Dear Mrs. Allison,
My name is Thomas McElroy, I go by Tommy, and I am in your 2nd block English III class. I was born in Charlotte, and I am an only child, my Mother is a pastor and my Dad is a retired network engineer. Outside of school, I spend a lot of my time primarily on techie hobbies or hanging out with friends.
My primary goal this semester is to be passionate about each of my classes, as I have found that it leads to better performance. In the future ( professionally ) I would like to do software engineering, and I would like to go to college and get a bachelor’s Degree in Computer Science. Doesn’t have to be from anywhere prestigious. This year the only problem I could see myself having is that my first block is a fully online class at CPCC, which means that I could feasibly stop caring about it like I did for classes during COVID. I think I have grown as a person since then and I think I am likely to have a great time in that class, especially because it is on a topic I’m very interested in ( Web Programming ), but I am still concerned about the possibility of losing motivation to do it.
The Person who I know best as a role model is my friend Will. Will is just an incredibly kind person, seriously, it is off-putting how friendly, social, and enjoyable he is, all the time. He has had a pretty hard life recently, with his Father passing, but I have yet to see him take out any of that on anyone. He is a person who I wish to be more like because even though I am a pretty upbeat and friendly guy, I am not always nice in the way that Will is. I am completely willing to be meaner than necessary to drive a point in. Will has led me to question myself each time I say something unnecessarily mean to someone and try to be a nicer person in the future.
“For every minute you are angry you lose sixty seconds of happiness.” ― Ralph Waldo Emerson. I chose this quote because of how much I focus on being happy. I spend very very little time sad, mad, or even bored. A grand majority of my time is spent happy. A small amount of that time is spent feeling just neutral.
I can be an incredibly self-motivated student if certain conditions are met. I am usually an A or B student, mostly A, and those classes in which I am self-motivated and wind up with an A are usually classes that can do the following:
- Allow me to take notes, and allow those notes to be taken over the internet.
- If notes must be submitted, allow those notes to be submitted in whatever format I want ( For me that’s gonna be a link to a website I host. ) ( https://notes.tommyhost.ing/ ) ( This is why I am just submitting a text file with a link in the file upload section. If you allow for URL submissions directly it makes my life easier. )
- Minimize how much I have to handwrite. I do not enjoy handwriting. It is slower, it is less precise, it is less readable, it is less customizable, and whenever I am forced by a class to handwrite I am much more likely to space out. I know some studies show that when you handwrite something, you remember it better, but I am passionate enough about the other ways to write things that it outweighs any gains in memory associated with handwriting. My passion for Free and Libre Open Source Software ( FLOSS ) and Self-hosting my Notes will extend to me becoming passionate about the material I am writing about and make me learn the material better.
- If I can sit near an outlet but close to the board, that is optimal. My current seat right next to the door is great. I don’t have great vision, so if i’m close to the board that is optimal. I do have glasses if it is a problem though. I would like to be close to an outlet because i’m using a thinkpad x280 as my laptop for this class and the battery life can be poor.
The only other thing you might need to know is that I am biking here and this is my First Block. I will never be late out of negligence. I will only ever be late if something happens while im biking. That could be as small as a popped tire, and I will get to class as soon as I possibly can, but it is very possible that at some point in the year I will wind up late because of biking related problems.