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