My Six Best Posts

Throughout the first semester of college, I was required to create a Blog for one of my classes. We were supposed to post a total of about 13 blogs and also create video blogs. At first, I thought the class would be an “Easy A” and I wouldn’t have much to worry about. We only had to post about one blog a week, but the blogs were harder to write than I had first expected. I assumed that I would be writing about my life, and it would be as simple as that. In reality, we had to write about blogs we had found and enjoyed, we had to give our opinions on issues in the world, but we also were able to write a couple Lifestyle Blogs. The Lifestyle blogs were my favorite to write because they were the easiest for me, since you cannot be wrong while writing about your own life. This is why the order of my six best blog posts is as follows:

• Dorm Life 🙂

I chose this as my number one blog because I had the most fun writing it. The first time I wrote it, it was extremely long and unorganized, but I went back and revised it to make it shorter and flow easier. It was the easiest for me to write because it was about my college experiences so far. Lifestyle blogs are my favorite type, so obviously it would be near the top.

• Kids These Days..

This was my second favorite blog I wrote simply because it was commentary, and I was therefore able to provide my opinion on an issue. I thought my reasoning was well laid out and I had solid points in it.

• “You’re a Wizard, Harry.”

This was my third favorite blog because it was easy to write since I was interested in the topic. It mostly just felt like a book review, and I was able to give my opinion on the books and movies and provide reasons for people to read and watch them.

• Everyone Needs Some Humor in Their Lives

This was my fourth favorite blog because the blog I wrote about entertained me quite a bit. I still look into it every once in a while. “Hyperbole and a Half” was interesting to me, and also the type of blog I had assumed I would be writing from the beginning of the year. It was merely for entertainment.

• Social Media

I chose this as my fifth favorite blog because it made me think about the pros and cons of social media. It made me look past the obvious uses of internet and other technology.

• Summer Reading

This was my sixth favorite blog. It was the first blog I had ever written, and I was pretty excited about posting it. I had already been knowledgable about the topic I was writing about so it didn’t take long. I also think it was one of my better written blogs because I put quite a bit of thought into it, hoping to impress the public. It helped that I didn’t have to research any of the information because I already knew what I wanted to write.

I can’t say that I will update my blog religiously when this class is over, but it is something I will check on every once in a while. This class has made me realize that there are a lot more people in the world who blog than what I originally thought. I don’t think my blog was read by too many people who were not in my class, and it would have been nice to get more feedback and comments so I could better my blog from outside sources. Overall, it was a good experience, but not my favorite college experience.

“You’re a Wizard, Harry.”

Midnight movie premieres, midnight book releases, book tours, and movie marathons. After seven books, seven (eventually eight)  movies, and so much hype it puts Jersey Shore to shame, Harry Potter is coming to an end. It has been over ten years since the first Harry Potter book was released. Since then, it has become a phenomenon. It’s very rare (and upsetting) to find a person who has not read the books or seen the movies. I will not lie, I am a huge Harry Potter fan. I have read the whole series at least eight times.

When the Harry Potter craze first began, both my brother and I kept up to speed with the books, and we were extremely excited when the first movie was released. When we went on family vacations, my mom would read the books to us during the long car rides. After a while, we became annoyed with her reading to us as she had a tendency to read ahead and give something away. We then began renting books on tape which probably sounds old school, but the man reading the books had a British accent and was pretty entertaining.

For those of you who have not heard of Harry Potter, I will give a brief overview. The entire series takes place in England. No one is exactly sure where the school is located as it was never disclosed. The wizarding world (yes, wizarding) is very competetive and the three main wizarding schools did not wish to be spied on by the other schools. Therefore, they kept there location a secret. The beginning starts out with a young boy who is just about to turn 11. He lives with his aunt, uncle, and cousin who are not kind to him. Mysterious things begin to happen around him and he is told that he is not a muggle, which is a non magical person, but a wizard who had extremely famous parents. He is also told that he is not just a wizard, but a wizard who is very well known and famous. Throughout the series, it is discovered that the wizard who killed his parents is still alive and searching for Harry. Many people of the wizarding world attempt to protect him, however; not all of them. Harry is a boy who doesn’t necessarily enjoy being the center of attention or hero of the day, but he ends up in those situations constantly.

There is much too much to try to summarize into this small blogpost because I just could not do JK Rowling justice. She does a fantastic job of tying everything together throughout the seven books and leaves no one hanging at the end. No loose ends are left. The books are a bit longer than many other books, however, I feel as though if they were any shorter, they would not be as good. The length is perfect for the great amount of detail she puts into them. There is nothing I can think of that JK Rowling could have done to make this series better. The only thought that comes to mind would be to write more books, however, as most people have noticed, when sequels and more are created, they begin to lose the momentum and quality they first recieved. As much as I would like to keep reading on about Harry’s life, I feel that Rowling stopped at the perfect point.

I feel it is necessary for everyone to both see the movies and read the books to get the full effect of this great series. Despite the fact that one character, Robert Pattinson, is shared between Harry Potter and Twilight, they are not similar in the slightest. In my opinion, Harry Potter is at least six times better.  After all these years, I will miss Harry Potter and the rest of the gang.

Harry Potter 7 (Part 1)

Just a good ole vlog with Erin and Marie! 🙂 Enjoy!

Kids These Days..

I’m sure everyone has heard someone say “Kids these days..” with a shake of their head as though disapproving of everything our young population does. I have heard many adults say this as well as hearing it on commercials and movies. Whenever I hear this line, I get slightly frustrated, and by slightly I mean it makes my blood boil up under my skin (ok that’s an exaggeration). Our generation has been hit with new media and technology constantly. We have grown up with it. Internet was discovered before we were born, cell phones were invented (the huge ones, but nonetheless), game systems were up and rolling, and more inventions were being worked on every day. I, myself, cannot imagine a world without any technology. Media influences our daily lives so much that it’s hard to believe people lived before it. Technology connects us with millions of other people instantly.

I as well as every other person I know, uses some form of technology. I’m aware that there are people who do not, but I do not know any of these people personally and will therefore overlook this portion of the population. (Sorry, but if they aren’t up to date with technology, they won’t be reading this or be offended anyways!) Technology is helpful to further people’s education. When students are working on a homework assignment, they are able to use the internet and sift through many files to find the information they need. It’s also helpful for people who work office jobs. Without technology, there wouldn’t be phones to answer, emails to send, files to edit (unless by hand), and even more. What then would these office workers do?

For our world to advance, we need to keep the technology progressing. If we were to be frozen with the technology we have today, our world would be a mess. We would have no where to go with all of our ideas, and jobs would not be created for others to learn. It would be as though we were just learning how to fill the same spots in the world. It would be like an ice cube tray. The shape never changes, but the water does. It’s necessary to break free of the mold and show our creative sides by inventing even more complex media systems. By doing this, it creates more jobs and the efficiency of finding sources, contacting people. and passing your free time.

I will admit that I spend a good portion of my free time on my computer when I should be doing other things. Every time I log onto my computer, I immediately check my Facebook. It’s not necessary, but it has become habit for me. I have six websites that I check daily, sometimes more. Because of this, it might seem as though I only use my laptop for fun. This is incorrect. I do all of my assignments on my laptop. Right now, I’m blogging. When I am finished, I will be working on a paper for my English class. After that, I will be using a website that is set up with my Spanish text book to complete several assignments. My point in all of this, is that technology is not all fun and games. Sure, there is all of the game systems such as; X box, Wii, Playstation, etc, but technology really helps everyone in their daily lives.

It all started with a lightbulb, and I would just like to thank Thomas Edison for following through his curiousity and therefore founding electricity. I salute you and respect you. Edison made of all these technological systems possible. So to those people who say that forbidden line “Kids these days..”, what you should be saying is “Oh those people who shaped our history..”.

Everyone Needs Some Humor in Their Lives

Two years ago, a college girl named Allie was procrastinating. She did not want to study for her physics final, and therefore she decided to create the blog titled “Hyperbole and a half”. http://hyperboleandahalf.blogspot.com/ Allie has an interesting way of writing her blog posts. She incorporates self drawn pictures throughout her blogs to help tell her story.

The way I came across this blog was by a Yahoo search for “Humor Blogs”. The first link I clicked on gave me a list of the most popular blogs in many different categories. “Hyperbole and a half” was voted the Best Humor Blog for 2010. I decided to check it out, and I must say I was impressed. The style of writing Allie does is to entertain people. Her goal is not to be informative, but just to be funny and to make others enjoy reading it. Her blog is just for fun, although it is now a part-time job of hers. She earns moeny from the ads and other things on her pages to be supported a bit. She completely enjoys this job. Many of Allie’s ideas come to her as she was doing insignificant things in her daily life. She has now learned to carry around a pencil and small tablet with her at all times, just incase an idea springs upon her.

Allie writes about things that have happened to her in the past. In her most recent blog post, she tells a story about when she was a child and her mother hid a cake from her. She ended up getting revenge, but paid for it by being sick. She drew many pictures describing her situtation. The picutres were perfectly incorporated into her blog and I feel that they added quite a bit to it.

I am impressed by Allie’s blog. She has a lot of unique ideas that I never would have considered using before I read it. She really enjoys drawing the pictures for her blogs and likes to use many graphics. I have not yet put any graphics in my blog as I am not entirely sure how to. In her FAQ section, she mentioned that she normally spends about eight to ten hours on each blog. This includes the drawing of all of her pictures. Even though the pictures seem to be done by children, she spends a lot of time perfecting them. She admits to the fact that they are “shitty”, but she likes how they look and they add a whole new dimension to the blogs.

I would prefer to write blogs the way Allie does. She does it for fun, and is not graded on anything. She doesn’t have a specific subject to write on, or a time when it needs to be completed by. She simply blogs for the fun of it, and does it on her own time. Blogging about my business major is not high on my list of priorities (no offense Prof. Albrecht!). I enjoyed blogging about my life in the lifestyle blog.

I would reccommend everyone to read “Hyperbole and a Half” because everyone needs to add a little more humor to their lives. It’s not a serious blog, it’s just there to entertain. The blog is easy to read and doesn’t have any social issues brought into it. Two years ago, Allie made a great decision to procrastinate and create this blog. (:

READ ME

Fifty million six hundred thousand links came on my computer screen when I did a search for “Business Blogs”. “Oh my,” I thought, “this is going to take a while!” I wasn’t expecting a short list of the most popular business blogs, but I was expecting to find them a little easier than I did. Many of the websites that showed up were to help create your own business blogs. These were not the type of links I was looking for! For this weeks blogging assignment, we needed to find three blogs, preferably about our major, that we would recommend to others. My declared majors are International Business and Spanish. I decided to focus on Business instead of Spanish simply because I didn’t think my audience would be as interested in reading in Spanish as I am. As i sifted through the many blogs, I came to realize that what I may think is interesting would not be to the majority of my audience. Everyone has different views and therefore, I decided to not write about why I recommend these blogs, but about why I enjoyed reading them.

The first blog I will be writing about is called “Freakonomics”. http://freakonomics.blogs.nytimes.com/ This blog is focused on economics and I am contemplating having economics as my focus.

Dorm life (:

The summer before my senior year of high school, I visited three colleges with my mom. The third college I visited, I applied to the same day. It was the only college I applied to, and I was accepted before my senior year even began. I fell in love with the campus and was beyond ready to leave my home town. I’d had enough high school drama to last me for quite some time. I visited the college once more with my best friend who was also considering attending. Senior year flew past for the both of us, and she had decided to go to a college about two hours from me. About a week after graduation, I went back to my college with my parents for orientation. It was the first time my dad had been here and he could tell that I loved it already.

Frat parties, sleep deprivation, piles of homework, and new experiences. These are common things that pop into a person’s head when college life is mentioned (or my mind at least). I am currently a freshman in college and living about five and a half hours away from my home. I adjusted pretty well. College life is not everything I expected it to be, although, I absolutely love it. Of course there are certain sterotypical situations that have occured while I’ve been on campus for this past month, but there are several things that took me by surprise.

I arrived on campus August 28th. The freshman class of almost 600 students was split up into orientation groups which would actually be the classmates of ours for two classes our first semester. Even though the week of orientation was not the most fun, it was nice being able to bond with people without having to search by yourself for friends. It was convenient that a girl in my group was also my neighbor! We have become very close along with our roommates. If I am not in my room, it is almost certain that you can find me next door. Sometimes we are watching movies, other times we are doing homework (like right now!). We are the noisiest people on our floor and have been told on more than one occasion to please be quiet.

I also became good friends with another girl in my club. We were introduced to some other people and I now hang out with them frequently. All the people here are great and I couldn’t love college anymore! Even though I do not have a car on campus, two of my friends do and we are often out and about whether it be a quick Target run, or a BK run. We also go to a few of the on campus activities such as the dances, football games, and meetings.

Although this is my first year on campus, I am technically a sophomore. I took many college classes in high school, and all 33 of my credits transfered. Unlike many other college attendees, I will be able to graduate a year early. I plan on double majoring in International Business and Spanish and will be traveling abroad for at least one semester during my college experience.

College is not all fun and games, though. The first weekend, my roommate came in completely drunk. Our neighbors and another girl on our floor all stayed up with her for three hours holding her hair back and just taking care of her. I would say that was an unpleasant experience, but a bonding experience nonetheless. None of us had expected this from her, and were slightly taken aback. We had not put a futon in our room yet and I insisted that she slept on our neighbors futon because I didn’t want her to fall out of her bunk bed. They agreed, and unfortunately, their $300 futon was puked on by my roommate! I felt completely awful, but they easily forgave me.

I’m not really involved in anything on campus, which is pretty uncommon. I therefore have a lot of free time. For the first half of the semester, I only have three classes on Monday, Wednesday, Friday, and one night class on Tuesday. Despite all my free time, I am not always studying as many people believe. Many of my friends are overwelmed by the amount of homework they recieve, but I have only felt pressured once, and that was my own fault. I tend to procrastinate quite a bit, but I almost always get my work done. I feel as though it’s possible that I’m not stressed because I took so many college classes already, that I know how to cope with it all. Hopefully this will hold true throughout my college experience, and I will be able to have as much fun later as I am right now.

Twitter

There are numerous forms of social media in the world today. Every single day more social media are being worked on to create a world that can be technologically dependent. The most popular forms of social media are texing, Facebook, and Skype, and Youtube. Twitter was started just four years ago. It has two hundred and fifty million dollars net worth with over 75 million users. I have accounts for hotmail, youtube, and Facebook. I also used to have a Myspace page. I recently just set myself up with a Twitter account, and from what I have viewed on this website, it is similar to Facebook, except it is only status updates. I, myself, will admit to updating my Facebook status at least once daily. To some that may seem excessive, but to others that would be nothing. It is common for everyone to know everything about each other nowadays. If someone posts something on the internet, hundreds of people will be able to see it within seconds. There are no secrets on the internet. I feel as though Twitter is a gateway for information. It is used not for secrets, but for information accessible to all.

I would recommend Twitter to people who are big fans of Facebook and updating their status. It is also a very good site for creeping. You are able to follow as many people as you like, and you are even able to comment on their Tweets. “Tweets” is what people more commonly know as status updates. It is also nice if you like celebrity gossip. It is very common for celebrities to have Twitter accounts. Lady Gaga, for example, has the most followers on Twitter. You are also able to upload pictures on Twitter. Another thing I discovered was that you can change the background of your profile page. It makes it seem similar to Myspace and Youtube since you can customize it to your liking. Also, if you are out and about for a large portion of your life, you can get Twitter updates sent to your phone.

I would not recommend Twitter for people who do not access their Facebook account much, or who do not often wish to pass along information about their daily lives. It is also not used to keep in touch with people. It is simply a site to see where people are and what they are doing. I feel as though it is a “stalker” site. There really is no other way to describe it. People only use it to check in on others lives, whether they be strangers or friends.

Overall, Twitter is an alright website for some people. I don’t think it will ever amount to Facebook because it is not the best of both worlds, but t it is a very popular site nonetheless. I’m sure I will check up on my Twitter account every once in a while, but it will not be something I look into everyday. It’s not popular enough among my friends to have an important impact on me.

Social Media

Internet, cell phones, iPods, TVs, and more. All of these items are considered social media and influence our lives in more ways than we can imagine. Everyday we are caught up in the whirlwind of media. I, myself, use many different forms of social media such as; Facebook, Skype, cell phone, and blogging. It is common for people to use forms of social media without even realizing it, daily.

A very common social media used today by every age is Facebook. Facebook allows almost immediate interaction with people across the world. Facebook is a free website, but is funded by advertisements that appear on the perimeter of the screen. Many of the different types of social media used today are free unless you, personally, upgrade them. I have not found that neccessary with anything that I use. I am just fine with the generic version because it was created in the first place to get the job done.

I believe that social media plays a huge role in our society today. It is useful in connecting with old friends, passing information onto others, and voicing your opinions. Some people say social media is preventing people from the face-to-face experiences that have the most meaning, but I disagree with them. In some cases, if you need an answer immediately, the only way to get it is to give them a call or send them a text. It is difficult at times to be able to travel to a location just to ask a quick question.

Social media is a positive component in my life. I am constantly using some type of social media. I feel like it is very important thing in college students lives. It helps us to find information quickly and efficiently. It also keeps us in contact with friends from high school. It also is helpful to connect with our professors in cases where they forget to give us an assignment or they are emailing us a link or if we just have a question about an assignment.

I would be surprised if anyone claimed that social media is a negative component in life. The only reason I could think of would be that it takes away the face-to-face communication. That can be fixed. If someone so desires, they can move their body over to the person to speak to them. It would take more time than just shooting a quick text or chatting on Facebook, though. I am not saying no one should bother with face-to-face encounters, because that is very important in life as well. I am simply stating that not every part of your life needs to be in person. Although, I wouldn’t be surprised if eventually almost all communication was virtual. Skype is directing us down that road. It at least still keeps the personal feel since you are able to actually see the person you are conversing with.

Without all of the new social media technology, less communication overall would occur. Social media is not used in complete replacement of any source of communication. It is simply an easier and more convenient option to resort to at times.

Summer Reading

For many college students, the summer is used as a time to relax and spend time with friends and family before heading off to college for the year. For some, their summer is spent working to earn a little extra spending money. Some colleges give out summer homework assignments. Every student has a different way of dealing with the assignment doing anything from reading it immediately to avoid reading it all together. My college gave out a summer book read assignment early in the summer. I bought my book and did not read it until my drive up to college. I actually finished reading my book the morning I moved in.

The book the incoming freshmen needed to read is called The Acts of Faith by Eboo Patel. It was a short and quick read, but I just couldn’t buckle down and read it and therefore procrastinated until the last possible minute. Some students in my orientation group did not read the book at all. Others read the book immediately when we recieved the assignment and even took notes on it. I would consider myself to be a good student, although I do not often go above and beyond the stated expectations. Which, to some people, would be something a “bad” student would say.

I feel like we have summer break for multiple reasons. These reasons are not to spend time reading a book for class, though, some would say that the summer is so long that it really doesn’t matter if we throw in a book or two to have read by the time the fall semester comes around again. I feel as though having an assignment in the summer does not prepare us for the outside world.

I actually love reading, but I enjoy reading in my spare time. Perhaps schools should make summer readings optional and students who were willing to read the book could form a book club. That would save the students who have absolutely no desire to read the book from wasting their precious summer days. It would also be a good option for students who are really dedicated to the book. They would be able to have even more intense discussions on the book with people who enjoyed (or disliked) the book just as much as they did.

In conclusion, my hope is that colleges strongly consider making summer book reads an option for all students instead of a mandatory thing. It would please everyone instead of being forceful.