Blog Posts 1-4

Blog Post #1

My name is Victoria Suazo. I’m in my fifth year of college pursuing two bachelor’s degrees in biology and psychology with a minor in chemistry. My goal once I graduate college about a year and a half from now is to take a year off to build up my application for dental school. My dream dental school is at UNLV in Nevada. 

The first day of class was interesting and definitely different from the way other classes have started. Typically, on the first day you go over the syllabus and expectations from the instructor and how the class set up works as far as homework, tests, etc. The first day we made a list individually and as a class about important topics we remember from general chemistry 1, topics we should brush up on as they are needed to understand concepts from general chemistry 2, and we did a dimensional analysis problem related to how much time we spend in lecture over the entire semester. Personally, I think it would have been helpful to brush up on topics briefly that we would need to know in order to help us succeed in general chemistry 2 instead of making the two lists. However, I do understand that based on what we remember and understand about chemistry helped to give Clarissa a gauge of where we were at with the material.

I did enjoy the dimensional analysis problem as it shocked me how little time over a semester, we spend learning a subject. I also enjoyed getting to collaborate with classmates about the activities we did on the first day. Although I had taken general chemistry 1, the semester before, when making the list of topics we remembered, it helped me to realize what I remember learning and what I don’t. How much I didn’t remember surprised me. That gave me some direction as to what topics I needed to review and ones that I could jump right into with regards to new material. Clarissa lectured for a little the first day which gave me an idea of what topics I would need to brush up on first, in order to understand the new topics a little better. Although chemistry isn’t my favorite subject being that I struggle with it and it takes me a lot of practice to even feel slightly comfortable with a topic, the first day made me optimistic that as long as I put a lot of effort into practicing and learning these topics then I would do well in the class. 

Blog Post #2

After the first test, I wasn’t too pleased with my grade. In my personal opinion, how the first test goes determines how much anxiety and worries I will have going into the rest of the semester. I’m not going to lie, when taking the first test, I was very nervous. Being that chemistry isn’t my best subject made me worry even more. There were many questions that I felt I needed a lot of time to even figure out how to start the problem. Continuously, I found the test to be quite difficult, and I noticed I was overthinking how to solve problems even though I had my notecard with me. I was unable to finish the test completely. Now what I mean by this isn’t that I left some questions blank, but some of them I put random answers that were not well thought out because I didn’t want to leave anything blank. Coming out of the test I didn’t feel confident in my performance and felt that I hadn’t prepared well enough to be successful and do well on the test. When I received my test grade back, as I mentioned previously, I was less than pleased. However, when Clarissa announced that she would give us half the points back instead of a quarter, I jumped at the opportunity to improve my grade. I appreciate Clarissa not only allowing ungrading to help improve test scores, but to allow us to reflect on why I performed the way I did. 

Personally, I felt that through doing corrections and getting a grade for it as well allows students to slow down and analyze what they did wrong, why they got the problem wrong, and what they need to study or what connections need to be made in order to improve and get a question like that correct the next time around. The structure of the ungrading helped me understand what I wasn’t understanding, therefore what I need to review or study in order to get that sort of problem right on the final. Although I will admit I struggled getting through the first ungrading because some things I had no idea how to approach or how I got some questions wrong, through collaboration with other classmates, it helped me to, for the most part, understand my mistakes and learn from them. Although I struggled through the ungrading, I believe this is a way in which students can actively work through their mistakes without simply coping another students work since you have to explain in your own words why you got the answer wrong and what you understand now to fix your mistakes.

Blog Post #3

Following the second test, I was also less than pleased with my test results. Although it wasn’t so much that I was displeased because I felt that I deserved a better grade. I knew that I hadn’t put as much preparation into this exam as I should have. Being that I had 3 other tests that week, I struggled with how to divide my time between all 4 classes. I realized that I should have spent more time preparing for this test being that it is my weakest subject, and that was a mistake I learned from. However, when walking out of the test, I did think that I performed better than what I did, which was better than the first test. The reason I thought this was not only because I was able to finish the test and actually look over most of my answers, but I felt that I prepared more for this test than the first one. Although I only got a slightly lower grade than my first test, I struggled with what I needed to do differently to perform better than I was. However, ungrading was easier to complete this time because I did change the way I studied from the first test. This helped in that the questions I got wrong I wasn’t completely lost on how to approach them when doing corrections.

The way I changed the way I studied is rather than looking up and watching the lecture videos a few days before the test, I looked at them well before that. Continuously, the topics that I wasn’t understanding, I watched those lectures videos more than once to help clarify and fill in the gaps. Continuously I used other resources such as the crash course YouTube videos and started the practice test earlier, so I knew what I needed to study more. I also did more practice while not looking at an example, so I knew I could solve certain types of problems without an example on the test. When doing the ungrading I did utilize the help of my classmates more this time around with certain problems. However, through collaboration with my classmates, I was able to understand some keys points and connections that I wasn’t making that if I had, I would have performed much better on the test. I’ve noticed that the more you do ungrading, the easier it gets because I learned that the point is not just to correct your answers without understanding and call it a day. The corrections truly make you understand your mistakes and make key connections with the material to prevent you from making these same mistakes in the future.

Blog Post #4

Prior to taking the first test, I did struggle with a lot of the concepts, and with multiple tests coming up at one time, I did my best to study for all of them. When I got my third test back, I was definitely not pleased at all. Walking out of the test I know I didn’t do great, but I thought I did better than what I did. This has been my lowest test score this entire semester. I’ve decided to not do test corrections because even with them my test score is still very low. It wouldn’t even put my new score in the passing range. I will probably go to the tutors to seek help on those topics, so I do better with them once I take the final exam. 

One thing I realized I did when I was taking the test is that I spent too much time on a couple of the short answer questions, so I was unable to finish the exam. The only ones I had left were some multiple choice, but there was also one short answer question that I answered quickly because I didn’t want to get most of the points taken off for not doing anything. Many of the questions I didn’t get to answer thoroughly and accurately because of the time constraint. I did watch the lecture videos and took notes on them too to prepare, but many of the problems I needed an example next to me to be able to answer them correctly, so I definitely needed to practice more. 

Seeing my graded test, I at least know that these are the topics that I’m going to need to spend more time studying for the final. Being how I did on the third test, and I walked out knowing I didn’t do well, I have already started studying for the fourth test. So far, I am understanding what we are going over, but we also haven’t covered nuclear chemistry yet which I’ve heard is difficult. For now, it puts me at ease knowing that I’m confident in my ability to do kinetics problems. My goal is to get at least a C on the fourth test before corrections considering I’m taking a bet by not doing corrections for the third test. Overall, I know I need to continue practicing problems for the next test as well as start reviewing all material, so I am prepared for the final which is coming up quickly.