New Year, New Student by Mason

New Year, New Student by Mason - January 2016 Scholarship Essay

During the holiday season, there were many opportunities for me to reflect on the past academic quarter and year. Although I earned good grades, I had to spend long hours studying and focused all of my energy on my academics. Sometimes the results went as I expected, but other times I fell short of my expectations.
Prior to this previous fall quarter, I studied possibly ten hours a week into studying and achieved excellent grades. However, I took three science classes and I studied nearly thirty hours a week. At the same time, I had a work schedule that I had to accommodate. Sometime during the quarter, I had looked up various studying methods that were supposed to get the most out of my studying time. While these ideas were very creative and different than what I was doing, I was nearing the end of the quarter and most of the studying had already been done. To review, I had simply reread my aggregated notes and analyzed challenging practice problems. I have since learned that both of these strategies are mostly useless. Therefore, I consulted my parents and we discussed both the positive studying strategies and what I needed to improve upon.
For 2016, I will become a more courageous inquisitor. For most of my learning career, I have been hesitant to ask questions. I always feared that I would ask a question that would make the professor’s eyes roll or that the other students would groan. Moreover, I wasn’t hesitant to attend office hours but often I had questions that I didn’t know how to ask. Therefore, I was unsure of how to have a good conversation with a professor about what I needed help with. This year, I will be less hesitant to voice discrepancies I have. When I go to a professor’s office hours, I will make sure to start out by showing them my process through a sample question. From there, I will ask how to approach problems of that type. I believe this method will get my questions answered without appearing to be a lazy student. With the Varsity Tutors Scholarship, I will be able to pursue my aspiration of becoming a sports physical therapist.