Slipping and Sliding to Class

With the sudden snow in the middle of fall, I was talking to some upperclassmen in my building. He was telling me and my roommates about last winter and we learned some interesting facts about Southern that other freshman might want to know. He told us that Southern does not like to cancel school. They are the last of all the state schools to cancel school. If they do not have to, then they will not. This worries me because I am very clumsy, and I tend to slip a lot in the winter. I am not looking forward to it because I have noticed that when it is wet outside, the granite stairs get very slippery.

To make matters worse, the kid also told us that the bridge is “like a slippery death trap.” According to him, the bridge is always slippery, even if they put rock salt down and the bridge occasionally gets black ice. I feel as if that is completely unsafe. So many people use the bridge, and if it is really that slippery, it makes me wonder how many people will slip and fall this winter. I may just feel safer just walking in the street and using the cross walks because at least there is rock salt down so it will be a little easier to walk. Another possibility in order to avoid falling, besides walking like a turtle, is to take the shuttle. My only thing about this is I would have to know the bus schedule, and I feel like a lot of people, especially upperclassmen, do this, so there would not be that many seats left on the shuttle.

The more that I thought about it, the more I realize that just because the school does not close, does not mean that the teacher will not cancel the class.

Say Hi to The Chainsaw Guy

  Last Friday, I went to Lake Compounce with my friends and Southern for the haunted grave yard. Now I hate scary things. I do not watch scary movies, and I try to avoid being scared as much as possible. Me and my other friend, who is the same way as me, were told that the scary would stay in the haunted grave yard. It turns out we were lied to. There were people in costumes all over the place. Me and my two friends went on rides the majority of the time and we sure did not go into that haunted grave yard. The only hard part was avoiding the people walking around intentionally trying to scare people.

  In order to do this, we all walked arm in arm looking around like the most paranoid people ever. The first creature that we saw was a odd looking thing. From behind you could not really tell what he, or it, was. We followed him for a while, and then we discovered what he was. He went in-between the bushes and blended in, he was a bush. He would hide there and scare unknowing people who walked by him. We walched him scare a few people, and then we continued to walk so that no one would try to get us.

    After we went on a few more rides, my friends wanted to go on this rollercoaster that goes upside down. Now I hate heights, so me going on all of the other rides was unlike me enough that I did not need to go on this roller coaster. I walked through the line with them and then went through the exit when they went on. While I was watching them, I kept looking behind my back, and it is a good thing I did. Behind me was this zombie looking guy with a chainsaw. He scared two grown men behind me who screamed like little girls and ran. When he started to approach me, my heart was pounding. Now I know they aren't really zombies, but it was still scary. So I did the only thing that I could think of to get him away from me. I turned my head, smiled, waved, and said "Hey!" After he looked at me for a little while, he turned his head, waved, and walked away. It felt so good to know that all I had to do to get him away was wave.

Midterms and Beyond

  I can honestly say that I am not proud of my midterm grades at all. I honestly believe that I could have done so much better and I know why they were the way they were for each one. The reason for each one is homework. I either forgot that I had it, or I would try to do it and not fully understand it, and the computer doesn't count partial credit, so for my math class I can't really do anything about it. I was honestly expecting the grades because I knew I was behind on my assignments.
  For this next half of the semester, I will be doing all of my homework and my papers ahead of time and not wait until last minute to complete them (which is why I am completing this assignment now). For my math, I will do the assignments as soon as I get them, even if they aren't due for a few days. This will also help me because if I don't understand it, I will have time to ask my teacher how to do it because if I wait until the night it's due, I won't have time to ask. For english I will check my syllabus everyday even if I am sure that I don't have any that day, or I think I already did it because she sometimes gives us more than one in a day to do. For inquiry, I will do my blog posts all at once when I can so that I don't forget when one is due, because that is my biggest problem. I feel good about anthropology, it is just hard for me to do the homework when I don't understand the reading. For this I may need to read it one day twice, and then the next day read it twice again before I do the assignment just to make sure I cover everything.

Something New and Exciting

  This past weekend, I did something that I never do. I am an extremely shy person. I hang out with certain people with my full personality showing, but as soon as I get around new people, I stay really quiet and out of the way. This past weekend I went to a murder mystery even in my hall with my roommate. After it was all over and done with, we were asked to help out with a banner for homecoming. We decided to stay along with all of the people on the eboard and a few other residence. I decided to be my normal self instead of hiding my true personality.
  It turns out that there are some really cool people in my residence hall that I never even knew lived here. We worked on the banner for five hours and we were all laughing and dancing the entire time. For the next few days after that, we all continued to hang out in the basement and work on the banner so that we could make it the best that we could. We finally finished it today and it came out amazing. I made friends with a lot of people that I will most likely hang out with more.
   If I hadn't been myself, people may have not noticed me or not really got to know me. From this experience, I realize that I should really do that more often. I am in ollege and being shy all the time just isn't a good way for me to make more friends. We all hung out so much in the past four days that I would honestly say that if we ever had to do another major thing with our hall, I would hope that it would be with the same people.

Troubleshooting

  I have never really used Window's Movie Maker, and it turns out it's not as easy as I thought it was. I started last week and I made all of the title slides with no problem.  I changed the slide color, the font size, and the transitions into each slide. The problems came when I tried to add music. I was attempting to add music to a specific part and I only wanted to use a specific part of the song. For some odd reason, I could not figure out how to do it. To this point in time, I still have not figured out how to do it. I have to play around with the music more, but for right now, I am more focused on cutting my videos and putting them all together to make it one amazing video. If it truly comes down to it, I am sure that someone will know how to fix this and I will be able to ask when it comes time to ass all of the music because at this pint, I was just fooling around with it to see if I could do  it because I am not sure what music I want to put in it quite yet.

Library Skills

  Last week I learned a new skill that I am sure I will be using very often, how to find a book in my school's giant library.We had to find a book on critical thinking that we can use to help us make our videos for our midterm. Finding the book wasn't as hard as I had expected. Once I went on the library website to see if the book was available and where I could find it, all I had to do was look at the letters and numbers on all of the rows in order to find which book I was looking for.This will help me when I have to write papers for all of my classes, so I'm glad I learned it because I didn't know that you could use that website to look for not only books, but articles and other things that would help me with my papers.

Midterm Video

  Midterms are coming up. Usually that means spending hours studying for all different classes and panicking. Lucky for me we got a different project for my inquiry class that it actually interesting. We have to make a video interviewing people and asking them about critical thinking. The questions that I decided to focus on within the topic are how do you use critical thinking in school, and how do you use it outside of school. So far I know that I am going to use windows movie maker and I know who I am going to interview. I have already asked the question to a few people so that they have time to think about how they want to answer it. The only thing I haven't done is started the actual movie. I am going to start the camera interviewing and such this weekend. I know what I want the video to look like I just have to get it to look like I want it to.

What Is Critical Thinking?..No Really.

  When you look up "Critical Thinking", the actual definition is disciplined thinking that is clear, rational, open-minded, and informed by evidence. This makes my eyebrow go up and my head hurt. Over the past few months of school, we have been learning a little bit about it, and it's helped a little, but not by much. During inquiry, it finally hit me what critical thinking really means. It's about answering somethinf using evidence and explaining with a deeper meaning.
  The book, Critical Thinking, by John Hoaglund helped me undertand it a little bit more. In the book, it shows examples that you would have to put into premises and comclusions. Then after you try, it shows you the correct answer, the wrong answer, and why they're right or wrong. This helps me because I will never understand it if I'm just told that it's wrong.
  I never realized how much I actually use critical thinking, especially in college. In HighSchool, you had to answer thing, but in college you have to answer then with deeper thought in it and you have to back it up with a lot more examples to show that you know what you're doing.

Work Cited:
Hoaglund, John. Critical Thinking. Newport News, VA: Vale, 1995. Print. 6 October 2011.

Football vs Hockey

  This past Friday, my friends and I decided to game hop. We went from the football game against UNH to the hockey game against Farmingdale State all in one night. The first game that we went to was the football game. There were a lot of people there and the energy was pretty good. Everyone was standing the entire time and they were all completely into the game. My friends and I left at half time in order to make it to the net game, but when we left, we were winning 13 to 7. In the end, the team lost the game.
  We rushed to the shuttle that was taking us to the hockey game and we headed over to the game. When we got there, it was completely different. We were all up close to the team and everyone did chants together instead of doing three different ones at once. No this wasn't my first hockey game, but it was the first one that I actually got into. I was screaming along with everyone else and I learned a lot about hockey. They game was really close. In the first period, we scored two points. Then in the second period the other team caught up to us and scored one more. The score was two to three and everything got a lot more intense. In the third period, we scored and tied the game, that is until the other teamed scored again. Thankfully we caught back up, after being robbed by the refs when they took away one of our points. The game went into a five minute overtime and no one scored. With the game still tied, we went into shoot outs. Now I'm not sure how it exactly works, but they went back and forth with one person from each team trying to score on the other team's goalie.
  We made out first shot, and the goalie blocked the other teams first shot. Then they made it, and we did too. Then both teams missed twice in a row. Finally we scored and then blocked the shot, so we won!! It was the most intense thing to watch. I think I prefer hockey over football because you're right there close up to the ice and it's a better fan based atmosphere. I am definitely a huge fan of SCSU hockey and I will be going to as many games as I possibly can.

Relax The Stress

 
   This assignment worked out well for me this week because this week was oddly stressful. With my cheerleader's competition is next week and we aren't wuite ready. I am also attempting to help our younger squad, and on top of it trying to keep up with my school work. It's a lot more stress than people think, but I made a commitment and I have to stick to it. By Saturday, I was so tired and worn out that I had to go home to just relax. I had to go to my cheerleader's football game, and I was really dreading it. I was so stressed that I was on the boarder of a panic attack. When I got to the game, my stress all seemed to go away. My cheerleaders always seem to know how to make me laugh and smile. Being with them for those three hours made me feel so much better, I was shocked. They really know how to put a smile on my face and make me feel better.

Staying Healthy While Studying

  A lot of students have an issue staying healthy during the school year, but it's worse in college because it's hard to make up a class if you miss it. There are a few things that you can do to help prevent being sick. The first id the obvious, a flu shot. You don't want to be caught with the flu, because you won't be in class for a week. You can also carry tissues so you don't have to wipe your nose on your sleeve, EWW!! And let's not forget our handy dandy purel. Keep it with you just incase you touch something gross or if someone sneezes on you. There is also this new medacine that I recently discovered. It is called Zicam. As soon as you get that icky feeling, you take it, and it either helps prevent it, or allows you to get over it faster. Just as a fact, it does work. I took it when my roommate and I both felt sick, and a week later, she got sick and I didn't. If you follow these guidlines, your year will be a little easier.