Buck 1

Christina Buck
Dr. Gregory ODea
Brock Scholars
1 June 2017
End-of-year Reflective Essay

I believe my most significant accomplishments this past year are keeping my 4.0 GPA
and becoming involved with campus life and the Chattanooga community. Of course, my main
goal in school is to learn; as such, I have worked very hard to succeed in all my classes. I believe
I have improved myself academically this year by focusing on my studies and taking advantage
of many extra learning opportunities both presented by teachers and through my participation
in academic organizations. Furthermore, one of my biggest goals at the beginning of last year
was to integrate myself with campus life and the Chattanooga community. At the time, I felt very
disconnected in Chattanooga as I had lived in Knoxville my entire life, so I knew it would be
important for my happiness and comfort to be involved as much as possible with the
Chattanooga community. I believe joining Brocks was one of the most beneficial actions I took
to becoming involved with the campus because it has allowed me to engage with students with
similar goals and interests as me. I was not able to get as involved with the community outside of
UTC as much as I would like, but I feel that I did make progress by volunteering at the Humane
Educational Society (HES) where I got to know many Chattanooga natives. I believe the most
important reason I succeeded in accomplishing my goals this year is that I have a clear view of
what I want my life to be like; I want to be successful in my career, involved in my community
wherever that may be, and capable of financially supporting myself and my family. In order to
make these desires a reality I must succeed in school and learn how to live on my own and
integrate with a new community, so my desire for success in the future drove my
accomplishments the year.
The biggest pitfall I faced this year is not feeling satisfied with the Computer Science
department and the classes I took pertaining to my Major. I chose to come to UTC primarily
because I thought the compactness of the campus would contribute to a more one-on-one
experience with my teachers, which in turn, would promote my learning. This has been the case
for most of my classes; however, it has been completely false for my Computer Science classes. I
have been very disappointed with this year in Computer Science because I was forced to take
both introductory classes with the same teacher even after the first semester ended, and I knew
she was not a good teacher because of a lack of sections available for these courses. Also, I
have not been able to take any traditional Computer Science classes yet; the only sections I could
take that were available for these classes were online courses. When I applied to take classes at a
University, I expected to take the classes at the University, not online. I hope that this will
improve in the up-coming years, but I know I will at least have to wait for improvement until
after the this coming semester as the only two sections available for the next Computer Science
course I must take are hybrid courses.
 Buck 2

I believe my biggest contributions to the campus this year were my activities in the
academic organizations I joined: 3D Print Club and Girls in Computer Science (GiCS). I have
really enjoyed participating in these clubs, and I believe both groups promote practical learning
and personal support to students on campus. For the 3D Print Club, I mostly helped by
participating in events and trying to recruit students who came to events, I also helped present at
a club fair, and I hope to make a website at some point for the club that will publicize the
activities we have done this past year. For GiCS, I helped with many of the events we held such
as a class on how to develop mobile applications using Android Studios and building our own
computer from scratch. For each event, we advertised to students on campus to make each
project an inclusive, fun learning activity for anyone who would like to supplement their
classroom experiences. Our non-member turnout at these events was not as great as we would
have liked, but we plan to work extra hard on advertising events next year. And, I have been
elected as the Vice President of GiCS for the coming 2017/2018 academic year, so I will
personally dedicate as much time as possible to making this wonderful organization even more
successful. I have enjoyed participating and helping with these organizations because they help
me to feel more involved with my fellow students. Furthermore, I personally know what its like
to not be confident socially, so these organizations, centered on academic engagement, provide
an excellent medium for social interaction to students who may not feel comfortable in a fully
social organization. It is very fulfilling to help foster a supportive, friendly environment for
students.
In the future, I plan to continue working on my goals of academic success and
community involvement. I would like to utilize most of my free time during school breaks to
supplement my Computer Science experience to hopefully make myself more prepared for the
work force. This past Spring, I fell behind with volunteering at HES, so I will try to set apart
more time to be actively engaged with HES or another community organization. I plan to
dedicate as much time as possible to my leadership position in GiCS to hopefully increase this
organizations success. Also, I will also work to be involved with the upcoming Freshman Brocks
to hopefully foster a more integrated Honors community for future generations. Overall, I
believe my Freshman year at UTC has been a success, and I hope that I can continue this trend of
accomplishing personal and academic goals.