October Monthly Summary - Casey

I think that this month was much more successful than last month. We have been able to communicate better as a group and have finally worked out the kinks as far as e-mail goes. My goal for us next month will be to be better at planning out our tasks before the last minute. We were better with preparation for the Program design and it was submitted on time, but I would like for us to have time to all look over a final product before it is submitted. I hope that we continue to improve in putting together final papers. Working with a group obviously makes it more difficult to put together a cohesive paper since we all have different writing styles.

As far as the project content is concerned, I am very pleased with our design. We started with the idea for a program for college freshmen and morphed it into a useful program for adults returning to education. My favorite part of working with students is helping them with the transition from one step to the next. I know that my transition from high school to college was very smooth thanks to the support that I got from BSU, but I did not have that same feeling for the transition back to college. I cannot imagine what it would have been like if I had waited longer or had a family as well. I think that our program would be an excellent one to implement at Ball State and, who knows, we may be able to do that after we graduate!

I think the program evaluation should be interesting. I have a couple professors in mind that I would like to have take a look. I want to know what we left out. It is easy to think that the program is perfect when no one else has looked at it, but there is probably some glaring blank that we never even thought to fill in. I was surprised with how difficult it was to develop a syllabus that comprehensively explains what is expected of students. That may be something that we continue to adjust as the project moves on.

This upcoming month will (hopefully) be a lot easier for us. I will finally be off the road and able to spend more time focusing on my assignments in a timely manner. It is hard to complete the work when you are in the car 9+ hours a day and exhausted when you finally get home.