After a few weeks of minimal to no communication with my conversation partner, we FINALLY got the chance to meet last week. Finding time to meet was very difficult, and we only got to talk for thirty-ish minutes because we both had things to go to after, but I’m glad we got to meet. My conversation partner’s name is Zainab and she is from Saudi Arabia. I first started asking her about how she felt moving away from home and all her family to come to TCU, and if she found it easy to make friends, etc. But I found out that she is actually the third sibling in her family to come to school in America, and the second to come to TCU. She has a brother that just graduated from Oregon, another brother that is currently at TCU, and also her cousin goes here as well, so she is not as alone here as I thought she would be! She lives in an apartment off campus with her brother and cousin, so I asked her if she drove to class often, and she said that she just recently learned to drive and isn’t very good at it. Apparently at home in Saudi Arabia, she has a driver that will take her wherever she wants whenever she wants. I’m not sure if having a driver is a normal thing in other countries, or if her family is pretty well off. I would assume with three kids in America it’s probably the latter. She spoke English pretty well, and we only had a couple instances where I couldn’t understand what she was asking, or she couldn’t understand what I was asking. I think for only 5 months in an English program that’s pretty impressive! Once she’s done with the program, she’s planning on majoring in interior design. She’s really interested in decorating and she showed me instagram pictures of some the parties she set up at home. We talked about her family and her home, what kinds of food she likes, what she misses most, what she likes most here, etc. We pretty much covered all the bases with minimal awkwardness. Overall it was a really cool experience to hear about her life at home, and her biggest culture shocks and things like that. We are planning to meet again next week, and this time we’re going to go to Pizza Snob, which is her favorite restaurant. Until next time!
Gotta laugh during organic chem so I don’t cry
Last week was my first test in organic chemistry. I feel like just hearing the words ‘organic chemistry’ ignite fear in the heart, so you can imagine how I felt preparing for this exam. However, my organic chem motto is “laugh so that you don’t cry”, so I spend a lot of my time in that class laughing.
We had a review session the night before the test, and I went with Sruthi. I don’t think I’ve every laughed so much during a one hour period in my life. The review session basically consisted of people asking really complex questions that we didn’t even understand, which is bad because if we can’t even understand the question, there’s absolutely no way we’ll understand the answer, and that sort of made me want to cry. So instead, we laughed! We found everything completely hilarious. Some one asked a stupid question? We laughed. The professor said something that didn’t make sense? We laughed. When we realized how totally screwed we were for this test? We laughed so hard that I actually started crying.
This laughing incident was not so much a single incident, but really a whole evening. I think in this situation, the laughter was probably a sort of our natural defense against the total hopelessness we felt. I personally think it’s very nice of our bodies to sometimes make us laugh when we want to cry. I think the uncontrollable laughter also signified an acceptance of defeat. We knew that things probably weren’t going to go so well with the exam, so we might as well laugh about it! Turns out the test really didn’t go so well, so I’m glad I at least had a good night full of laughter!
Learning experience while learning about learning
In my psychology class this semester, we spent the first couple of weeks talking all about learning. We talked about common misconceptions about learning, how people actually learn best compared to how people think they learn best, and different strategies involved in learning. Thought it was a little weird to be learning about how we learn, I thought it was really interesting, because learning is one of those things that we do on a daily basis, but never talk about or dissect how it’s done. So I thought I would blog about how I think I learn best, and then compare that to some research that’s been done on the topic.
When I have a big test coming up and I’m starting to study for it, notecards are the first thing I make. Even if the information is not the usual type of information that you would put on a notecard, I will find some way to make it work, because I know for me, notecards are the most effective way of learning. Even if every notecard has tiny writing filling up the entire back side of it, it’s still helpful to me. I like that they’re a way to test yourself along the way. I get to explain the information to myself, and the more times I go through the notecards, the more different ways I’m explaining the information. Another thing that really helps me is I like to talk out loud to myself, so I always reserve a study room and will just say everything out loud as I go through notes and notecards. Both of these things have proved to be pretty effective for me.
During one of my psych classes, my teacher asked us how we all studied. I was a little nervous about this, because I knew she was about to say that a lot of the study methods us students have are ineffective. It turns out, self-testing is one of the most effective study methods. Research shows that most students study by rereading pages, summarizing information, or highlighting. These are actually the most ineffective ways of studying. The most effective are self-explanation, practice testing, and distributed studying. Like I said above, I test myself with my notecards (self-testing), I explain things to myself out loud (self-explanation), and I always go through my notecards at many different times before the test (distributed studying). I was seriously relieved to hear that I was using my study time most effectively, and had not wasted countless hours and notecards (and also probably a loss of hand function from writing so much) using ineffective techniques.
I thought the information I learned during this section of my psych class was invaluable and extremely relevant. I liked that my teacher taught that section at the beginning of the semester. I’m sure it acted as an eye opener for many students, and an affirmation for some like myself as well.
haleylitandciv2 