Treat or Trick?

  " An the 5 victims for today's discussion are.."

    This is the dreaded sentence that I hear every Monday and Wednesday during my biomaterials class. Instead of having a normal class of lectures, homework, and tests with long walks on the beach, this class is far from ordinary. This class has a set up similar to a medical school class. The professor emails the class a case study which includes an small overview of the patient history, what happened to the patient, and what the doctors did to fix him/her. We the students are required to find all of the rest of the information to fill in the blanks. Yet, you never know when you are going to to get called on to speak about the topic for the week. So you always should be prepared in case your name is called. Luckily each person only has to be a victim twice during the semester.
    For this week's topic, a guy came into the hospital with shortness of breath and they figured out he had an MI (myocardial infarction/heart attack.) Instead of doing a bypass surgery where they take out a blood vessel in the leg and attach it to the heart to make a new way for the blood to flow; they decided to do an angioplasty instead which involves using a catheter and forcing the blood vessel back open again. At first I dreaded spending countless hours looking up information to discuss in class. I thought my teacher was expecting too much out of us because we aren't experts on the material, nor do we have any form of degree in his field yet. I kept wondering why can't he be a normal professor and teach this class the same way he taught cellular and molecular biology. All the time I would wait for someone to bring up school so I could rant about this professor. 
   However, as soon as I stopped dwelling on the bad things about the class, I started to see the good things. I started to realize that even though I kept telling myself I dreaded the class, I actually enjoyed it a lot. I was/am learning so much that I would call my mother who is a nurse and discuss with her the topic before each class. Often, I would be the one leading the discussions and probing her brain about other possible drugs to use for drug-eluting stents. Changing my mindset has helped me so much especially for this class. With this continuous task of changing my mindset, I've been able to change my major as well. After thinking about what I really want to do in life, I changed my major from Nanomedicine Engineering to Materials Science Engineering. I was a little hesitant at first, but now I am completely content with my decision. All of my prerequisites transfer to this major, and I just have to catch up on my materials science classes. I received a few, "OMG are you serious Karis?" from my peers. However, one close friend of mine said she was really excited that I decided to change my major. I myself was surprised to hear a positive remark from any of my engineering friends. Yet, she stated how she knows I can't stand chemistry and I would still need to take physical chemistry and organic chemistry 2 in order to satisfy my major. Her comment supported my decision to switch majors and to take another step towards achieving that growth mindset. 

Can You Hear Me Now? .... Good

  One of my goals is to keep my phone on silent while I do homework. Now, doing this eight years ago would have been easy as pie. Actually it would have been even easier than pie, even though I do not understand how easy as pie is even an analogy when making a pie is quite tedious..Regardless, I think yall understand how keeping a phone on silent while doing one's homework is a lot harder than one can imagine. 

  I waited a long and difficult hour an a half before I was able frantically undo the pass-code to unlock my phone. To my avail, I only had 1 text message and that was from my mother. Somehow she still manages to double text me the same message. I don't understand how I can be so attached to a piece of plastic and metal with a glass screen. Hopefully it gets easier not looking at my phone, but it still takes time getting used to not having the phone attached to my ear or fingertips at all times. Its amazing how so dependent I have become on social media avenues. 

   Even though I somewhat question my choice to make this one of my goals, I believe it is a necessary one. One day earlier this semester, I met with one of my friends Vicky to study at the library. She is only a first year and I have been trying to guide/mold her so she can seize every opportunity while at this University without having to worry about grades. Normally when we study together I take her phone away because she is always texting or telling me about another guy that she met on grounds. Most of the time at the library she waits in silence like a lion watching for its prey. Searching all around her, waiting for the right opportunity for her prey, me, to get up so she can pounce and take back her phone. I often laugh at how ridiculous she acts when she doesn't have her phone. She complains half the time, telling me I'm being mean and she can study and have her phone at the same time. However, within 30 minutes in she has completely forgotten about her phone and is busy doing her work. Then the tables turned when she grabbed my phone and proceeded to do exactly what I had done to her - taking my phone while I worked on homework. I was a mere image of Vicky, squirming around in my chair, waiting to hear the ever so faint bing that I had received a text message. Hopefully after this semester I will be less likely to be a fish out of water with a phone on silent.

Office Hours Part Two

  The goal for this week was to attend at least one session of office hours. Lucky for me I was able to go to almost each and every class that offered office hours this week. However, the slight unlikely part was that it was all due to the mass amount of homework that was due. Nevertheless, my office hours experience was actually tolerable than I thought. I went to office hours for both of my materials science and engineering office hours. The first was for my electrical, magnetic, and optical properties class. Instead of making an appointment, I merely just walked in and asked him for more details about how to approach the problem set.  He was very easy to talk to and the one-on-one attention was something that I wasn't expecting from him.
   Yet, the office hours for my structure and defects class was a completely different situation. I actually had to go twice because the homework took so long to finish even with my study group of six people. The first session of office hours consisted online and boy oh boy was that an experience to never forget. Our teacher was expecting several people to attend office hours, so he decided to have them online instead. It was very confusing at first trying to keep up with what was going on. He was sharing his screen so I just saw him scribbling information down and I was trying to keep up with what was going on. To my avail, there was no audio and it wasn't until 30 minutes into the session did he realize from the group chat that we could not hear him. Instead of stopping and trying to fix the software, he kept on going and wished us the best as he kept writing. It took me a lot longer than I expected to decode everything he had been typing. One of the odd things about office hours was that only three people including myself logged onto the office hour session.
   The second session of office hours consisted of a small classroom with most of my peers and I sitting on the floor. For a second it seemed like my peers and I were having story time with the professor as he enlightened us on the good and evils of the world. Yet I was surprisingly amazed at how much more information I was able to obtain in the group setting. All in all, my office hours experience wasn't as horrible as I thought it was. I was able to get the needed help with my homework. Yet, I think it will take a bit more work before I feel completely comfortable approaching my teachers. Hopefully, this is just the first of many more experiences to come.

Time For Sale

  The words, "Time for Sale," is something you will probably never see no matter where you are at in life. Time is something people are always searching for or running out of. If time and money grew on trees then all of the world's problems would be solved. Everybody would be less stressed and we would spend forever basking in paradise. However, there is only one problem with this concept and that is reality. Reality always seems to disrupt any source of fun or time which appears free at the moment.
    Sometimes I feel as though I need to stop time in order to accomplish all of the items that I need to get done. This upcoming week I have two large homework assignments due Thursday, a gospel choir concert on Friday, and an event for the National Society for Black Engineers (NSBE) at VCU on Saturday. Then, the week after that I have a weekend conference in Norfolk, VA. Time Management, Time Management, Time Management is all that has been popping into my head every time I think about what I need to do to prepare for this upcoming week. I keep telling myself that this is just a week, its not that serious but in the back of my mind I'm dreading the upcoming weeks. However, my planner has been able to save me through times like these and many others. Even though I can visually see it, actually doing everything written in it is another story. One of the problems I'm working on is  following through with what I plan out to do. I could write my whole day down from waking up to going to bed. However, the follow through is what seems to be the hardest part right now. Actions speak louder than words...Hopefully, I can start doing more actions this time around to accomplish all of my set goals.
  The way I plan on doing this is by finding the will power inside of myself to power through. Placing sticky notes in my planner has been helping thus far. The bright colors draw my eye to what I need to be working on and they get annoying when I keep having to move them out of the way to write down more information in my planner. Honestly I just need to put on my big girl panties and do what I need to do.

Ready, Set, Office Hours

    Office hours has to be one of my most dreaded things as a college student. The idea of entering a room where you stand face to face with the person who determines your fate is mind boggling for me. . 
    For myself, office hours consists of me attempting to conjure some way of getting to know my professor. I've heard tons of stories of people who have become great friends with their professors. One of my friends has even been to her professor's house for dinner and she even babysits her children from time to time. At first I thought it was too close for comfort. However, after thinking about it more I would do the exact same thing if I was in her shoes. Nevertheless, I had to come back to reality and realize that I am not my friend yet, I can get there one day.
     One of the major problems I have with office hours is that I feel as though I don't have anything "smart enough" to say or ask. Especially in my calculus office hours, I would feel as though my question was very trivial to the professor. He would answer my question as though it was matter of fact when in reality, it caused me an hour to work on. After I had my question answered, there would be that awkward silence where we are both anticipating the other person to say something. I think the idea of trying to prove myself to the professor is what keeps me from going to office hours as much. It's like I'm letting my one time experience of meeting him decide if he wants to pass or fail me. In addition, it seems as though professors love to look up how you're doing in the class when you go to visit them. In most cases I am not doing as superior as I would like to and it just makes me feel worse about going to see them a second time.
     Overall, I do not go to office hours like I should, however, it has become one of my top goals for this semester. Thanks to Dweck, I've been able to have more of an open mind towards office hours. However, it's still taking time for me to feel completely comfortable with carrying on a conversation with my professors. I have to constantly remind myself that learning is a continuous process and one encounter with my teacher does not define me as a student. 

La Vida de Mi

    Hello all, my name is Karis and I am a third year, engineering major at my University. Even though one rarely hears African-American, female, and engineering all in the same sentence, we do exist. I grew up loving school and everything about it. I remember gliding through summer workbooks to the extent where my mother started buying me three and four workbooks to work on at one time. Yet, the only subject that I dreaded working on was English. Even now, it takes me longer than most people to write a mere 2 page paper. However, my major allows me to exchange writing papers with problem sets which I happily enjoy. I am a Materials Science Engineering major with a biomedical engineering minor. Now that most of my prerequisites are finished, I am taking two materials science classes, biomaterials, and EDIS. It is a somewhat lighter schedule, but my materials classes are very demanding and I need a high GPA if I plan on getting an internship this summer. 
            I decided to take EDIS 2890 as a way to learn more about myself and how I study. I would spend hours studying, however my test grades showed as if I did not study at all. From this class, I hope to gain efficient study skills as well as a new perspective on school. Spring of 2012, I received a letter from my Dean that I was put on academic probation. My parents suggested that I take a semester off to get my thoughts straight. Both of my parents were put on academic probation during their college years and thus it seemed only customary for me to do the same. Nevertheless, I chose to persevere and endure the challenge to bring up my GPA. I was able to do just that, and I want to continue my voyage towards success not only in college, but life as well. I am working on bringing up my GPA by putting more effort in my classes and learning better time management skills especially when it comes to balancing schoolwork with my extracurricular activities.