Here are the professor you interviewed:
Shelly Christman
College of Biological Sciences
Freshman seminar professor “Battle of the Sexes�
Seemed like a motivated, successful and happy person.
Talked about:
Feel better about approaching faculty members now.
“I learned that they are willing to talk and usually get bored during office hours and like when people come in to visit.�
Dan Dooghan
Wanted to interview someone from the Sociology department, but couldn’t get a hold of an instructor.
Cultural Studies and Comparative Literature Department
Chose him because he was interesting and made CSCL interesting
Talked about:
Nervous about approaching a faculty member at the beginning of the semester, but now is comfortable.
Rod Ferguson
American Studies Department
Thought he would be interesting
Talked about:
Feel more confident about approaching faculty.
Glad to be forced to talk to a faculty member so early in college.
Gordon Hirsch
Wanted to talk to someone in the Theatre Department, but they were too busy
English Department
Talked about:
Fell much more confident about approaching faculty now.
Contact professors more through e-mail and office hours, than at the beginning of the semester.
Amy Kaminsky
Women's Studeies Department (WoSt)
Major exploration
Taked about her research experiences:
Kaolee Christine Marran
Asian Languages and Literature Department
Major exploration
Went to Japan when she was 15 and stayed there for 5 years
Found interviewing faculty to be very interesting.
More curious and open minded about talking to other faculty memebers.
Dr. David Martinez
American Indian Studies Department
Find out about a major
Talked about his experience in college:
Always felt comfortable around grown-ups, so feelings about approaching faculty haven’t changed.
Ann Meier
Sociology Department
Recommended by Current professor
Talked about:
More open to speaking to faculty after the assignment.
� It’s nice to see them as more than only professors.�
Pang Rhodes
Family Social Science
“she was young and seemed like she could give me some good advice about college and my major�
Talked about:
Feel as lot more “ease� about approaching faculty memebers.
“faculty are more than happy to share their experiences and their advice with students as long as they ask
Things you've learned:
Have instructors look over you papers, because then you can see firsthand what is expected of you
When you don't understand something, ask the source, not your friends
Study is small doses, so you won't have to cram (especially before or after class)
Sleep well the night before a test. On the day of the tests, eat all your meals (especially breakfast) and stay hydrated
Even if you have been studying regularly, step it up a week or 3 days before the test, depending on how hard you have to work to do well in the particular subject
Find out what works for you, in terms of studying and stick to it
Be open to changing your study habits, because you may just find something that works better for you
Don't compare your high school standards, in terms of grades to college standards, which aren't always the same
When you like whatever you are studying, it makes things 20X easier
Stick to first impressions when it comes to deciding if you like the instructor, or if you should change instructors
Never do a once over of your answers, unless it's to see if you've skipped any questions
A lot of you contribute to paying for your education through: scholarships, savings bonds, savings accounts, money earned from work, and student loans.
A lot of you also have a little help from parents: helping pay for your education, spending money, doctors visits, health insurance, car insurance, gas, everyday items, a few meals and gifts.
For some of you having a budget of a $100 a month is something that you're not used to. For others, if you $100 isn't too much. If you did have to cut down on your sepnding, you would stop eating out as much, you wouldn't by things that don't have a real purpose. To prevent spending too much money, you try not to carry around too much cash, go shopping to make you feel better, and put a certain amount into a savings account each month.
Some of you have started planning for the future by opening up savings accounts, as well as putting away small amounts of money, to provide as cushions if something unexpercted comes up.
Hello y'all,
I hope y'all had a fabulous weekend. This week, we will be meeting in Blegen 415.
Your Faculty Interview Journal is due by noon on Tuesday (December 6) e-mailed to Charles and me.
Remember:The goal of the journal, is to go beyond summary and think about what you got out of the interview.
What we will be doing in class on Wednesday
We will talk about the faculty interviews for about 15-20 min.
Everyone will talk a little about their interviews (who they interviewed, what they learned, etc.) in small groups. Then we will talk as a large group about the big picture of student-faculty interaction.
For the rest of the class time we will do something else...
Here are all the organizations y'all visited:
Parking and Transportation Services
Multicultural Center for Academic Excellence
Women's Student Activist Collective
Individually Designed Major
Studying Abroad Center
National Student Exchange
Community Placement Services
ADCS (Academic and Distributed Computing Services)
Radio K
CCLC (Career and Community Learning Center>
UROP (Undergraduate Research Opportunities Program)
Community Engagement Scholars Program
UMPD
BIS (bachelor of individualized studies)
University Libraries
Here are the things y'all are interested in doing:
Why do you Volunteer?
Learning about other cultures
Teaching people to be computer literate
Meeting people from different backgrounds
Sense of accomplishment
Studying abroad
Japan
France
Spain
GLBT Programs
Academic Skills Center
Speed reading workshop
CCLC
Pre-Law Workshops
Volunteer Opportunities
Summer jobs
Y'all did an awesome job on this journal entry. They were very detailed, and seemed like you did a good job thinking about the subject.
Stress management
For a lot of you, your life has been very stressful since you started college. Especially when it came to working, many of you had trouble balancing both. You can’t stop working, because then you can’t pay for your education, but at the same time, you want to have a good education.
Some of you also said that college wasn’t really stressful for you until recently. That’s because tests, midterms and papers started to come up. Time has really started to become an issue. A lot of you procrastinated, or did things that you liked more than homework. This doesn’t leave much time for finishing up your homework, much less studying.
Almost everyone in college knows how they should study; it’s forcing yourself to do it that’s half the issue.
Here are a few things that result when you get stressed out:
“I get really tense and anxious and as a result I tend to get little work or studying done,” “I become easily annoyed and frustrated, and in extreme cases, my chest becomes constricted,” “usually get really mad and freak out.”
Y’all dealt with stress in many ways: sleeping, hanging out with friends, shopping, yell at people, exercising, listening to music, take a break; but most of you said that they ways you deal with stress aren’t really efficient.
Test taking
There was a lot of anxiety related to test taking. Especially when sitting down to take a test, you suddenly don’t remember anything you studied or even what the test is about. This is really common, and also really hard to avoid. On Wednesday (Nov. 2) we will talk in class about how to prevent psyching yourself out.
There was also concern about different types of tests, especially finals. Mostly y’all were worried about short answer and essay tests. There were also a few who said that multiple choice was the test they did the worst on, because they had a hard time choosing the “best possible” answer. We will talk more about this in class on Wednesday.
Resources
With this journal, I noticed that a lot of you have changed majors since the first journal entry.
Major during 1st week of class:English/Pre-law
Major now:Women's Studies
Major now: Kinesology
Major now:English
Major now: Architecture
Major Reqirements for Bachlor of Arts through CLA
Major now: Something in the Social Sciences
Major during 1st week of class:Architecture/ Interior Design
Major now: Interior Design
Changes to the College of Human Ecology starting fall 2006Architecture people, take a look at this!
Major during 1st week of class:Economics
Major now:Sociology
Major during 1st week of class:Economics, Poli. Sci., History, etc.
Major now: Global Studies
Major during 1st week of class:Japanese
Major now:Sociology
Hello all,
Your journal entries for this week were all over the map. Some were very well written while others seemed haphazard. While this isnt the hardest class that you will take in your career at the U of M, there are certain expectations for quality work.
Journals should be turned in on time the Tuesday before class. They are to be 300 words long at a minimum. I am not checking the word count on every assignment but if an entry looks short I will check it. Also, make sure you spellcheck your assignments before you send them in. If you scroll down on the blog, there is an entry with suggestions on writing good journals.
Here are the things that were present in all your lists:
Here are some of the other things that were also important, but didn't show up across the board:
Firstly, I'm just glad y'all included sleep. Some of my friends go with 2 or 3 hours of sleep in order to do well in school, have a social life, and a killer party/concert life. How come y'all didn't include like eating time? Is it just part of the social/personal/liesure time? What about de-stress time?
A lot of you also mentioned that you were surprised by the difference between how much time you thought you spent on some priorities, and the actual amount of time you spent. When I kept track of how much time I spent on stuff, I realized that I only slept 6 hours a night, had 5 hours of exercise/socializing/personal/lesiure time, 3 hours of volunteer work and an astonishing 11 hour studying time on an average day.
Time management is one of those things that almost everyone has to work on. Even if you have a system that works, you still have to stick to it and do the daily maintainence tasks. Even if it takes you 20 minutes a day to maintain a callender, that's still a lot of time over the course of a year. But in my opinion, it's very much worth it.
During your time in college, you will figure out what works for you. So hopefully we will all get so good at time mangement, that when we get jobs after college, will end up having like 6+ hours of free time a day. We'll just have to see.
G'night*
Many of you had the kind of sentiment represented in the following quote, in regard to the Dean's lecture:
"At first I thought that I was just going to space out into space and daydream but he really had something to say that got me going otherwise".
Y'all also mentioned how the lecture also brought about the realization that "a liberal arts education prepares [you] for a plethora of career opportunities". How some of your professors had you "think[ing] about things that [you've] never thought about before". This is because your cirriculum mostly focuses of getting you to think formally, or logically.
You also learn how to apply it to a wide variety of topics, which makes you capable of doing so much more. Most CLA students graduate with a a large 'box' of knowledge in different areas", which gives you the ability to better communicate with larger numbers of people.
I was surprised that not many people mentioned that Dean Rosenstone also emphasized that many students, especially during their first year at the U, get most of their education outside of classes.
More than anything "the most important skill my Liberal Arts experience will provide is the capacity for me to be the best that I can be in whatever I decide to do".
Cheers*
Here are some of the things that I found interesting in your journal entries:
"College is considered the next big step in a teenager's life."
"As a kid I always thought how awesome it would be to walk around campus and know that it was my school."
"I am excited to meet new people and to learn about their lives and cultures."
"I can't wait to be challenged to see who I really am... ...my background in high school of a pretty light workload will come back to bite me."
I also noticed that a lot of you came to the U because of the majors: Architectural design, Economics, Interior design and Japanese.
Many of you were also concerned about how to meet people and build solid friendships, when you have to commute and can't be around on campus all the time. Managing school and extracirriculars was also mentioned quiet a bit.