14V: Investment!

What is it to make an Investment?

è  The action or process of investing money for profit or material result. Not always does it only include money. Its really applying anything such as effort or energy in order to get something you desire in the end.

Articulate- This is having or showing the ability to speak fluently and coherently.. to pronounce and enunciate your words properly.

Ratification- It is making something valid by formally ratifying or confirming it.

14B: Thanksgiving post

Hmm what exactly am I truly thankful for that’s taken place during my first semester of college? Well for starters, I’m thankful for the fact that I found a group of friends that I can relate to and that are literally just like me. That was one of my major worries coming into freshman year.. what if I don’t find a friend I can relate to and hangout with?! IM thankful for the fact that I have yet to have any true issues in the dorm and that I get along with my roommate.. why on earth would I want to have a roommate that I don’t get along with? Imagine living with someone for one WHOLE year that you did not get along with!!

Coming into college I worried that I would be stuck with a group of professors that were hard and unwilling to work with their students.. safe to say this is far from the truth. I was lucky enough have almost near perfect professors (except for one)! Fun and flexible are really the only words that can be used to describe my professors. They understand each students strengths and weaknesses in the classroom and are willing to find a way to work with the student so they are better off as a student and are able to have success in the near future.

I’m thankful for the fact that Im not doing horribly thus far.. by no means am I doing great but it could be worse.. I’m glad I’ve made it through the first semester without failing out of the university. 

14A: Preparation over Break

                There’s no better feeling than going home after not having seen your family and friends in nearly a month. It’s always a good time when you go back home for the first time in a while; and though I’m 30 minutes from home.. I do get home sick. So getting to sleep in my own bed and have a home cooked meal was something that couldn’t be replaced.

                Having a week off gave me a bunch of extra time to get myself prepared mentally for finals week, which is one of the most dreaded weeks in all of college. Finals week shouldn’t be too hard for me seeing as I only have one final where I actually have to step foot into a classroom! (thankyou professors) This week mainly consisted of me gathering information and filming some things for my next video in inquiry. I sat down and really had a lot of time to myself to brainstorm how I would go about handling my final project in this class. Though I didn’t have too much work to get done or even have any finals to prepare for, I took the time to really plan for this inquiry final because my grade as of now isn’t exactly where I’d like it to be and if I get an A on this final It can really boost my grade.

                Thanksgiving came and I took the opportunity to be thankful for the fact that my math teacher is sending out an extension until December 4^th to finish all late math homework.. talk about a life saver. So once this is all completed and I ace this math final, I can walk away from freshman year happy and maybe end on terms that I choose myself, maybe I can walk out of the first semester satisfied with what I did as a student. 

13I: Registration..

It seems to me like everyone had such a hard time registering for classes in the spring.. I wish I felt your pain. Athletes at SCSU are given the opportunity to register 3 weeks earlier. What’s tough about registration for athletes is the fact that we usually are limited as well. Most of our schedules have to be free by 2 pm everyday, and that simply means morning classes… I’m not really a fan of that at all. I want to wake up late and finish around 4 or 5 and not have to worry about anything else at all.. While on the topic of registration, SCSU should maybe develop a better system for it.. because the one they have now is awful. 

13V: Vocab for the mind

What is your Purpose?

Will you strive to make a difference and stand for something? Will everything you do and aspire to be in the future have a sole purpose? Or will it be random acts that don’t stand for anything useful? A purpose is the exact reason something is done or created; all important actions in life are handled with a purpose.

Speculate-  Form a theory or state your exact opinion about a subject without firm evidence.

Adjunction- The asserting in a single formula of two previously asserted formulae….. Someone please better explain this to me in class on Tuesday.. thanks. 

13B: Creativity In Your Video

                Creativity…. I like to think I’m a tad bit more creative than the average college student and maybe even the average person who’s graduated from college. So for my final video I’ll go about setting a goal of having the most creative video in my class. I like to think my first video was creative, it just wasn’t very clean or well thought out. I plan on winning my professor over with soft but witty humor, and maybe even some elaborate jokes I’ve created myself.. always been quite the jokester. My goal is to create a video that’s fun, humerous, but filled with informational bits and pieces that can potentially help my peers to go on and enable them to writing the perfect paper.

                In the background of all that takes place in the video I’ll use catchy music that immediately draws the viewers attention to the computer screen and makes them want more.. Background actions are important. (I know this from my film making class I took in 8^th grade). I’ll assemble the best crew of actors I possibly can and make sure that they perform their lines to a T. My lines however will be strictly improv; nothing like someone on camera winging it as best they can.

                When all is said and done I’ll have the funniest most creative video that has ever passed through a freshman inquiry class at southern ct state university.. (Hopefully)

13A: College Level Thinking

As I journey into making my second video for inquiry, I’m trying to everything completely different this time. No way will I hand in another video like the last one. What do you immediately think of when you hear a teacher say “Embody a sense of college level thinking?” If someone asked me this the first week of college, I would have thought instantly like a high school student would.. ten page research papers daily and endless work.. But that’s far from what it actually is.

                College consists of going about assignments in a way that sort of makes you think outside of the box, nothing is as straight forward like an assignment in high school. An assignment in college makes it so you tap into a strong sense of critical thinking and implying some everyday knowledge into each and every assignment. When going about making my final video I plan on actually going around campus and using the resources SCSU has for writing the perfect paper and showing that they are available to us students. My first video didn’t get the grade I was much hoping for, so on this next video I plan to stray away from my methods and carefully examine how I go about making this next video.. no need to make the same mistakes twice. Good college students are enable to inquire and accomplish things without explicit direction by a professor or one of their peers;  I plan to critically think and inquire what I know about this campus and its writing facilities into my next video. I’ll even use tools from our 14 weeks of readings that we’ve had in inquiry thus far throughout the year. Hopefully with using all of the tools that I’ve been taught , and with my own personal I’ll be able to write the perfect paper and make the perfect video.

12V: VOCAB FOR THE MIND!!!

11.)    Interdisciplinary Perspective- It is looking at “the same” issue/s from multiple disciplinary perspectives,  in a way that tries to integrate or make holistic sense of the various explanations of “the same” phenomena that are generated from each of the disciplinary perspectives; an interdisciplinary perspective might be more than merely multi-disciplinary because of an attempt to think through the relations between the various disparate disciplines” explanations. (I have no idea what this means, I got it off Griffith.edu… hopefully you can further explain in class.)

22.)    Perspective- Is the particular point of view someone has on varying topics. A certain and particular attitude someone possesses upon certain things.

33.)    Rendition- Ran across this word on youtube today.. I liked the way it rolled off the tongue (now I guarantee that you just said this out loud once more, didn’t you Professor Guarino?) It’s someone’s own variation or interpretation of some sort of dramatic role or musical piece. 

12B: Is college really doing its job?

*What is college exactly needed for? Is it as important as people portray it to be?*

                Growing up, college was something that we were all taught was a necessary thing, and that basically without a college degree, success was something that was almost as attainable as walking on the moon for the average person. We were all told that a college level, four year degree opens up doors that only a GED won’t open.

                College or an institute of higher learning is something that prepares people and builds them better intellectually than high school did. College also is something that is known for doing a very good job of maturing a person as a whole. Entering college as 17 and 18 year old teenager is something that can seemingly be overwhelming, seeing as some of those teenagers are still trapped in the high school mind frame.  College builds young adults and quickly starts an intense process of maturing these individuals into bright adults, that are mature enough to think on their feet quickly and prepares adults that are mature enough to go into the real world on their own and find ways of success. Aside from maturing students and building them intellectually, as you set out on the long journey to studying your major, college prepares bright young individuals for the job world that seemingly is in your near future.

                But is a college education what you really need to be successful? Living in a time where a four year college degree means basically as much as a GED does, is a college degree what you need to be able to land you first job? Reflecting back on one of our readings, it says, “In today’s generation as job opportunities decrease, if you want a job, invent it!” Does college really do a strong enough job in preparing innovative people that possess that creative drive and skill needed to create their own job opportunities?  This question can simply be answered with one word.. no. This is exactly why the four year Liberal Arts degree will seemingly be more important than the master’s degree in mathematics. Liberal Arts programs build balanced and well-rounded students that can potentially work in multiple different fields, while the math degree limits you to simply math. How many math teaching jobs are really actually available?

12A: Is liberal Arts Necessarry?

When I went about picking a major for college, Liberal Arts was one that nearly everyone steered me away from. I always heard “There’s no job opportunities when it comes to Liberal Arts” or “Liberal Arts is for those who lack the mental capacity to hold the knowledge that it takes to require such a field as psychology or biology.”

                What exactly is Liberal Arts?

                Liberal Arts is the broad study of academic subjects such as literature, philosophy, mathematics, and social and physical sciences all combined into one. Seems useful to me? Seems to me that Liberal Arts finds a way to build well rounded and well educated students, that possess the academic ability to hold an educated conversation in many different fields.

                Liberal Arts also plays an intricate role in the job pursuing field. Surveys say that employers look for their potential college employees to be able to meet “learning outcomes” which is exactly what a liberal arts education provides. Employers want someone who writes better than the average, speaks better than the average, and reasons better than average. The liberal arts education provides the creative drive and enables all of the tools for the people with this degree to do exactly that. Especially now that we’re in a generation where if we want a job we need to create it, liberal arts provides the education necessary for someone to create their own job opportunity, for someone to create their own destiny when it comes to their future in the job world. It is able to expand your learning and overcome the notion of blindness towards education; it broadens the awareness to other subjects. These subjects consist of cultural histories, multicultural languages, it opens the mind to various mathematical fields, and introduces concepts of many scientific fields.

                Liberal arts produces well rounded students who possess the mental capacity to create their own job opportunities as well as fit right in to many job fields already there. 

11B: Prepared

This week has brought a new perspective to my view on tests and quizzes. Now that I know how to analyze and ask college questions I don’t think I’ll ever be stumped on a question again.

In class one of my peers asked “ Why is it important to be able to formulate good educated potential test questions?” I thought about it and really didn’t have an answer until I failed the math test that I took next period. I realized that if I can be able to formulate potential questions I can then better prepare myself for what the test will be on.. maybe even have the answer alreadly prepared for the question that will be asked.

Seeing as my study habits are awful, having any bit of help or head start is something I can use to help better my grades. Being prepared is the first step to passing a test. 

11A: Productive Questions!

This week in inquiry the readings we were assigned were about creativity and lessons in perspective. The readings ranged from innovation and to the joy of boredom. In the end all of the readings touched back upon the art of “creativity”. What I found interesting with these readings, and seemingly every other reading we’ve done, they all touch back on points that were made back in the first two weeks of school when we discussed motivation and the inner drive that we possess.

                Our class lesson required us to develop “creative” questions that would potentially be asked on a quiz or test. We were asked to venture away from our high school ways and use our newly built college-minds and form good, thorough questions that could form a discussion.  

11.)    How does the creative industry hold people of creative nature ransom to their own self image?

People of creative nature are held ransom because of fear of not being creative enough to please everyone.  Most jobs lack creativity.  People learn to live without the need to be creative.  so for jobs that require creativity, there is a lot more pressure on these creative people.  These people become less willing to put their ideas out there because they don't want to be criticized or rejected.  The pressure of coming up with the best idea keeps creative people from coming up with an already great idea.

22.)    When we ignore innovation, what are we more likely to accomplish?

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33.)    What is the difference between a fact-based question and an inquiry based question? In detail describe what an inquiry based question is and what a fact based question is.

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44.)    When analyzing the joy of boredom, what can we do to break away from technology as what use to fill the time? How can we make the free time that we call “boredom” something productive?