My Final Video

After a few hours, my video finally uploaded to Youtube:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=GKpA4KAD4kk&context=C3d22acbADOEgsToPDskIFoVhghM0bm-r5UhL2IHhn

Video Update

I missed my blog post last week, which was to write a video proposal. I believe I want to relate my final project to something dealing with drugs or alcohol. Maybe make it something like "How to seperate yourself from drugs and alcohol in order to become a successful college student" or something along those lines. I feel the need to revolve my project around drugs and alcohol because I believe in todays world its a huge part of our society and effects millions of people daily in terrible ways. Some students forget that college is here for learning and not for partying and having the "time of your life". There isnt a single day on campus when I dont see drug or alcohol use or even hear about it.  Also for me, it enables me to encorporate a personal side to my video, for drug use runs through my family whether its genetic or not. I have seen, first hand, people's lifes get destroyed, mentally and physically, from the use of drugs. I've also seen people overcome these behavoirs and move on with their life. As for the status of my video, I have yet to start it. I am embarrased to say that I procrastinate way to much but its 100% true. If in fact this is what I do my video on then im confident with the knowledge I've already obtained and I'm confident that I will be able to do more research and inform people on how to stay away from drugs and alcohol. I have a feeling alot of people are already thinking about doing their project about something similar to this so I may decide to change my mind really soon.

Nov 15th presentations

Tuesday's presentations consisted of my group, Louie, Mike and I, and Dominique’s group. Both topics seemed to be very interesting to the class. Out topic was personality traits and there topic was college relationships.

I felt very good after our group presented, I believe we followed the citeria well. We discussed before our class that day and told ourselves to make it more of a discussion other than just us just presenting our research to the class. We were able to keep an open discussion while still getting our information on personality types out to the class. So, overall I think we did a great job. Also, I would like to add that I have always been terrified of public speaking and giving presentations to a group of people, but I can say that I felt comfortable enough up there to get the information out. I think the atmosphere of the class room really made it easy for me to not feel nervous at all, so I was feeling extremely good about myself after our presentation.

Dominique’s group covered college relationships, which is a very important topic because some or all of us may become involved in a relationship during college. They shared valuable information about what makes a bad relationship or a good one. Also, like Adriana’s group, they made the discussion a lot better by giving us a game to play, which really brightened up the room and made it easy to vocalize your opinions. I thought it was a great idea to incorporate possible scenarios in our group discussion. Each scenarios was carefully planned and was real enough where it could happen to anybody. I would give this group a good grade if I was the one grading this. The whole idea of this assignment was to get a group discussion going and to keep it going for your designated time and I think they did that with ease.

Follow up on Thursday Nov 10th in class discussion

Do parenting skills have a major effect on the way their kids will behave throughtout their life and how successful they may become? Adriana's group presented this topic to the class last thursday and I was very thankful for the knowledge I obtained from that experience. I never knew that there were four parenting styles to follow and the success or failures of those customs. The most strict style of parenting is called, Authoritarian Parenting, which the parents set out rules that are expected to be followed. For example a rule that parents may lay out is, do good in school or they expect their child to clean up their room etc. Uninvolved Parenting is the worst way to raise your kids. Basically this style of parenting is like the parents arnt even there. They dont care what their child does or how successful they are and dont get involved in their life.
I also enjoyed the way this group presented their data to us. When other groups just read off their statistics to the class, it became very repeatative and boring just sitting there and listening to the stats. I like how Adriana's group got the class involved by asking us what we think the percentages would be and they sort of made a small game out of it. Even something as simple as that to get us involved is good when dealing with an assignment like this. Overall I think they're presentation was pretty good, we discussed alot and had a few laughs, which always brighten up the mood. As a class, I think we got off topic a bit when discussing social networking which took some time from their presentation but overall there was nothing bad about their presentation and I enjoyed being a part of it.

Haunting Homecomeing

I attended a Pep Rally not to long ago that was held on campus in our gymnasium. It was based off a Haunted theme for Halloween, but I decided to go to see a couple of things in particular. I wanted to see our basketball teams blue & white scrimmage and I also wanted to see one of my friends perform on the Dance team. I was pretty impressed by all performences, I thought the overall homecoming was performed better than any high school homecoming or pep rallies I have been to. This experience has gotten me somewhat excited to watch a few basketball games this season. I would like to see the home game against Pace on November 30th, I have a friend who goes to Pace and hopefully I can get him down here for the game!

What is Co-op?

During this weekends events, on Friday I came across some information about Co-ops. A Co-op is very similar to what you think an internship is. Co-ops allow a student to be enrolled in school and work for pay for a company that is similar to one you may work for after graduating college. Depending on how well your performance is, there may be a full-time job waiting for you when you graduate. In order to qualify for this, you have to fill some basic requirments of: Provide a meaningful work experience, Provide training and supervision, and Complete a brief evaluation form at the end of the co-op period. Also, students get paid at least minimum wage at an hourly pay but, these are determined by your employer. If you want more specific  information about Co-ops and othe internship's follow this link: http://www.southernct.edu/careerservices/employers/cooperativeeducation/

Something that interests me

The other day as I was playing xbox with my cousin, he told me about how a persons learning skills and skill in general were related to whether a person's brain was either dominately left or right sided. We talked about what we were best at and I told him that I was very good with numbers and that I learned the best by writing things down and seeing them develop infront of my eyes. Like in math, if someone did a problem out on the board, then I would be able to remember the steps, see how it worked out and then do a problem on my own with no problem. He told me I was most likely left-sided. This dicussion with him got me interested on the topic and I decided to do some further research.I found this site to be very interessting if any of you are curious http://www.angelfire.com/wi/2brains/ I learned that people with who were left side dominant were best at writing, speech, reasoning, and dealing with number. I think all of this fits me except speech, because Im not a good public speaker and I have a hard time talking infront of a large number of people. A person who has a right sided brain is very creative and their skills are strongest in music, art, and creative writing. I know I am not right sided brain at all because in the reading it said that these people were good at geometry. I've always been great in math except for geometry. I decided to show my older sister this webpage and her and I are really alike, I've never noticed how much we have in common with our school work and learning ability. So if any of you are interested in whether you have a left or right-sided brain, I recommend to give this a look and youll be surprised on what you find out.

Reflection on my midterm grade

We found out our grades the other day for the half of this semester and I must say that I am very displeased with the grade that I recieved, but I dont blame anyone but myself. Our grade is primarly based on this blog, which is 50% of our total grade and up to now we havent had many other assignments besides weekly blog posts. I started the year off doing all 3 blog posts per week but lately I admit that I've been slacking on it. Im not sure why though, its pretty dumb on my part because when I miss one post, then my grade for that week diminishes by a big margin. My work ethic and time management is a main reason why I've missed the assignments that I have. But theres still alot of blog posts left and I really need to encourage myself to do every single one. If I do every blog posts then I'm sure I will have no problem raising my grade from what it is now. Im glad we had this Mid-term assignment, because I put some time into my video, did it on time, and was overall pleased with the way it came out. Hopefully, I can keep that level of success that I felt throughout the year and end with a grade that I am proud about, instead of getting a lower grade when I know that Im capable of a high grade.

Mid-Term assignment

Big Rivalry

Last week I was able to go to the football game and I was very excited to find out that UNH was a big rival of ours. I left at halftime, but the first half of football was really intense, the momentum shifted several times and it was looking to be a pretty good game. Both teams crowds were excited an filled with school spirit. I was very impressed with our runningback Rashaad Slowley, who finished the game with 184 yards on the ground. The score when I left was 23-17, during the third quater we increased our lead to 13 points. Unfortunatly UNH rallied late to beat SCSU 59-38, leaving us with a 4-2 record. I hope to see more games this year, I had a lot of fun watching this one.

My midterm video

I have been thinking about this video since it was assigned to us. I have never made a video before or have i ever opened Windows Movie Maker. So far my video has only reached my head, what I mean by this is that I have only thought about what I want to do so far and have yet to get any video. I have educated my self on what Critical Thinking was, looked up professional views on critical thinking and I found this site very helpful: http://www.texascollaborative.org/criticalthinking.htm

So far I dont think my video will have a personal twist on it, mostly because I do not plan to be in my video. I plan to incorperate some music that should stand out from the rest. Hopefully once i understand how to use Windows Media Maker, i will be able to put more into it than the regular person. Since I commute to school, I plan on interviewing a few people that I know in my hometown, as well as the few people I know who live at school. We have alot of time to do this project and I hope i can space out the rest of our time to make it as simple and less stressful as possible.

Battling with stress

Life is full of many hassles and fustrations that can effect the way you think or act, this is called stress. Stress is a defensive mecahnism by your body that releases hormones when you feel threatened. Work, school, and money are just a few ways that can cause our bodies to stress. Our muscles become tense, blood pressure rises, our heart beats faster, and our breathing becomes heavy. In turn these symptoms can makes us stronger and are important to our flee or fight responses. Besides physical symptoms, being stressed also releases many mental symptoms, like the inablility to concentrate, loss of memory, anxiesty, or poor judgement. School work is a major cause for stress in college students. Ive experienced it myself, sometimes I feel so overwelmed with work, that it causes me to feel some symptoms of being stressed. Alot of times I find it very hard to concentrate when I have a large workload to do. Stress is normal for people to experience, in fact most of you probably have some sort of stress right now. But sometimes stress becomes so powerful that it has been known to lead to suicides amoung many college students. I read about a Cornell student who jumped off a bridge because he was so stressed out about finals. You can read the article hear: http://abcnews.go.com/Health/MindMoodNews/students-found-dead-cornell-university-month-suicide/story?id=10108672
That article was very sad to read. I dont even want to think about what could of been going through these peoples minds for them to want to take their own lives. Almost 90% of all suicides deal with the victim being stressed out and depressed. 1/12 people try to commit suicide each year, most of them are caused by the person being to stressed out to function. Over coming your stress is all about overcoming your thought process. You have to take charge of your emotions and schedule, admitting that your stressed is one of the best things you can do to become non stressed. It very important to set some time aside for relaxtation.

First meeting with professor

I recently stopped by room EN D138 to visit my pre calculus professor, John Scheuermann. I met with him to go over some work we did in class that I didn’t quite get. Also, he told of good study habits I could use to improve my grades on quizzes and tests. Office hours are a great way to get some 1 on 1 time with your professor. You should really take the advantage of meeting with your professor if you have any questions at all. I found it very helpful and will continue to meet with all my professors if I have any doubt in mind about my work.

How do I manage my time?

There are 168 hours in a week, I wonder how I spend those hours throughout the course of the next week. How much time do I have free to myself? I started logging my time a week before last wednesday and over the course of that week I learned that I spent 16 hours in class, 13 hours at work, and roughly 15 hours on homework and studying. That leaves me with 120 hours of time that I have to my self. Sleeping probably takes up about 60 hours a week and the amount of time I work can fluxuate about 5 hours more or less. So I'm still left with about 60 hours of free time to eat, go out, and do whatever. I never noticed how much time I leave myself everyday, almost 9 hours each day I have nothing to do. With those hours, I'd like to say most of the time I am with my friends hanging out, or surfing the internet or watching TV. Seeing that I only spent 15 hours doing homework really bothers me. I got all my work done but its still half of what is expected by a college student. But I still dont imagine many students doing 30 hours of homework each week. Another factor that can effect my study time is that I dont have any required homework for my math class, so i spend way less time studying in that class than my others. In the future, I would like to spend a few more hours in my studies even if I completed my required work or dont have any required work. Procrastination is something I would like to avoid in college. I feel like I'm working harder than I ever did in highschool but I think i could spare a few more hours into my work.

Southern Fitness

The fitness center is a great place to use as your everyday gym when living on campus. There hours of operation are Monday-Thursday: 7am to 10pm, Friday: 7am to 8pm, Saturday: 930am-430pm, and Sunday: 2pm to 7pm. The price to join the gym is $60 dollars per semester, so $120 for your whole year. Compared to other local gyms like Planet Fitness and The Edge, the prices are reasonable enough. They have a dress code but its the same as any other gym. You cant wear jeans or midrifts but you can wear regular gym clothes like a t-shirt and shorts. I do not live on campus so I probably wont be using their services but if I did I would highly consider it.

Who wants an A?

My task was to review my fellow classmates blog's and pick the ones I would gave an A too. This is a good assignment because it makes all of us have to read what other people have to say about some of the same topics I am writing about. A few stood out of others.

I would deffentily give an A to Louie's blog. The way Louie writes his blog, I can tell that hes is just being himself and I can hear him saying everything that he writes down. His good sense of humor comes out in his writing and I enjoy reading his posts. Louie isnt afriad to say whats on his mind.
http://louiehappyblogtime.blogspot.com/

Hannah is another person I would give an A too if I where grading these assignments. I can tell she puts more effort than most in her blog posts and it shows through her writing and overall display. On of her posts "Guide to Getting a Good Teacher and Having Good Textbook Skills", had alot of useful information that any college student could learn from. She posts things that can overall improve you as a student and I really enjoyed learning how to pick the right teachers and some better study habits.
http://hannaexploringtheuniversity.blogspot.com/

Tori's blog was another blog that stood out from others. Once I looked at the layout of her blog, I could tell alot of time was put into it. She doesnt half-ass her work, and goes above and beyond on some assignments in order to give her readers the most value out of her blog. Her layout is very colorful and her pictures are very interesting to look at.
http://www.torislifeinanutshell.blogspot.com/

AM Blog

Professional blogs, I've noticed, are far different from the blog I am writing now. The two I decided to look up were not personal blogs, but strictly business blogs that were promoting events and they really seemed more like a marketing strategy if anything. I was excited to do wrtie this blog, because it gives us such a vast varity to write about, I can relate things I like to follow on my spare time into my school work.

Almost anything has its own blog. After watching alot of football this past weekend, I decided to look to see if my favorite team, the redskins, had a blog of their own. http://blog.redskins.com/ I found their blog right off of their main website. I quickly noticed that the author never talks in the first person, he doesnt use "I" but uses "we" frequently, as if he is talking like a community. The things that are being written arn't much different than the headlines surrounding the Nfl or this team in general. It has pregame and post game wrap ups, evaluations of players and things like that. Also, this blog is promoting events being held, like fundrasiers held by the team that help donate money to certain charities.
Another thing that was on my mind was the anticipated launch of Gears of War 3, which comes out tomarrow. Shockingly they had a blog, It was professionally done, but really it was pruely designed to gain fans and potential customers of this product. In their latest blog post, they talked about great deals you can buy off of amazon, and it was clear that it was all just a business scheme. Other recent blog posts, showed great ratings that the game was recieving, trailers for the game, once again just a way to get money but I also dont mind reading about it, because I am interested in this kind of stuff. Every blog is different and has its own meaning which is the beauty of it. A blog gives you freedom to write about whatever you want for the reasons you want.

Campus Safari

This book, "Data Abstracting & Problem Solving with Java" by J.Richard and F.Carrano, was recommended to me by my Computer Programming professor. This book is an add-on to our required textbook, for this course revolves around the use of Java, which is the basic software that all computers, cell phones, and most modern technology runs off of. This book's focus is to help you deal with problem solving while programming with Java. when programming, you have to be very precise, any small mistake, whether its a wrong capital letter, wrong number, punctuation, will disrupt your program and make it not run properly. This book can help further anybodies knowledge on Java, since I will be using Java a lot in my next years, I may have to refer back to this book.

Marshmellow Catastrophe

I wanted to share my view on the marshmallow experiment that we had to watch last week. The experiment went like this, a child was placed in a room with a marshmallow, they were told that they could eat the marshmellow now, or patiently wait 15 minuetes and get a second marshmallow. Approximently, 1 out of 3 kids waited the full 15 minutes for the second marshmallow, while 2 out of 3 ate one marshmallow before the 15 minutes were up. So what does this say about the child? Supposely, the kids who waited for the second marshmallow had great success in college and their future life. The kids who didnt wait, showed to have a higher drop-out rate and were criminals. I dont believe this experiment has anything to do with a certain childs future, there are many other factors that a child comes across in his or her life that causes these outcomes. What are their parents like? Did they raise them correctly? Teach them the value of patience? They are just kids, maybe they were hungry and wanted the satifaction of a delicious marshmallow. I believe this would be a great experiment to do with older indivivuals, who know a little better. It may not work with a marshmallow but maybe along the lines of money and a longer waiting period.

 Working Hard or Hardly Working?

I just read the article "Work Hard or Work Smart" written by Tom Weber. The purpose of writting this article was to point out the differences between working hard and working smart and tell which, if any, is the most productive way. My first reaction was ok, usually when you work hard you get things done and do them right, and working smart, you think ahead and prepare yourself better. The author states many time that incorporating both will in fact be the best choice. The "smart" part would be to design a plan, look at what you must tackle first and then work your ass off and get it done. I totally agree with everything the author has to say on this subject. Yes, being smart and working hard may be the best thing you can do in order to succeed in school or in life. If you go into your homework, for say, working hard but not totally understanding what that hard work is for, its very likely you wont achieve what you need to achieve. And the same thing goes vice versa for only working smart. So, in conclusion, be successful requires many different skills to be put together.

Multitasking and Kafka

"Debunking The Myth of Multitasking" caught my eye quick. Just by reading the articles title, I could see that im going to dissagree with the authors conclusion on multitasking. I question why the author says the author says that multitasking is culturally unacceptable. I've never came across anything in my life that would make me believe that. Sure, multitasking has its disadvantages like everything else, but in no way do i believe our cultural doesnt accept it. If anything I believe we promote multitasking. Technologically, our world promotes it by coming out with hands free devices, like cellphone headsets, which allow us to talk and drive, talk and do anything almost. Although i disagree with the overall conclusion, the author makes very valuable points that I can stand by. The author says multitasking can disrupt your productivity, and maybe interrupt your growth in the business industry. So, in most purposes I think multi-tasking is a great skill to have but, it can potentially hurt you if you decide to base your life off of it.

Whats Kafka?
At first, I thought Kafka was a learning program for kids, but as I started reading I quickly realized they where talking about Franz Kafka, a famous German Novelist. What the author is arguing, is that reading some of Kafka's literature, will overall make you a smarter person. I wasn't famillier with any of Kafka's writings so I further educated myself on this man, and was impressed by his accomplishments. He was a very educated man, he studied law up untill he obtained his degreee of Doctor of Law. He was fluent in three languages, and adapted to many different cultures, so he must be a very smart individual. Back to article, I do agree that reading certain pieces of literature can make you smarter. I've always heard that reading Shakespear and listening to Beethovan, so I was easy to believe that it was possible. Then I learned the Kafka's writing made people feel uncomfortable and that readers experienced a breakdown in their own sense of identity. My research on Franz Kafka also made me discover that some of his writings show that he may have a disease called Schizoid personality disorder, which makes a person unsocialable and very paranoid about themselves. Those two points make me question myself, I do believe certain readings can make a person somewhat smarter, just maybe not this guy.

What College Means to Me

College is way to sort of start over, you have an opportunity to make a new name for yourself, whether you want it to be known or stay under the radar. For me, college gives me a chance to meet new people and make friends, even though I already have many friends who go here already. I am a commuter this semester, but for most people college gives them a chance to get away from their parents. College also enables me to find out who I really am. Besides the social point of view on college, I also want to be dedicated to learn what my future has to hold. I love the fact that everything is based off of yourself. What I mean by this is that you really start to become an individual, there are no teachers or parents down your neck about school work and your studies, everything is up to you. So will I be a slacker? Or an achiever? I’m ready to learn accentual skills that will prepare me for a full time job after college. High School is over along with all the bullshitting that went with it. I am a procrastinator and always will be, but hopefully college will steer me away from that path. I am expecting the work load to be a lot and the tests to be difficult. As long as I know what to expect I think ill be alright. Right now my major is Computer Science, I’m not sure if that’s the major I intend to graduate with, but as of now it’s what I’m most interested in. I’m also interested in History, but only time can tell what will happen. I’m faithful that I will figure out the best career for my self here. I would like to do something I really enjoy and I am excited about my future.

Getting to Know Me

Five words I can use to describe myself are: Fun, Spontaneous, Caring, Procrastinate, and Music.

A day without fun is a useless day in my opinion. When Im around people, I want to have a good time. I love to laugh, most of my day consist of laughing.

I like to think that I'm a pretty spontaneous person. Im thrilled to try new things. Although ive never gone base jumping, its something that I'd willing to try. I agree with the expression "Life is short", because i believe everybody should enjoy their life's to the fullest.

Being caring is a wonderful trait for anybody to have. I'm always looking to lend a helping hand. There are many people I'm close with and will do literally anything for them.

I hate to admit it but im am a procastinator and always have been. Its something that I must work on in order to be successful in my future. I always get what i need to do done, but some of the things i enjoy to do for "fun" get in the way.

Music is an important part of my life. I enjoy all types of music but my favorite is Rap/Hip-Hop and my least favorite is country. I love to listen to lyrics and pull out the story and moral of the song. Wale is one of my favorite rappers, I think his lyrics have a strong meaning with a nice flow.