Brain Rules

     For University 101 I have to read a book called Brain Rules by John Medina.  Basically this book discusses ways our brain's function from how they function a certain way, to the effect on our brain from certain activities we participate in.  The first chapter went into great detail about how exercise benefits the brain in a great way.  Not only is exercise healthy for the body, but has added benefits for making us as individuals smarter.  By participating in aerobic activity we allow more oxygen to reach our brain which helps it function better and retain more information.  In order to learn our brain has to be functioning.  In order for our brain to function it needs oxygen.  So to put it all together our brain needs exercise to function at its full capacity.  The author even went into detail about certain studies that have been done on how much more well off a person is based upon their aerobic activity.  We are shown how someone who participated in regular aerobic activity their entire life was significantly more alert and cognitive into their late 80's then someone who sat around all day and did nothing during their younger years. This really struck me hard because I am avid exerciser.  I go to the gym daily because it is healthy for my body, now I know it is healthy for my mind.  Seeing how my daily ritual of exercise can aid in my brain function and help me learn better makes me look forward to the future when I will be able to be more alert than the average person who did nothing as a teenager.
     The second chapter in Brain Rules mainly discussed how our brain's have evolved over time to where they are now.  Our ancestors had one small brain in their heads, we have three small brains that form one large brain.  It is even proven that our heads have become bigger over time, amazing!  Most of this growth attributes to our evolution of walking and going from four legs to two legs.  Once we did that we had to expend less calories to get around and more energy could go to the development of our brain.  Basically, our adaptation to life has affected the way our brain has evolved.  After reading this chapter I cannot wait to read more!
     On a different note, today was the Major Information Fair.  I have nothing to really say on this topic as I did not attend.  I know right now that my major as Pre-Pharmacy is exactly where I want to be so I do not have any interest in changing in my major.  Also, I am already very involved in organizations within this major and do not think I can handle anything else right now.  Maybe next semester I will swing by to take a look.

Six Weeks In and I'm Loving Every Minute

     I have now been down here at USC for a little over six weeks now.  I love everything about college, even my classes.  I do not think I have ever been this excited about going to class ever in my life.  Most people say the excitement of college classes dies down within a few days but I have not experienced that disappointment of going to classes yet.  Although my Chemistry class is at 8 am I still really enjoy what I am learning, even if it is difficult to wake up so early in the morning.  That I have to say is the only thing keeping it from being my favorite class here on campus.  I am not a morning person when it comes to waking up.  Once I am up, now that is a different story I am ready to go for the day, getting up is the hardest part in the morning.  Apart from the morning wake-up difficulty, I LOVE chemistry.  Everything about the subject is fascinating to me.  Balancing equations, calculating molarity, determing limiting reactants, whatever it is I love to solve for it.  It includes the math that I love to solve for, yet the fascination and understanding of science.  My other favorite class is swimming.  I do not typically say this is my favorite subject because it is not an academic class but besides chemistry, it is the only class I look forward to and cannot wait to get too on Mondays and Wednesdays.  It is my stress relief class.  Whatever is going on in my life I can just get in the pool and let it out in my swimming and feel so much better when I get out of the water.  It is one of the best feelings in the world.
     Although I really enjoy all of my classes I have not done a very good job of reaching out to my professors outside of class.  I have emailed my Biology Lab TA a few times and my Chemistry professor once or twice but besides that I have not tried to contact anyone.  Part of it is because I am doing so well in my classes I have not had a reason to talk to any of them.  However, I am planning on contacting each of them or at least introducing myself so if a time comes when I really need help they will give me help knowing that I have made an effort before to establish myself as a concerned student.  Hopefully though I will never need to contact them because I am having difficulty!

Time to be a mentor

     For my University 101 class I have to choose to be a mentor at a local middle school or participate in a literacy program that helps bring awareness to reading throughout South Carolina.  Well I chose to do the mentoring program because I felt that it would be a great opportunity to really help someone since you work one-on-one with the same child over the course of several weeks.  Also having the background of working at the YMCA as a counselor I already have experience with working with children and really connecting with them.  Mentoring just really gives a child the opportunity to grow with the help of someone and not have to worry about being criticized. 
     Today we went to our different service sites to become acquainted with the programs we would be working with.  My mentoring program takes place at a middle school about a mile from campus and many of us in the program including myself already visited the middle school so we did not have to go back.  My previous visit to the site included getting to know our mentor leaders who will be there to help guide us as mentors and a quick tour of the school.  We were shown the room where most of our mentoring will take place and given examples of how a mentor may interact with their child especially the first day when the mentor and mentee are both nervous.  I feel like this will be a great experience with helping a sixth-grader transition into middle school.  I can give them helpful advice that I wish I had known, and really watch them become more comfortable in their new school environment over the course of many weeks.  I also think it will help me transition into college because much of the advice I am giving to my mentee I can apply to my own life here at school.  The only downside of the mentoring program is that I do not know ahead of time who my mentee will be but will show up next Monday and meet them.  Hopefully they will be a good kid and not be difficult to mentor, but you never know.  I just hope that I get a "good egg" out of all the kids in the program. 
     By the end of this program I hope that I can clearly see a difference in my mentee's life.  I want to be able to tell that he/she has gained a new perspective on their life as a sixth-grader and feels more comfortable at their new school and ready for the next half of the year.  I hope that I may also gain a new perspective on my life and also feel more comfortable as a college freshman.  Hopefully both my mentee and myself can gain something positive and useful from this experience. 

One Month Later

     So I have been down here at USC for a little over a month.  Wow!  Time has flown by!  Seems like just yesterday I was packing up the car to drive down here with my family to move in.  Thankfully I can say that these past few weeks have been great.  As a Capstone Scholar down here I am given added advantages on top of being in a great dorm.  I love all the added benefits given to us, such as social events and cinemas that we get to attend to for fun, yet still get points towards the Capstone Scholars Fellows Award.  So pretty much we are rewarded for having fun.  Nothing is better right?  That's what I thought.  Being a Capstone Scholar puts me in a great position for improving my resume for Graduate School and helps me get a leg up on the competition within my major.  I have the opportunity to grow closer with other Capstone Scholars just as interested in improving their education and meet with faculty one-on-one.  I cannot find any reason why being a Capstone Scholar would have been a bad thing, it is one of the best decisions I have made so far in my college experience.
     Outside of being in the Capstone Scholars program I have done a pretty good job of staying on top of my schoolwork and making good grades.  I am surprised at how much time I have to complete each assignment for a class.  I planned to be stressed out 24/7 and never have any fun, yet I do not feel this way.  Although I am still stressed a good bit I do not feel like any of my stress is preventing me from having a good time.  It is really all about time management at this point.  I was extremely nervous about meeting friends, especially ones who were not very interested in partying and more about having a good time outside of parties.  Thankfully, I have found a small group of close friends who all share the same feelings towards partying as I do and understand that you do not have to be at a party or drinking to have fun.  With my friends I have gone on midnight excursions to various places and just toured Columbia in a different way then if I was driving around in a car.  So far I have been very impressed with how diverse college can be and how many opportunities there are for everyone to have a good time in whatever they choose to be interested in.  With such a large school it is hard not to find something you love here!

High School Transitions

     Today I sat down and mapped out a few goals that I would like to complete by the end of this semester.  Most of these goals pertain to my major of Pre-Pharmacy, but a couple are my own personal goals outside of school.  My goals pertaining to my major include maintaining a 4.0 GPA, preparing my resume for applying for internships by the end of this semester, and obtaining the materials necessary for studying for the PCAT (Pharmacy College Admissions Test) next semester.  These three goals will be difficult to maintain but I do not think will push me past my breaking point.  The hardest goal for me will be maintaining a 4.0 GPA because of my heavy course load and other commitments.  However, I have already taken Chem 111 in high school and typically do well in math classes so Stat E201 should not be too difficult.  My hardest class will be Biology because it is not as much math-based as my other core classes are.  However, I already attend SI sessions on a regular basis and plan to continue this, so hopefully the extra tutoring will help me stay on top of my studying and do well in the class.
     My other goals outside of school that I would like to complete are keeping up with my triathlon training and staying involved in the triathlon club and Navigators, a bible study on campus.  These goals are more personal goals that pertain to my life and what I like to be involved in.  I want to keep up my training so if I can just continue to stay active in the Triathlon Club this should not be too hard.  Also, staying involved in Navigators will be a great outlet for when I am stressed and need a study break or someone to talk to about my struggles with school.  Both of these are personal outlets that will be a great source of stress relief for me as I try to maintain my goals above.
     On top of maintaining these goals I set for myself I also have to choose a personal challenge to accomplish.  My challenge will be taking the stairs all the time except once a day when I will allow myself to take the elevator or if it is after 10:00 pm when the stairs are locked.  This challenge will be hard for me because I walk everywhere on campus and workout once a day so typically I am tired and opt not to take the stairs.  This challenge will push me to go up the stairs even if I am tired and sore.  I have been doing this challenge for three days so far (woohoo big accomplishment) and right now it is a little difficult but hopefully it will get better as time goes on!  Stay tuned to hear how my challenge progresses and if I have any setbacks along the way.

LASSI!

     So a few days ago I took another one of those academic surveys, called LASSI, which try to place you in a certain category of academic success.  This one was different, catering more towards my success within the classroom and ways to improve how I study and learn.  Thankfully, most of my scores were above the 75th percentile range, which is the target range for having good academic strategies.
    Only a few categories fell below this target range, all of which I already know I need to improve on and have been working towards improving.  My two lowest scores fell under anxiety and selecting main ideas.  I have always had anxiety during tests, affecting my score in every manner possible.  Typically I get nervous, then second guess my answer, choosing a completely different answer that ends up being wrong, and then I do horribly on the test.  It is a never-ending process for me.  My anxiety typically kicks in on any sort of English test, which focuses a lot on selecting main ideas.  Ironically, selecting main ideas was my other really low score.  It is clear that my anxiety issues are very connected with my trouble of selecting main ideas. 
     Most of my scores I agree very much with but a few of my scores I do not agree so much with.  These include my score on attitude and self-testing.  According to my attitude score I should not care at all about my grades but I care very strongly about my grades.  I never made below an A before AP Chemistry my junior year and strive for nothing less than an A in all my classes.  So to be told I do not care about my education is way off from my actual interest and concern over my education.  My other disagreement is with my score on the self-testing category.  This score shows that I do not do a good job of testing myself in preparation for actual tests which is not true.  I spend a lot of time reworking problems and testing myself to make sure I know how to do something before the actual exam.  Self-testing is what helped me do well in Calculus my senior year.
     For the most part I agree with the rest of the scores given to me from LASSI.  My motivation and information processing scores were very high as well as my time management score.  Organization, motivation to do well in school, and time management are what helped me do well in high school and shoot for high goals in college.  I continually use these skills on a daily basis to do well in my classes.  Being busy with clubs and class has helped me to plan out my days better in order to complete everything I need to complete for school.
     Overall I believe I am doing a very good job of staying motivated and on top of my school work to do well in my academics.  My only concern is over my anxiety issues which I hope to fix soon and continue to work on each and every day.  Stay tuned to here about how I deal with anxiety in my schoolwork as I have a statistics test tomorrow which will be another test of my anxiety.  This time, I will go with my first decision on a question and not second guess my answer choice.  Hopefully it works! 

Service in the community

     I have grown up in the church so I have grown up doing mission work and service activities through youth groups and other church organizations.  From feeding the homeless to building a house I have done it all, or what I would say is all considering the limited ability I would have as a young child to help.  Every opportunity I had to do a service activity I would do willingly without force from another person.  I enjoy helping others around me and find a certain satisfaction knowing that I have helped a person's life become better through my service.
     Every service I have given to someone else has been my own doing apart from a service club where I was required to do a certain amount of hours each semester to maintain membership.  Unfortunately, I have never been able to connect my service within a course I was taking in high school to combine learning with service.  I am grateful that this year I am given the opportunity to do both.
     My only job has been as a YMCA counselor over the summer at a day camp.  Although I was getting paid to be there, I enjoyed the time I spent with the campers every day and seeing the joy on their faces with all the fun they had.  Most of the campers were able to afford to go to day camp, but some of the campers were at the camp on a scholarship from the YMCA through a fundraising program.  Working with these campers really makes me appreciate being able to offer a child the same experience I had as a camper.  I would easily help out these campers even if I was not getting paid just to see the joy and fun they would experience.  This joy of working with kids is the reason I chose to do the mentoring program because I want to work with a child one-on-one to help their life become a little bit better.  Stay tuned to see how my service-learning is doing!

Labor Day Weekend!

     Let me start by saying that my weekend was not as exciting as you probably guess from the exclamation point in my title.  My highlight of the weekend was on Saturday doing three hours of Chemistry homework.  Okay that is slight sarcasm, although I did end up doing three hours of Chemistry homework all day Saturday.  Saturday morning though I went tubing with the Navigators.  The Navigators is a bible study group around campus that has a group in Capstone that meets every Monday night at 8 pm.  The experience was supposed to be relaxing, but of course I would not be relaxing, something always happens.  My tube ended up drifting to the left the entire time when it was supposed to stay to the right of the river so I ended up paddling half the time to stay on course.  At one point I got out of the tube and swam while pulling it behind me because I was fed up with paddling.  Let me note that I have the biggest fear of snakes and the entire time I was swimming I was imagining a snake slithering by me in the water which I would have died if that had happened, literally died.  Anyways, near the end of the trip I latched onto a group of tubes that were staying on course, so I had time to relax before I began paddling again to bring the tube onto the shore at the end.  I could see the shore near the end of the trip and was a few rocks away from the shoreline where I would be departing from my tube.  These last few yards of water were the worst.  I ended up getting stuck on rocks every few feet, floating away from the shore and to top it all off my tube flipped in a rapid right at the end.  By that point in time I gave up and just swam to shore with my tube because for me that was more efficient and quicker.  Although the tubing experience was rough to say the least, I still had a blast and would do it again anyday.
     The rest of my weekend was not as exciting.  I mostly did homework in my dorm room or walked around campus with friends.  Monday night I watched the Virginia Tech game and I'm gonna leave it at that.  No words can express the anger inside me from watching that game.  Anyone who knows me in person knows my dedication as a Virginia Tech fan so you can imagine how upset I was at the end of the game.  I hope whoever is reading this had a much more exciting weekend then I did and that their football team of choice was victorious!

Fair Time!

     Today was the fair of all fairs...the Student Organization Fair.  Overwhelming is an understatement.  Attending such a large university like USC it is understandable to have many (200+) organizations around campus for students to get involved in.  Upon walking to the fair I actually got slightly nervous because I am not a fan of large crowds.  Knowing the size of Greene Street and the amount of organizations that would be present I knew the fair would be crowded. 
     Once I started the trek down the little stretch of pavement they called the fair, I was bombarded by every single type of club.  There were leadership clubs, sport clubs, writing clubs, you name it they had it.  Part of me wanted to join everything because they looked so intriguing, but my conscience got the better of me and told me to remember that I am only one with person with a limited amount of time.  So I decided to make a mental list in my head of what I really enjoy and search out just those clubs and figure out information on those organizations.  I ended up signing up for about three different organizations and got information on many more that interest me.  Two of the organizations I signed up for were Habitat for Humanity and the Cycling Club.  Habitat has always been apart of my family because my dad is on the Board of Directors for the Raleigh section.  I have not been as involved as my dad or my brother but I love mission work and making a difference in other people's lives so I figured this is a great oppurtunity to do mission work right here in Columbia.  The other club I signed up for was the Cycling Club.  As a competitive triathlete I must train year-round to not only keep up with my endurance but also to improve my times.  I did not find a table for the Triathlon Club so I decided the Cycling Club would be my next best option.  The Cycling Club will allow me to go on rides with a group of people who also want to ride to get better as well as help me improve my speed and times for my races.
     As I mentioned above there was no table for the Triathlon Club.  I am aware that there is a club on campus but it is not as involved or outgoing as I would like it to be.  I wish that the club gave out more information to students so those who are already participating in triathlons or inspire to participate can find a place to train and get connected in the sport on campus.  Hopefully I will get involved in this club soon and if not just take it upon myself to start a different club on campus that is more involved and well-known to students.  Thanks for reading my latest post! Stay tuned to hear all about my Labor Day plans and the first USC Football Game!!!! Go Gamecocks!!