My College Experience

By: Laurie Slater

Starting at Durham College in September of 2019 gave me a bit of mixed feelings. None

of my friends were going to Durham and I had one friend going to Ontario Tech but the

downtown Oshawa campus. I was coming into this year with an open mind as it is a new

experience and it is the start to my potential future. My dream ever since I was little was to

become something in the medical field that involves helping people but children in particular.

My mind went from a pediatric gastroenterologist to now a pediatric nurse as I don’t want to go

to school that long to become a doctor and also because I know I am not that good at school

because my mental focus towards school is not very strong. As high school went by, I came to

realize that my priorities were not on school and I would tend to procrastinate to the very last

second that I could. I knew that my ways had to change if I wanted to succeed and wanted to get

into the program that I wanted to pursue my future career. I chose to do three SALS workshops

not only for this assignment but to help better myself with the way I choose to deal with school

and my other priorities. The workshops that I did were procrastination, study strategies and time

management and organization. Even though they were all on different topics they all gave me the

same overall experience with doing the workshops and they all related to topics that we have

went over during class. The workshop I am choosing to elaborate on in procrastination. During

this workshop it focused on making sure you realize that you are the one that is choosing to

procrastinate and it is not just a lack of time management skills. At the beginning of the semester

you are given outlines in all of your classes and you are given all the applicable deadlines that

need to be followed. When going through the workshop they really highlighted the things that
are associated with procrastination whether it is the challenges or the reasons or ways people

tend to procrastinate. This workshop gave me some tips about how to avoid procrastinating and

if I think about it, I think I have done a pretty good job so far with not leaving assignments till

the last minute. I believe that getting yourself involved in things on campus especially if it is

going to benefit you in the things you do is really important. We are lucky that we have so many

different services provided to us and we should utilize them as much as we can. SALS has

become one of my favourite things on campus as I have also utilized them for tutoring help as

well as I am not as strong in some subjects as others. I believe that if I keep getting the help I

need and keep utilizing my resources and keep bettering myself as a student I will have no issues

in pursuing my dream job. Other than SALS other things that I want to start taking advantage of

and using is teacher’s office hours and group study spaces. I have a hard time asking for help

because I don’t want to feel dumb so I tend to avoid it but I think that if I utilize my teachers help

it will help me achieve higher marks. Group study spaces is also something that I could be to

great use. I tend to always just work on school work in the cafeteria with my friend but booking a

group study room could probably give me a higher opportunity to get more work done as it is a

quite space and no one is there to bug you.