Week 10: Degree Engagement

Introduction

Sadly, we had to return to talking about our regularly scheduled topics this week. But, I have to admit they were pretty helpful. We pretty much just went over the basics of what we need to do in college to prepare for our degrees. 

Mondayyyyy

On Monday, we were introduced to the fascinating feature offered by our campus called the catalog. Being the clueless freshmen we are, we had never heard of it. Basically, the catalog let's you see all of your major requirements. But, even more than that, it lets you see the requirements from the year you declared that as your major. This is because the requirements and guidelines are changed all the time, so students have the option of sticking to the major requirements they started with or changing them. We also took a look at program maps. I had seen these before thanks to my mom always being 5 steps ahead of me. The program maps for each major are extremely helpful when registering for classes. These are spreadsheets designed specifically for your major, and they provide a basic outline for what each semester should look like for you. At the end of class on Monday, we were all handed a sheet of paper filled with various values. We were asked to start by picking 15 values that were important to us and narrow them down to 5. This was a lot easier said than done, but after completing it, I was pretty happy with what it said about me. After we were all done, we got to discuss our personal values with the people around us. Nearly all of us had "determination" or "hard-working" as one of our top five, so I think that's something to be said about honors kids.

Wednesday

On Wednesday, we got our paper of values out again, and we broke up into small groups to discuss them with each other. Then, we watched a video about retrograde analysis. It's a pretty useful problem-solving tactic that I wish I knew how to use a bit better. The video was hosted by a game-master, and he explained that you could very easily plan things out and see many steps ahead of something by starting at the end and working your way back. I guess it's a lot easier to back track than to hack your way through the entire time. Being a game-master, he explained most of it from the perspective of a chess game because it's the tactic used by people who excel at the game. Cue me asking for a chess set for Christmas. After seeing how helpful retrograde analysis can be in everyday life, I'm pretty excited to try and practice it more in my day to day life.