Before the creation of my Degree Map, I had a pretty broad view of what college was going to be like. In the first couple semesters, college almost seems to be a repeat of what I did in high school. You have to go through the GE required courses for your major, like Calculus, History, English, etc. But when I started working on this degree map, I started to get really excited for what is to come later in college. I get to take classes that actually interest me, instead of taking the classes that just are high school 2.0. Kennesaw State University offers so many different classes for business, like Entrepreneurship, Real Estate, Company management, etc. In this project, I discovered that no matter what I think my major is now, it could change at any moment later in time., which is a good thing. I have many areas of interest throughout the field of business, and KSU has supplied the opportunities to do what intrigues me the most.
The degree map really opens your eyes to what classes you are going to have to take, and it gives you a sense of what people you will be around. In the genera education classes, everyone in the room has a wide variety of majors. These classes allow you to really meet a lot of new people that might not necessarily have the same preferred major that you do. But once you enter your Junior year, you are constantly surrounded by students that have the same aspirations as you do. It gives you a sense of belonging to a group or community inside of KSU. You do not have to join a club, or a fraternity/sorority to have a sense of belonging, because being around students that have similar interests will be easy to gravitate to and feel that sense of belonging with. Meeting new friends and making connections isn’t an easy thing for college students, especially for out of state students like me. So that welcoming feeling inside and outside the classroom is something that is very important.
During this process and outside of just the degree map, I am going to use OwlExpress a ton, Career Services, KSU Course Catalog, Professors, Advisors, Friends, etc. Having access to owl express and the course catalog made this project a whole lot easier. Looking up the GE requirements for Coles College of Business on KSU website was a huge resource. It can, and has guided me through the process of picking courses that are required for admission to Coles College of Business, and also courses that are required to graduate from the school. Scheduling appointments with my advisor is essential to my success. They are very thorough and really help map out what classes and requirements are needed to succeed. Overall, this experience has been very helpful and eye opening for what is to come in the later years of college. I came out of this much more excited for the future as a student at KSU.
