8A: The st(A)ndouts

I found it interesting that this week’s assignment involved us evaluating each other’s blogs. I think it will be exciting to see what we as peers consider as “A” material amongst our bunch. However, this is not the first time I have analyzed my fellow bloggers blogs and it definitely won’t be the last. I always go through a variety of the blogs each week because it’s a great way to make sure I won’t be too repetitive in my own. Although I wish I could credit everyone for things that are amazing about their blogs unfortunately for this post I’m going to have to narrow it down to a couple of the people who I think are likely deserving of an A/A+.

One of the blogs that in my opinion demonstrates good work is "Blog girl". I like this blog because it’s simple and easy to get around while at the same time it still manages to be engaging. It’s nice how she makes her points clear and organizes her work accordingly with an intro, middle, and end. She also always includes interesting pictures or videos to go along with her posts which to me are a plus. Altogether I think she succeeds in getting her opinion across and shows satisfying work.

Another blog that usually catches my attention is "An Owl's Mind by Kali Rogers". I admire how it has a unique background composed of pictures of a fierce owl which compliments the blog’s title. I also think it is great how she splits up the writing so you don’t have to read just one huge collection of words. She also makes her blog enjoyable by including funny pictures which show her sense of humor. However, the biggest reason why I think this blog is A+ material is because she is always very elaborate and backs up her writing with educated and detailed information which enlightens the reader. An example of this is from her 3A post: “This line from the infamous play, Hamlet, came from a conversation between the Prince of Denmark himself, and one of his courtiers, Rosencrantz.”

All being said about these two wonderful blogs, hopefully they are receiving appropriate grades. It’s clear that it takes thought and effort to produce a blog of excellent quality. I constantly try to implement such elements in my blog in attempt to make my posts better. I think it was beneficial for us to point out what we think makes blogs exceptional because it causes us to be more aware of what we need be doing as individuals to improve our own work. As mentioned in our class readings in order for us to get better we need to dedicate ourselves and continuously work on our weaknesses.

8V: Mastery

 

Mastery is the concept of advancing to a very high level of proficiency at a specific subject or craft. When I hear the word Master the first thing that comes to mind is how in the movies when they mention a master it’s usually a very old man with an extreme amount of wisdom. This goes along with the idea that it usually takes a certain amount of time(on average at least 10 years or 10,000hours) before someone can be considered to have reached a level of mastery. It’s apparent that if we want to excel at something we’re going to have to put in a lot of hours of hard work and deliberate practice.

One of the new words I added to my vocabulary this week is deleterious. It means something that is harmful or negative.

Another word I learned is insipid which means to not have any taste or flavor. It also could mean lacking excitement or something boring.

8B: Her beloved world

The Common Read that was assigned to the incoming freshmen this year was “My Beloved World” by Sonia Sotomayor. It is a memoir so the entire book is her version of how things occurred in the past. She recounts her life experience and the different hardships that she had to endure growing up, but as you might have already guessed this story has a happy ending. As we all know Sonia goes on to become an Associate Justice of the Supreme Court of the United States.

I really enjoyed this book because I could relate to some of the things Sonia went through. It inspires me to know that even those who start off as less fortunate have the potential to achieve great things. Sonia lived in the projects in New York and beside her disadvantages including her diabetes she was able to get into Princeton University. She continued to work hard way beyond that which explains how she went to Yale for Law school and continued working her way up through the years. Sonia is a great example of deliberate practice because she truly dedicated herself to her dream and continued improving with time. However, she had to sacrifice other things in her life by dedicating herself completely to her job such as her marriage with Kevin. This reflects how sometimes we lose things in the process of trying to accomplish our goals, and how we need to make our priorities clear so that we can continue working towards what we desire most.

Sonia’s memoir is very inspirational and that’s probably the biggest reason why it was chosen to be the Common Read. It shows students that we control our fate and that hard work and dedication ultimately determine how far we can get in life. It gives us hope because Sonia shares that she didn’t start out so well as a student in elementary school but she asked for help from those who knew what they were doing and eventually she found what worked for her and kept working on her weaknesses and improving her study skills. This relates directly to us as incoming freshmen because we have to settle in and find what works for us by asking others and using our resources. Altogether “My Beloved World” is a great story and it helps people realize that if we fight to overcome the challenges and disadvantages that we’re faced with then we can accomplish amazing things in life.

               MY SIX WORD MEMOIR: It’s been worse, it’ll get better.

My memoir reflects how there have been some hard times in my life, and how it’s already gotten better. Also that I plan for it to get even better in the future.

midterm video project rough draft

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=O5RQa1EB9oU&feature=youtu.be

7B: Yesterday is History

I was taking a brief reflection of my college experience so far and one thing I considered as a little bit of a failure was my performance in my History class. This has never been one of my favorite subjects because in my opinion things of the past tend to get really confusing and repetitive. There always seems to be some sort of disagreement then a war to try and reach an agreement, which also usually comes attached with a lot of death and debt. It just seems depressing to me most of the time.

Anyways, I was unsatisfied with the first grade I got in that class. Although it’s not considered failing and most people would probably be satisfied with such a grade, to me it was disappointing. I spent a lot of time studying but when the exam came around some things seemed completely different and unfamiliar. I noticed that what I had taken notes on from in the text book had showed a different aspect then what the professor had shared in class. On the exam the questions seemed to be leaning more toward what was given in the lecture rather than what was written in the books. Since, my class is a huge lecture there isn’t much discussion like in high school, so my reaction was to just try and write down as much of what the professor said as possible. I realized immediately that my mistake was getting too hung up on every little thing that the he said instead of picking out the important points and later looking further into them in the book.

I decided to move my seat to the very front row of the lecture room so that I could clearly hear what the professor says without feeling the need to write it all down because now I’m so close that I could just ask him anything I don’t fully understand. I listen more attentively now before jotting down random things. I have also been comparing what I’ve been learning from the book with what is brought up in lecture beforehand. So that I could see how everything plays in this time instead of just analyzing two different sources of information and only trying to make sense of them on the test. I hope that I can continue to improve my study skills not just for history but for all classes in general. This incidence made me realize that certain classes require different approaches and techniques and also that college truly provides endless learning opportunities whether it be from our mistakes or from the text books.

7A: It's Not Right But It's Okay...

In my opinion I believe that failure is never encouraged and that people are always pressured not to fail. From a young age we are taught to try and make the least of mistakes as possible. We were trained how to speak, walk, write, read, color, behave, and much more, in ways that were considered most perfect. Whenever we happened to fall short of expectations we were scolded and instructed to do better. This is where the fear of not being good enough or ‘failing’ started to become instilled in us.

People never want to be perceived as inadequate or as a failure. Therefore, I also believe that there is no place where it’s completely safe to fail. However, I do think that there are certain people that are more accepting of failure than others. For instance, even though it seems that family are the most judgmental towards us when we make mistakes, deep down they’re the ones who accept us the most and the biggest reason why they react so harshly in times of failure is because they want us to have the best life possible. On the other hand, society is probably the worst place to fail because everything is a constant competition and failure can discredit you and make you easier to replace. That’s part of the reason why doctors are so ashamed of admitting their mistakes.

 
The impact is negative when we fear failure and stay in denial, because it halts progress. If we don’t acknowledge the problems then they are going to continue to happen. That’s why it is important to realize that it’s impossible to be perfect. We all have some sense of what we are capable of and it’s obvious that some plans are just unrealistic. I feel that when we set such far-fetched objectives were basically just setting ourselves up for failure, unhappiness and disappointment. As J.K Rowling mentioned “Achievable goals: the first step to self-improvement.” and “It is impossible to live without failing at something, unless you live so cautiously that you might as well not have lived at all – in which case, you fail by default.” Another thing that comes into mind on the subject of failing and improvement is deliberate practice. Instead of wallowing in shame we need to face our failures and continually work on fixing them so that we can eliminate our biggest weaknesses and hope that eventually we might master our work. It might not seem right when we fail but it’s okay as long as we can turn it into a learning experience and never give up.