MRC

I am on Spring Break. I needed this break. I have one week off. I am not working. I do not have any homework. This is nice. Let me tell you about my life in the past couple of weeks. I started off my last blog by saying that college sucks. Guess what? My feelings are the same. My classes are all still very stupid, my professors are really just annoying, and if it were not for my involvement I would not be in college right now. I have never hated classes so much. It is not just about working hard. I have no problem doing that. I just do not like wasting time, and frankly my classes waste my time and just do not challenge me. Let's review my classes. SPN335 - Advanced Conversation and Composition 7:45am-8:50am MWF I currently have a 0% in this class, and I will be dropping the Monday I come back to college. Basically, I received no credit for any of the first three essays that I wrote because the professor grades on our writing process and not on our final paper. I think this is stupid. I know how to write an essay. I do not need to be graded on how I put the paper together. Our grade is divided like this: 35% notes from articles we read, 25% notes from the movie we are watching, 15% from our bibliography, 10% from our theme and thesis,10% rough draft, and the final copy is 5%. We start preparing our paper barely after beginning the movie. After maybe 15 minutes of watching the movie, I need to come to class with an academic article relating to the movie and I need my theme on what I am writing the paper. Are you serious? I need to watch this movie first and let it digest. Then, I can begin to research some themes. How am I supposed to get an idea for the movie after only 15 minutes? Everything is so fast, and I know it's college. It's also way too early in the morning. Also, everything is in Spanish, and movie Spanish sucks. My advisor told me it took her years to be able to understand a English movie without subtitles. How the hell am I supposed to do that in one semester? The professor does not even give us Spanish subtitles. I should not be in this class as a freshman. It kicked my ass. And that's okay. Now I know (1) receive transfer credit when I study abroad in Spain, or (2) take this class after studying abroad or when it is offered at any other hour besides before 8:00AM. Dropping this class makes me a part-time student, which is not good. So I need to add at least 3 credits to replace this class. My advisor approved independent study for me for the rest of the semester. And it sucks because she is making me study literature. I hate Spanish literature. Some of it is cool, but I hate it. I want to work on speaking, and she is not letting me. Why does everything have to be about literature? I should have went linguistically with Spanish. I care more about syntax and communication in Spanish. I do not care about old literature. Especially when I cannot understand it. This makes me hate the Spanish major. There is no advanced class to work on conversation. Spanish 335 should be doing that, but it does not. French 335 focuses on speaking and oral fluency. Same with German 335. NOT MOVIE RESEARCH! I'm just mad. I can't believe I failed a Spanish class. Thankfully I am dropping within the drop time. MTH243 - Calculus III 9:05am-9:55am MTWF This is getting better. I am not worried. Dropping Spanish 335 gives me a lot more time to focus on this class, as previously, I was devoting everything to 335 and not sleeping, therefore skipping this class. SPN221 - Spanish Conversation 10:10am-11:00am MW Same comments from last blog: "This class only meets twice a week. It's boring, and too easy. The students in the class can't put any sentence together. Only like 4 of us can actually converse without having to toss some English in each sentence. I don't understand why I am in this class. Well, I do. It's part of my major. I just wish it wasn't so awful." LAS200 - Enduring Questions for An Intercultural World 1:15pm-2:30pm TTH I have a B+! Hooray! Same comments otherwise: "This is a core class that everyone has to take. It's all philosophical about what it means to be human. I haven't done a single reading for this class. I don't even think I have a grade. Not sure entirely what is going on, but the class only has eleven of us, and it's in a lounge. Warm, comfortable, easy for now." In other news: I dropped Spanish Club. It became too academic and no longer fun. VP Operations for IFC has been amazing and rewarding. I prepared my first budget. Scary. I was accepted to be a Resident Assistant. I accepted the job for next year. I did not get Summer Orientation Leader. I got Welcome Weekend Orientation Leader, but that's not worth it. I do not think I will continue with Education for high school. I am looking toward higher education. I guess I will continue with Spanish and Math because it's decent and fun. I feel really bad dropping the Spanish major. I just want it to stop being awful. I just no longer enough it, and I am already in the 300 level classes. I'm just kind of miserable. This blog makes me happy. I love reading every comment you guys post. I miss Runescape sometimes. But I know I should not and could not devote time to it right now. I love being in a fraternity. My brothers are amazing, and I always have so much fun with them, and they support me. Beginning college classes at 7:45am is stupid. Screw all the deans and professors who think that.

College sucks. By all means, I love it, but there is a lot of fiddlesticks. My classes are stupid, and my extracurricular activities are kind of time consuming. I do love being involved though. I feel the need to blog right now. I'm going to talk about my classes. SPN335 - Advanced Conversation and Composition 7:45am-8:50am MWF First off, the moron who thought making classes start earlier than 8:00AM is going to die before this semester is over. I am very unable to wake up this early for one class. I am pretty sure I only arrived on time the first day of class. I show up to class late every day. I do not care. Part of it is because I work in the foreign language department, so I know the teacher well. She really is phenomenal, but I am not in the mood to speak Spanish this early in the morning. I can barely get dressed. How do you expect me to speak? The class is stupid too. Basically we watch movies in Spanish and then analyze it. It sounds easy, but it is truly awful. I just got done with a literature class last semester, where we read plays and short stories and analyzed them. That was much easier looking back, because I could go back and re-read stuff and look for symbols, where with movies, I have one shot. So I decided to buy all the movies in English, because listening to them in Spanish is just awful. Our first essay had to be three pages. I turned in one badly written page. I can write great in Spanish, but not about a movie whose plotline is confusing as hell in Spanish. I'm also the only freshman in this class. I placed pretty high. I kind of regret it, but I guess I do get to feel decently badass. MTH243 - Calculus III 9:05am-9:55am MTWF Calculus and I have always been great friends. I scored a 5 on the AP Calculus AB exam, 94 A for Calculus II last semester, but Calculus III is stupid and awful. We're doing vectors and all this three-dimensional crap. I'm very aware the class is all in 3D, but it's just silly. We're not even doing derivatives or integrals right now. Let's go lady. Stop boring me. Not a huge fan of this class. I've skipped it four times already in the past first four weeks. SPN221 - Spanish Conversation 10:10am-11:00am MW This class only meets twice a week. It's boring, and too easy. The students in the class can't put any sentence together. Only like 4 of us can actually converse without having to toss some English in each sentence. I don't understand why I am in this class. Well, I do. It's part of my major. I just wish it wasn't so awful. LAS200 - Enduring Questions for An Intercultural World 1:15pm-2:30pm TTH This is a core class that everyone has to take. It's all philosophical about what it means to be human. I haven't done a single reading for this class. I don't even think I have a grade. Not sure entirely what is going on, but the class only has eleven of us, and it's in a lounge. Warm, comfortable, easy for now. So yeah. My classes are boring me and teaching me how to cheat. I have skipped SPN335 twice, SPN221 once, MTH243 four times, and LAS200 once. So in only four weeks, I have skipped 8 classes. Last semester, I skipped my classes 27 times. That's the total amount of times. I did not skip one class 27 times. College bores me. As for extracurricular activities, I do love them. I am a Vice President for the Interfraternity Council. I handle Operations and be a secretary and treasurer. I am on the Executive Board for Spanish Club. Truly not sure what that involves yet. I am in my own individual fraternity. I am now the technology chair. I edit our web page. I have no web page editing skills, so this will be an adventure. I applied to be a Summer Orientation leader. I got an interview. It's Monday. I applied to be a Resident Assistant. The interview was Saturday. I think it went well. I am a Spanish and Math major with an Education minor to teach at the high school level. I seriously do not think I want to teach high school anymore. I'm all conflicted. The education department here makes me go through all this stupid crap. Just teach me how to teach.

I haven't blogged since the end of August. Wow. There's so much that has happened in my first semester of college. On this Christmas Eve, I feel like blogging some thoughts. No one in the family is really doing anything right now. It's also crazy to think I've been on this forum since seventh grade. Wow. I took six classes this semester for a total of 17 credit hours. For those who don't understand credit hours, it's the amount of time you meet for class. My English class is 3 credit hours, meaning we meet for a total of 3 hours (in most colleges, 50 minutes per hour) per week. My English class met Monday, Wednesday, and Friday 9:05-9:55, where as some classes meet twice a week or all three hours in one day. Anyway, my final GPA for the first semester is a 3.804/4.000. I'm happy with that. My classes were awful, but I learned a lot. Calculus II and Intro to Hispanic Literature were the hardest. I'm also done with English for life. Of course, I'll continue to write papers, but no more English classes. Socially, I am doing great. I live in the newest dorm on campus in a suite. I have one roommate, but we share a bathroom that connects to a double next to us, so four of us share a bathroom with our own respective space. It's nice. I don't think I'll be living there next year, although it's possible. I am going to apply to be a Residential Assistant and an Orientation Leader next semester. If I get both positions, I can't accept them both. Training days conflict. RA would be great. I would save $4,000 and even get a stipend, but there's a lot of responsibilities all the time. On the other hand, orientation leader is a new summer job, and it's tons of fun, and hard work. The work means a lot more to scared incoming freshman, too. I used to do it in high school, and I would love to do it in college. It's very competitive, so I need to rock my resume and application. I also need to decide if I want a roommate next year. I did not like having a roommate this year. He's great, but I like my own space. Being an RA solves all of that as you get your own room, too. I need to figure that out. Besides dorm life and new applications coming up, I also joined a fraternity. Sigma Phi Epsilon. It's been a fantastic experience. I love Greek Life so much. Yeah, there are parties, but it's a lot more than that. I was really scared about excessive drinking and being forced into things, but that hasn't happened, and I know it won't. Everyone in college drinks. I honestly think the athletic teams party more than the fraternities here. It's the amount that matters most. I've consumed a little bit, and I clearly can function and rock my GPA. It's different when you're actually around it. You just see what happens when people know their limits and what happens when people don't want to remember what's currently going on. But overall, I've made legit friends who I really care about, and there is a love of brotherly love. I can't wait for the rest of the year to spend time with them. I am also now the Secretary and Treasurer for the Interfraternity Council. It's pretty awesome, especially as a freshman. I get to work with all the chapters of Greek Life, and that makes me happy. I love my fraternity, but I want to make good relationships with other men of the other fraternities. It's important. I've joined the Spanish Club here, and it's pretty sweet. Not that active, but it keeps going. I also work as a student assistant and secretary for the foreign language department. I make copies and handle office chaos. It keeps be busy and I make money. Next semester, I get to be a course assistant for Spanish 202. It's the equivalent of Spanish 4 in high school. So many great things have happened. I love college. If anyone reads this and currently hates high school, it gets way better. I say the same to anyone who currently loves high school. Pick the right college for you, get involved right away, and don't let anyone hold you back. Make a mark on whatever college you attend. Change it up. Be a force to reckon with. It makes life so much more fun.

You'll make strong brotherly connections by partying and getting laid in 90% of frats. Unless you find one that's specifically straight-edge/community oriented, which can be few and far between. I don't think you have a real good idea what Greek life is about, but the only way you'll know is if you start going to their parties and stuff. But since you don't like to drink and such, I doubt many will be interested in you joining their fraternity. (Unless they have an academics/community service/gay centered one on your campus.) It sounds like you need to get in touch with your school's activity board. For you to join a fraternity, you'd probably have to pretend to be someone you're not, and that's never fun or fulfilling. 'Course maybe frats are different where you're from, but I doubt it. :( Everything you said is pretty much what I've always heard, except from people on campus. :D The Greek people are always super involved and everywhere and active. They just don't *seem* like the kind in the movies and other stories. I know it's pretty useless to post on a forum who doesn't go to my college but I still wanted to ask.

I go to a small, private college in northeastern Ohio. The campus is very alive and active with a lot to do. I am interested in joining a fraternity and getting involved with Greek life. I like what they do in the sense of promoting brotherhood and community service. I like doing things for people and being good. The frat. I like the most is Sigma Phi Epsilon. This is only my first week as a freshman, and I know each college is different, but I was just wondering - often, how true are the stereotypes? If I join one, will I really make strong brotherly connections or am I just getting into a world of sleeping with lots of women and drinking a lot? First off, I'm gay (I barely appear as the stereotype), and totally against alcohol. I see nothing wrong with a little party here and there, but for me, I can totally wait until I'm 21. Anyway, every frat guy seems big, tall, and in shape, and I don't blend in that much. I know I'm smart and I would have the grades and I am involved with a lot of stuff on campus, but I just don't know what I am getting myself into. There was a greek fair and I did visit the fraternities, and the Sig Eps seemed really cool and I got along really well with one of the guys I talked to. I just don't want to get myself into something I'm going to regret or something that might change me into something I don't want to become.

There is some good to the bill, not mentioned in this article. I know it can really help get rid of the bad teachers who literally sit and don't do anything, but for the most part, it's not going that well. Senate Bill 5 is Issue 2 in the November Election in Ohio, and many people I imagine will vote No. So this might all go away soon. I know that, if it stays around, it will need to be fixed and touched up. Overall though, if you're graduating college in Education this year or just now, you are better off leaving Ohio. I think in four years it will be taken care of, hopefully in November though.

Currently, in Ohio, there is a proposed Senate Bill that would affect unions in the sense of teachers, firefighters, and policemen. I honestly don't know the exact details about this bill. Since I am going into the teaching field, I know some of the basics as to how this bill will affect the teaching field. The bill is known as Senate Bill #5. One of the big issues with this bill is that it will affect teacher's way in such a way where a student's performance determines how a teacher will be paid. Overall though, a teacher's pay is expected to suffer even more with the passage of this bill. There is tons of discussion and conflict going around about this. I haven't read the entire thing, but I know many people have brought up their thoughts about the teaching career. Many believe that teachers don't have real jobs, they only do half the work, they deserve half the pay, and if they want to complain, they should just get a second job. These words upset me beyond belief. The amount of ignorance is unbelievable. I have observed the teaching field much more than the average student. The amount of work done by a teacher is remarkable. I'm speaking for what I see in my home town at my old high school. First, based on hours, teachers work their weekly eight hours. Teachers are expected to be in their classroom - or in general at the high school - by 7:00AM. The school day begins at 7:25AM. Teachers are scheduled to depart at 3:00PM. The school day ends at 2:15PM. 7:00AM to 3:00PM is eight hours. Their lunch break is maybe 22 minutes, and all teachers are given an hour planning period. Teachers don't sit in their classrooms for the hour with fuzzy slippers and their feet on the desk watching the TV. They are working on material for the upcoming days and classes later in the day. Sure, maybe some days they sit at their computer and browse the internet, but who doesn't do that at work on an lazy day? It happens to everyone. Teaching, in the sense of scheduled hours, surely isn't any less of a job. The timecard only tells part of the story. Teachers do plenty of work outside of the classroom. The biggest activity is grading. I have graded papers for teachers. It has fun moments and horrible moments. It's enjoyable when no red slashes have to be given, but sometimes a red slash through a butchered response provides a good laugh. Yet, after a few graded papers, the pile seems never-ending. The letter grades continue to vary. It's important to always mark the incorrect answer on every paper. Sometimes an incorrect response is left untouched. Once all the papers are graded, a grade book cries for updating. This can either be done once or twice. Some teachers enjoy having a written grade book and a electric one, while some rely on technology solely. All of this thrilling entertainment isn't done in the classroom. It's done at home. The hours at home aren't rewarded. They are expected, and the pay and time card do not reflect the work done. Grading is more than quantative stress. The assignments vary on expectations and content. An English paper from a remedial class has different standards than that of an advanced placement class. What about a teacher who teaches three subjects in one day? Not only does the grading complicate, but the planning extends. Weekly plans for one class is enough work as it is, but three classes just builds up pressure. While many teachers do not follow precisely the directions from college about lesson planning, plans are indeed made. Preparing three different subjects with assignments, notes, and instructions is an adventure. The adrenaline for such adventure is fueled with love and care. Teachers do a lot of work behind the scenes. Their fifty minutes in front of any student have to be captivating and meaningful, even during a test. It's upsetting when this isn't understood by people. I know I didn't like getting homework and reading assignments. Behind all the work, there's a meaning. Teachers want us to learn, grow, and succeed. I look back at all of the assignments I have received. I may not remember the criteria, but I remember the lessons learn. Teachers have a gift to do what they do. They are hard-working people of society. It's a real job with real hours. Ignorance unfortunately shadows all of this. I hope I can one day turn on a light to help vanquish the shadow.

haha I was pretty sad :( and nice! I didn't know that.

Oh no! I don't mean it like that. It just makes me laugh she is going to college and she wants a hair stylist with her.

Probably. I just don't understand why she needs to spend money on a hair stylist. She'd be better off learning how to do it on her own. It's like me paying someone to do a tie for me since I still don't know how.

This girl needs to realize college expenses will be adding up quickly, and spending money on a hair stylist in college is just dumb. You are not going to prom. Go to class and learn. No one cares what you look like.

They dropped the charges because it went media, not because it was an accident and shouldn't have been sent. Lies. Another story where my reaction is basically "calm the f down" http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2011/08/03/m...sec1_lnk3|83222

Not cool.