Isaiah Ricoy
ENG 101E
2­4­15

In our society today many students are attending classes that they see as non beneficial.
Any class that has nothing to do with their major, to the untrained eye, seems to be a big waste of money and time. What these students do not see, is the opportunity to explore these classes and truly understand the concepts. These same students do not take the time to firmly grasp the main concepts of these classes and will inevitably gain nothing from a big portion of their education.
“...the raison d’être of a college is to nourish a world of intellectual culture; that is, a world of ideas, dedicated to what we can know scientifically, understand humanistically, or express artistically.” (Gutting) As Gutting puts so well, college is for those who wish to grow as a person in any and every way possible. College is a place to continue the appreciation of knowledge “to nourish a world of intellectual culture”(Gutting) to understand deeply and I plan to take advantage of this opportunity.
Throughout my college journey, I plan to take the time to learn how to really understand every concept of every class that I attend. I intend to begin this semester especially with math.
Math is a subject that I have struggled with since elementary school and hope to dismiss any further classes of the subject by taking time to understand how each problem works and why they exist. Grasping the concepts and how to diagnose each problem will help to develop the deeper understanding that I have been longing for as well as discontinue the need for any further classes based on my major requirements. Although the main purpose for college is to truly expand your view, appreciate, and understand subjects on another level, I personally would not enjoy pursuing math any further, but I will apply myself as much as possible in order to fully appreciate my last math course.

Isaiah Ricoy
ENG 101E
2­4­15

In order to accomplish this goal, the first step I must take is to master the art of studying.
Besides math as a subject, studying has also been a skill that I lack. Hopefully, by the end of this semester I will be able to sit down for a solid fifty minutes while reading or practicing math problems before taking a break. This fifty minute strategy was learned from my psychology two hundred class and is extremely simple. Every fifty minutes of studying ends the hour with a ten minute break. This should be repeated about three times per subject. At the moment, my attention span seems to withstand twenty minutes of studying before needing some kind of break. Hopefully, using the courses that naturally interest me, I will be able to increase the length
I’m able to study between breaks until I reach a solid fifty minutes. Starting at a consistent twenty minutes per ten minute break, I will then try to move to thirty minutes and so on until fifty. Another strategy is to switch to a different subject after every fifty minutes, this could also help improve studying times. By continually studying I should get used to the task and be able to stay awake, but by switching to a new subject I can cover more work while keeping my mind fresh and focused.
After finally achieving my goal of fifty minute studying intervals, I can finally apply it to studying math. Using this skill for one subject may not seem like it is being used to it’s full potential, but for me it will be. I understand that math is used everywhere, even in statistics which is used heavily in my field of study, but it has never been . This complete lack of appreciation for mathematics will make the task to fully grasp and appreciate the subject a lot more difficult. Hopefully, because this subject has been such a burden to me throughout the years, finally gaining an appreciation for the subject will lead to better grades as well as the increased ability to apply the same to future subjects. “Students, in turn, need to recognize that