An overall what I have learned this semester

This semester has been one of my hardest yet with me taking 17 credit hours. Next semester however I am taking 18 so something I did not learn was what over working oneself is. I took, organic chemistry, introductory neuroscience, sociology, lit and civ, and worked in a lab. This all has been such a great semester filled with learning and striving for bigger things in my life. I feel as though the stress level I had is lower than what a doctor would have. I have been stressed almost from the day I unpacked my bags in August. However lives are not on the line. It is better for me to get accustomed to stress now, at age 20, than down the road at age 40 during a brain operation. Time management is something that I have also worked on, sacrificing sleep but getting the job done. I have had to wake up at 6:30 most days for my lab and that has been a blessing in disguise. At first I would come back and go back to sleep. However I learned that with all this extra time in the day I could get so much more done. I have volunteered over 10 hours at KinderFrogs, done 4 hours of observations, and not flunked any class (so far). I learned a large amount of info academically, however the most important take away from this was the study skills. My worst weekend where those where I was in the study from 7am to 1 am however I got so much done that I never could have dreamed of otherwise. I hope I can take these skills into next semester and continue to study in the pre-med program and keep competitive GPA scores for med school.

What I have learned

I have had a lot of assignments and classes in between my posts so the amount that I have learned is astronomical. For one, I learned that the way we control muscles is difficult to learn. Not like "O wow this is hard yikes" I mean like "I think I'm just gonna say its done by magic and hope for the best". Just mind numbing difficult. I never thought I would miss the days of learning about the eye. I would much rather diagram light. However the stress of not knowing is done and I feel so relived about that. In organic chemistry we learned about the re-activity of carbonyl compounds. Unless you are a organic chemistry professor we most likely know the same amount about carbonyl compounds. I know they do reactions and that tends to be the limit of my knowledge. In sociology we are learning about being more sustainable, which is a specialty of the instructors adding to the interest of the material. I know he teaches a class called sustainability so I know the depth of his knowledge in this area is great. However the biggest thing that hits home is his belief in the subject. He actually wants the world to become more sustainable. And that passion drives the subject and inspires me to be more sustainable myself. knowing what I want to do later in life it is interesting to me how I can actually be a change with this. I want to own my own medical center, and it makes me wonder, what if we could be fully sustainable? That would be amazing. Yes we may not have the soaring profits that make us rich beyond our wildest dreams, however good practice makes good health. All the food served could be organic while patients are staying. We can offer services to those who are down on there luck or insurance, and increase the overall quality of life in the US.

My last meeting with Jon

I met with Jon for the last time on Friday with Katelyn. We talked about him going to K-State for Aircraft engineering and what its going to be like starting all over again. He has had many different experiences starting over, from coming to the USA in the first place to when he was young moving from DR Congo to France, to India. From what he indicated most of his friends that are graduating from IEP will go back home to there own country's anyway. So although he is a little nervous to remake a large amount of friends when he just made a bunch here, if he stayed he would be one of the only ones. I found that interesting that a majority wanted to go back to there own countries. With English being such a worldwide language I can understand wanting to learn it, however it is interesting to me that after being in a different country for a couple years, you would want to move back. Now I don't mean to say "Our country is so great why would you want to leave?" I mean more along the lines of I'm interested how advantageous it is to speak English around the world. Going back to Korea, for example, are you really that much better off now that you know English? What worlds have opened up to you? I would assume that you would work in some kind of business or service industry where English would be be a connection between your country and another. It was weird seeing Jon for the last time. We had gotten close in the 3 months we where partners and most likely I wouldn't see him again. It was a learning experience however the biggest thing I took from that is when it comes down to it, people are people and we really are not that different. We all enjoy hanging out with friends on weekends, getting good grades, and making new groups of friends we can hang out with.

Jon and Katelyn

Me and Katelyn now share Jon as a partner. I was OK with this knowing I would still be his favorite regardless. We met on Friday at chick-fil-a and talked about what we had done for Halloween and what are plans where for the weekend. Jon, it seems, goes out every weekend and tends to be the life of the party. He is always getting phone calls from friends asking him what he is up to and when he is ready to hang out. The funniest part of this is most the times the phone calls are not in English. I find it funny that being here in america in order to live life to the fullest, he goes out so much. It makes me wonder if this was a preexisting state of mind or if he has always been so energetic and full of excitement. Me and Katelyn were both impressed by his outlook on life and his popularity, leading me to call him the Mayor of IEP. What was funny about this meeting was it was also the longest me and Katelyn had had a conversation. I had met with Jon 4 times before yet I had never met her before. Me and her both got to chick-fil-a about 15 minutes before Jon so we talked as well. I think its funny that in these meetings we are learning from people of other cultures far away however you can learn just as much from cultures not far from you. I am from Colorado and she is from Houston. Although our cultures share the same language, general look, and government, it can be surprising just how different they are. I talked to her about her hometown and i reciprocated with info about mine. This was the start of the cold wave and she felt it more than i did. I find it funny that just being from different parts of the US you can feel entirely different climates, from freezing and going to school in -12 degree weather, to have many days well over 100.