Week 10: Degree Engagement

Hello everyone and welcome yet again to another blog by yours truly. Now if you have read up on the previous blogs up to this point then you probably know the drill and how this blog is going to be constructed. I will lead off with the usual summary of my college life over the last week followed by the topics discussed in my Honors First-Year Experience Class. Reading this far, you are probably dedicated to reading the whole blog post so I'll do my best to keep you engaged to what I am addressing throughout this post.

With midterms, major assignments, intramurals, and Homecoming Week looming around the corner, the week was bound to get feisty and busy real quick. The start of the week went by similarly to the beginnings of past weeks as my Calculus, Composition, and Engineering classes dictated my time and grabbed a hold of my learning focus. Wednesday was a long and interesting day as I had a lot of studying to do for exams and a kickball game that my team won that evening. Thursday was even longer than Wednesday as I woke up at 5 in the morning to continue my studying for my Calculus exam which took place later that morning. I went to my Geography and Engineering Processing Lab classes to finish out the academic part of my day. After those classes, I went to the Statesboro fair with a group of friends. I ended up getting Fried Oreos which were very good. The weekend has been plagued with rain as I tried to go to the football game on Saturday with my dad and step-mom, but the rain forced us to leave the game soaked and disappointed in Mother Nature. 

In the midst of a busy and fast-moving week, important topics were discussed in our FYE class regarding our personal values and the what mindsets we have pursuing our degree in college. On Monday, we took a look at catalogs and curriculum sheets for our majors as we are entering the period of setting up our classes for the next semester of college. We also participated in a activity that helped us determine what values are important to us as values help set ourselves up to be the person we wanna be. We started by picking out 15 values from a list and narrowing it down to 5. The core values I believe are important for myself and are apart of who I am are accuracy, efficiency, success, purpose, and family. A big part of who I am is wrapped around the idea of being able to be as successful and efficient as I can throughout my life in order to have a family of my own one day. While I want to be a great mechanical engineer, I also want to be an amazing father figure and husband for when that time comes.

On Wednesday we continued the activity regarding our personal values by discussing them with fellow other classmates and why we chose the values we did for ourselves. After the discussing we watched a TEDTalk video with Maurice Ashley speaking about how setting goals is related to chess. In chess, advance and experienced players look at several outcomes moves ahead for them before they move a corresponding piece on the board. Using this concept, we can look ahead at the goal we are achieving and work our way backwards in order to see what we need to do to accomplish the tasks and goals we set for ourselves. Using this mindset will allow myself to see where I need to be and what I need to do to in order to get my.college degree and obtain the life that I want for myself down the road.

Personal Reflection

After this week's schedule and discussions, it has definitely had me questioning if I am doing what I really want to be doing with my life. At the end of the day, I want to be doing something that I can excel in and enjoy. I know regardless of where I go there will be good and bad days but I want to amplify the amount of happiness I can possess throughout everyday life through the career and lifestyle I am in. It is definitely good for me to look at my personal values and see if I am on the right track in order to achieve happiness and get the life that I want past college. Thank you so much for reading my blog and acknowledging my moments and FYE discussion from the last week. As usual, sources for videos and pictures referenced are listed below. 

Sources:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=v34NqCbAA1c

https://catalog.georgiasouthern.edu/undergraduate/allen-paulson-engineering-computing/mechanical-engineering/mechanical-engineering-bsme/

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=9ImyM90XHJQ

https://www.technologyreview.com/s/614043/instead-of-practicing-this-ai-mastered-chess-by-reading-about-it/

Week 9: Extended 'Make Your Home Among Strangers' Discussion and More

Good afternoon to anyone and everyone that is reading this blog! I will do the usual rundown of my week and proceed to analyze the discussions that I had in my FYE class last week. Since our class spent the majority of the week going over the speech given by Jennie Capo Crucet at a FYE Success Series event last week, this blog will be present less info and detail than others in the past.

My week went fairly well and mostly according to plan. Monday was very busy with all the classes, an Honors Advisory Board meeting, and a kickball game at 10 at night. Tuesday went according to schedule as well, but I did find out the dates of two upcoming exams for Calculus and Geography which ramps up the stress and studying for the next two weeks. I had an advisory meeting to discuss the workload and the classes I would be taking for the spring semester of my freshmen year. I was a little shocked when my advisor said that I would be only taking 13 credit hours next semester, but I was then told that I was ahead in credits with some of the dual enrollment credits that I carried over from high school. Having those dual enrollment credits cancelled out some of the classes on the schedule that I have already taken. This also means though that I am kind of trapped due to me not being able to take certain major classes next semester because I have not completed classes like Calculus II and Chemistry yet. Besides that, my week went pretty smoothly the rest of the way. Now onto the discussions from my FYE classes last week.

Starting off on Monday, each student in the class was presented with a sheet a paper that asked us questions regarding the speech given by Jennie Capo Crucet the previous Wednesday before class and how we felt about the speech. We were asked if the speech made us feel uncomfortable, and we were also asked on our personal opinion on why particular students at Georgia Southern burned the 'Make Your Home Among Strangers' copies in protest of the book and speech given. To give a quick backstory, Crucet's speech highlighted her journey to becoming a professor and why she does what she does today. In the midst of her speech, she angered some people with her strong tone and her speech against the ways of white privilege in her past and in the present day. A group of students got together to burn her books out of their anger, and some students showed their displeasure through Twitter. These series of events made national news across the national over the course of the last week and a half. We reviewed and looked over some of the things that Crucet mentioned in her speech and discussed some quotes from the speech. On Wednesday, we looked over some of the responses from within our class for the questions given in class on Monday. We highlighted some of the responses that stuck out to us and was the most surprising. Some of the responses also opened up the conversation to talk about Crucet's tone during the speech, diversity, freedom of speech, and many other topics. After looking at Monday's responses, we looked at the article "11 ways white America avoids taking responsibility for its racism". The article by Dr. Robin Diangelo indicates that people can say racist comments without even thinking about, and it happens unintentionally in lots of cases. People. whites in particular, not realizing that they have or can say racist comments out of the blue sounds absurd and does not apply to them at all. 

Personal Reflection

To be honest, I have not enjoyed discussing things the last two weeks not because of the controversial and difficult topics but because it is hard for me to say something from the perspective and person that I am. I feel like that my views and standpoints in these type of conversations does not mean much. I do not want any bad intentions to come out of this because I typically do not have a good point or idea to relay in class when we are talking about anything. I also have felt a bit embarrassed and disappointed in both sides of the book burning controversy because it is burning bridges and relationships between the university staff, students, and many other people. I know there is a reason for everything in this world, but I would like to move on from the series of events that has taken place the last few weeks.  Thank you again for reading my blog once again, and the sources used for the pictures and article mentioned in this blog are listed below!

Sources:

georgia-southern-university-jennine-capo-crucet-book.jpg

https://www.salon.com/2015/06/16/11_ways_white_america_avoids_taking_responsibility_for_its_racism_partner/

Week 8: 'Make Your Home Among Strangers'

Good afternoon to all my readers! I am here to give you yet another quick rundown of my week and my FYE discussions. This week surely was interesting, but I will try to get to keep it as condensed as possible.

To go over the week from my point of view, we start off with Monday which was filled with interesting changes and surprises in itself. In my Engineering Graphics class, I found out that my professor ended up in the hospital over the weekend. I will not go into detail about what happened to him but he is doing alright and getting physically better as he should be able to return to teaching our class within the next week or two. I participated in the Honors LLC Advisory Board meeting as well where we discussed the plans for our first event in the Honors LLC. Tuesday went relatively smoothly as every class went according to schedule those days. Wednesday and Thursday were mediocre days as I had a Math quiz to deal with early in the morning. I also attended two FYE Success Series in the evening which I will get to later on in this blog. Thursday was a pretty slow day even throughout the two flag football games I played that evening. Friday, Saturday, and today (Sunday) have been the better portion of the week with time for me to relax and catch up on some of the work I did not do throughout the week. Now onto the FYE class and Success Series experiences from last week.

Before Monday's class, we were set with the task to read Chapters 1-18 in the book 'Make Your Home Among Strangers'. Considering it was a book that all freshmen students were required to read, I did not have high expectations about the book to be honest because I thought it would have repetitive information and not tell me much that I do not know. Reading the book was kinda rough because the main character was a confusing person to follow with personality wise. The character, Lizet, has a problem with academic dishonesty in the early stages of the book with plagiarism and wasted money to come home for Thanksgiving during the fall semester even though she should have been saving her money for school. Lizet has a few complicated relationships as she struggles to maintain a relationship with her boyfriend Omar which eventually falls through and a friendship with Ethan which also has problems due to Lizet's personality in not being able to address her problems efficiently throughout the film. Despite the many problems I saw within the book and its main character, the book did a good job highlighting several themes that are important to college freshman like dealing with academics, fitting in at college, and dealing with financial troubles which are all concepts that I can relate to.

During Monday's class, we took a quick 'quiz' over our knowledge and views on the first chapters of the book. After the quiz, we read an article called 'Against All Odds' that depicts the real story of Gasper Leiva journeying to the United States from Cuba in order to give his family the American life that would be better for them. The man would go on to be a Spanish professor at our University of Georgia Southern even to this day. The trouble with Cuba and the United States in the late 1900s and early 2000s indirectly spoken in the article would be put on display through the Elian Gonzalez Raid. This event was shown and depicted through the character and political problem with the 5 year old boy of Ariel in the book 'Make Your Home Among Strangers'.

We did not have class Wednesday, but I went to the FYE Success Series to listen to the speech of Jennine Capo Crucet who wrote the book 'Make Your Home Among Strangers'. The speech was mainly about the journey of how Crucet became a professor at the college she teaches at and why she does what she does for a living. She also took a good chunk of her speech talking about white privilege in the past and today's society. After her speech, there was a time period dedicated to a Q&A session with the author. This led to a student asking a question regarding to why the author talked about white privilege and 'why she thinks she has the right to come in here and talk about it'. This lead to tensions between the author, the student, and the rest of the audience. After this event, I attended another FYE Success Series called 'Beat the Blame Game' that discussed how victims and people can be viewed in cases of sexual assault.

Thank you for reading this blog once again! Sources relating to the speech, topics, and pictures used are featured below.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=5BJUta-9BsU
https://www.amazon.com/Make-Your-Home-Among-Strangers/dp/1250094550
https://clipartstation.com/quiz-clipart-1-4/

Week 7: Diversity & Inclusion 3 - Instructions Not Includec

Good afternoon everyone! As usual, I will give a quick rundown of the week before jumping into the lesson and topics discussed in my FYE class this week. Classes started to ramp up this week in regards to the workload as the majority of classes are headed towards the midterm. Calculus and English were the two classes giving me a lot of busywork and assignments to crack down on. While I do not completely get the concepts being told in both those classes yet, I feel like I am not too far off from having a grasp on things. Away from classes, I was able to play my first flag football game on Tuesday. Our team did not do well overall but I was able to get an interception in the game which is a positive takeaway. On Friday, I was able to go back to my hometown to enjoy dinner and the Atlanta Braves baseball game with them. I came back to the college campus on Saturday to enjoy the rest of my weekend. Now time to backtrack to look at the topics from Monday and Wednesday's FYE class.

Before the Monday class, I was tasked with watching the film 'Instructions Not Included'. The film follows the life of Valentin Bravo who is left with Maggie, who is supposedly the man's daughter, by the mother. Valentin's inexperience as a father figure shapes up the film to be an interesting movie as Valentin does his best to provide for his daughter. In Monday's class, we were given a three question pop quiz to refresh our memory on the film and to generate discussion later on in the class. After writing down our responses, we took the time to discuss the themes in the film. I discussed with fellow classmates Matthew, Tonilynn, and Alicia about the themes in the film. Some of the themes we discussed were child custody, parenting, selfless love, and fear. Another thing we talked about in regards to the film was a scene that stuck out to us the most. The scene that stuck with me the most was the scene where the Valentin risked his life to jump from a thirteen story building in order to save the daughter that he barely knew from falling into a pool. That scene in the movie was an example of selfless love where the dad laid his priorities and life aside for the safety and life of his daughter.

On Wednesday. we continued the discussions from Monday and gave details on the stereotypes highlighted in the movie. Early the movie. the main character, Valentin, was depicted as a 'man whore' because of his lifestyle of getting and hooking up with numerous tourist chicks in Acapulco, Mexico. Valentin also provided justification to himself for trying to take Maggie back to her mother by saying that Mexico has 'drug dealers', 'police corruption', 'muggings', and many other things to profile his home country. Our class also took the time to go over any other key points or topics in the movie with fellow classmates including the surprising closing scene which throws the film's audience off.

Review and Reflection

To get more feedback on the film for this blog, I looked at the review of the film on variety.com which basically highlighted the major scenes and detected the change of the mood throughout the film. The review claimed that the film went from iffy to comedic to tragical. I pretty much had a similar view to the film as I believed that the film was not going to be that great considering all the sexual and 'kissy' scenes to start the movie but it progressed into a loving father and daughter film that ended in sadness. I enjoyed the film overall but it was sad that the movie ended the way it did.

Thank you once again for reading the blog and here are the sources for the sites and pictures used.
https://variety.com/2013/film/reviews/instructions-not-included-review-1200594529/
https://www.alternateending.com/2013/09/there-could-never-be-a-father-who-loved-his-daughter-more-than-i-love-you.html
https://www.justwatch.com/us/movie/instructions-not-included