Well here we are at the end of the semester. I have neglected to write hear a couple times, but not much has happened. I just feel like I've been doing a lot of work and have forgotten to get back on this. But my failings are not what I wish to talk about. I'm going to discuss what I've earned over this semester.]
What have I earned over this semester? A few new friends, some experience, and a kidney stone (not literally...). More than anything else though, I've received moments. Lots of different kinds of moments, happy moments, sad moments, hungry moments, etc. Basically what I'm saying is that I have not received as much physical things, as I have intangible things. I just haven't taken any real pride in any of my work yet, I guess. Nothing that I've made or written matters to me much at all. Maybe that's just the kind of person I am, or maybe it's because I really haven't done anything of actual value yet.
But a new semester starts in a month and we will see what I gain from that. I hope for a greater understanding of what I plan on doing in life, but we will have to wait and see. Until then, I'll just take my moments.
So here we are. It's been a long time coming, but I've been busy and lazy. A week ago in Focused Inquiry, we spent our class period discussing what would happen if "the grid" went down. For those who don't know, the grid is basically the network that everything electronic runs on. The internet, cell phone networks, and lots of different forms of communication is what composes the grid. Knowing that, what would happen if the grid went down?
First of all, I believe it would take a while before everyone actually realized it happened. People might notice that their cell phones aren't working and that their internet is down also, but that happens, at least to me, every once in a while. However, as soon as word got out, I believe that chaos would indeed reign. Personally, I would go home immediately and work out a plan with my family. That would probably include staying in the house with guns ready.
However, for amusement, if I was alone I would probably go home and grab my (model) revolver. Then I would head down to the nearest gun store and grab an actual pistol, rifle, and plenty of ammo. After that, I would probably try and go to my friends' houses and see what they're planning. In the end, I would stay camped out with my friends in a single house until we needed food. Then we would loot a grocery store or steal someone else's food. Boring? Maybe, but safe.
In case you haven't noticed yet, I haven't been doing my class ratings. My teacher has begun to attempt to train himself not to cuss as much in classes, and thus I have decided to forgo the rating system for now. There is a possibility that I will create a new, more accurate one, especially considering that I'm going to have Scott for another semester. But will I continue this blog for another semester? We will see.
This weekend I had a couple things that I definitely needed to do: I needed to finish my FI paper and I needed to write 2 lab reports for Engineering. I did none of them. I probably could've done everything on friday and gotten it out of the way, but I didn't. And that brings me to my topic for this post.
I find that when I know I need to work, but don't feel like it, I usually don't get much done. I tend to stray away from whatever my objective is and do other things. This ends up in a lot of wasted time doing something like watching Youtube videos. Thus, in order to fix this, I have created my Philosophy of Laziness. If ever I know I should probably feel like doing work, but don't want to, then I don't. It's that easy. I don't waste time by convincing myself that I'm going to do work and then slowly drift through the internet. I just tell myself that I don't feel like doing it, and then do it later.
I know some of you are probably wondering how I get anything done. Well, this weekend I didn't get any of the stuff I needed to do done. So today is the day I have to do it all. Sure, it's a price to pay, but it was worth it. I had friday, saturday, and sunday off without any worries! And all I had to pay for it is one day of hard work. Also, I tend to write better when I'm closing in on a deadline. I don't know why, but ideas just flow out of my fingertips onto the screen when I feel pressure.
Well, that's my Philosophy of Laziness, plain and simple. Feel free to adopt it yourself, I have no problem with that. Three cheers for procrastination and all of its wonderful benefits!
To live eternally is to suffer exponentially. Life gained, or forever lost? Who has the right to say? Endless amounts of stories have been written containing eternal life, a main one being the bible. What would have happened if Adam and Eve had eaten of the tree of life? How many people have hoped for such a miracle in their lives?
Thanatophobia- a fear of death or dead things and those related to both
Given the chance to live eternally, who would say no? The fear of death is what drives our decisions. We realize our mortality relatively early in life, however we do not comprehend it until later in our lives. With every decision we make, a dark presence lingers over our shoulder. Who among us would give up the chance to slip away from the Great Deceiver?
Death whispers worries into our ears, making us care greatly about our decisions. Death is the topic of so many modern discussions, such as religion, abortion, and war. No one wants to die.
However, that is not to say that none have accepted death. Some accept death and move on like normal, others accept death and then take risks they normally wouldn't take, and then others accept death and wish it upon themselves for many reasons. For instance, is not dying for someone the greatest expression of love possible? Holding another's life far above your own, enough to die for them?
Now let's take a look at eternal life. Living forever also entails suffering forever and everything else that comes with life. Everything bad that has happened in your life as of right now will happen an infinite amount of times. On the other hand, every good thing that has happened will also extend over eternity. Eternal life is not the angel we think it is. With every action there comes an equal and opposite reaction. Who says eternal life is exempt from this? And on the opposite end, who says death is exempt from this?
The modern view of eternal life is muddled with nothing but happy thoughts, while the modern view of death is muddled with just dark thoughts. My question is this: who really has the upper-hand in religion? The Immortal God, or the mortal man?
the written english languige has been butchered over time. With the online age we have tryd to make it sound, when read, like we speak it. In other word, we write how we speak now. with pauses and everything. This results in fragments, repeadted ellipsis, and a large number of other crap. However, it has changed over the thyme that the internet has been around.
now, our writing has become not only how we say things, but also abbreviations for how we say things and laziness. Every one is lookin for a faster way to say what they want to say, to the point of leaving out punctuation, making abberviations (wtf?), and just plain ignoring what their typing. And now what we right has slowly bled onto how we speak.
Every heard anyone say "lol" out loud? Who we r online has become who we r in person. Some of us have simply used some poor grammar to make it clear HOW were saying something when writing online. This is used only in personal emails and such though. however, most others've just rezorted to laziness and then let it affect they're normal lives. Ridiculuos.
learn totype , learn to use grammar correct, learn to punctuate learn 2 not use abbreviations, and especialy learn to spell. Stop letting what you say online affect what you say in person.
Today, I will be writing about the chaos theory. Let's begin by defining our term to make it clear what it is we are discussing.
Chaos Theory- The study of unpredictable and complex dynamic systems that are highly sensitive to small changes in external conditions.
We are going to be looking at specifically the idea of chaos theory in a global sense. In this sense, chaos theory is the study of all actions and their unseen effects on our everyday lives, in other words, the butterfly effect of chaos theory.
Let me explain this more clearly. Let's say you are in the library. You've just sat down at a computer and some dust came off the seat. This makes you sneeze. Now, when most people view this scenario, they see a simple cause and effect. You needed to do something, and in return something else happened. However, chaos theory looks at the ripples of your action that you may not immediately notice.
Using our earlier scenario, you sit down at the computer and then you sneeze. However, by sneezing, you have just distracted a person from the paper they are writing on their computer. He has lost his train of thought and now looks back to his paper in hopes of regaining it. He had a great argument to write, but now he can't seem to recall what it was. So, he simply writes down a half-ass argument to support his claim. Once again, the ripples do not stop here.
By having written that half-ass argument, his final thesis is not as convincing. The student then hands in his essay and receives a 80 on his paper for not having a more supportive argument, among other reasons. Your sneeze has now cost a student a good grade. But it continues further.
That student, having received a lower grade than he expected, is now disappointed in himself. He put a lot of time into that paper and still received a bad grade. This was a very important essay and he didn't do nearly as well as he thought he would. He blames it on the teacher for being too hard on grading, and in return drops the course. By dropping the course, the student now has a lot more time for his other homework. He puts more effort into those and receives good grades accordingly.
The student may have dropped that one course, however it wasn't necessary for his degree. The students goes on to graduate at the top of his class because he did so well his first year that he had much more confidence in himself in the following years. This student gets hired by a well known company and gets paid extremely well, due to his understanding of his major.
The student becomes rich rather quickly and, having always been partial to movies, attends the first showings of many upcoming movies. However, one night as he leaves in his Ferrari, he gets hit by a drunk driver and dies immediately.
You were in the library and you needed a computer. You sat down on a chair and some dust flew into your nose, causing you to sneeze. Your sneeze goes on to kill the person across from you.
Now, you might say that there are so many other factors involved. That is absolutely true, and that is what chaos theory is. I just took a look at the butterfly effect that your sneeze had on a person's life. To look at all the butterfly effects is what chaos theory is.
So what is the best way of defining Chaos Theory? -Shit happens.
No, there will be no rating for this week's classes. My teacher didn't really do much teaching at all this week, so I'll spare him the criticism, though I did enjoy both classes.
Anyway, today my classmate, Brent, and I had the pleasure of my teacher's company after his first class. We sat in his office, mentioning different bands and websites of the weird. I believe we three were slightly late to class, but it didn't slow class at all. Today, we simply peer-reviewed stories that everyone wrote as an essay. Easy, quick, enjoyable. A little, sugar-coated treat of a class.
So now I am left to wonder what made Mr. Scott want to be a teacher? He seems to have the uncanny skill of keeping a class's and individual's attention at all times. I wonder, did he develop this before becoming a teacher? or after?
I guess what I'm wondering is, did becoming a teacher make him who he is, or did he become a teacher because of who he is? If the first one, what made him want to be a teacher in the first place? And how long did it take him to learn to such a skill?
Many questions, all are unanswered. Right now I can only speculate. I'm not sure whether I would enjoy analyzing him more or just straight up asking him.
"Another day, another pain," an old work friend of mine used to say. I have never felt the same way about each day as he did; I always looked at each day with some degree of optimism. However, today I am completely exhausted; I have just completed hours of homework; and now must go to my calculus class that starts at 7 and progresses until 8:50. What I would give for a pillow and a bed right now is absolutely absurd.
However, while today may be dreary, tomorrow is a little ray of sunshine. I only have 1 class and I get out at 12. Then, I can go home and relax, finish my homework, and enjoy the rest of the weekend free of it all. Huzzah!
Alright, I'm going to do my second weekly rating for my FI class. If you haven't been keeping up, I rate my class on a 1-5 scale in 3 categories: Clock-Watching, Class Comparison, and Cussing. If you would like to see my first rating and how exactly this works, feel free to check out my other post entitled, "Finding Purpose in an Outline".
Clock-Watching: I honestly only looked at the clock once throughout the whole time. The reason I looked was not because of boredom, but rather because I did not want to do the peer review of my classmates' papers which were scheduled for that day. It's not that I'm afraid of reviewing or being reviewed, it's that the classmate next to me, Neil, had a fucking 11-page story that I did not want to read. 11 pages! So, I'm going to give this category a: 4/5
Class Comparison: My last history class would have earned a 2.5/5 based on the fact that I was pretty bored. My teacher has a fantastic way of grasping your attention and keeping it, but it was not enough this time. I had missed the previous class and she seemed to be giving us the exact same facts as the last class I attended. Too repetitive for my taste. Thus, with that class as my basis and the fact that my FI class blew it out of the water, I give this category a: 4/5
Cussing: Ahhh, cussing. It may not be the most obvious choice of a category, but I think it was a good one. Cussing truly does seem to get everyone's attention in class. My teacher simply places a cuss word in with an exclamation and it's "funniness level" exponentially increases. I was actually tallying my teacher's choice of words until he said about 5 of them in succession, the word was in an example. I chuckled to myself as I just forgot about counting because he definitely earned himself a: 5/5
Final Average: 4/5 There was a power point, and not enough conversation time in class which made him lose a point in Class Comparison. And the fact that we had to review our classmates' papers near the end of class made me hope we wouldn't have time, thus losing him a point in Clock-Watching.
Now that that is over, I just realized that I've been refering to my teacher as "my teacher." This is getting repetitive and boring. I am going to now refer to him as Mr. Scott, so I don't completely drive you and myself crazy. And in case you want to look him up. And, on a side note, I actually have added the list of blogs I am currently following post-by-post. Mr. Scott's blog is PunchPhoto, if you want to check that out. I actually highly recommend both blogs.
That's enough for now. I am actually worried that my blogs are becoming too long. That's why I've decided I will do at least to posts a week: A short one early in the week, and this long one after my 2nd FI class. This will help anyone that's interested in what I'm thinking, rather than a class rating. Cheers!
I have officially read at least one post from all the blogs written by my Focused Inquiry classmates. Some are interesting, some are not. However, I did notice a trend throughout them all. Whenever anyone mentioned this FI class, it was always with compliments. It seems that my classmates agree with me that our teacher is rather interesting. Or they are simply flattering him in hopes of an equal return.
Originally, I thought that I wouldn't tell you my personal labels, for lack of a better phrase. What I mean is that I wasn't going to tell you what political party I'm a part of, what religion, if any, I believe in, sexual orientation, or anything like that. The purpose of that was to protect myself from anyone making hasty generalizations about me, based on those facts. However, I have decided that I might as well tell you because I believe that it will make it more clear to you how I feel about things.
So here we go. I, Jeremy Winslow, am a libertarian, with a lower case 'l'. I want to make it clear to you that I am not a part of the Libertarian Party or I would capitalize my 'l'. There is a decent difference between the two terms, but I'll allow you to look into that, if you are interested. I would hate to bore you. Also, please do not think that I am a liberal. Once again, there is a difference between the two that has to do with social security and other such government aid.
To continue, I am not religious, though I was raised in Christianity. I was religious for most of my life, although once I decided to take an objective look at it, I was not able to believe in it. Reasons why are another story completely.
I guess the only thing left is my orientation. I'm straight, that's how I roll. I have no problems with anyone of any orientation. I openly accept any way of living anyone has, except those that I deem dangerous to our community.
So there I am. That's a little taste of me. Now I must go and write that story for Focused Inquiry so that I won't be kicked out of class tomorrow. Cheers.
(Oh, and if you liked that video, go to www.sethcomedy.com. Seth MacFarlane is doing an online mini series that just started today. There's only one more episode up there at this time, but there are a couple teasers that are worth watching also. Enjoy!)
Alright, my second blog post and already I am having to force myself to sit down and start writing. I would have figured that I could make it longer before my will slowly slipped, but it appears that that is not so. There is good news, however. I have finished developing my class rating system. It consists of 3 different categories with 5 points in each category, and then a final average score. The 3 categories, descriptions, and format follows:
Clock-Watching: I record how many times I look at the clock for the class period and deduct points based on that. If I feel I am becoming biased in trying to look at the clock (or not look at the clock), I will see how many times my classmates look at the clock. How I rate this is simple, 1 point deduction if I look once and so on.
Class Comparison: My other classes I take, including Art of Historical Detection, Calculus 1, and Intro to Engineering, don't come near to being as entertaining as this class. With the exception of Art of Historical Detection, I usually have to force myself to pay attention. Thus, I will use my History class a grading scale for this section. I would give my History class, on average, a 3 out of 5. So, I can grade how much I enjoyed the class using that as my reference point.
Cussing: Curse words are an easy way to grab a student's attention. Whether my teacher uses this on purpose or not doesn't really matter. It works anyway. Thus, I will be giving him a score based on 2 things: How well he uses his cuss words, and how often.
That is my rough draft for grading the class. You will most likely see many changes over time to it, as it obviously requires fine-tuning. Any suggestions would be appreciated. With that settled, I figure I'll finish up this blog with my first class rating. Today, we finished up the stories that we, the students, were supposed to tell. It began with a quick look at rGrade, followed by a short, comedic youtube video. So here goes:
1. Clock-Watching: Despite me being extremely exhausted, and just having an energy drink, I was somehow able to not look at the clock at all today. Not by forcing myself, mind you, but simply because I was not bored at all. The youtube video and the stories kept me rather interested throughout the class period. Thus, I give this category: 5/5
2. Class Comparison: This class period, as I said earlier, kept me entertained throughout. Much more so than my history class did. However, the teacher himself did not do much of the talking, which dropped the amusement level down a notch. Hearing the teacher tell a story and a student telling a story are two very different things. Therefore, I believe this should receive a: 4/5
3. Cussing: Only one cuss word was said, a moderate one at that, but the delivery was sufficient enough to still make it entertaining. There's something about hearing a teacher cuss that is remarkably liberating. Thus, this categories receives a: 3/5
Adding those and taking the average gives this class period a : 4/5 This class period was decently good, however it could have been better. The reason it wasn't was simply because the teacher didn't do enough of the talking. It was left up to the students to entertain me, and they did an alright job.
I understand that these first 2 posts are far from interesting, however I feel I need to set out my plan for all to understand before I can make more fluid posts. You should be hearing more about me as I learn to separate the interesting from the not-so-interesting.
This is my very first blog entry for my first semester of Focused Inquiry. For those who don't know, it's an english 111 class that is required for all students to take at VCU (Virginia Commonwealth University). I have to admit, at first I was skeptical. I have never truly been a fan of english classes, but this one has taken me by surprise. I can easily say hands down that this is the best english class I have ever been a part of. Not only does the teacher interest me greatly, but the topics do also. This is a class that I've been waiting for for so long, one where I can state my opinion about many different topics and be heard. I also never thought that I'd ever spend the first 15 minutes of an english class discussing whether the Dark Knight movie was incredible or just good. Or whether I would choose the superhuman power of invisibility or flying if I was the only one who was going to get it. Either this is the perfect english class or he's just buttering us up for something much, much worse.....Crossing my fingers for the first. Well, just to make clear my intent of this blog, I want to have at least 1 blog entry per week, commenting on what we discussed during Focused Inquiry, and then taking a broader view of what happened during the week. I also have hopes of developing a rating system through which I can rate how well each class has gone. I'm sure it'll help my teacher also if he can get a student's opinion on each class so that he has some kind of reference. That's in the making though, something that you might see next week. As for this blog post, it's had its time. I might post something later this week, but definitely something next week.
