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Winter Quarter at UCI: How I managed to get back on track after a rough fall quarter

Whether you aced your first quarter at UCI or you were like me and almost failed your STEM classes, every freshman goes through their own adjustment period as they transition from high school to college. Here are some of my tips that have helped me get back on track.

1. If there is a LARC tutorial available for your class, enroll in it.

I made the mistake last quarter of enrolling in only one LARC tutorial instead of two because the classes were full at the time, and I learned about the CBCRR sponsorship a little too late, during my Thrive@UCI class. LARC tutorials are small, sixteen-student discussions held twice a week, on the third floor of the Anteater Learning Pavillion. Although each session costs $110 each, there are staff members and organizations who are willing to cover the costs of your sessions.

From my experience, LARC sessions are very helpful and even engaging! The purpose of LARC is to engage in group discussions about the course material, but aside from filling out worksheets and talking about the work, we also play games and make little fold-ables to help us study for the course material. This especially helps people like me who like to learn by talking about the course material and working with others to understand the material because the traditional “sit in a lecture for fifty minutes to almost two hours and take notes off of a PowerPoint” really bothers me and causes me to quickly lose interest in a class. I have even heard many positive experiences from other students talking about how they loved their LARC tutors and that they’re glad that they enrolled because the tutors did such a great job with breaking down complex topics into simpler terms.

2. Find out what study method works for you.

This is a topic that we have been talking about in University Studies 1, which is a class for Undeclared first-year students here at UCI. Learning how to study effectively helps a lot when it comes to succeeding in your classes. Here are some of my study tips:

  • Watching Khan Academy/Crash Course/other informative videos
  • Attending LARC sessions (see #1)
  • Printing out lecture slides and annotating them during lectures
  • Studying in groups or with friends (for social learners like me)
  • Using focus apps such as Forest/Flora, or Focus Mode for newer Android devices (such as the Galaxy S10 and Note 10 Series)
  • Printing and completing department peer tutor worksheets
  • Putting your phone on silent while you study, as even the vibration can distract not only you, but those around you as well.

3. Your phone is your friend– and sometimes your enemy– when it comes to productivity.

When it comes to productivity, your phone can be either an aid or a distraction based on your discipline and how you use it.

For starters, try to put your phone on “moon mode” (for iPhone users), Focus Mode (for phones running Android 9 or newer), or Do Not Disturb (for older Android versions). The vibrations and notifications going off can not only disturb you, but those around you as well.

Focus Mode is a setting that is similar to an app called Forest, and it’s available on Android devices running Android 9 and newer, as a part of Google’s Digital Wellbeing campaign. On my Galaxy S10e, it has helped me to avoid distractions and stay engaged by limiting my app selections to mostly stock, educational, and maybe one or two messaging apps. If you have either an iPhone or an Android running Android 8 or below, you can download the apps Forest and Flora in the App and Play Stores, or you can simply set your phone to Do Not Disturb mode.

If you are an Android user, you can also take advantage of home screen widgets. The Canvas student app has a widget that you can place on your home screen so that you can view your upcoming assignments that are due. I also recommend using your calendar widget (Google Calendar is your best friend!), your reminders widget, and maybe your notes widget, if necessary. Take advantage of your phone’s customization options, and use them to further enhance your productivity! (iPhones have widgets too, but they are compressed into one long list if you swipe to the left of your home screen; coming from iOS, I didn’t really tend to check them that often).

4. Find the right spot to study.

Studying in your dorm is not advised unless it is really late and you do not plan on going back to campus. Even then, unless you have the discipline to do your homework in your room or on your bed, you are better off using your hall or apartment’s designated study spaces. Here in Arroyo Vista, each hall has its own study room, but residence halls and ACC apartment complexes should have their own as well.

Dorm rooms are full of distractions. The walls are super thin, so thin that you can hear people’s conversations in your hall, and you can literally hear doors slam and the floor thump whenever someone jumps in the house. Some of the desk chairs are extremely uncomfortable to sit in and are terrible for your back, and the chairs are lower than the desks themselves, forcing me to rest my arms in this uncomfortable position whenever I try to type onto my laptop. On the other hand, studying on the bed is super comfortable, but the temptation to plop back into the softness and comfort of your pillows and blankets and just drift off to sleep is so great! Personally, I only do homework on the bed when it is late at night, or it’s the weekend, but I plan on changing it up to only on Sundays and late nights since Saturdays can be used for going to the library to study.

With that being said, try to study either at the Langson and Science libraries or at the designated study centers on campus such as Gateway and Courtyard. I find it that I study better when I am in a study environment that is nice and quiet, as opposed to in my dorm room. However, do be sure to take breaks, because after sitting in the same position for a while, your body starts to become strained. I know from personal experience that my back starts to hurt after leaning forward in concentration over an extended period of time!

5. Ask other people for help, but be smart about it.

Ask your classmates, club members, professors, R.A.s, T.A.s, L.A.s, peer tutors, LARC tutorial leaders, mentors, just ask for help when you need it!

What I did for my Chem101 homework when I got stuck on about ten of the problems was that I utilized the message boards feature that was built into our Canvas course space. Utilize the Canvas message boards, and read the posts, because not only may people be asking the same questions that you have, but the boards may also have some very useful study questions for you to take note of. My classmates were nice enough to offer me solutions to most of the homework problems, and as a result, I managed to complete 47 out of 48 questions (I gave up on one of them, sadly).

Important tip: DO NOT wait until the last minute to go to office hours. By last minute, I mean before the exam. I did this one time and I was stuck in the professor’s office with over thirty other students. The room was packed with students waiting to ask questions about the lecture right before the midterm. When you visit office hours, come with your questions ready, and be as precise and detailed as possible. Explain what you did and be straight to the point with what you are confused about so that you don’t waste the professor or TA’s time.

6. Take care of yourself!

Staying up all night doing homework is not an excuse to not shower, not eat, or not get enough sleep. No matter how hard the major is, don’t forget to take care of yourself as well. I never pull all-nighters because I love getting my sleep. I find out that if I don’t get enough sleep for a night, I end up feeling terrible in the morning. The same goes for when I don’t eat a proper breakfast (dining hall breakfasts are the best, although I hate when Brandywine runs out of ketchup!).

When you feel like you are tired, take a break. If you feel as if you have studied the material for too long, take a break. Self-care is just as important as academic success, and it’s important to never neglect your personal health.

Some of these tips may not work for everyone. Many of you have probably heard these tips before from numerous sources, but I personally find them to be helpful. Nonetheless, good luck with your studies, my fellow readers!

Zot zot zot!

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Finishing Up Another Chapter

Though the quarters seemed to have dragged by slowly, it appears as if the end of my first year was silently biding its time to pop up out of nowhere. I would be lying to you if I stated that my first year at UCI was a complete dream. But it’s not as if it was a nightmare.

So the good, the bad, and the somewhat okay.

Fall quarter Addie was a bit too ambitious… My idea of being successful in college was structured around three main goals: maintain a high GPA, avoid the classic freshman fifteen, and have a great social life. Well, I accomplished about 1 ½  of those benchmarks. I don’t have straight A’s. I’m still pretty socially awkward. But I had an adequately consistent gym schedule, three solid friendships, and while it’s too early to tell what the results from finals are, I’m somewhat confident that Math 2A will be the only class I’ll fail. Not exactly what I would picture as the definition of success at the beginning of the year, but something I would not write off as complete failure now at the end of spring quarter.

If I were to teach a class on being undeclared, I think I would want the curriculum to be structured around the topic of being okay with failure. I would want students to know that you’re not always going to get the outcomes that you desire throughout the quarter. And that’s completely fine. For my first midterm for Biology 94, I scored a 68%. I also was not successful in getting a writing class at all this year. However, those events still resulted in me getting a B for Biology 94 and taking Political Science 31A- two of what I consider to be some of my greatest accomplishments. Although I still have yet to kick my habit of procrastination and my work habits definitely could use some improvement, failing that one midterm taught me a bad grade does not signify the end of the world. Overall, actually understanding the material is more important than getting an A out of the class.

Moreover, not getting into your preferred major right away and being Undeclared is not a setback. At the start of the year, I thought I was certain I wanted to major in Nursing. I had an ideal schedule set for my first two years at UCI that was centered around taking mainly Biology and Chemistry courses with a few GE’s scattered here and there. After scheduling Fall classes during orientation, that plan was basically thrown out the window. When I decided to challenge myself winter quarter by taking 16 units, and the writing classes had filled up, I picked a random GE- Political Science 31A. Despite the fact I am more leaning towards the possibility of majoring in Public Health and the likelihood of taking another Political Science class is relatively low, that class with Professor Chambers remains as my favorite for this year. Fingers crossed for the possibility of still getting into UCI’s nursing program. But looking back now, I’m grateful I had the opportunity to be Undeclared my first year because if I weren’t, I probably would not have signed up for a class that interested me yet was unrelated to my major. So for those of you who were slightly disappointed of being Undeclared, instead of seeing it as a setback, view it as an opportunity to explore your options.

Furthermore, this year was not absent from struggles. But a few of my professors and ZotBlog were highlights that made those difficult moments less painful. I never fell asleep during Professor Chambers lectures; she always made the course material easy to understand and engaging. And Biology 93 with Professor Taagepera is probably the second hardest course I have taken so far after Math 2A. But even with such a heavy workload and challenging midterms and finals, she showed me you can still love a subject that you don’t always understand. To end, I would like to give a huge thank you to Lauren for allowing me to be a part of ZotBlog. My favorite aspect of being one of its writers is being allowed an opportunity to reflect on your prior experiences at UCI and also having a counselor and second-year students answer a never-ending list of your questions.

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Final Thoughts

I am not going to lie, but it feels like I graduated high school yesterday and here I am finishing my first year in college. So much has happened, so many new things I experienced that I never thought of. However, through all that experience, sometimes it’s easy to forget the main goals you want to accomplish by the end of the year. Coming into college, I had several goals I wanted to accomplish, but these three were my main ones:

1. Avoid Freshman Fifteen
2. Improve my social life
3. Maintain a good GPA

I knew coming into college that I would not be working out as much as I wish to, either it’s time, or due to my laziness to not work out. But one thing was sure was that I needed to not fall trap to the infamous Freshman fifteen. For those who don’t know Freshman Fifteen (FF), it’s basically when one gains an extra fifteen pounds by the end of freshmen year. In other words I needed to maintain my weight by not baiting myself to the junk food around me, or stress eating. However, I am a student, and therefore I had multiple occasions of stress eating (particularly around finals) and consuming fast food, particularly In-N-Out. Stressing about gaining weight while stress eating is not good for you, especially when it’s finals week, but I lived. I made it out while dodging Freshman Fifteen. Still I did gain a few pounds. Looking back, I was proud of myself for maintaining my weight, because my willpower against food is particularly weak, especially when I imagined I would eat a lot in college.

The second goal was to improve my social life, simply because I never really had one back in high school, and also because I was really shy. I wanted to be out there, rather than constantly spending time alone in my room binge watching netflix or playing video games. I was not planning to spend my time in college reliving my high school years with almost zero social life. To accomplish those goals, I approached a lot of people, and while I did not get along with over half of them, it was great, because I now have friends that I can hangout with rather than spending my weekend alone. People say that the friends you make in college usually are your true friends and in many ways more than one I agree with them. Now I don’t have that social life where I constantly go out during weekends, but it’s better than high school for sure.

My third goal is to maintain a good GPA. In high school, I never really worked too hard, and my GPA suffered the consequences. I started fall quarter with determination to keep a good GPA in college, especially since this is my first year and I don’t want to mess up. However, I stressed myself more about getting good grades and GPA than the actual class, I couldn’t really focus on understanding the material, and that was bad. Things took a bad turn as Spring quarter rolled by, because I was having a harder time focusing on my classes and those exam and midterm grades did not help me with my confidence. I know it’s not the best GPA right now, but I still have three years ahead of me, and I just need to work harder and smarter. The last thing I want in college is to repeat the same mistakes as in high school.

Not all is bad news, because a side achievement that I am happy about being undeclared is getting into ICS 31, because the demand for that class is really big. To get that class is basically first come first serve. I am not saying it’s impossible for an undeclared student to get that class, but I want to just advice that getting into ICS 31 (intro to programming) is difficult.

Throughout the year, I really appreciated applying to be a Zot Blogger, not because I can put this on my resume, but also because I was able to write blogs. I always loved writing in general, whether it’s fiction or nonfiction, but being a Zot Blogger made me realize how much I love to blog, whether it’s about myself or just giving advice in general. Topics were great too, as I got to write about what UCI felt to me in many ways, from meeting new people, trying new experiences and more. This also gave me a chance to give me insight about myself too.

With all the knowledge I have accumulated over this past year, if I was to teach a class on being undeclared, I would structure it more interactive-based rather than lecture based. This class is not too difficult to comprehend, but it requires more time and experience. For example, I would start off by debunking the misconceptions of being undeclared and instead explain how one can get their major based on how hard they work. Being undeclared sometimes means taking GE’s and because they are first years, maybe recommending students to take these GE courses that fulfill two or more GE will also help. For example, I would highly recommend taking Anthropology 2A with Professor Egan for many reasons. His lectures are traditional-lecture based; professor speaks and you take notes. Professor Egan makes his lectures entertaining in a way it becomes easier to understand and remember (but you still have to take notes). However the content is really eye-opening, because all the topics are things not well known. For example, there are a group of people who in the Himalayas who practice fraternal polyandry (where a group of brothers all marry one wife), which keeps the population in check and results in no food shortage. There is more to this, but it becomes hard to explain unless you take the course.

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Look Back At It

As we all are approaching the end of our first year at college, it is just about time to reflect on what this year has been for us and me personally. In general, I really like reflecting on things that happen to me. I am also a big fan of self-analysis and improvement, and being able to reflect is an essential requirement to succeed in analyzing and improving yourself. I also like setting goals and making long-term plans. This helps me to make my reflection even more effective and informative.  At the beginning of the academic year, I set a goal to stay above 3.5 GPA, go to bed before 12 am, and eat more than one time a day. In general, I can say that I reached every goal that I set for myself, but if I look closely, it becomes clear that everything is not that perfect as it would seem from the first sight. While my GPA is above 3.5 and my sleep time is not always 12 am. And by not always I mean “pretty often.” I can definitely say that most of the time I do go to sleep at 12 am or earlier, but there are also times when it is way later than that. And the reason for that is pure procrastination. I still need to get better at time management and self-motivation. Regarding the food issue: I definitely started eating more, but it is still not enough. I don’t have a specific eating regime which is because I eat a lot of snacks or sandwiches during the day. So, you can see that really not all of my goals were reached properly, but this only means that I need to work harder. Nothing bad has happened and so there is no reason to panic. I really want everyone who will read this to have a similar approach to setting goals and reaching them. Trust me, this might be very useful and helpful during your first year in college.

Working on reaching goals was not my only duty this year. Being a part of ZOT Blog was among them too. I really enjoyed taking part in this and being a member of such a nice community if bloggers, interns, and Lauren. And it’s not just because I was getting additional units per quarter, but because of the precious experience that I acquired. I can say that writing blogs was a supplemental writing practice and also the place where I could use the writing skills that I acquired in composition classes.

Regarding the academics: I really like UCI. I also like most of the professors. And when saying “most,” I am not trying to say that some of the professors are bad. Every single professor that I had, no matter if liked them or not, was an expert in the field they were teaching. The only issue was that sometimes they just were not the best teachers. I don’t know if it was just them not trying hard enough or if it is really that they are not so good at teaching.  Though, I really want to take some time to express my appreciation to every professor that I had so far and that I will have in the future. I can see how hard that job is and I think there is no way an undergrad can blame a professor for not being either competent or just generally “good” at the subject they are teaching. I also encourage everyone who reads this to think the same and have the same attitude towards professors.

And finally, I want to address my “undeclaredness.” This year I was trying hard to get all the courses that I need for my major and finally, in Spring I was able to get a seat in the ICS 32! I was sure that I can do it and was just constantly trying hard to get into it. So now I am waiting for the final exam and then for my grade to be released so I can apply for Business Information Management major right away. I am really happy that everything turned out to be this way.  It is exactly how I wanted it to be and it is just another proof to the idea that being undeclared is not a bad thing but rather a good thing!