Arsenic Analysis

From this course, I have learned a lot about arsenic than I thought I would. I never knew about the diseases that arsenic can cause and how much of it is in and affects our dietary consumption, especially within food regulations worldwide. Most importantly, this class has made me become more aware of what I put in my body, concerning the amount of arsenic goes into my body. Throughout the semester, I primarily learned through the OWL assignments, the lectures, and doing some readings on my own time regarding some of the math used in class. Compared to other courses I have taken at UMass Amherst, this course is a lot of work due to the amount of assignments to complete on a weekly basis.
As a first-year college student, there has a noticeable difference between learning in a university and in high school. For a start credits mean
different things in terms of workload and class expectations, along with there being more class time and time to meet with your professors after class compared to the shorter 30 to 45 minute block schedules in high school with little to no outside class time to meet with the teacher; instead there being a constant game of tag while emailing each other for communication. In addition, learning in a university makes working and concentration easier to try as there are no concerning distractions in the classroom, as everyone is focused on learning the course materials in preparation to pass the class and retain knowledge from it . In my opinion, I believe the best use of class time is learning the materials and applying the new material to discussion to help students have an understanding of the subject matter (and to be able to have a foundation to building this on other topics in the matter). I definitely agree that a flipped classroom approach may be one way in achieving this, as it gives students the opportunity to see the information of this course in real life applications, instead of reading about it; being disassociated from it. Unfortunately, I was not able to use any of the tutoring resources due to conflicting times with other class times and commitments.
With this semester, I have definitely gained new learning strategies, along with new ways to manage my time more wisely.
Once in awhile I had missed some deadlines, due to some weeks being overwhelming with assignment deadlines for the courses I took this semester, but I’ve learned to become more stringent with my time. Advice I would offer for future first-year students is #1 use the learning resources available to you/take advantage of what the library offers (tutoring, writing help, etc.) as they help you improve these strategies in the extent that you are improving studying skills and retaining information better. Secondly, I would suggest to first-year students is to set time aside to go over the new materials gone over in lecture and create a study list of important terms, concepts, and themes, along with writing down any questions in regards of clarification needed or otherwise. For this course, I generally devoted 3 hours per credit per week by working on papers, readings, OWL assignments, and completing online quizzes given to us. Sad to say, I do not work with students who work on subjects related to what we have
learned.
Strategies for succeeding my undergraduate career are getting help when needed, working hard, to ask questions to better understand the material, and to manage your time wisely between school and free time. I feel like these strategies are important because they help create a better work ethic outside of undergraduate studies, and prepare you for both graduate school and career work. I also believe that in this context, success is working hard and seeing the reward from that work. In one way it is being able to understand information clearly and seeing the applications of it in the real world. Another way is seeing the input from instructors who have seen you put in the work to earn the grade in class and the amount of participation seen in class.