leaving... for now. (14I)

This week I went home for thanksgiving. It was crazy Tuesday trying to hang out with friends and pack for the long weekend. I wanted to say goodbye to all my friends but was unable too. Though the packing was hectic I was prepared for the weekend of food and old friends. So far I have done tons of work for my work at southern. My involvement this week was leaving southern. Mostly because there was two days of school and not much was going on except packing and leaving. I’m more nervous about my return because it will be two weeks of insanity and then nothing.

thankful (14B)

I am thankful for a great many things in my life. Going to southern and interacting with all the different people made me realize how lucky I really am. I have talked to many people and seen that life isn’t really as great as everything seems for everyone. And it has made me realize how lucky I really am.

First and foremost I am thankful for my family. They are all great, loving, and supporting. I know that no matter what happens to me they will love me forever. It was great seeing them over the break and look forward to spending Christmas break with them. Another thing I am thankful for is safety, a house, and food. There is nothing more necessary than have all of you basic need taken care of. Is the purpose of society and obviously something every American is thankful for.

Another thing I am thankful for is my friends. They are so great and supportive of me. They are also a lot of fun to be around. Next I am thankful for my opportunities and through that my education. I understand that many people even other Americans don’t have the same opportunities as myself. There is so much in this world to be thankful for it’s impossible to make a list and include everything. I am thankful for my world and the universe. I am thankful for everything in existence. I am thankful for the unanswered questions and the answered ones we know. I am thankful for my life and everything in it. It is an amazing chance I exist so I am thankful that all the things that were necessary for me to exist happened. There really is no possible way I can express all the different things I am thankful for in life.

relax (14A)

Thanksgiving break is a necessary because it’s a time to get a break before the final plunge. The last 2 weeks of college are by far the most stressful of the semester. While it’s important to relax over thanksgiving break it’s also important to stay on task. It’s also the time to begin studying for finals. This week I have hung out with friends watched TV, played video games, and slept A LOT, pretty much what anyone does to relax. However the fact that I have a lot of Spanish to memorize for Monday is not helping my stress level. I have also been stuffing my face with well, stuffing from thanksgiving. Also it’s scientifically been proven that petting animals relieves stress so I guess petting my cat has been helping as well. I have been listening to music and taking walks as well.

I saw the hunger games with my family Friday night. It was and extremely good movie and took my mind off everything that has been happening to me recently. I find that there is nothing better than sleep and a good movie to take you mind off stress. Waking up after 12-14 hours of sleep only to eat and watch a movie is the best. I watched TV with my mom and hung out with my brothers. It was really great catching up with everyone. However I won’t be totally stress free until the semester ends. Being able to sleep more than 5 hours at night was fantastic. I got advice from relative (all of which are in the medical field) on my education. This gave me some encouragement to continue on and finish my semester even though I have very difficult classes. Overall I have done many things this week to relax myself and it has been great.

investment (14V)

Google defines investment as an act of devoting time, effort, or energy to a particular undertaking with the expectation of a worthwhile result. Investment is relevant to college because college in itself is an investment. When you go to college you spend money on improving yourself and then in the future you can make more money. College is an investment in yourself.

This week I learned two new terms in chemistry:

electron affinity:  The energy change that accompanies the addition of an electron to an atom in the gas phase.

enthalpy:  A measurement of the energy content of a system.

dorm distractions creativity (13B)

Everyone has heard the term “work hard, play hard.” But what if someone’s playing hard while you need to be working hard? Not everyone has the same schedule and while some people may want to party in their dorm others may have an important project to do or a major test to study for. Now this seems like a pretty classic problem that occurs at all colleges, however in this project I need to tackle this in a creative manner. So aside from the statistics and boring facts and surveys I will make a fun skit with people from my dorms. This will hook people into my video and also illustrate creatively the problem and solution my video is about.

I plan to find different way to solve disputes about excessive noise, roommate problems, and much more. I plan to have numerous slides and different methods to describe my statistics from my survey and the different comparisons on what are the best ways to deal with problems in any dorm. However I will also cover the reverse, how to have fun while respecting that others have work to do. One such way to have fun is that you can listen to music without it shaking the walls.

Together with a wide array of means telling the statistics and results of my survey and interviews along with my creative skit on studying will accurately and creatively portray my problem solution video at a college level thinking level. Much of the editing will also add the creativeness in that it will smoothly and uniquely slide from fact to fact. I have so many ideas I can’t wait to get started on my final video project for Inquiry, but first I need to plan out my project and get people to act in my skit.

dorm distractions (13A)

Before I get into my plan on how to make my final video project contain college level critical thinking I will define what that is. College level thinking is when a high level of effort and intellectual thought goes into a task. It is not the level of thinking college student have, but are striving to achieve.

I plan to do a few things to make the intellectual part of my project of a college level. One is I plan to make my own survey and give it to people in my dorm. Because my project is on dorm distractions it would be best to get first had data due to the subjectivity of the topic. Some of the questions I will be asking are:

1        1.      If you need to study/work do you need to leave your dorm in order to concentrate?

2        2.      Is sleep difficult to attain due to noise?

3        3.      How often do you encounter a serious distraction in your dorm? (i.e. loud music a party)

I will add more questions but these will be the basic questions I will ask people. I will then research possible remedies to problems encountered in dorms. I also plan to compare my southern statistics to other schools to see if southern is a good or bad place live.

I will also explore what to do in case dorm distractions arise. For one I will explore what to do if people are playing loud music or if you have a bad roommate matchup. Also where can you go in case things are out of control and you need to focus on your work. So all in all I plan to make my own survey and compare its data in a statistical setting and then come up with the best solutions to dorm distractions.

SPDC (13I)

On Sunday November 17 I went to the Symphonic Pulse Dance Company dance competition. The moves some of the people were capable of were insane. While all the teams did a great job I particularly liked when they had people from the audience come up. They were all good and it was interesting what dance moves people could come up with on the spot. I would recommend this event to people because it was extremely exciting and entertaining. The dance teams choreography was great and if I were to give the overall event a rating it would be 8/10 stars.