"Give Me A Map And I'll Show You Where The 'Giraffe Women' Live!"

"Everything has to do with geography." Judy Martz 

Indians in the West, Culture conflicts up in the Middle East, Climate problems up in the North and Political changes down South. Oh Geography class! How much I've learned from you and I've actually enjoy it! Yea I know.... Geography? One of the classes that usually everyone dreads, but to be honest I don't know why. The class consists of various powerpoint slides where the teacher points and/or talks about cultures and give interesting side notes of the region/country/continent to keep us even more attentive on the subjects presented at the class. Did you know that the Women in the Padaung or Kayan Lahwi (A subgroup in Asia)  culture have to wear necks rings since they are 5 years old and that's how they got their nickname as the "Giraffe Women". Punishment for adultery? Take the rings off and since their neck muscles have become atrophied by the excessive amount of time wearing the rings, they have to live their rest of their lives laying down. Now I know that seems kind of crazy and all but its their CULTURE and I find it so interesting to find out things like that which are out of the ordinary. The crave this semester for that class has become so intense that my lowest Exam grade for it is a 94.  The class is demanding when it comes to memorizing countries and other continents plus the facts of the different regions but when you're having fun in a class and your eyes and ears have full attention on the subject, the class is not a class anymore, it's an incredibly enjoyable lifetime event.

"Not Only Am I Cozy But I'm Also Being Productive!"

Where else can you possibly find the double Cs  with a side dish of silence for a study place? No idea? I do Ever been to the Student Center's Fire place? A room located on the third floor of the center designed only for students to be able to have a secured study place to work on their homework practically at any time  they please to be productive. Now I know hat you're asking, what are the double Cs ? Well it's just the simple combination is for a study place. Now this is my personal favorite thing about this place, it not only provides comfortable couches and a pleasant environment but it exposes an extraordinary view of the campus with its enormous windows. In here I've experienced looking at the different seasons and weather, from sunny days to rainy to windy and even snowy, now if you're the type of person who likes to observe sweet mama naturaleza (Mother Nature) I recommend for to you to go here. The last thing that this place has that is pretty attractive to people such as myself where I need space for myself is that there's not a lot of people who go there, its always very presentable, and to me... Well it's my favorite place in the entire campus.

" Organizing Emotions Is Far More Effective"

“There are thousands of causes for stress, and one antidote to stress is self-expression. That’s what happens to me every day. My thoughts get off my chest, down my sleeves and onto my pad.”

It’s finally the month of November, and I couldn’t be any happier. Why you ask? Well the reason why is because it’s a whole new month and a whole new month to sew myself together from the past few weeks of October that have brought me down entirely to the point where I couldn’t handle simple task that I did in my usual schedule.  At the lowest point I remembered something crucial…. Why am I bottling everything up? I mean what’s the point of that? My friends continuously told me that I was always my own worst enemy because of my over thinking in every situation I’m in and they’re absolutely right on target. In the past summer I told myself that I would keep an online diary where I can organize all my thoughts in a single space or in this case; a screen.  So far I haven’t fulfilled my own promise to myself and I’ve been going downhill,  that sort of became the consequence for being unorganized and let admit to you that it wasn’t the best feeling… But that’s all good and done as I started typing out feelings again and according to the article that I read recently, emotions are leading factor on how we act and it affects our actions in a great percentage.

"You're Inflating My Ego!"

            3.0? Check. Same classes as everyone? Check. Changed the teacher’s mind about my grade because I felt it was unfair? Check. Will someone tell me who made this “To- do” list? It seems that almost every student have a large share of similarities in their academic history, now why do you think that is? Now in my class we talked about how does grade inflation affect us in our individuality, apparently we agreed that it debases the term “out of the ordinary” as we start learning consciously and unconsciously to not do as much work as the hard working students only because the teachers are suddenly curving their test grades and changing grades. The laziness is easily spreading out but how can you even blame the students when these teachers are becoming more and more gullible and vulnerable to students who strongly demand a better grade for honestly no reason. It has become a cycle and the cycle only gets worse as the cycle only keeps boosting the student’s ego to never be wrong and to reject and deny the accusation of having a bad grade even if they know they’re doing average work. There’s been a study about college students to prove that they have become far less working then what generations before have done as it quoted “This would mean that today the amount of work required of an undergraduate student is similar to what a high school student needed to accomplish 40 years ago.” if you want to read the article here it is “Data suggests that college students are getting lazy.”

“I Don’t Want A Treat, I Want A Trick To Fix My Grade!”

“Nice job in that class!” “ Oh that’s so good” “WHAT THE HECK?!”

Yea… sorry mom. Midterms grades came out and what do I see? Pretty much of what I expected, except for one little thing that brought my whole GPA down. What’s it called? Math. The thing is, I was actually really good at math as a young kid, so what happened? Beats me. As I stared at the screen gazing at my grades I couldn’t help but to feel so aggravated and frustrated as I saw every grade that I wanted but math; my academic weakness, and not to mention that I also knew that my only academic flaw was going to bring my whole academic GPA down, even though I worked hard throughout the semester. So what now? Back to the beginning of course! That’s probably the hardest thing to do in any problem-solving situation, find out what’s wrong with your original plan/agenda and try to modify it. Another factor to count in is that since it’s October, almost everyone got use to his or her daily schedule and though humans can adapt, they usually dread change. But of course life is an ever-changing environment which the need to resolve daily problems is essential to all of us.  My goals for the rest of the semester is to improve my math grade by going to tutoring and finding more time in my schedule to use it to study for test and quizzes.

"Move Out The Way! I Want to Lead The Pack!"

Who has ever heard of a freshman leading a team workout? Especially in college! The thought of a younger athlete leading the pack is not very commonly accepted throughout college teams because of the sense of seniority from older kids but at times there are some freshman that dare to challenge the hierarchy, when that happens it tends to be very controversial. I got lucky; my teammates acted more accepting then what other teams would usually act like when a younger athlete or maybe “inexperience” athlete would take leadership in practice, they encouraged me to keep going though they said their “competitive” nature was aggravated and turning on but when they said to me it made me wonder if that’s really a bad thing to turn on your competitive nature? I mean when you start competing within your own practice wouldn’t that help you way even further during real championship competitions? I think so. At the beginning of the year I let the juniors (who are basically the top swimmers in the team) know that I wanted to stay close to them during practices, at first they made it seem to take it as joke that how could someone that hasn’t gone through the practices they’ve done for 2 years now could keep up with them, but as the practices went on and they assigned the lanes, to their surprise they saw that I could keep up with them but just recently I tried to lead the lane, it was extremely hard but I’m sure it’ll pay off at the end.

My Project

The video!


http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=esp3mJBzTQw