This semester is a roller coaster, which caused so much pressure. However, one thing I really like from my university is that it provides many entertaining events or activities for students to do when they are dealing with stress from classes. A couple of weeks ago university provided a really exciting and interesting trip for international students through global affair office to visit a museum and Blennerhassett Island. Interestingly, I got to ride the horse carriage and see different types of stones that were used during the beginning of human society, which we talked about in my Humanities 101 class.

My favorite class is Humanities 101, I am learning about western civilization history, especially in the countries around the Mediterranean Sea that was developed from the beginning of human society, how each culture influenced other neighbor counties and how people converted their beliefs from being polytheistic to monotheistic. It requires has a lot of readings, but I really like the way how the professor explains the history, he makes the class more dynamic. His explanation makes me get the feeling like I am living in that history. For instance, if he talks about the history Roman of empire, I would feel like I am listening to a real Roman emperor talking in front of us as he would jump on the table or sleep on the table, jumping around in the class, sounding with various tons and even sometimes with different western languages. It helps a lot to imagine what life was like during the western civilization.

The most challenging class that I have so far is Biology 115 because it so has many names to memorize and functions to understand and where they can be found whether in human, animal or plants. My professor uses power point in this class, thus I sometimes miss some parts because I have to take notes during lecture. However, I have a great professor who is kind enough to let us access to his powerpoint slides through our student blackboard (online); therefore, I take advantage of it by bringing the slides to see my Bio 115 TA’s during their office hours or visiting tutoring hours at night. Moreover, since I am a visual learner, I find YouTube has made a great impact on my studying as well in particular with this class. Also, sometimes my professor uses YouTube in class, which is so helpful because it helps me visualize and relate the functions organelles in cells (for example), names and localization to each other.

This semester I join Society of Women Engineering (SWE), we do different activities such as participating TED talk, doing community services, watching movies together. I also join Mountaineer Catholic club, we meet at the church every Thursday for one dollar dinner, having different speakers coming over to administer homily as well as on Tuesday we also meet for bible study. The church also allows us to do various activities like sleeping over and playing different games.