Football and SCSU

            I think that it is pretty obvious to anyone that knows me that I am pretty interested in sports. My whole life I have been involved with athletics. Whether it is recreational or competitive I have always wanted to move around.

            When the time came around to choose what college I wanted to go to, the choice was pretty simple. I wanted to play some sport. As time went on in high school, I made up my mind that I wanted to play football in college. I had finally fell in love with the sport I had been playing my whole life in about Junior Year. I never really thought I could play in college until my coach said he could get me in to basically any college I wanted (minus all the top end academic schools).  

            My coach played in college so I knew I could trust him when he told me how it would be. He played at Stonehill College, which is in the same league as us. He told me how it would require a lot of hard work and effort. Not only would football alone be hard work, but then you would have to balance the more important academic side of school. He asked me if I was prepared for it and I said yes.

            After contacting several schools, mostly around this area, I stumbled upon Southern Connecticut. I liked it. I was told by many people that you should like the school you want to go to regardless if you play football or not. I thought that this campus size and population was perfect. Once I met the coaching staff it was a no-brainer. It just seemed to fit. They were all very nice and taught me everything I needed to know about the school before I made a decision-no gimmicks.

            Looking back on the decision I made and the decisions I could have made, I feel like I made the right choice becoming a member of the owls here at Southern Connecticut State University.

Majors Expo (safari #10)

                  I attended the major’s expo that was held in the ballroom in the Adanti center on October 19^th. Even though I am already a business management major, I thought it would be a good Idea to check it out to see if I wanted to change to something I would find more interesting. What I found out is that southern has a great and wide array of different majors. After looking around I stumbled upon Accounting. I never really thought of accounting, but I have always been good at math. After all I have not been doing well in my microeconomics class, so this might be something to seriously consider.

Out of my comfort bubble

            It is not easy for someone to do something extremely out of his or her comfort zone. That is why they call it a comfort zone; you should feel all right doing it. However, when you expand what you are comfortable doing, you are always moving forward in your life, which should be everyone’s goal. It is not easy, but if you expand your comfort zone in a good way then you should feel better in general.

            I have never been one that likes quitting things. I was always taught growing up that once you make a commitment, you must stick with it until it is through. That is why I never quit I sports team growing up no matter if I hated going to it everyday or not. Whether I did not like the coach, the players, or just the sport in general I always had to stick it out through the end.

            The same thing goes for school with classes. Throughout middle school and high school I never dropped a class that I was having trouble in. I always tried to work my hardest to get the grade up before the report cards came out. This was easier to do in high school because you had a lot of easy homework grades and extra credit you could do. That is not the same in college.

            This year in college was the first time I ever really quit something. I count dropping a class quitting, and I dropped microeconomics this past Monday, so I look at this as the first thing I have ever quit. The reason I did this was simply to help myself out. I had a bad grade, and the only way to bring it up was to do well on tests, which has not worked out for me thus far. The choice was easy to protect my GPA; I needed to drop the class. I do not see this becoming a habit for me, as I will try to do my best in every class I take throughout college.

Final Critical Thinking Video

First Semester Midterms

            After a half of a semester here at southern, I feel that I am in a good spot. I came to this school mainly because of football, and I liked the campus, but the reason I am here is for academics and they definitely come first.

            I had trouble in one class, which was microeconomics. This class is somewhat challenging, but I thought that I knew the information well. Once I got to the tests, however I did not do so well. This whole class is based on tests too, so when I got a 61% on the first test it was kind of an eye opener. The teacher lets you drop one test though so I just figured I would study a lot harder the next test and then the first one will not matter. So I studied a lot for the second test, and did not do well, in fact I did worse than before. That’s why I decided to drop that course, I will probably take it again next semester and maybe a different teacher will be a different story, but we will see.

            Other than my microeconomics grade I feel that I am sitting pretty well. I have an A in anthropology and I am doing well in Inquiry and Computer Science. At the same time, I can raise all of those grades, which will be my goal for the second part of the semester.

            The class I have to focus on the most the rest of the way is Zoology. It is a Monday and Wednesday lecture class and a Friday lab. It is almost like having two different classes because we have different teachers and talk about completely different things. The tests are tough because the words we have to study are very difficult. They are not normal words and they are very long, which makes it difficult to memorize. I have a C right now, but I don’t think that it will be a problem to raise.

Time Management with Long Term Projects

             I started off this project by brainstorming questions. I came up with five good questions that I wanted to ask people. After this I ended up narrowing the questions down to three. I think that this was the hardest part for me because it basically made what my whole project was going to be on.

            Once I got the questions down, I wanted to lay out the structure that I was going to use for the video. This is just the way I like to think. Instead of creating all of the videos first and then adding titles to them, I like to have everything all set up before I start recording. This makes it as easy as a drag and a drop into iMovie to finish my project.

            Transferring my videos to iMovie is really easy. In the first video I made, I used Photo Booth so it was right on the computer to begin with all I had to do was drag it into iMovie. With my camera it was about the same thing, with just one more step. I had to connect the camera to the computer and open up the videos in iPhoto. From there I just saved them to the desktop and then dragged them right onto iMovie.

            I still have to interview a Senior leader and a staff member, but I now know who I am going to interview and it will be as easy as finding them and recording them for a few minutes, then my project will be done.

            As for time management, the best advice that I can give on a long term project like this is to start early. The worst thing that you can do is wait until the last minute. Not only will you be stressing, but your project will not come nearly as good as it would if you plan out your time well.

Troubleshooting

            I have not really had any troubles in making my video. For the most part thus far it has been pretty straightforward. This weekend I went home and brought back a video camera, so it is easier now to transport my videos right to iMovie. I have no problem with sound, or adding transitions, or anything like that.

            The only thing that I can see being a potential problem, is finding more people to interview such as teachers and older students. But at the same time I have an idea of whom I want to interview and I don’t think it will be a problem. It is just a matter of me seeing them and asking them questions. I will get that done within the next couple days. I think that I am on the right track and I should not have a problem finishing this.