Semester Reflection

This semester of BIOL 1610 has been a very surprisingly good one. I had taken this
course once before a few years ago but didn’t pass it then. I found it to be very difficult and
could not keep up with the class. I was apprehensive to take this class again, but I needed to take
it again as it was a pre-req for another class I needed. I was fortunate that my girlfriend had
recently taken this course and had given me a great recommendation to take Professor Melissa
Hardy’s class. My girlfriend had talked about how great of a professor Melissa was and credited
a lot of her success in the class to how well Melissa taught her class. That was enough for me to
feel confident enough to sign up for the class and give it another shot.
There were not too many difficulties I had while taking this class, but the ones I had
made the biggest impact on me in this class. One of the most difficult things I experienced this
semester was managing time. This includes finding time to do go to class, work, sleep, do
homework, and balancing my personal relationships. I had to make sacrifices to all of those in
different ways and different times. For example, I would choose not to spend time with someone
for the sake of studying or doing homework. I would sometimes choose to sleep in because I had
a late work shift the night before and miss class that day. I believe time management played a big
role in my learning this semester. It’s no surprise that the more time I spent on my studying and
homework the better I learned. The times that I’ve missed class made me feel like I’m missing
out on important information that I wouldn’t get from the online assignments. Being in class was
needed for me to learn well in class.
I believe my biggest accomplishment from this semester was making it to the final week
and feeling confident that I will pass this class. When I first took this class, I didn’t even make it
to the end of the semester. I had fallen too far behind in class and the material was too much for
me to understand and keep up with. The specific things about this class that allowed me to
succeed were the professor, the online assignments and resources, and the way assignments were
graded in canvas. First off, Professor Hardy was a great teacher this semester. She genuinely
wanted all her students to succeed and learn in her class. That gave me a lot of confidence and
trust that I could succeed in her class too. She was well-educated about all the topics in class and
taught us about them in a way that was easy to understand. The online assignments were a great
learning supplement alongside the in-class lecture. I feel like I learned a lot from doing those
assignments. Also, the videos Melissa made for us had a lot of info and were great as well. The
assignments were also not graded too heavily so if we did not do very well on an assignment, we
weren’t punished too bad.
Overall, I feel like I had a very good experience this semester. I learned and re-learned a
lot of different topics this semester and felt like I could really understand what was being taught
to us. The time-management aspect of this semester was the most difficult experience I had, but I
was still able to make it through all the way to the end. I am proud of my effort and
accomplishment to finish this class and I thank everyone and everything that attributed to my
success.