Fiseha Yigzaw
Professor: McFarland
English: 7
Due date: 08/12/13
Success is not something given to anyone; it is hard to achieve .success is accomplished through strong desire and dedication to achieving one`s goals and faith in oneself. Dedication to achieving one`s goals is the most effective way to achieve greatness. To thrive in life people should work hard and nobody should take success lightly. However, the driving force that creates dedication should be the desire to achieve something. There are a lot of factors associated with success such as educational background, cultural influence and family support but the key is to work continually towards success. It may be a difficult task to do but motivation to move forward and the willingness to overcome challenges is fueled by a passion for a particular field of endeared. Family influence is an important factor in whether or not the kids become successful. Most young people form many of their attitudes about work and careers as result of interactions with the family. Family background provides the basic foundation up on which youth plan their future careers. However, within each family, the level of parental involvement can vary, offering both positive and negative influences. Almost everything that we learn as a child comes from parents and how reacts to our parents.
We tend to follow in their footsteps, positive or negative. Growing up without a family makes many people feel lost and unable succeed. However, I do believe that family is not only place to look for guidance teachers, mentors and other adults who take an interest in us can also influence our decisions and careers. Personal responsibility is also a factor in achieving success. My personal goal is to achieve my educational goal.
Being born into a life of economic and social privilege can kill your passion because everything is too easy and you don't develop a burning passion to accomplish due to some lack in your life. For example, sometimes being extremely poor creates a great passion for achievement in some field to overcompensate for lacks felt as a child and teenage. Burning passion for learning can be fostered by a life of privilege. The passion movie is good example and speaks to me in three ways: First it reminds me of when I came to Chabot College from my experience I learned it is ok to be afraid or undecided major as long as you don't lose track of the necessary decision; there is nothing wrong with exploring different fields. The second influence is influence of family and friends I remember that my father`s expectation of me was that to follow his footsteps and become business man like him, but my idea was to explore what is out there .After being here at Chabot for a while, I have realized that I am leaning towards the health care field .Arts and literature were interesting, and I learned a lot but I don't think I want to make them into career. The Third influence :Media tries to influence the students telling the students what is best for them based on the norm for example in the movie Andrew had a passion to become an architecture, but then he saw statics on yahoo where it says things like "Oh 1st degree not to get in college is an architectural degree: there is 12% unemployment rate" .This is perfect example of the role of media in trying to make students fearful and convince them that if they don't listen to the media tells them they may fail. In reality we sometimes learn things the easy way and sometimes the hard way, but the key is to learn from our mistake and move forward.
There are many deal breakers for people when it comes to college: My personal philosophy is that if I start something, no matter what I have to finish it, I will not have room for failure .Issues that I faced while at Chabot: I strongly believe that some of the professors at Chabot College have been here too long and it seems they have lost the passion for their subject or didn't have passion in the first place. Including professor McFarland there are very passionate and helpful professors whose goal is students success. When I first took classes I was working full time and took one class per semester; after a couple of semesters I decided to quit my job and become full time student. Unfortunately the professor of my class in Human Anatomy doesn't have passion she seems to be here to collect pay check. The subject itself is pretty interesting and difficult in addition the student don't get the help they need. But soon enough before the drop off date I decided to drop this class and focus on the other class I had signed up for. It worked out perfect but in this process I learned that the first few days of class are critical in getting to know whether I have connection with the teaching method of the professor or not . It is even better to go to www.rate my professor.com to evaluate before signing on to the class and read what students say about him/her. Even though there is biased information checking the web Page is helpful.
The other deal breaker I had were the counselors : My expectation of a counselors is that he/she guides you shows you the path you want to go ,and help you explore, in other words helps you think outside of the box. However, that is not what I experienced with most of the counselors here at Chabot. With due to respect I sometimes don't see the difference between going to a counselor and car dealership sales persons because they both tell you this is what is available, take it or leave it. They don't even give you the opportunity to discuss what is on your mind ,Just like Karina said in the passion project, "What `s that thing called when you put things on machines and it is just going like that an assembly line...so you are going through these classes to get on the same type of assembly like”. It seems if you don't follow the assembly line you are not going to get the end product."Which in college is a degree”, the counselors treat you the same way, like you are just a mechanical part of process.
Another deal breaker is also Lack of financing, some of the students may not qualify for financial aid grants because their parents make middle class salaries and as a result the students don't fulfill financial aid criteria. Once that happens the other option the student have is either to apply for student loans or get a job and work and go to school at the same time. If a student chooses to get a student loan to pay for tuition fees and very expensive books and continue his/her education, the interest rate is so high the student keep on accumulating mountains of high debt. As school progresses students become stressed and their performances decline, and by the time mid-term approaches, many make harsh decision to drop out of college. If students decide to work, most of the time he/she gets a job is at minimum wages where the boss is not lenient in students having to take an occasional day off to study for a test. Students are thus faced with the dilemma of either to reporting to work or getting fired or not going to work and studying for the test whichever choice the student makes, his/her academic performance is affected one way or the other; this can lead to dropping out of college.
The policies of community college like Chabot should accommodate students from different backgrounds, programs that reflect and understanding the difficulties students face in college and support them. Based on my personal experience there are three categories of students: students who lack financial support, student without strong educational backgrounds, and students like me that have come from foreign countries/international students. There are some students at Chabot that I have come across that have dropped out of college because they don’t qualify for financial aid, they think there is no way they can afford to go to college because there is no alternative way provided by the community college. One of the policy changes Chabot should make is to create a program to help students caught between being disqualified for financial aid and being unable to afford the high tuition and text books cost of college.
The other policy change should focus on students with lack of strong educational background. Because these students have different needs from students with strong back ground they don’t have trouble with understanding or unfamiliarity with American culture. Chabot should set up remedial classes for these students that are focused on their lack of strong educational back ground and bring them to the standard. Although Chabot does have numerous ESL classes for international students, there is a gap between these classes and the educational skills needed for fresh man level college work .In other words, The ESL classes do take students about half of the way towards college level work ,but then abandon them to go the rest of the way themselves. Thus Chabot should add more programs that are more focused on the student’s skills and gradually raise the students to college level.
Student personal evaluation helps students connect to their inner selves, in other words it helps the students to ask them what their weakness and strength are. Once the students are done with self evaluation, this process can help them figure out what their passions are. Self-evaluation also helps the students explore different opportunities and to access whether they are suited to the fields of their interest. In evaluating myself I discovered that I wonder around in different education fields, but I am leaning toward the medical field. Even though I find some of the science classes challenging, I try my best to put extra effort in to learning and passing the classes. Learning is a journey and how fast you get through your journey depends on personal skills and digesting the learning materials, the important thing is the final success that is the result. I also realized that I am drawn to science and technology more than other subject because I am fascinated by the mystery of it and the scientific processes. I also found myself to be a team player and I work well with others. I put the individual competition behind and the team success in front while working with others.
My interest in science, desire to help people and my abilities as a team player made me real like that. I would like some sort of career in medicine. Thus self-evaluation was very useful to me in deciding what kind of career to choose. Due to my personal experience, I think all the students in the passion class should be asked to take similar journeys of self –discovery. Some times some students evaluate the educational system as well for example What Jeff Bless in Duncanville, Texas did in class was heroic act; he stood up and told the teacher that she was not teaching and none of the students weren't learning, and that is not right. She told him to leave. His fellow classmates and students across the nation should be proud of him. When I saw the video in class, I was speechless for few minutes, and eventually I said to myself “What a brave act”, he stood up for himself and as well other students. He was motivated to learn, but the teacher was irresponsible and unprofessional and didn't care about what he had to say.
When he said, "We are the future of this nation” he was referring to the young student like himself. He told her that she was just there to collect paycheck as she has mentioned in class earlier .How can the teaching process be? I believe what Jeff did in the class room is awake up call for schools in the nation .But it is up to us students to stand in solidarity with Jeff ,let our voices be heard and get the broken educational system get fixed. Students are tested either quarterly or per semester on what they have learned in class. Thus far they are graded based on what they have learned not on whether a teacher has taught in class or not. My question is, is there any kind of measurement to check if a teacher has properly taught in class or not? There is no evaluation done once teachers get tenure; they are set for life unless they are stupid enough; like the history teacher in the video, who admitted that she didn't care about teaching and was just there for the paycheck. Jeff`s experience in high school is sometimes true in community college and in higher education system .My personal experience of this at Chabot was that, I had a professor who kept on complaining in class all the time about the students lack of knowledge and kept on giving assignment after assignment without explaining why we were doing them and how to do them. In class he would give us problems to solve, but when we asked him how to do them, he would just say, "How come you are here without knowing this?" This might have been appropriate if he had been teaching at UC Berkeley, but at community college there are all levels of knowledge and many people are just beginners at college level. Thus we faced difficulties in surviving the class which was more of self teaching. If the professor had been professional and taught the subject matter, we wouldn't have had so much difficulties learning in the class. If there had been evaluation process in place while at the college the irresponsible acts of the professor could have been stopped. I wish that one of us had had the courage to do what Jeff did, may be it would have changed the professor.
When he said, "We are the future of this nation” he was referring to the young student like himself. He told her that she was just there to collect paycheck as she has mentioned in class earlier .How can the teaching process be? I believe what Jeff did in the class room is awake up call for schools in the nation .But it is up to us students to stand in solidarity with Jeff ,let our voices be heard and get the broken educational system get fixed. Students are tested either quarterly or per semester on what they have learned in class. Thus far they are graded based on what they have learned not on whether a teacher has taught in class or not. My question is, is there any kind of measurement to check if a teacher has properly taught in class or not? There is no evaluation done once teachers get tenure; they are set for life unless they are stupid enough; like the history teacher in the video, who admitted that she didn't care about teaching and was just there for the paycheck. Jeff`s experience in high school is sometimes true in community college and in higher education system .My personal experience of this at Chabot was that, I had a professor who kept on complaining in class all the time about the students lack of knowledge and kept on giving assignment after assignment without explaining why we were doing them and how to do them. In class he would give us problems to solve, but when we asked him how to do them, he would just say, "How come you are here without knowing this?" This might have been appropriate if he had been teaching at UC Berkeley, but at community college there are all levels of knowledge and many people are just beginners at college level. Thus we faced difficulties in surviving the class which was more of self teaching. If the professor had been professional and taught the subject matter, we wouldn't have had so much difficulties learning in the class. If there had been evaluation process in place while at the college the irresponsible acts of the professor could have been stopped. I wish that one of us had had the courage to do what Jeff did, may be it would have changed the professor.
On one hand there are less fortunate people, with less or no family support at all to pursue education in the video of Jeff Duncan Andrade starts with the Philosophy of life his mother once told him as a child as one can see the same glass half full or half empty .How you choose to answer the question is how you lead your life. This statement conveys strong message, that it is actually our perceptions that control our satisfaction nerve in our brains, that tells whether we believes our lives are full, or empty. The moral of the story is that it is up to each individual which perspective he/she wants to take. As the video continuances he talks about the role of bad influences that affect the minds of the young children in a place like East Oakland. It is human nature to live and learn from what is around us , when young children grow up in the neighborhood like in East Oakland they learn a criminal life style where killing one another because that is what society taught them as children. Many drops out of school very young and join gangs. He reminds me of the old saying that what you plant as a seed is what you grow as a plant. The seed represents the young kid and the plant represents the adult. The only way you can grow plants and expect them to grow and become fruitful is if you nurture it with proper soil, water and fertilizer; the same principles apply to young kids if you expect them to become responsible adults it is society`s responsibility to provide them with a good educational system, sports activity and a good social environment. That helps them develop physically and mentally as better citizens. But in Oakland the young are fed everyday with crime, robbery and hate and when they grow as an adults many reflect that.
On the other hand people are fortunate and yet don’t appreciate what is provided to them. Christopher McCandless was a very educated and passionate young men but it seemed that he was not happy about the rules and regulations of society and the school systems. He thought that civilization is like a poison to the truth. According to the in to the wilds Chris stated “Ten days and nights of freight trains and hitchhiking bring him to the great white north.Nolonger to be poisoned by civilization he feels, and walks alone upon the land to become lost in the wild”.(163) .He was really against possessions of material things and before he made his journey to Alaska into the Wilds, he gave up his family, his car, his lifetime savings and his credit cards because he felt he belonged into the wilds rather than the city life. He enjoyed the physical work of survival in the wilds, and didn't want to sit behind all day. It is sometimes difficult as Chris’s young age to know what once passion is let alone to get out and follow it, I admire what he did however Chris had courage to chase his passion, and he went to the extremes and scarified his life. Had he been more cautious and prepared with basic survival skills ,hiking gear and road maps, he would have been a living Legend and to been able to share his experiences .It`s great to follow your passion, but deliberate ignorance and lack of skill are not admirable.
Chris seemed to also have content for higher education. If Chris had been as determined in his education as he was in his passion for nature and combined his education and his passion he would have succeeded in accomplishing his passion .For example, he could have been a field researcher who studied animals in the wild and published his studies, he could have been a park ranger or entered many other professions that would have allowed him to live in nature. Chris was a spoiled and privileged person, he was provided with education, materialistic support. He did not value and appreciate what society and his family offered him, he rejected it because he thought society and family were interfering with his passion. I understand his passion for Mother Nature because it is part of me as well. But I will feel more proud of myself if I earn a higher education and I feel like I have earned the privileges I was given. Unfortunately Chris didn't respect the fact that his parents worked hard to give him a comfortable middle class and a higher education. Instead he had contempt for his parents, especially his father, but his father had achieved more than Chris did.