After getting over the shock and excitement of receiving my Mathematics exam results at the end of August, the thought of coming to university became more real and daunting. Having been out of education for ten years, and becoming a wife and mother, I was anxious but ready to take the next step in my life and do something for myself that would effectively better not only me but my family also. Becoming a primary educator has been an innate desire of mine since early secondary school. I am thankful for the opportunities I have been given to allow myself to get to the position I am in today, currently submersed in university life by making my first blog post on campus in UWS Ayr library.
Having successfully completed a SWAP course ay Ayr college in the last academic year, I felt prepared to a certain extent that I would be confident with handling and analysing texts and other types of work, and getting on with the task at hand efficiently. However, since starting university properly (after induction week) I have felt slightly overwhelmed at the volume of academic reading to be completed. As a visual learner I find having the texts in physical form to highlight and note take to help me absorb and make sense of the information I am taking in.
Since having my first Spanish class on Friday of last week, the thoughts and feelings I had before going there were not the same as the ones I had after leaving. I felt it was very fast paced and didn’t have a lot of opportunity to go over phrases and words. However, I am hoping that a lot of my independent study and use of other resources will pull my confidence levels up from the ground.
Overall, I would say my experience at UWS so far has met with the expectations I had, albeit the workload and amount of reading is slightly more than what I first expected we would have in BA1. However, I feel to be an effective educator these are important skills and passions to possess when influencing younger minds and setting them up to be effective lifelong learners.
