Robert Mackey Mackey 1

Carbajal-Ramos
College 1
31 October 2014
Midterm Successes and Failures Reflection
A. Reflect
I want to reflect on my College 1 course experience. I am 51 years old and this is my first
year in college. I had much fear of not measuring up to the much younger students. I was not
computer literate, had not had any experience in Microsoft Word, and had never had to do any
research.
I am so grateful for the learning assignments and the order they were in. I learned early
on in the semester thanks to the sections on brainology and the two mindsets that I had entered
college with a fixed mindset. All my life I would avoid challenges, give up easily when
frustrated, never wanted to put any effort into anything I did not understand, ignored useful
negative feedback, and feel threatened by the success of others. I figured I just was not able to
learn new things and thought I was intelligent as I was going to be. fixed mindset. After learn
about brainology and the assignment about the two mindsets, all whole new perspective came
into view. At last, the growth mindset. I perceived that intelligence can be developed. I was
very pleased to learn that all I needed was a desire and will to learn. With this new knowledge I
was able to make a new beginning. From that point, I was able to open my mind and embrace
new challenges, persist in the face of setbacks, see effort as a path to mastery, learned from
criticism, and even encouraged negative feedback so I could improve on my learning skills. I
was also able to learn from others by investigating what worked for them, so I could improve on
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my own new success. As a result of this new growth mindset, I was able to reach higher levels of
achievement. With this new mindset, I was able to improve on my assignments throughout the
semester. This increased my self-esteem, which made completing assignment more satisfying
with this new confidence.
Another important study tool I learned in College 1 was Metacognition. The most
important thing to me, that I learned from metacognition, was whenever I get stuck on an
assignment, I have learned to think about what I am thinking and I am able to refocus what I am
thinking, thus not overloading my mind with too much information at one time. Other valuable
skills that I learned in the College 1 course reader include how to communicate with my
professor, pay attention to his instruction style, follow the rules in class, participate in
discussions, and use common language. I found that when I had trouble with assignments, asking
questions for help was very effective. I felt when I studied hard and read all available
information; I began to feel confident when participating in discussions.
One example of my learning outcome is in my reading response journals. On my first
RRJ in College 1, I really struggled to complete the assignment. I was full of fear because it was
the first college assignment I had ever been assigned. I did not have any study skills prior to the
assignment. The assignment took 15-20 hours trying to figure out how to complete the
assignment and in the end I only received 13 out of 20. I began to worry that I was not able to
complete the course successfully. As I learned about study habits and growth mindset in this
class, assignment became easier to complete and my RRJ scores began to improve to 18 out of
20. I began to see improvements in all of my classes. With this new knowledge I have been able
to improve my social skills, academic abilities, and have helped me further my educational goals.
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To sum this up, I feel I am doing very well in college 1, not because of my intelligence,
but because of my new attitude and behavior that I have learned from the assignments in College
1.