3. Taking My Education Seriously: Joining a Study Group

For the three major exams of our Foundations of Education class, Alisha Bender, Kristen Szappanos, Lucas Nafziger, Daniel Gingerich and I would be in contact as to whether we wanted to get together and study the material. This was somewhat difficult given the nature of the exams, which included a lot of personal experience as well as larger conceptual material than just the material from the chapters themselves. But, it was still helpful to be with a group of people who had spent time doing the reading and writing notes on the various figures and concepts throughout educations vast history. I really appreciated someone asking me if I would like to join the group; we intentionally tried to keep it small for the most productive studying possible.

Besides this study group, I take my education seriously in a number of ways. From an early age, my parents instilled in me the belief that my primary job was to be a good student. This changed and was reformulated throughout my schooling to include being a good driver, a good friend, and many other things, but academic excellence was still held up as what I should be striving for. I had somewhat of a wake-up call when I let a grade slip in one of my Math classes in high school. I was really struggling with the material and found the way the teacher explained the material unhelpful. I started to lose interest in the class and decided that I would simply take a lower grade because of it. My parents then talked to me about how important GPA was in applying for colleges and scholarship money. I regretted having given up on the class and worked hard to get a B in it. This is when I learned to work at my schooling for me, not simply because of my parent's expectations.