Travel!

         I love everything about traveling: packing the journey, the excitement of being in a new place away from home, and the experiences you will have. So far in my life I have traveled to three different countries outside of the United States, and may different states inside our borders. I have traveled to England several times because I have a lot of family who lives over there, I have traveled to Paris, and I have also traveled to Canada. Each trip brought new experiences and different memories.

          I believe traveling is important because traveling allows a person to become acquainted and familiarized with different societies. There is also a great amount of different historical points and landmarks, which are interesting to visit. A great program that southern offers is the travel abroad program. This is an opportunity everyone in the university should at least look into.

         When I looked into the program I thought the study abroad trip to Guatemala looked interesting. It looked like a good opportunity to both explore a new country, and gain experience in the medical field. I have always wanted to go to a foreign country to help out medically. There are so many countries who are not well equipped in the medical field. I am a biology major and I want to go into the medical field. Traveling to Guatemala would offer me a lot of experience and it would look great on resumes.

         I think it is a good idea to do you traveling while you are young; before you have the full time commitment of a family. It is sometimes to do the traveling you want when you have economic and family commitments. I hope to do a lot of traveling when I graduated SCSU. There are so many place in the world that would be great to visit. I hope I have the opportunity to get there, and I would encourage anyone who has thought about traveling to try to follow through with their plans. It will be an experience you will not forget.

Swishh!

On Thursday, I attended the Southern Connecticut basket ball game. This game was the basketballs team's game to celebrate home coming. The game was a scrimmage, which means they played against each other for a practice game. The game was exciting and it came to a close score. My team and I attended the game together. The game was held at the James Mores Field House. It was definitely a fun entertaining bonding experience. I originally thought that I would be bored at the game because basketball is not my favorite sport to watch on the television. However, once I got there and started to watch the game, it ended up being a lot of fun, and i got into the game. The final score of the scrimmage was 110 to 111. It was definitely a close scoring game.

I would like to attend a football game sometime soon. I really like football and I think that would be another good game to watch. I think it is important to go to school games because it shows support, which is nice, especially at home games. I hope when it come around to my competitive season, we have a lot of supporters. We will do our best trying to get people to attend the home meets at be supportive of the gymnastics team. We start competing in January so keep your eyes open for when our meets are posted! Be a proud owl fan! The games are fun, I enjoyed my time at the southern basketball game. 

Midterm Video Project

The semester so far.

Midterms were this past week. It was stressful without a doubt, but my hard work and dedication definitely paid off. I did not have too much time for myself, but it was worth it in the end. I did well on all of my midterm tests.

The week of midterms I also received all of my grades in my classes. I was happy with all of my grades. I have straight A's. I know I am doing well but it is important to me that I maintain my grades and dedications. I can see it in some of my friends and teammates that their dedication towards their school work is not as high as it was  at the beginning of the semester. I need to keep my grades up to me because it will be nothing if it have high grades at midterm; it's all about what your grades turn out to be at the end of the semester.

 

I know I am capable of doing well so I do not want to do anything less than what I was capable of. In order to maintain my grades, I will continue to do what I am doing. I will try to cut back on my stress because I need to try not to get as worked up. I need to constantly remind myself that everything will work out, and I will only do as best as I can. My time managing is working well for me; I just wish there was a little more relaxation time between school and gymnastics but there is not too much I can do about that. I will just keep pushing through, knowing the rewards will be in the future. I am thoroughly enjoying my time at SCSU so far. 

The bus...

          Drastic times call for drastic measures or so they say. Well I would not exactly call taking the bus a drastic measure; however, it was a new a and scary thing I experienced for the first time this weekend. Thursday night I got the call that no one ever wants to hear; my boyfriend was very ill and being admitted into the hospital. I was scared, but knowing there was nothing I could do Thursday night. I just prayed that he was in good hands. I knew I needed to get home though. The earliest I could leave was Saturday morning.

          The only way I could get home was by taking a bus because my parents were working. I booked the earliest bus on Saturday leaving to Boston. There was not going to be anything stopping me; I needed to be there for him when he was sick. I was at first nervous to take the bus but I knew it was my only way home. I first took a bus from New Haven to Hartford. In Hartford I had a 45 minute layover and I changed buses. From Hartford I continued on to my destination of Framingham Massachusetts. This was were by boyfriend Anthony was hospitalized. It was all together a four hour trip. It was long, but well worth it. I was glad I was able to see Anthony who was very sick. Anthony had appendicitis and bacteria in his blood which led to more complications. On Sunday night, I had to head back to school. Anthony was post surgery and stable, however I wish I did not have to leave.

          The bus ride was smooth. I was nervous at first but it was pretty straight forward. I would definitely take the bus to get home again. Although I hope in the future I hope I don't have to come home on such upsetting news. 

Time Chart

Brainstorming	Interviewing	Gathering materials	Transferring all of your materials to the computer	Learning how to use video software	Making video/ Troubleshooting
This all together too me a significant amount of time. I wanted to make sure I was going for the right ideas, and I wanted to make sure my topic was not boring. A lot of the brainstorming was done throughout the day and not at a set time. I also looked previous work from years past for inspiration.	All together I interviewed three freshmen, one upper class student, my CC and two professors. This took time because the people who were being interviewed wanted to make sure they were prepared.	I took a lot of time gathering information. I looked though books for inspirational quote which would fit in and I search for what well-known people think of critical thinking. I really tried to incorporate a variety of sources and people so the movie does not seem repetitive and tedious.	This took next to no time at all because I used my laptop to interview people, which means all of my video footage was already on the computer.	Where should I begin... This definitely took the longest out of the whole project. I was very new to Movie Maker and I needed a lot of help on learning how to use the software. I did not even know where to start with movie maker so until I could get help I improvised and just saved everything I needed on my computer.	After I got the help I needed, I was able to breeze through the video. The most time was spent trying to design the video in an intriguing manner. Cutting and pasting the interviews was a little tedious but once it was done it looked more complete. Just the finishing touches are needed now!

Video Project!

          If you have always dreamt of being a famous movie producer or a commercial advertiser, this project it for you! I am a biology major whose specialty is definitely not in technology. I am definitely a slower learner when it comes to technology, and I am a very visual learner. I have had a few problems while I have been trying to complete this project. Getting the basics completed on the project has been hard enough for me. Therefore, I am just going to worry about the details later. I first had a problem with the general use of Microsoft Movie Maker. Unable to even complete even simple steps such as uploading slides and videos... I realized I had to look around for some help. Luckily there was plenty of help to be found.

           One of the girls on my floor walked me through the program step by step. When I felt confident I knew how to use Movie Maker, I was on my way to producing my movie! until... a few steps later. The problem I am having now is uploading the video and publishing it. For my rough draft I could not even figure out how to upload my work. I had put time and effort into what was my rough draft, and I was not even able to be shown in class or emailed to get feedback from my class. But this does not mean I haven't had any feedback. I am happy to show my video to my team and to my other friends. They think it is coming along nicely, as do I.

          I cannot wait to have the finishing touches on my movie so I can see my first completed movie. I am find the help I need as I move along in my project, and it will be completed soon!