Danilo Pacris Espiritu
Week 4- Assignment 1- Journal Entry Coming to an end towards week 4, I cannot believe that we are halfway through the term. I believe this week was all about looking back to the first week and reflecting on how we all came a long way and grown together as a class. Even as an online class where we don’t see each other face to face, I have learned so much from my other classmates through discussion boards when reading their posts as well as the feedback they provide me. With two weeks left for this term, I am still open to learning more from my classmates as well as the benefits of technology. In answering the discussion assignment this week about specific technology equipment that we could not live without, I was able to use the checklist we filled out from the first week. As mentioned from my last journal entry, we are always building on the prior week’s material in order to help prepare us for the current week. Therefore, I was able to use the checklist as a guide to help with this week’s discussion assignment. In reflecting on how much technology has evolved over the years growing up, I learned that living without it would be difficult. However, learning about techno-stress was an interesting topic where we often rely on technology on a daily basis which causes our stress level to rise. As a result, we get too involved or “plugged-in” with technology that it can be over stimulating for us which can lead to dangerous situations. As much as technology has become so productive in our daily lives, I learned that taking a break from our computers and cell phones can be a good thing once in a while to decrease our stress levels. One aspect of week 4’s classroom resources that surprised me was the self-assessment quiz on the Math and English content. It’s a comprehension quiz to assess one’s ability’s to answer questions in different areas involving both English and Math. Before starting the quiz, I predicted that I was going to score higher in Math as oppose to the English quiz. Growing up, I always struggled with writing essays in high school as well as my freshman year in college. I felt that I was a lot stronger with math because I got good grades with algebra all the way up to calculus. So I first started with the English quiz which involved topics on main ideas, thesis statements, topic sentences, essays, and reading comprehension. As I was working on the quiz, it brought me back to all the material I learned during my freshman year taking English Comp’s 1 and 2. I scored an average score, and right after I finished the English quiz I went straight to the math quiz without hesitation. I felt that it was going to be really easy for me because I was under the impression that it was just going to be basic algebra, ratio/proportions, and integers. However, I was in for a big surprise when the first problem I encountered involved elementary math which I totally forgot in terms of the strategy in solving the problem. I had to take out scrap paper as well as my calculator to decipher these problems which I totally forgot how to do over the years. There were some problems I was able to recall and had no difficulty answering them. The other problems such as radicals, absolute values, and graphing integers were the ones I really struggled with. I spent a long time trying to finish the quiz and at the end I had a low score. I was more surprised and laughed at the fact that this whole time I thought I was going to score higher in the math content then I would on the English content. It was a very interesting quiz and I learned a lot from it. Even though it has been many years since I took English and Math, I feel I need to go back and work on the areas I struggled with. As a new grad nurse completing my BSN with Walden, I know I’ll be doing a lot of research papers and writing essays for my future nursing courses. Also with the math content, I need to teach myself not to always depend on using the calculator when I need to calculate dosages for my pharmacology course. Therefore, the value in understanding all this is building on a stronger foundation with the English and Math content so I can take it with me as I complete the program. This involves coming up with a solution to writing better formatted essays as well as calculating math problems quickly in my head. I feel that this self-assessment on English and Math was sort of a wakeup call for me because it helped gauge on my weak areas that I need to focus on in order to better myself as a student so that I am able to successfully continue on with the BSN program here in Walden.