Tuesday, October 9th, 2012
R.A. Planned Event
Blog
Today at 6:45pm, I attended an
event my R.A., Megan Francis, planned. Dr. Rebecca Ricciardo, a chemistry
professor, came to speak to us about how to be successful in a large class,
namely, general chemistry. I am currently in chemistry 1210 and have been
struggling greatly, so I thought this would be a wonderful opportunity to take
advantage of. Dr. Ricciardo was great and summarized many good tips. Although
it has been emphasized to me before, I realize even more that I need to go to
my professor during office hours when I need help. She brought up the point
that if I don’t have any questions while I’m studying, then I am not studying
effectively or actively thinking about the content. She also pointed out many
reasons why students may not succeed, and the one that best applied to me is
missing little points on every assignment that add up over time. I do
wonderfully on the chemistry lab reports, but fail the online pre-labs and
post-labs. Some I’ve even forgotten the due date and unfortunately received a
zero on them. I suppose I need to do more
studying and more effective studying.
According to Dr. Ricciardo, I should spend more time on studying the lecture
notes and reading along in the textbook, instead of spending hours on
perfecting my lab reports. Lab reports are only 20% of the total grade, whereas
lecture is the majority. I should focus my time on preparing for the weekly
quizzes during recitation, and less on the labs, while balancing study
techniques that improve my success on the online pre- and post- labs.
One
thing I loved about Dr. Ricciardo’s presentation was the memes she used to go
along with every point in her powerpoint. They added humor, mainly because they
were “sad, but true”. I realize “oh no! I do that… I need to change something.”
Dr. Ricciardo addressed something that I feel every student should be informed
about, and that is the etiquette of e-mail. E-mail is usually the first and
preferred method of communication between students and professors, and Dr.
Ricciardo stressed the importance of maintaining a formal tone, because
professors DO remember students with nice e-mails… and bad e-mails. Luckily
I’ve had a bit of experience with this when I’d have to send out e-mails to my
co-workers in the Human Resources Department at Stanley Steemer International,
Inc. The importance of sending appropriate, concise, and important e-mails with
a formal and calm tone could not be stressed enough. She showed examples of
students venting to professors, commanding the professors to stop the “freshman
hazing,” etc. These examples were good to show because it puts the students in
perspective of how e-mails should be worded when being sent to these
professors, these connections that may follow us past undergrad school.
Overall,
I was happy I attended this event. It was helpful and informative and was
somewhat of a confidence booster (for the things I already do that are good) as
well as a wake up call (for the things I need to improve on). Hopefully I am
conscientiously applying these study tips and notice an improvement in my
general chemistry grades.
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