putting in well over forty hours of work, and was extremely stressed by my work schedule as well as the environment and type of work I was doing.  I was the boss without getting paid like the boss.  I originally started washing dishes at the restaurant when I was fourteen so with five years of experience my boss depends on me more than he depends on himself (and I really wish I was kidding.)  Being in the back of a fast paced kitchen where ducking sauté pans (again, I truly wish I was kidding) is not an irregular event with the stressed out, "overworked and underpaid" sentiment setting in, I knew it was time to make a change.

            While asking around for work, I remembered Dave owned his own company.  I also knew he was driving around in a brand new BMW M5 convertible; why the hell wouldn’t I ask him for a job?  A couple months later, I landed the job with R.S. Capital Group.  My job is to contact merchants all across the country that R.S. has worked with in the past and bring the news that we are no longer brokering deals and that there is no more middle man; we are the man. As his company has grown, they are now able do in-house loans and processing which means more money for R.S. and hopefully more money for me.  At a starting rate of twelve an hour, plus commission with bonuses, I'm pretty optimistic that my hope will become a reality.

            For my first two weeks of work, I've been told how great of a job I'm doing.  The Senior Account Executive told me I picked up on everything that he learned in months in a matter of a week.  Although that might be a nice compliment, knowing that I opened up six potential accounts and locked two new accounts down, it’s a bit of reassurance that it might be more than a compliment.  Before either one of us know it, you might be seeing me pull up in a new BMW…well okay, mostly likely a pre-owned.

Midterm

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http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=2v60JRvxupY

My First Semester

My first semester at college has been a very difficult adjustment.  I am still getting used to managing work and school.  It becomes hard to juggle everything without finding yourself slipping every once in a while in one part of your responsibilities.  For example, it is hard to be a very good worker and still be an excellent student.  Although we strive to be able to be great at both, we still often find ourselves let down in our performance due to other obligations and responsibilities that require much of our attention.

Another struggle is finding time to manage a social life with everything going on.  It's hard to spend time with friends and enjoy yourself when you have so many other responsibilities.  This is a hard time in a students life.  We want to be able to do it all, but we often still find ourselves not be sufficient in one area of  our lives.  I honestly am definitely having trouble with managing my time with everything going on, but I am starting to recognize the things I can change in order to make things easier on myself.  For example, instead of sleeping late on the weekends, I can wake up earlier and get more homework done so that way after work, I can use that time to relax knowing that I have accomplished things earlier in the day.

I am looking forward to the second half of the semester so I can use the knowledge of college that I have gained in the first half of the semester.

Peer Mentor

Having a peer mentor allows the students to connect with an older student and receive advice and information in a private classroom setting. This helps the students to feel comfortable asking questions and following older students' advice.  Sometimes when students interact with the professor or teacher, it’s hard to figure out what is really expected of them.  Having a peer mentors helps to break it down to a student’s perspective so we have a clear understanding of what to do.  Students need help when they are trying to manage multiple responsibilities so a peer mentor is very helpful in "bridging the gap."

A good peer mentor is able to keep an open schedule to meet with students and finds constructive and interesting ways to inform students of upcoming events and opportunities offered on campus. A good peer mentor is also able to multi-task so they can handle all of the students that they work with and meet with them without feeling overwhelmed.

After meeting with my peer mentor, she helped me understand that during the advisement period of our class, I will learn about what classes I need to take and what is required of me.  When I was picking classes during orientation, I wasn't sure on exactly which classes I need to take in order to work towards a degree.  After speaking with our peer mentor, it gave me an idea of where to look for advisement on classes and a "degree evaluation."

I think having a peer mentor is a great addition to a class and it has been very helpful.