Senior Year Courses

I remember one of the things I was worried about the most as a high school senior enrolling in college, was being able to understand, complete, and enjoy college-level coursework. I remember thinking that high school-level course work seemed hard enough, so college-level coursework seemed unmanageable. I thought I would use this entry to describe the work associated with college for all the nervous highschoolers out there, or for anyone who is interested in knowing what kind of schoolwork Elmira College Business Administration majors receive. Ironically, after three years of increasingly difficult classes, I still believe that my freshman year was the most challenging; and I think that is part of the school's strategy. In freshman year, every student is required to take a "Freshman Writing Course," regardless of incoming college-level transfer courses (trust me I tried) in which we write at least two papers a week (most of them with midnight due dates.) There are also Saturday classes for the first term, and a twenty-page paper due at the end of the course, in addition to a mid-term and final. That class, in addition to the required CORE class, Encore (classical theater) requirements, and community service (60 hours), (plus an off campus part-time job I decided to add), freshman year was by far the most difficult to handle. However, at the end of freshman year, after accomplishing all of that, the feeling of relief and pride is so overwhelming, it empowers students and instills confidence in them to complete the remaining years at Elmira College successfully. Now that all of my general degree requirement classes are completed, I finally have the chance to take classes that are challenging, but rewarding and enjoyable. For example, in my Market Planning class (the capstone class for a Marketing specialization) we are assisting a local, non-profit business in writing a marketing plan for their business which they will implement for the year 2013 (I cannot describe more details because I signed a confidentiality form). In my Human Resource Management class, groups of three people are traveling to local business to meet with representatives from Human Resource (HR) departments to discuss their career in HR, ask them what challenges they face, learn about the company they represent, and then report about it at the end of the semester. Recently in my Strategic Advertising class, we watched the Superbowl commercials and analyzed the effectiveness of each one and the elements that make a successful or unsuccessful advertising campaign. Needless to say, the courses get more involved in the transition from underclassman to upperclassman, but they are far more interesting and relevant to future career plans. With only 5 weeks left before my last semester at Elmira College and my trip to Hawaii, I think about how far I have come and how much farther I can go now with everything I have learned these 3 short years of college.