Final blog

The first semester has finally come to an end. It has certainly been a semester of learning and adjusting to what college will be like for the next 3 years. I believe I learned more in this semester then I learned in a whole year of high school. Not only have I learned a lot about school but also about me and how I had to and will continue to have to adjust my ways in order to be a successful college student.

                I have learned so many things that I can’t name them all but the biggest thing I have learned to do is use better time management in college. Time management is no joke in college, if your plan is to be successful that is. I have always been that kid throughout high school to not really care about assignments and push them off to the last second. Now that I’m in college that doesn’t work, there’s not enough time in the day to get everything done definitely if it’s a college assignment. College is taken very serious and teachers can tell if you hold off an assignment all the way to the last minute. That is probably the biggest adjustment I have made since I have entered and it is not an easy adjustment by any means. There are many distractions that take place at college but the thing I realized is that these things don’t go away they go on every day so it’s best to just get your work done then enjoy the extracurricular activities that go on so you’re not stressing to get a giant assignment done on time. 

                Learning how to be a successful time manager was very tough for me. Main reason why, I’m a college athlete my schedule is crazy. I am on the southern football team and we have practices and lifts. Everyday practices go from 3-6 besides Monday that would be our day off. It got really tough at times this semester where I would find myself so overwhelmed with football that I just couldn’t handle the school work. As time went on I learned to handle things more proper and got into a solid routine. My routine would be going to class then taking a pre practice nap. After that I’d practice then go to study hall and bang out as much home work as possible. Once study hall ended I would go back to my room and continue to work. Truthfully though, there would be weeks where I wouldn’t have to follow this exact routine. No practice Mondays is when I would take care of most of my work. With all that time on my hand and not having to worry about a meeting or making it to practice on time I found that I was able to accomplish a lot more. After establishing this solid routine I started to find college to go a lot more smoothly so I highly suggest students to get a good routine in place it helps out a lot, definitely if you’re a college athlete.

                To conclude this semester has been quite the eye opener it made me realize what I have gotten myself into entering college. If you don’t get what I mean by this I mean that college is very difficult and it is not all about partying and having a good time it’s about growing up and where you plan to be in the future. Both of those two things are a choice though you can screw off and waste your money or your parents money on partying and screwing off or you can take college in a more serious manner and possibly someday find yourself making a lot of money if you dedicate yourself and put in the work to get you there, but at the end of the day it’s all about how well you managed your time and that is biggest thing I have learned this first semester.

video project 3

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=amwxCJYZEIw&feature=youtu.be

Now that I have more experience with making video projects I believe this is my best one. I chose to do my project on college distractions. I felt this was a great topic in general because there are so many things in college that can distract you from being a successful student.  After two video projects I kind of got a better understanding on how to make a good video that keeps the interest of the viewers so I hope you find my video enjoyable.

Summing up Creativity

After reading this book I have learned that Twyla Tharp and I have very similar perspectives on creativity. It’s obvious she is very creative and has benefited from it. It is important to know how to be creative and how to use it because being creative makes you successful. Creativity can be defined in various ways but at the end they all are very similar. Creativity is going above and beyond using ideas that others wouldn’t that you came up with yourself. It is important to be creative, without creativity we would live in a simple world where everything is boring. It’s those who are creative that make this world interesting. As people get older it has been proven that their creativity fades away. This is not good and there’s no exact reason why but it’s possible that it could be because life gets more serious and you start to grow up. Its okay to grow up but those who lose their creativity lose the thrill in life. It is proven that kids have the most creativity do to the fact that they don’t have to follow a routine like an adult has too. What we need to do is change this and not go by routine. That why me as an individual like to do things on my own and figure things out on my own because I believe the most creative people are individuals that work by themselves. Without creative people we would probably live in a very simple society so be thankful for those who are creative because that’s what is keeping our world at the cutting edge.

Campus safari

This week I decided to go to another workshop based on how to write an essay. Essay tests become more common in college and are very important to know how to do. Luckily I have yet to have taken a essay test but now that I have learned on how to write one as well as some tips on how to make it best. Now that I have learned tips and also the right way to respond to an essay test I feel more prepared for the future. One tip that I found most helpful that the professor adressed was to read the question and think of three main topics on what you can talk about. The professor said that 3 main things is a great way of answering an essay question if you want to go over and beyond try for four. The most intresting thing I learned in this work shop was that before responding to an essay question you should always give your self some time to develope what you plan to write on a seperate pieve of paper. This is very helpful because one you wont forget what your trying to talk about and two if you dont finish your essay on time atleast the professor can get an understanding on where you were going with your responce by looking at the outline.

Twyla Tharpe Exercise

I chose to do exercise seven in chapter five. It is called name that muse. There are nine muse’s and they represent the daughters of Zeus and Mnemosyne. The nine muse’s are; Calliope, Clio, Erato, Euterpe, melpomene, Polyhymnia, Terpsichore, Thalia, and Urania. The point of this exercise is to put an image to each name so that you can remember its meaning. At first I had to think of how I should go with this exercise and this is what I came up with. Calliope means epic poetry when looking over this word I thought what in this word will remind me of epic and I thought hey it has the word “Cali” in it so that’s how I remember that one. Clio means history so i thought of a historical thing and I came up with Cleopatra which is a very historical name. For Erato which means love poetry gave me the hard time trying to figure out how I can connect the word but then I realized that Erato has every letter the word Heart has in it besides the H so that’s how I memorize that one. Euterpe is definitely that one word where I just have no image or trick to memorize the meaning of Euterpe is music. Melpomene means problem as soon as I saw this word I memorized it because it basically has the word help in it. Polyhymnia was a very quick muse to remember it means sacred song, so to remember it I thought of polytheism which means one god so that’s the sacred part and then it has hymn in it which reminds me of the word rhyme and that’s where I get the song part from. Terpsichore means choral song this was pretty simple because the first image that came to mind was chorus which is music. The muse Thalia gave me a difficult time though. Its meaning is comedy and truthfully I really couldn’t connect this word to anything. The last of the nine muse’s is possibly the easiest to remember its Urania meaning astronomy and obviously the first thing you think of when you hear that name is Uranus the planet. After doing this workout I think it helped expanded my creative thought process and I deffinetly think it’s a very useful exercise.

Facing the Fear

Have you ever worked really hard for something, and still was scared that you would fail well if so we have that in common. My fear is failing, or not achieving in what I have worked very hard for. When I say I fear failing I’m referring to school assignments but also on the field. As life goes on and the chance of failing is always in site I try to avoid it by doing little things these little things can help you too! The things I do before I go into anything is 1) build my confidence up. By this I actually mean that I tell myself, I’m the best I can do this. All it takes is a few words to build up your self-confidence. 2) I go into everything with a good attitude, doesn't matter what the situation maybe you forgot to study the night before a test. Don't be negative about it though although you screwed up you still can pull off passing just be positive. I'm not saying you shouldn't study that's an awful thing to do. What you should do is study but if you still are worried of failing you shouldn't you should believe no matter what you can pass. The third step takes the most time but if you can do the third then you won’t ever fear failing again. 3) Never doubt yourself. If you can go into something with no doubt, then you have gotten over the fear of failing. 

campus safari

This week for my campus safari I went to a work shop. The work shop was about how to be sucessful at taking notes. I believe I learned alot from this hour work shop. we learned strategies of what to do for certain types of notes. We also were taught that the old saying," If you sit in the back of the class your not going to learn." is not true because now in days its all about feeling comfortable where you are in the class and finding the spot where you will be less distracted. It's all personal preference. Another thing I learned was how to take actual notes because theres different way which i never knew. I found this very interesting. I am happy I went to this because I truely feel it was helpful.