11/20/2013 – Honor Code
The Baylor honor code exist as an attempt to teach students how to be independently intelligent, morally correct, and fair towards all students. The honor code allows Baylor to be able to see a student’s true progression in his/her academics. This is important because how much you honestly know will show in your work life – which is the reason for a college education. The honor code will allow me to understand my place in my academic progression and help me learn the importance of all aspects of integrity. Overall, I am learning that your grade is important only short-term, but what you learn will stick with you long-term.
11/14/2013 – Spirituality at Baylor
One of the interesting things about Baylor is its Christian Environment. Baylor encourages students to take a deeper look into their spiritual beliefs and discover why or why not that person believes it. Spirituality is a controversial issue and it is my hope for myself that I never let myself blindly follow a religion and its values. I heard a physiologist say once that the best thing you can do with your journey with God is to be honest with Him and yourself about where you are. My spiritual beliefs will drive the way that I conduct my life and treat others. Because of this, I am choosing to be a Baylor student that does not blindly follow or blindly not follow a certain spiritual lifestyle, but to be a Baylor student that cares deeply about discovering Truth and understanding how that effects humanity.
10/24/2013 – Baylor’s Mission Statement
One aspect of Baylor’s Mission statement that I identify with is not only becoming a worldwide leader, but caring leader. Academically, I feel that being a caring servant is an important part of being a leader. As a future nurse, I must respond to leaders and be a leader myself when it comes to health-care decision making. I am VERY passionate about the field that I am going into, and Baylor’s mission statement and core values are helping me reach my long-term goals.
10/10/2013 – Who will I become?
During college, I definitely want to gain knowledge in my field, but beyond that, I would like to gain wisdom in my field. Going into the health field, two characteristics that I would like to expand on in college would be integrity and compassion. These two skills will be important in life and in my career choice as a nurse. I have joined two groups on campus that are helping me think ethically and outside of the box on healthcare. One group is BUMEDS (Baylor Medical Ethics Discussion Society), and the other is SIGHT (Students Interested in Global Health Today). In BUMEDS, we have several speakers from different areas come in and talk about the humanities of medicine and the ethics of healthcare. In SIGHT, we talk about practical and effective healthcare plans that still go along with our idealistic healthcare expectations. These are preparing me and opening my mind before to the human side of health before I dig deep into the science side.
Short term, my goal is to get more involved with service in the Waco community. I would like to keep up with my academics and enjoy learning. And lastly, I would like to get involved with these organizations on campus to continue to work on my healthcare educations outside of the classroom. These will allow me to reach my long-term goal of making a difference in health in the world, and the way that people in the world view health and its importance.
Succeeding Academically
This week, I met with my Spanish Professor, Profesora Manzanares. We talked for a long time about her experiences studying/living in Mexico, Venezuela, Argentina, and Spain. And since she is not a native speaker, she talked with me about her story of how she became fluent, and what advice she has for me working on my progression in Spanish language. She advised that I watch Spanish television, but told me that in reality, in takes living in the country for at least a few months in order to become fluent. She also taught me a bit about the Spanish revolution and what she studied about it when she was in Spain. Her passion for the language, history, and culture inspires me to take on that same passion. I talked to her about my experiences living in Thailand, and studying Thai language, then how it relates to my outlook on studying Spanish.
My Spanish professor studied the Spanish civil war for one semester in Spain, and shared a little of what she learned with me.
Because I understand her better and vise-versa, I feel like my professor can understand me better and where I stand with my language progression, and my cultural situation. I actually went to her office again to work on the direct and indirect object pronouns and she was able to raise my grade quite a bit on the test because I was able to understand it much better after meeting with her. I plan to meet with my professor again if I have questions. But I also will take advantage of Spanish tutoring because I do not want to bog her with too many questions and take up too much time. I know that I can talk to her or any other professor better about opportunities or course work.
Connect to Baylor
These past 3 weeks at Baylor, I have found a few ways to connect myself into the Baylor community. I have come to take great pride in the fact that I am part of the Global Community here at Baylor. I have been involved in many activities since arriving here… and I am beginning to feel part of something very big. I have been continuously learning how Baylor can impact me, and I can impact Baylor… this is what it is like to be a part of the Baylor Community.
I have joined a couple of organizations since these past couple weeks. On Friday, August 30, I attended late night to filter through organizations that I am interested in being a part of. I have joined the Baylor Swing Dance Society as a way to have fun, relieve stress, meet new people, and learn a new skill. I also joined the Urban Missions team, and attended my first service opportunity with them on Saturday, September 7th at the Talitha-Koum daycare cleaning their facilities and learning about the impact that the childcare non-profit makes on Waco families. And for my major and my own special interest, I joined an organization called BUMEDS(Baylor University Medical Ethics Discussion Society). This is a group that listens to credible speakers and then holds discussion within the group on different controversial medical ethics topics. It is really helping me preview what I will be dealing with in nursing school, and I have met many other pre-health students through this group. With a little of everything, I think that these communities will make me a more well rounded person and student.
To make my own double-helix, it is important for me to intertwine my academic activities with my extracurricular activities to build a strong back-bone for what I am to learn here at Baylor. I am excited to see how this semester goes and how I can become a stronger component of the Baylor Community.