Expectations of INQ

            The goal of the freshman INQ class was to get us to “immerse” ourselves in the college experience.  Such experiences include being able to handle multiple tasks at a time, being able to solve problems on our own, not being afraid to ask questions or take risks, learning how to grapple with things that may be difficult, finding our creative sides, learning from our failures, taking ownership of our own learning, and being able to apply abstract concepts to our everyday lives.  That is a lot to be thrown at college freshmen, who have maybe never had to deal with most or any of these experiences.  While all of this seems complex and a lot to handle, I have been able to conquer most, if not all of these expectations for myself.

Juggling multiple tasks

            This semester I got acquainted with multi tasking better than I ever had before.  I would have multiple papers due on the same day, a paper and a project due on the same day, and especially on weekends I would have my two blogs for INQ due by Saturday night, a short blurb essay due on Monday for History, sometimes a journal entry due for my Theatre class on Monday, and whatever would be due for Tuesday since I get home late on Mondays and do not have a lot of time to do work when I get home.  I used to think that multi tasking was easy, and sometimes it is (i.e. listening to music while doing homework).  However, when there are several assignments that all need to be done by the same time is when multi tasking becomes a little more severe than walking and chewing gum.

 Be a problem solver

            INQ has taught me that there are many different ways to view a situation.  Everyone deals with issues in his or her own way.  If there is one thing I learned about being a problem solver, it is that there is no one way to solve a problem!

Ask questions

            I have always been the type of person who does not like to ask for help, I like to do things on my own and figure it out, otherwise I feel incapable.  I learned though, that it is just the opposite.  It would be silly of me to not ask questions or not ask for help because if I don’t ask, I don’t learn. 

Take risks

            In college there are many opportunities and experiences.  It is important to take risks to gain knowledge about something as well as to broaden our horizons with experiences different than that of what we are used to.  It is also important to take risks with assignments and work that we get in college because we can learn from the risks we take whether they are good risks or bad risks.  A risk taken may be a good one and may bring about a better grade, or a risk can be a bad one and may bring about a worse grade than we had.  Either way, we learn from our risks and learn what to do and what not do to again.

 Grapple with difficulty

            College is much more difficult than high school.  One of the biggest difficulties that freshman in college have to deal with is the transition from high school to college.  For my own personal endeavor of entering college, I had to get used to commuting a half hour to and from Southern every day.  When I was in high school, my trip would literally be thirty seconds up the road to get to school.  

I also had to become acclimated to the different scheduling of college classes.  In college, classes can be dispersed all throughout the day.  In high school, a student’s day starts at about 7:30 a.m. and goes to about 2:00 p.m. and includes six to seven classes a day.  My earliest class this semester is 9:35 a.m. and my latest class ends at 7:30 p.m. but I only have a couple classes a day.  This was a little hard to get used to, but I like it a lot better than I liked high school scheduling.

Be creative

            In college creativity is a big part surviving socially as well as academically.  People are usually drawn to those who are creative because they seem to be more exciting and someone interesting to be around.  The same holds true for being creative academically.  Meeting the requirements and doing what is expected on an assignment deserves a decent grade.  However, it is the extras that put an assignment over the top and deserves an excellent grade.  Learning how to use imovie this semester will allow me to make future projects and assignments more exciting and original.  It will make my work stand out more than others…hopefully!  With being creative, though comes risk.  It is risky to be creative because creativity can either help or hinder an assignment or first impression on someone else.  However, without taking creative risks, one will never know what the outcome might have been.  The creative risk might have been the one thing that got him the job or grade, or the one thing that did not get him the job or grade, but by playing it safe, he will never know.

Learn from failure

            As ridiculous as it may sound, failure can be a good thing.  No one wants to fail at something, but sometimes we learn best from our failures.  If we fail at something, we are likely to remember what it was that caused us to fail; therefore we can remember not to do that certain thing again.  I have been very fortunate this semester so far and have not failed anything yet…let’s hope that continues through finals!  In INQ this semester, we talked about failure and the outcomes of failure and whether it brings about a positive or negative experience.  I do know that for myself, when I fail, it makes me want to improve for next time, or the next assignment almost to prove that I can pick myself back up again and conquer it. 

Take ownership over learning

            All throughout school up through high school, we were taught that teachers are responsible for making sure that the students know and learn the material.  They would chase us down to turn in our work and really took responsibility for us.  However, in college it is quite the opposite.  It is not the professors’ jobs to make sure that we learn the material it is our responsibility.  They could care less if we turn in our work because it is not their responsibility to make sure that we do.  If we don’t turn something in, it is just less for them to have to grade.  I had to take ownership over learning in my history class.  I have never done exceptionally well in history, so I wanted to make sure that I was doing well in class.  My professor does not like to discuss grades because he is “uninterested” in them and “could care less” about what grade we have in his class.  I went to his office hours to ask him how I was doing in his class knowing that he does not like to discuss grades, so I had to finagle the question in a different context to learn that I was actually doing well in the class.  It is important for students to know what their professors are like regarding the class so that they know how to communicate with them.

Apply abstract concepts to everyday life

            In INQ we talk a lot about abstract ideas and concepts that can be applied to our everyday lives.  In doing this, we are gaining a new and more collegiate outlook on our lives and various situations.  If we allow ourselves to think abstractly, we will make ourselves more worldly in a way because we have such I higher order way of thinking that will allow us to stand out from the crowd.

          I have had to tackle just about all of the expectations of a college student, but still have some that I maybe need to work on.  Juggling multiple tasks is definitely one that needs more attention as well as trying to be more of a risk taker, as I like to play it safe a lot of the time.  Because of at least attempting to meet these expectations, I feel that I have met the requirements of this course.  I may still need to work on things, but I have a pretty good idea of what is expected of me and what I need to do in order to be a successful college student, which was the whole purpose of the INQ class. 

I found that I have grown over the semester as a student in that I know what is expected of me and know what I need to do.  I would say that I need to keep track of my assignments a little better, as I have let myself slip with work a little in this class.  Remembering and time management are two of my biggest weaknesses, so I think that a good thing for me to do would be to write down all of my assignments according to when they are due and figure out what needs to take priority over everything else.  This coincides with one of my personal goals for the remainder of my time in college.  This goal is to not have to rush to get an assignment finished on time.  I would like to be one of those students who starts projects and assignments early and works on them a little at a time in order to get them done in a timely manner and not have to worry about anything the night before they are due except if I want to make small last minute adjustments.

Another one of my personal goals for college is to come out of my comfort zone of not getting involved in things and actually start becoming more involved.  Even if it is just a small group or organization, I would like to try to break out of my stereotypical commuter ways and instead of going to class and then leaving, I would maybe like to be a part of something at Southern. 

As of right now, I have no regrets about my college experience so far.  The way I see it is that I have at least seven more semesters to have experiences and make memories, and I can’t regret anything because my journey through college is far from over.  I can say that one thing I will not regret is blogging.  I really enjoyed finding my voice through blogging.  I may not have completed all of the blog assignments, and may not have always enjoyed the topics that we had to blog about, but it is fun to post views and ideas and experiences for other people to see and hopefully become enlightened from it.  I am still not quite sure as to who I am or what may define me, but it sure will be a fun experience to find out!

Food Will Bring Us Together

Food is a staple when my family gets together.  We are always eating at every family function.  My mom’s side of the family is Slovak and my dad’s side is Italian.  Slovaks like to eat, and Italians like to eat while they wait to eat.   Therefore, food is a must.  When there is food, people will gather together to eat and talk and catch up with one another.  I am very thankful that my family is so loving when we share a meal together.  Like all families we have our spats, and like the majority of Italian families we are very loud, which makes it seem like we are having huge fights, but at the end of the day we all love each other and we know it…there are no grudges.

I have always been very curious about why we only have the traditional Thanksgiving dinner one day a year.  Everyone always loves the food at Thanksgiving, but we never really eat it any other time of the year.  In watching all of the preparation though, it made me realize that so much time and effort goes into preparing a Thanksgiving meal and it is not something that would be easily done every day.  I also think that having Thanksgiving dinner one day a year makes it all the more special, as well as something to really look forward to every year.

It is important to my family to have food when we are together because the food is what brings us together.  Some people may be in the living room watching tv, some may be in the kitchen making the food or socializing, but as soon as it’s time for dinner, everyone congregates to the kitchen table and sits down together as one family.  It is a great feeling to be around the people we love and share a good meal with each other.  

A Peaceful Place

            A place to study should be somewhere that is peaceful and where you can relax.  This semester I am taking a performance class in Lyman.  In the class we have gotten several group assignments and have had to meet with our groups outside of class to work.  When my group would meet, it would be in the same spot each time.  On the side of Lyman (between Lyman and Earl Hall), there are rocks that are flat on top so people can sit and study or do work.  It is under trees so that if the sun is out and it is really bright that day, the trees will prevent the sun from beating down on you.  Now that it is getting colder outside though and snow will start soon, it is not too ideal to sit outside.  When the winter is over though and the spring comes, it will be nice to be able to sit outside to study again.  The area is secluded enough that you can block out the commotion of people around you, but it is not too secluded so that you will not be in the middle of nowhere on campus.  If you like to be outside and you like nature, I highly recommend that you try sitting down and studying here, or even just sitting and people watching or listening to music and relaxing.  It is a great place to keep yourself focused and not have your mind racing in a bunch of different directions and stressing about classes or anything else going on in your life…it is a place of peace and serenity. 

Calm, Cool, and Collected?

Stress is something that I face every day of my life, multiple times a day.  I have a really big problem with stress and anxiety and try to relieve these problems as best I can.  For my performance class, part of our class and homework is to do yoga to help with being focused and relaxed.  I found that doing yoga really does help to keep my mind in one place and not think about everything else that is going on around me and in my life.  Everything has to be dealt with sooner or later, but unless you are in the proper mindset to deal with those things, you will just stress yourself out even more. 

It is important to be relaxed and feel relaxed, especially when stressed.  If yoga isn’t really your thing, we also learned deep breathing exercises that coincide with yoga and the poses.  Deep breathing is good to do no matter where you are so you don’t have to get up in the middle of a test and do the downward dog pose.  When you feel stressed or feel that you will soon become stressed, do some deep breathing.  I do that when I’m stuck in traffic because I get really stressed and I will admit to having a small case of road rage.  Instead of lashing out irrationally when I’m behind the wheel, I take the safer approach of breathing deeply. 

If you are prone to getting anxiety or being stressed out, it is important to do deep breathing exercises regularly because if you familiarize your body with how to become relaxed when you are feeling stressed, your body will recognize that you are stressed when you are and will automatically know what to do in order to handle the stress and relax you.

Just Breathe - Anna Nalick

Inflating Inflation

I really don’t think that grade inflation is a good thing.  It has not been good in my own personal experiences and I don’t think that students should have that safety net of knowing that even if they don’t do well on something, their grades will still be okay because professors will just inflate them.

As I said in class on Tuesday, in my Junior year in high school I did not do well in math.  I would fail quizzes and tests and one time I went to my teacher to talk to him about it.  He had me sit down with him and he helped me correct the problems I got wrong and ended up changing my grade from a 32 to an 84!  I thought it was great at the time and I really took advantage of that.  However, when I got to my Senior year and had no idea what was going on because I had never actually learned what I had needed to the year before.  I did a lot worse in my math class senior year and realized that I could no longer rely on teachers changing my grades for basically no reason other than to raise my grade and make it seem like I’m doing better than I actually am. 

I really don’t think that it’s fair for the other students who actually try and earn their good grades for professors to raise other kids’ grades.  In my math class this year, there are a lot of kids who don’t really try to do well because they just don’t care.  I used to be like that, but now I am actually trying and it is paying off.  I have a B- in math, which is unheard of for me and I am really proud of myself because I know that I deserve the grades I am getting in that class.  When we get tests back a lot of kids in my class will ask if there will be a curve on the grading and I sit there thinking it’s not fair for their grades to be higher because they don’t care, they don’t try.  I think that grade inflation will encourage students to not try as hard in their classes because they will have in the backs of their minds that their professors will raise their grades even though they do not deserve it.

Grade Inflation Article Reflection

            In the article “Grade Inflation in American Education”, author Thomas R. Eddlem talks about how professors at some universities are inflating their students’ grades so that they have higher GPAs.  They are doing this because jobs are becoming more and more competitive, so by raising GPAs, their students have a better chance of getting jobs.  There are some qualms that people have about doing this and they are saying that by inflating grades, students will not work as hard at their schoolwork because their grades will be higher anyway.

Tulane University in New Orleans, LA is one of the universities that is inflating students’ grades.  One of my best friends goes to Tulane; he was third in our graduating class and always took his schoolwork seriously, but ever since he has been down at Tulane, his work ethics have changed dramatically.  He wants/wanted to be a surgeon and is/was going to Tulane for pre-med, but he has not been focusing nearly as much on school as he should be. This really concerns me because I am afraid that he will just do whatever he has to just get by and rely on grade inflations and expect his professors to raise his grades to higher his GPA.

I personally do not think that it is a good idea for schools to inflate students’ grades to raise their GPAs just so that they have a better shot in getting a job.  I think that grade inflation will make students think that they can spend less time studying and doing schoolwork and more time out partying and not focusing on what they need to be focusing on.

INQ MOVIE

Trip to Quinnipiac

On Tuesday, my friend Sarah and I went to visit our friend Emily who goes to Quinnipiac University in Hamden.  Emily had given us directions, but we wanted to make sure that we would have zero chances of getting lost so we asked someone who works in the bookstore to give us directions too.  They were both the same way, but one was a more in depth set of directions than the other set of directions.  Even with the clear directions of where to go, we still ended up getting lost…several times.

 

We finally got to Quinnipiac from Southern, it only took us an hour to get to a school in the next town over…we’re not very successful when it comes to following road directions.  We ended up needing to call Emily quite a few times so that she could tell us where we needed to go and get reassurance from her that we were going the right way.

            Getting lost on this trip made me think about how college is kind of like a road trip.  In order to get to where we want to go in life, we need to go to college first.  College is the road that we pave to find our way to our final destination.  We might get lost on the way, but everything will eventually work out.  Either we’ll find our way back to the path ourselves, or we ask for help and guidance from others to help us get back on the right path.

Lee Time!

            Having a peer mentor in my INQ class is a really good experience.  Lee is an awesome person and is real about everything.  She is very knowledgeable and insightful.  I think it’s really good that we have a peer mentor for our inquiry class because she can help us make the transition into being college students since she was in our position just a few years ago. 

            Lee is teaching us to find out who we are as people.  She has us do writing exercises to get us to think about who we are.  From these exercises, I’ve realized that I’m not really sure who I am yet.  I feel like I haven’t lived long enough yet to experience enough to give myself defining characteristics to say who I am as a person. 

            Having a peer mentor in class adds a lot to the class.  It makes it different than a regular college class.  Having Lee come into our class and have 15 minutes with us every Thursday spices up the class…it’s not just having a professor come in and lecture us or be in control of the class.  With Lee, we have more perspective on ideas and someone else to contribute to discussions.  Since she is in her last year in college, she knows how to give a “college answer” as well as how to think like a college student, which gives us a taste of how we need to start thinking and using information we learn in class to connect to other things we discuss in class.

My Major is.....

            I’ve thought about a few different things that I might want to do with my life.  Some more realistic than others, but I like to think that even the ones that aren’t so realistic could be possibilities for my life.

            For as long as I can remember, the ultimate goal for my life was to be a singer.  At the young age of six or seven that seemed possible.  My voice has grown and improved over the years, but now that I’m a college student, I realize that making a career of singing is not exactly a very stable choice.  Not very may people “ooo” and “ahhh” over someone saying that she wants to be a singer…so I decided that that was kind of out of the picture.

            There was also a time in my life, just a few years ago, that I thought about being an interior designer.  I love colors and decorating rooms and putting themes to rooms.  I recently redecorated my bedroom and got new furniture and everything and literally spent two whole days getting it together.  I love the actual thinking about where all of the furniture pieces are going to go and trying to figure out the feng shui of the room.

            There is one more possibility that I am leaning most toward.  I really love to write.  Creative writing is my favorite style of writing.  I enjoy the expression it lets you have when writing.  Because of this, I think I might decide to be an English major.  When I tell people that, they immediately ask me if I’m going to be a teacher.  I really don’t think that I would want to be a teacher.  I don’t think that I would be good at teaching writing, I would rather actually write.  Maybe this means that one day I’ll be a writer, or a journalist or something and get to travel.  I don’t think I’ll decide until the very last minute though…I’m not very good with commitment to one thing and being held down to do it.  So we’ll see what life throws at me and where I end up. 

Creativity in a Blog

            A good blog post has content that can relate to the readers.  It is important for readers to be able to relate to what they are reading because it gives them a connection to what the author is feeling or writing or where he is coming from.  This means that a blogger should write about something that will appeal to a wide variety of readers so that a lot of people will read. 

            Another thing that makes for a good blog post is something interesting and catchy to draw a reader in.  A picture, quote, video, or song will draw people in to read your blog post.  Lyndsay's blog has a moving animation in one of her posts, which drew me in and made me want to read more of her blog. 

            Before you can make your blog posts good enough to have people want to read them though, you have to have a catchy title for your blog so that people want to actually go on your blog site to see what you’re all about.  DJ has a blog title that makes you want to read about this “college superhero”.  Ilmar also has a catchy title to his blog and it made me want to see what his blog is all about.  It was funny though because when I clicked on the link to his blog “The Situations Station”, the first post was “I LOVE MATH”….to me that was a big oxymoron.

            Having something to draw your readers in is really important with any kind of writing.  Blogs are about who you are or something that interests you that you want to inform others of.  So it’s important to be creative while also being informative.

INQ Questions

            For my Inquiry storytelling project, I am connecting time-management with motivation.  I already had an interview with a Psychology professor at Southern and asked him some questions about motivation.  The inquiry questions I asked him were how motivation works (the internal workings of motivation), I asked if motivation was different for children as opposed to teens and adults, and I also asked how one gets motivated.

            The answers I got to these questions were very interesting.  To the question about how motivation works, the Professor responded that there are two different kinds of motivation…physical, and mental motivation.  Physical motivation is when there is kind of a physical energy, such as hunger or thirst.  Mental motivation has to do with one’s thoughts.  There might be accomplishments one wants to achieve and be successful at, or he might want to obtain a material possession, or even praise, and he will also think about where it will get him in life.

            The Psychology professor also answered my question about children vs. teens, regarding motivation, and he told me what we had discussed in class when we had the readings about motivation.  He said that children are motivated more physically because they want the praise and acceptance of adults, they want adults to be pleased with them, which would make this an external form of motivation, whereas teens are motivated more internally (intrinsic).

            When I asked how one can become motivated, he responded that you should set goals.  You need to set specific goals and develop a belief system in those goals, and once you have done that, your efforts will be rewarded.  The trick to being rewarded for your efforts, though is that you need to be open to feedback and advice.

            I am getting really excited to do the next step of my project and see how I can connect time-management to motivation and see what students think about the relation of the two. 

We The Kings!!

            A couple of weeks ago my friend, Sarah, and I went to the We The Kings concert in the Lyman Center here at Southern.  Sarah had won a meet and greet with the band through Southern so we went a little early.  We waited outside of Earl Hall with a few other girls waiting to meet the band.  When it was time for the meet and greet to start I sat on a bench and waited with three other girls, whose friend also went into the meet and greet.  The four of us were talking and we actually had a really good time just getting to know each other.

            When the meet and greet was over, the four of us met up with my friend, Sarah, and their friend.  We all waited in line together to get into the concert and we even sat together once we got inside.  The concert was pretty good.  The opening band was Valencia, which I had never heard of before that night, and they were pretty good.  When We The Kings came on, the whole audience went crazy…it was kind of funny to watch the whole audience get so excited.

            Unfortunately, things do not always go as planned.  Before the first half of the show was over, Sarah got a call from her grandmother…her sister got sick and her grandma couldn’t deal with it.  Since I drove to the concert with Sarah, I had to leave with her to go home and take care of her sister.  It was kind of a bummer to have to leave the concert early, but I’m glad I got to go at all and I even made some new friends while I was there!

We The Kings - Heaven Can Wait

           

New Discoveries!

I just made two new blog discoveries that I thought were pretty interesting…if you’re a girl.  One is about fashion and the other is about beauty.  I wasn’t really sure how to go about looking for new blogs or when I found a blog, how to decipher if it is a good one.  I came to the conclusion that as long as a blog is interesting, it is good! So I have decided to share these discoveries with you!

Café Fashionista is a blog written by Erika, a woman who, clearly, has a passion for fashion!  She lets her readers in on secret fashion steals as well as promotes the things she obsesses over.  She will tell her readers about the hottest Gucci boots that are available for the low, low price of $990.00 because everyone can afford those…yeah right!  So in comparison to the gorgeously Gucci’s, Erika told her readers about the Colin Stuart boots that are almost exactly identical for the more affordable price of $69.00.

 http://cafefashionista.blogspot.com/          

The Beauty Blog is an advice blog about all sorts of things like makeup, men, and beauty tips.  The beauty blog is very much like reading a magazine article.  So for those who read Glamour, or Cosmo this blog is worth taking a look at.  There are a bunch of links on the page that lead to different aspects of beauty, depending on what you are looking for.  There are a lot of referrals to products, dieting tips, shops, and so much more!

http://www.beauty-blogs.com/

Time Management, or Lack There of....

Time management is probably one of the hardest tasks to achieve.  I have always struggled with being able to manage my time and being able to get everything that needs to be done, done in a timely manner.  I am really trying to get better about managing my time, but it seems that there is always something that comes up when I decide to get something done, or there is something more “interesting” for me to do.

            I think that the problem with most students is that they do not have enough drive to actually do their homework.  This lack of drive starts at a young age when teachers are less harsh on kids who do not do their homework.  Kids then get used to that kind of attitude from teachers and, from there, figure out which teachers will let them “get away with” not doing their homework in a sense.  However, in college, that attitude is not really there anymore.  Professors won’t necessarily “hunt kids down” looking for lost work like high school teachers will do, but instead, the students will receive a failing grade and still have the bad habit of not managing time well enough to have completed the homework.

            I wish that I had not gotten into the horrible habit of putting off my work until the last possible minute.  Sometimes I wonder if I will ever be able to get out of the habit and if so, how I will actually be able to break the habit.  I think I would say that time management is definitely my weakness that I really would like to be my strength. 

Project Problems

            For the “Group Think” project in Inquiry, I was in a group with Madison, Ryan, and Jackie.  We found that it is harder than it seems to do a group project.  We discovered that the only days all four of us could meet were on Tuesdays and Thursdays.  This was because Ryan and I have late classes on Mondays and Wednesdays, I am a commuter student, and Ryan leaves school on the weekends because he has to work.

 

            We found it difficult to keep in touch sometimes too because we would have to rely on each group member to have their phone with them so that we could text each other where we were going to meet and when.   However, even with all of these difficulties, we managed to get together and put our presentation together.  We had to put trust in each other to have the meanings of each of the words for the presentation, and we also had to put trust in Jackie because she was the one who was putting the actual presentation together for us.

            In the future, I think that we should start the project as soon as we can (preferably the day it is given) even if we just discuss what we are going to do and get ideas together.  Procrastination is definitely something I suffer from and something that probably a lot of other college students suffer from.  Taking projects and assignments a little at a time all along is a lot better than waiting until the last minute to get everything done at once.  I think that we need to try different methods of going about doing group projects to make the doing the assignment more affective.

Outcasts Unite in College

            In the book Outcasts United the soccer team has to raise money.  They only have a small amount left to go and question why they can’t just ask their parents to give the remaining money to the team because surely they would.  Luma, the coach, told them that they could not ask their parents to give them the money because they needed to do it on their own.  She said that they could not ask their parents to help them with everything and that they should start to become more independent now.           

          

This relates to college very well.  Now that we are college students we are more independent.  The majority of college students live on their own, away from their parents.  We cannot always just rely on our parents to help us when we need it; we can’t expect them to give us money if we don’t have any.  We need to learn to provide for ourselves so that when we are older and have our own families, we can properly support them.  While parents are usually always willing to bail us out of trouble and fix our problems, we need to learn for ourselves how to deal with things that life throws at us. 

            By not asking their parents for the money, the boys learned independence.  By not calling our parents every time we need something, we are learning independence.  Ultimately, parents will always help their children however they can, but one of the greatest ways to learn independence is experience not having parents clean up our messes so to speak.

Technology Qualms

The readings that we had in class really made me think about technology and different generations.  All of the articles shared a common theme…technology.  There is so much technology today that it really affects our lives.  While it can be very helpful to us, it can also be hurtful in a way. 

            Technology has its advantages as well as its disadvantages.  Cell phones are extremely helpful when it comes to getting in contact with someone when there are no other phones around.  Computers are a great resource to have when doing research or just finding something online because it is quick and easily accessible.

            Along with thinking about the advantages to having such high technology, I also started to think about problems with technology.  From personal observation, I have noticed a lot of younger kids starting to get cell phones.  I have heard of kids getting cell phones as young as 9 years old!  I had to ask myself what a nine-year-old girl needed a cell phone for.  When I asked her why she had a cell phone at age 9 she responded, “I just asked my mom for one and she got it for me”.  I was floored when the now twelve-year-old told me that.  I didn’t get my first cell phone until I was about 12 and it was only for emergencies so that I could get in contact with my mom if I ever needed to.

            Kids used to go outside every day, all day; that’s how their time was spent.  However, we see less and less of that now because there are so many video games and computer games that kids are almost addicted to.  Technology almost seems to be taking over childhoods.

Problems at Southern

Being a commuter student I face an on going challenge.  Every day I go to school and have to drive around to look for a parking space.  No matter what time of day it is, all of the parking lots seem to be full.  I leave my house an hour and a half before my first class starts every day just to make sure that I can find a place to park. 

            One day after being stuck in traffic, which is also another problem I face every day, I pulled into one of the commuter parking lots and immediately went to the back of the lot.  I figured that there would be a better chance of me finding somewhere to park if I went to the back.  I saw an open space however, when I pulled up closer, it was a space designated for motorcycles.  I kept driving and found another space a few cars down that appeared to be empty.  When I got to the space and went to pull in, a motorcycle was parked in it.  I got really angry that the motorcycle was in a regular parking spot when there was a designated space for it just a few cars down.  It is annoying to have to deal with things like that when there is barely anywhere to park in the first place.

            I am not looking forward to facing this parking dilemma for the next four years, but I am hoping that it will get easier for commuter students to park.  Until then, I will just have to deal with this problem. 

My Freshman Year

I am a commuter student at Southern and sometimes I wonder if I am going to get the same college experience as everyone else who is a resident.  College is an experience that matures you academically, socially, and personally.  College gives challenges that could not be faced anywhere else, which creates for a great learning experience.  There is also a whole new atmosphere being around new people, which is good for socializing and making new friends and stepping out of your comfort zone in order to talk to different kinds of people that you may not be used to talking to.

Going to college can accomplish so much more than just getting a good education to later use in finding a job.  College allows for experience and friendship building.  I have already made some friends at Southern whom I would not have met if it were not for college. 

College is a time to experiment and find yourself.  It’s also about independence and gaining responsibility.  Even though I am a commuter and do not live on campus, I still have more responsibility and independence than I have ever had before. 

The goals I have for college is to figure out what I want to do with my life after college.  As of right now I am undecided and I would really like to know by the end of my freshman year what I want to major in. 

I do get concerned about the work load in college as it is so different from high school and the amount of work I used to get.  However, I am keeping an open mind and being optimistic about everything and hoping to just have a great time and have a lot of fun experiences and make great memories!

Shelby in 5 Words

Musical – I am a very musical person.  I sing and can play a little piano and I love to listen to music.  Music is an important aspect of my life because it is a great form of expression.

Family – My family means a lot to me…I am very family-oriented.  According to dictionary.com a family is a “basic social unit consisting of parents and their children”.  While this may be true, I also consider my friends to be a part of my family.  To me, family is people who love and care for each other, which describes my relationships with my friends and my family members very well.

Honest – Relationships are based on honesty and trust.  Whether it be a relationship with a parent, a friend, or a boyfriend or girlfriend, we have to be honest to gain trust within that relationship.  I always try to be honest with people because I want to have good relationships with people and to not be honest with someone is one of the fastest ways to end a trusting relationship.

Honesty - Billy Joel

Mature – Maturity is something that I’ve learned not a lot of people I know acquire.  I ran into a lot of drama with my friends this past summer because I found that they are still stuck in high school attitudes.  I don’t like to get into drama because I am more mature than that and know that I need to grow up and be the bigger person in certain situations because other people will not always have the maturity to realize that they are not being the bigger person.

Witty – Being witty is a good quality to have because you can’t always be serious…there needs to be something to lighten the mood and wit can do just that.  I have been known to say things that can make people laugh just because of who it is coming from.  I like to make people laugh…if you can make a person laugh you have broken a barrier that leads to who a person actually is.