Acad Blog 7 Final Acad Blog

Throughout this course I have learned a lot of things that I thought I already knew. This course has taught me a lot about myself in regard to writing. I learned that my strength is writing with feeling and from the heart. I also learned my weaknesses, which are commas and semicolons. This course has given me knowledge that I use in my other courses and in my everyday writings. I find myself catching grammatical errors all over the place, even when I'm writing a quick text to a close friend.

I feel that I have improved greatly since my writing sample, which was what determined that I needed to take this class. I did not proofread my writing sample at all; this course has shown me the importance and advantages of proofreading your work. Although commas and semicolons are still my weakness, I have gotten much better at them. I am still not perfect and quite unsure at times but I'm progressing and that's what matters most to me. I am a tad bit more confident in my writing ability now that this course is coming to an end, but I am also sure that I will be contacting Prof. Aggen for help in the future. Unfortunately, time management is still a major struggle for me and I cannot say that I have improved much in that area; I will continue to work on managing my time wisely though. 

Acad Blog 6

I originally struggled with deciding what to research for my paper because I had no idea what I wanted to read or write about. I had to really dig deep to decide what I felt passionate enough about to write about. I'm also taking Basic Research Skills and wanted to be careful not to overwhelm myself with too much research between the two classes. I finally decided to do something similar to the research that I am doing for that class and that I am very passionate about. I decided to do my research paper on, how integrating multicultural counseling practices into counseling services offered to African Americans will positively affect their perception and attitudes towards counseling.

I feel very passionate about this topic because I now live in a community that is predominantly Black and I see the overwhelming need for mental health and counseling services. I see the stigma and attitudes that African Americans have towards seeking help in the counseling field. I am also a witness of the overwhelming lack of counseling services available in my community. The very few services that are available are not relatable to the people they aim to assist; because of this disconnect African Americans are not inclined to seek out the mental health care that they are in need of. I really hope to change that in some type of way one day soon. I am in school now to learn and grow so that I can be part of the change that I want to see in my community and others like it in regards to counseling and mental health issues. I would also like to help remove the stigma and negative attitudes towards help-seeking and counseling and I feel that implementing multicultural counseling practices will greatly help close the gap between African Americans and the mental health services they need.

Acad week 5 blog

I have learned a lot of very valuable lessons in this class that I hope will help me throughout my time at Trinity. My main goal is to retain the information that I have learned and put it to correct usage. I have also learned to not overthink writing too much; when I overthink I make more errors than when I just write and proofread my work. There are a lot of rules to learn in the English language and it can get very overwhelming at times to grasp all the concepts.


I am not confident in my writing ability at this point. I am not confident in my ability to write because of my fear of punctuation. Punctuation has not been my strong point and it has kept me from having error free blogs and papers. There are days when my writing is stronger than others but, overall I still feel like I could do so much better. My main concerns with punctuation are commas and semicolons; it seems like I can understand them in class but in my own writing I get mixed up. I am still hopeful that by the end of this class I will be great at punctuation. Until then, I will just keep trying and taking in all the corrections that I'm given by Sandy.

Week 4- Reading For Fun

I am a firm believer that reading is fundamental and that it can also just be fun. I enjoy reading for fun in my spare time;  although I do not have much spare time in my life right now I still love to read whenever I can. From a young age I have always loved to read and hear the adventures of the characters in books, short stories, and the people in magazines. Reading allows me to escape the reality of life for a little while and drift off into a ton of different journeys. I love going on the imaginary journeys that reading takes me on; I find it very relaxing and exhilarating at the same time. I think that books and stories open up my mind to new ideas and thoughts that I may have not had if I had not read the story. To me it is amazing to learn about all the things that the brain of others can come up with and how wonderfully they can share those amazing thoughts with the world.

I also enjoy reading because I think that it is something that you can share and pass on with others. When I read to my children I can see the excitement and curiosity in their eyes as the stories go on. I love to share the joy of reading with my family; even if they do not adapt my same love for reading they can enjoy it with me. Learning is another reason that I love to read for fun. I have learned and continue to learn so many things from reading; things that I would not have expected to learn have enlightened me while reading my "fun" books. I believe that life is all about learning wherever you are and whatever you are doing, activities that you enjoy are no exception to the rule. I hope that more people that I am in close relationships with would enjoy reading as much as I do because I would really like to share those experiences with others around me. I think everyone should give reading for fun a try and allow themselves to be swept away by the fantasy of the stories.

Week 3 acad blog

Hello fellow bloggers, today is my third attempt at an error free blog and I don't know if I'm feeling all that confident about it. I for one reason or another, feel that I get really stressed when trying to write these blogs and essays. Trying to remember where all the different punctuation actually goes kind of gets me overwhelmed because I'm always feeling like commas are my weak point. I can understand them and their placement in the text and even in the classroom exercises, but when I write independently I'm always questioning myself; putting commas and semicolons in the wrong place seems to be my knack. Maybe I'm psyching myself out and that's causing me to error, but I am motivated enough to keep trying and get it right. Hopefully, by the end of this class I will have mastered the art of punctuation.

As I stated before, I'm motivated to get to a point where I am correctly punctuating everything that I write. Chapter three in "On Course" spoke a lot to me and my life as a college student at the age of 33. I see that I put way more value on getting my education and ultimately my degree than I did when I was 19. At 19 I felt like I had a lifetime ahead of me to accomplish getting a degree; now I know that time is of the essence and I expect more from myself than I ever did before. I also feel like I have different motivations now, sure I still want the things mentioned in the reading: more money, better work conditions, better healthcare, higher savings, increased personal and professional mobility but, the thing I want the most is a better quality of life for my children and even their children to follow. Just like I'm motivated to learn correct punctuation, I'm also motivated to obtain my degree with more determination than ever before. I can imagine the end result and it doesn't seem too hard or too far fetched for me.

Acad blog week 2

To begin, I feel like the blog for week two is supposed to be a little more text related than personal. This makes writing a blog a little harder for me because there is no certain topic to write about and not questions to be answered. In school I am used to being given distinct direction on what my topic of discussion should be. Even though it would seem that free writing would be much easier it has proven to be difficult for me to develop content and expand on it. I also believe that one of the goals of this class is to enhance student writing in all areas and that this is a form of accomplishing this goal. During this blogging I have found free writing a lot more challenging than I would expect, I really enjoy the guidance of professors in my writing.


Even though I find it challenging to find my own topics to write about in this blog I did find the text interesting and blog worthy. I really enjoyed reading what was to be said about self-responsibility, victim mindset and creator mindset. These concepts and the way Downing explained them resonated with me on a personal level in my life currently with some issues and choices that I am facing. The chapter helped me come to some conclusions on how to move forward with certain things and people. I can relate to this chapter because I am a person who is also encouraging others and myself to take responsibility for the choices you make, the things you do, and the words that you speak. I believe you have full control over these things and you determine the course of your life. This is not to say that God is not at work in our lives but to say that he has given us a free will and we can do what we like with it. I would like to know how do you help someone who you personally know has a Victim mindset to begin to change that thought process?

blog week 1

I chose to write my first blog this week about returning to school as an adult learner. I got the idea from prof. Aggen and I think it is a great one, so here I am writing about being back in college as an adult. Although I thought that coming back to school as a mother and a wife would be extremely hard I have come to find out that it has proven to be much less stressful than I anticipated. I think the support system that I have around me plays a major part in how school is going  for me. When I was fresh out of high school and attending college it was very hard for me because I didn't know how to navigate through life as an independent adult quite as well as I do now. When I originally began my college career I was a young, single parent who was for the first time living on my own and trying to balance motherhood, job, school and a social life. Needless to say the ball was dropped on school quite a few times which lead me to stop going and focus on providing for my kids and being the best mom I could be.


After years of contemplating and going back and forth with the idea of going to school or not going back to school I finally decided after my sixth child was born that it was time for me to pursue my education again and it has been the best decision for me at this time. I'm very glad that I found Trinity because it works well with my schedule and they offer exactly the program I was looking for. I feel that God sent me to Trinity and it has been a blessing to me. The work does get hard and it is a lot of work at times but it is worth it and I feel like it's teaching me more discipline. School at this age and stage in life is also forcing me to be better with my time management. This biggest and best thing about coming back to school to do something that I'm passionate about is that I'm showing my children that it can be done no matter the circumstance and I believe that I'm pushing them to want to go to college and get a degree in something even if they don't know what it is yet.

All in all, coming back to school has been a great, tough, challenging experience but I feel more ready now than ever to accomplish the goal that I have set for myself.