Tuesday, December 17, 2013

16V: Freedom

                FREEDOM!! Right now, freedom to me means a month off of school. It means getting away from the general taste of Conn dining hall food. It means getting away from something I don’t want to be in at the moment. The real definition of freedom is, the power or right to act, speak, or think as one wants without hindrance or restraint.

16ABI: This is the End....


                Well first semester of my college year, we are coming to a close! And though this has been one of my most strenuous semesters of schooling, I have gained more knowledge in this one term then I have in most of my years in high school. Though it might have been tough, no task has ever come easy.
                High school was always a struggle for me. I had terrible time management skills and would always just skip out on doing assignments if they got too tough for me. But once I got to college, I realized I needed to step up my game. At first, it was a tough transition. But once I got started, I got much better and it became much more natural.
                I have realized that I’m more of a perfectionist then I though. Once I got an assignment I had the drive and knew that I had to finish it. But the problem I faced was the initial procrastination. I have always waited till the last minute to do things my whole life. So that’s one thing I’m continuing to overcome. With most of my classes I didn’t let the work load overcome me, yet I will admit I did with English. I wrote my essays the night before most times. I realize this was bad, I even wrote about it in my English self-evaluation. One thing I mentioned was,

“In high school, if I didn’t know what to write, I wouldn’t write, I would hand in assignments really late and get points off because I procrastinated with writer’s block and then I just gave up because it was too difficult. I’ve learned that I need to push through that feeling of not knowing what to do and just do something/anything.”

I realize what I need to do now, and though it might be the end of one semester, I know what I have to improve on next semester and I can work on it. Something that helps me is when I brainstorm my ideas and organize them before I write.
                Although I have only been saying many of my struggles, I have improved on many of my other things. I have learned to not skip out on my work because it does add up. I have completed every assignment I was given because I realized how important everything was to, not only my grade, but my learning experience. I don’t think I would retained all the information I was given if I didn’t complete all my work. This was a mistake I made in high school, and I know I needed to do it for my grades but I had no idea that my knowledge would increase.

                I think, despite my procrastination, this semester was a success. I worked so hard in all my classes. INQ and Italian are among that classes that I learned the most in. I believe what helped in these classes were the repetitive learning. We reviewed the information several times and it helped engrave it into my brain. I probably had the most trouble in my English class. As I talked about before, I had trouble getting my thoughts onto paper. But with all of this said, I believe I did fairly well on my first semester of college and I laid down good stepping stones for my years of college to come. 




Saturday, December 7, 2013

15V: Autonomy

Autonomy: the state or condition of having independence or freedom, or of being autonomous; self-government, or the right of self-government.  This means you have the right and the opportunity to make your own choices in a nutshell. You have to choose what’s best for you and your future.

15I: Taking My Own Advice

                This week I applied to a job on campus. As many of you might know, my video project is about how to make money on campus while in college. For part of my project, I decided that I was going to do a tutorial of how to fill one out. But, before recording me showing off the application, I realized how easy the application really was. So I filled it out and am now applied to Barnes and Noble on campus. Now if I can get the job, my video project for inquiry class with helping people find a job can be a real success!

15B: They're Here!!


                A big part of the college expectation is tough finals. In the movies, they portray them as the breaking point of a class. They lead you to believe that, all the work you have done up to that very moment doesn’t even matter because if you fail that final, there is no hope and the teachers seem to show no mercy. This may be true for some classes in real world; for example, my English final is all of my collective work and there is not much graded assignments beyond that so if you don’t hand in, or fail the final you are doomed. But, on the other hand, my Italian class, the final is only 10% of my grade, so if I fail or don’t even show up, yes it will affect my grade, but if I did all the work up to then and got good grades, I have a good chance of still passing.

                But it still kind of a big deal. Even if your grade is at the bottom, you can come back and get a good average. I’m preparing in the simplest way possible; I’m studying my butt off!! I don’t want to take any chances with my grade averages so I am going to be working my best. I have been studying the past week for each class occasionally but I don’t really focus on one class till the day before that final. This way I can still sleep on the information but it is still fresh in my brain from the day before. As said in my previous blog, revise. If you have a project, look it over several time and have multiple drafts and feedback so you know what you can work on and know that every mistake is caught!!


15A: A Revision is Necessary!!

               Two weeks ago, I talked about how I was going to make my final and several things to include in it. Though it was a long, intensive process of making the rough draft, I finally figured out some of the things I needed to do.
                First, I needed to figure out how to record the process of me filling out the resume for the book store. To my complete and utter shock, I found out that the resume was online and not a paper one I could just record myself filling out!! So I used the resource of all college students and googled it. From that I found out that I could record my laptop screen and everything I was doing (this may not sound that crazy to some, but for those who don’t know I am very anti tech savvy.) And once I finally completed that I added a few notes and facts into my video.
                Though I wasn’t quite done, I posted the video on my blog as a rough draft and we viewed it I class. The issues I had with the project were minor things that I could easily fix. First, when I click my mouse for the resume tutorial portion, it is very loud and it drowns out other noises. What I am going to get a portable mouse and plug it in so you can’t hear the loud tap of the key pad. I also need to include some hard facts and/or statistics of college students in need of money and how they plan on making it. i might also
include quotes from my friends about how they make money while in school. With that I will include a comparison of commuters to on campus residents along with my personal ways of making money to go to school and have some spending money on the side!

                With all of this said, I know I’m on to a good start to help my fellow college student stay educated on how to fix the problem of limited funds while in school.