Final Academic Paper | My Strategy for College Success

My Strategy for College Success

Brendelyn Mitchell

237703

Columbia Southern University

My Strategy for College Success

The Student Learning Success course has helped me to get a better focus on my academic and career goals. I am seeking a B.S. degree with the view of pursuing a career in financial management.

Career Goals

In order to prepare myself for this goal, I have been working on developing the knowledge and skills that are needed for being a business leader and making sound financial decisions. Among other things, I have been learning about business law and ethics, the international perspective on business, and the importance of being able to effectively use information technology systems.

There are also other things that I have done in order to accomplish my goals throughout this course. For example, I have been making an effort to improve my academic skills. The course in Student Learning Success has provided me with many ideas that

can be used to improve my studying abilities. I have become better at reading texts and communicating my thoughts through writing and speaking. The course has also helped me to be more effective in doing research. The ability to do research is important because it allows people to find the resources that they need for making decisions or solving problems.

Time Management Techniques

In particular, I have discovered that an incredible amount of useful information can be found online if you know where to look for it. There are many online journals and newspapers that provide information about business as well as other topics. I have also learned a great deal by visiting company websites. These websites usually include financial investment pages, which have annual reports and other important financial information about the company. I have also been learning how to find articles at online data bases such as EBSCOhost, Proquest, and Business Source Premier. In addition, I have found out that online research does not simply involve looking up articles but also involves interacting with other people. I am able to share my experiences and learn about the experiences of other students in chat rooms, bulletin boards, and similar online sources (Barrett et al., 2009).

Study Methods for Academic Success

In order to make progress toward my goals, I have also been working on developing my life skills. This includes learning how to plan for things so that I can be prepared to handle them more effectively. I have also learned that it is important to know how to handle stressful events in one’s life. Stress often occurs for people who are in business careers. In order to protect my health and be more effective in my work, I need to be aware of this fact and have the skills that are needed to prevent stress from being overwhelming to me. During this course, I have also been learning more about myself. In order to be successful, one must know what one is able to do as well as what one is not able to do. Self-knowledge enables people to know when they should lead and when they should follow. I believe this is very important in the world of business. I have

discovered various things about myself by taking the tests that are contained in the book, Self-Assessment Library (Robbins, 2009). These tests have given me insights about my needs and motivations, how well I handle situations, my level of confidence, and my ability to communicate with others. The tests have helped me to realize the importance of having ethics and values. I have also learned the importance of understanding my

own personality as well as the personalities of other people

that I interact with. For example, it is helpful to know where people fit in terms of the Big Five personality traits (extraversion, agreeableness, conscientiousness, emotional stability and openness to experience). I was happy to learn that I have a fairly high score in conscientiousness, since this is a trait that is needed for being reliable in one’s job performance (Robbins, 2009, p. 3).

Summary

Thus, there are various things that I have been doing in order to accomplish my goals during this course. I have been learning as much as possible about my chosen career field, which

is business administration with an emphasis on finance. I have also been learning how to study and do research. The ability to do research is important because one needs to be able to obtain information in order to be effective at decision making and problem solving. I have also been working on developing my life skills, such as the ability to plan my future, be organized, and cope with stress. Another area of importance has been learning more about my own personality and the ways that I am able to interact with other people. All of these skills will be useful

to me as I continue to pursue my academic and career goals in the future.

References

Barrett, S., Poe, C., & Spagnola-Doyle, C. (2009). Power Up: a practical students guide to online learning. Upper Saddle River, NJ: Prentice Hall.

Robbins, S. P. (2009). Self-assessment library: insights into your skills. Upper Saddle River, NJ: Prentice Hall.