Bobby Portis – College Life

Relaxing > Working

There are many pros and cons of online courses. Personally, I think the pro and cons are pretty equal just, the hardest part is discipline. There are many pros, but it takes discipline to make those pros effective. One pro is online accommodating someone’s schedule whether it be sports, work, or anything else one can have going on. This is super nice for me because I am an athlete here and having these online classes are needed because of my practice schedule. Another pro is getting to rewatch lecture videos. If there is something that I don’t understand I can just go rewatch the lecture. This is super nice because then I don’t have to go into office hours all the time or make an appointment with my professor for them to answer questions. Lastly, I feel like I get more sleep when I have online classes because I don’t have to wake up as early to go to class and that makes me more energized to do my classes later in the day.

On the other hand, there are also many cons to online classes like procrastination which I sadly suffer from. Yes, it’s nice to not have to go into class all the time, but then you are also home all the time where there are many distractions, like TV, video games, and roommates. These things make me put off watching my lectures because I don’t have a strict schedule and I also get sidetracked very easily. Another con that happened recently for me is lecture videos not loading. My chemistry lecture videos would play for two minutes then buffer and never load again. This is very annoying because the time I want to get work done I can’t because technology decides not to work. Lastly, just having the motivation to get out of bed and watch the lectures or homework is the hardest part. I struggle with this, and I am trying to get back on the horse and get my stuff done then I can go relax or do whatever I want to do.

https://www.youthvoices.live/wp-content/uploads/2017/10/procrastination-1.jpg

What A Struggle

The biggest struggle for me in college is studying because I never needed to in high school. When coming into college I didn’t think I was going to need to study as much as I really do because I thought I retained information well. I was severely mistaken. Since I am a human biology major my courses are very difficult and need extra attention. Since I need to study so much, I should have found an effective strategy, but I haven’t yet. There were many study strategies that I have tried like a study group, Quizlet’s, rewriting my notes, quizzing, and flashcards, but none of them seemed to work. During group study sessions I always get off topic and start talking about something else and not doing any work which leads the others to get off topic too. Whenever I try to study my mind just wonders off and I can’t stay focused long enough to retain any new information. I’ve got to start focusing on studying more and with no distractions present.
Along with not being good at studying the courses are insanely more difficult than those in high school. Just the other day in lecture going through new material and it sounds like it’s not even real words just made up. In high school I could just sleep or sit on my phone in the back of the class and still get a high A, but in these classes I could do the complete opposite and get a C. Another example that makes college classes so much more difficult than high school is when taking notes on the computer and the computer thinks that the word is spelled wrong even though it’s correct. Anyone who thinks that high school to college was going to be an easy transition is most definitely retracting that statement.

https://www.missbsresources.com/images/homework.jpg