Article | How Was My Fall Semester?

 By Eddlynn Jennifer Mangaoang

Written: December 9, 2021

Please do not copy or post to another site. Thank you. Enjoy reading. 

Summer 2021 school session ended on August 13th for me. Just 8 days after, my Fall semester started. I took 6 classes, 5 of them were courses geared towards my Bachelor's. In addition, I also continued going to my weekly volunteer work at the hospital about 20 minutes away through the freeway from my home. 

Sometimes, I would find myself wondering how fast the days and months went by during this year. It became more apparent during the semester. I believed it was because I have many projects, assignments, papers, and other academic responsibilities - because they have due dates, I constantly looked toward those due dates. I am sure it's similar to other students out there, but due dates always felt like they come faster, whether we want them or not. 

It was a busy, yet satisfying and fun semester. I did several new things and learned more about Public Health. I specifically enjoyed my Health Behavior class. It was a 7:30 am class, but I didn't feel sleepy even once because my professor made it a very engaging class. She would often put on music as well while waiting for class to start. I remembered drawing in her class. We drew about social determinants of health, and then we have a little presentation about it. 

Out of all my 6 classes, my favorite was the Global Health class. It was an asynchronous class, but the professor was the same as my Statistics class. I particularly enjoyed the two big projects: policy brief and webpage. For the policy brief, I had to write a policy brief for Malawi's maternal mortality. The project was given on our second week; however, the webpage outline was due earlier, so my groupmates and I spent most of September and October making our outline. By the time we turned the outline in, I only had 3 weeks to work on the policy brief, but I didn't know where to start since it was my first time making one. The professor's examples were done by professionals, from FDA, if I remembered correctly. I felt that they were also a bit different from what she wanted from us. Either way, I did it about a week before we have to turn it in. I was very happy when I got my grade. My professor also asked if she could use it as an example for future classes! I had flashbacks from freshman high school when my 9th-grade teacher asked by the end of the semester if she could use my pile of projects/assignments. Of course, I happily agreed. 

For the webpage outline, my professor commented that it was "the most thorough and thoughtful webpage outline... since offering this assignment." It was exhilarating receiving praise after you did your very best. For the webpage itself, I think that our webpage was very good. The only thing was that the webpage creator we used was a bit foreign to me, so I didn't really know how to use it to make the information put together. Otherwise, I had fun making it with my groupmate(s).

This week was our finals week, and today was the last day. I didn't have any tests, but I had to come for my Japanese class's final presentation (by my classmates) as an audience. It was online, so it was no problem. Last week, I started doing a group session review for my Statistics class through Zoom at 8 pm. It started because some of my girlfriends who were taking the class with me wanted to go over their answers with our last Problem Set - it was a nice review for the finals. Then I remembered that I could schedule a study room in our Library, so for Wednesday, Thursday last week, and Monday, Tuesday this week, I scheduled a 4-hour long group study session in different rooms of our Library. Only about 1-2 people came from each day. During the times no one comes, I just created videos instead. These videos went over different topics from our Statistics class. Just making the videos helped me study, and I liked that. I also did a night session through zoom at 8 pm from Wednesday (last week) to Tuesday (this week) before the test yesterday (Wednesday). 

Along the way, I attended a couple of online concerts; tickets were thanks to my sister. These online concerts were SB19's -well, they're there one way or another. I had so much fun. I think the concerts helped me relax.

I wanted to take a break, so instead of enrolling in a Winter Intersession, I didn't. I felt I deserve the month-long vacation.