:)

UNT my oh my, how time flies! From the beginning my life at UNT has been non-stop busy and an adventure! From becoming best friends with my roommate, to roommate drama, to a different roommate! From having my best friends at UNT and feeling independent from my family, to missing my other old friends, making new ones, and being homesick…From feeling excited and busy, to drained, to tired, to alone, I’ve had a mix of emotions all along the way. But, that’s what I loved about it. College is fun, hard-work, and lonely sometimes, but most importantly I learned it is life-changing. I’ve learned so much, books wise, experience wise, about other people, and about myself that I could have never learned without it. I also find out who I really want to be, and learned to stop trying to please everyone else, including my parents. I have finally accepted what I am truly passionate about, what I love, and what makes my life worthwhile, I have proudly proclaimed my love for art. I am an art major. I am a lively, determined, and rebellious individual who knows what she wants and what I don’t know I’m ready to keep on going to figure it out. College has set me free; free from my prior restrictions others and myself even, have placed on me. I have met such a diverse group of people, and become great friends with people I would’ve never thought before. I have made life-long lasting relationships. I’ve learned to work harder and be more confident in my abilities than ever before. But most importantly, I’ve learned how to be on my own and rely on myself as my own motivator.

As for my goals, I said I wanted to:

·         Stay in Honors and maintain a 4.0 GPA while doing work study.

·         Pick a major and stick to it; think of careers that could prosper from it.

·         Join clubs to get involved within the next year, including Sigma Alpha.

·         Keep all my scholarships and gain more as the years progress.

·         Get my masters within at least two years after my bachelors hopefully!

I am still in Honors, I do not know my GPA but I think it’s still good, and I did not do work study. I realized I couldn’t work and maintain the grades and social life I want, so I’m going to work during the breaks and summer. I picked my major, communications design and hope to become a graphic designer or something else with it. One thing I want to do is get more involved, because I could not find a lot of information on clubs. I did join one, CKI, but did not join Sigma Alpha. I realized I didn’t like that sorority, but might choose a different one for the spring. I have all my scholarships right now, and I am hoping I will get more opportunities later on. Lastly, my Master’s is still on my agenda and a while from now, so we shall see! Next semester, I would probably add:

·         Excel at my art classes.

·         Put myself out there more.

·         And get into the Honors dorms.

These three things with the others are what I aim to focus on next semester and remember to stick to. I’m not too worried though, because I believe I can do it!

It has been said that “art is the only way to run away without leaving home,” and that is what it is for me. Art is an escape from the world and all that is unpleasant, it calms and soothes me, and at the same time brings me great joy once I have completed a piece. That is how I knew I was meant to be an artist.  

I am an art major in Pre-Communications Design at the University of North Texas and will graduate in May 2016. No matter what I do, I know art will be a part of my life without a doubt. I want to have a career in life that I love, and I refuse to settle for less than that.

I have always been an ‘overachiever,’ you could say, in school. I always took the higher level classes, participated in more clubs than you can count on both hands, and always tried to push myself to the maximum limit it seemed I could go. I was in the top 3% of my class, nominated Miss McKinney North, received the Principal’s Student Spirit award, Rotary Club student of the month, Avid Student of the Year and Most Uplifting Student of the Year, etc… I loved being involved at school, making a difference in other people’s lives, doing community service, being a leader, and leaving my mark. I pride myself in becoming a well-rounded person, who not only is a great team player and motivator, but is fully prepared to take on that leadership role.

 I like my life busy, and not routine. Variety and independence are important aspects of my life that I like to keep in mind. Art enables me to have all of these things and still involve interactions with others and really establish emotions between myself and others. I can work well with others, and well by myself. I believe I am a versatile worker, who is a creative thinker, intelligent, hard-working, and persistent in what she wants.  I don’t listen when people tell me I can’t do something; it just motivates me that much more and once I set my sights on what I want nothing can get in my way.

Though I have an artist’s mind and heart, I am an optimist/ positive thinker, analytical, organized, disciplined, punctual, and extroverted. I know I would be a very different and irreplaceable person to anyone’s life that I encounter; I can assure you that.

After watching the video I understood the message of people judging the surface or “cover” of what they see, because after the man took off all the tattoo covering my presumptions about him were established pretty quickly even without thinking about it. We all tend to judge based on what we see, because at face-value that is all we know. But the problem with that is we are not always right and just have a lack of understanding for one another’s diversity. People may look a certain way, but that doesn’t necessarily mean that it reflects all of who they are or what they represent; however, I believe this is why individuals, including myself, try to portray our identity from our outside appearances. For example, I have always been a more artsy one and tend to gravitate towards the more eccentric, independent, and rebellious things in life and how I look. But some people judge artists as unsuccessful, or drug abusers, etc… this is not true for all artists and is just another example of how the diversity in cultures, identities, and backgrounds are often times misunderstood.

What I identify with:

·         Artist

·         Christian

·         Free spirit

·         First generation college student

·         Middle class

·         Caucasian

·         Blonde

·         Short

·         Female

·         Independent

·         Extravert

·         Political moderate

·         Freshman at UNT

·         Etc….

My Christian faith, background, family, and life experiences all basically influence my values and opinions in life. Most of the decisions I make are carefully considered and analyzed based on the above categories. For example, if I decide to go to a party, I tell myself that I won’t do anything too crazy because I am a Christian, and I wouldn’t want to disappoint my family, but also on past experiences where I have learned what is good or not. Another viewpoint that these have influenced me could be abortion. My family doesn’t support this, my faith doesn’t support this, and neither do I to an extent. I do believe that only in the worst possible case where a woman was forced against her will should she be allowed to have an abortion, but any other time I do not see the justice in it.

I didn’t disagree really with anything in the chapter, though I did agree with the fact that most people’s beliefs are influenced by their own experiences and reinforcements. Like I am more liberal than my parents and have different viewpoints on such things that they often find hard to understand, and I have learned my different opinions on things by whether or not they have affected me negatively or positively, which can either reinforce my behavior or not.

I would like to possibly study abroad when I am a little older and more mature in the college world. I do not only think this would be beneficial to me in helping me learn different cultures and perspectives, but also enrich my viewpoints on life and give me different options and help me grow as a person. I also want to join a couple of diverse clubs that are not directed into the same area of topics, but enable me to experience multiple things and learn from them.

Budget seems to be the hardest thing for me to get started. I just don’t know how to accurately decide how much I’ll spend a week, how money I will have, and how much money to leave for extra or uncertain expenses. It’s hard for me to do this; because I get different amounts of money income I guess every month, but roughly at least a hundred bucks. I’m not a big extravagant spender or waste my money, but sometimes I like to have finer things or more expensive things for when I do occasionally go shopping. Sometimes it’s hard for me to say no to the things I want, but I find it easier to do so when I’m spending my own money or when I use cash, because I can visually see money being lost better than I can if I use my debit card.  Some of the strategies I am going to try to use and incorporate in my daily life and for the future consist of doing a test run of my budget to determine my average expenses and intake of money, and to better recognize the different between needs and wants. After my first job last summer, my whole view on money and the value of a dollar changed dramatically; I realized how hard it is to earn the money you worked hard for and how easy it is to spend it all on trivial items. I made minimum wage, which is around seven dollars, and I’d go shopping for clothes and realized that even most shirts are more than what I made in an hour, and I only worked probably around fifteen hours a week tops since it was at a concession stand for the baseball games. This did not please me, because I knew that working at a concession stand in the hot summer days with a lot of customers is not an easy or joyful job, and giving a day’s money of hard work and sweat for just one or two things was not cool with me. That’s when it really hit me why college is so important to get a better education, so I can start a career that makes more than minimum wage and allows me to keep up with the more expensive economy. So after this I definitely learned to better understand the difference between my needs and wants. Luckily for me this happened before college, so I cannot waste away all my money, savings, and parents’ money when I go grocery shopping or what not.      

This is the video of Steve Jobs speech that I chose.

Well I have actually done a lot of public speaking, and I was a student representative and speaker at the AVID Summer Institute my junior year. It was a great experience to face my fears of public speaking and the possibility of humiliation, since I had to speak in front of hundreds of adults and faculty. At first I was really nervous and hardly spoke at all, but after the first panel I got more comfortable and ended up being one of the best speakers I was told. However, I still get nervous and anxious every time I have to speak in front of others, especially my peers. I feel like this is only natural for everyone or most people to feel this way, because no one wants to look bad or foolish in front of others. But I try not to psych myself out, think positively, be prepared, and if I mess up to just go with the flow and recover quickly. I think those are my strengthens in public speaking, besides giving eye contact to the audience, trying to relate to people, and using emotion and body language. My weaknesses in public speaking I’d say would be getting anxious, sometimes fidgeting or forgetting what I was going to say, and rushing through while I’m talking sometimes; also, I’m pretty much an open book and hiding my emotions is hard, so when I’m a little nervous most people can see it.

I think that Lisandry’s and my presentation was well prepared, thought out, and had good visuals; we worked well as a team and also came prepared with a handout. The only thing we didn’t know was that our information could come from other sources other than the book or our personal reflections, so our presentation could’ve been more informative that way.

I chose Steve Jobs as an example of a great public speaker. In his Stanford Commencement Address on “How to live before you die,” he exhibited a great deal of relatability to the audience, but also incorporated some comic relief in a very subtle way. His speech consisted of the personal aspect; discussing his childhood difficulties with adoption and dropping out of college, and his adult difficulties of being fired and diagnosed with cancer. However, he spoke of such adversities in an inspiring way. He demonstrated his capacity to overcome life’s inevitable obstacles, and to not fear death or the end of life, but to live it at its fullest and do what you love while not worrying about what other people think. The pathos he displayed in his speech was very moving, and at the same time very informative and encouraging.

My study habits haven’t changed that much since I was in high school, because I used good strategies that I learned from my AVID program and other basic classes; however, I have been able to find more time throughout the day to spare and study or refresh my memory, rather than waiting until school is out and study in just a certain time frame.

Yes, I have taken quite a few tests already at UNT, and currently have three more this week. Before the tests, I was very anxious and kind of worried just because I didn’t know what to expect with college tests and how hard they would be, but for most of my classes at least, because I studied, read my books, and took notes, I did pretty well. When the tests are concentrated on specific details, it is a little harder to determine which ones will be asked out of the whole subjects, since main ideas are easier to remember in bulk. I have gotten a B on every test so far, though sometimes after I took a test I felt like I would’ve gotten an A, but that’s okay. Study guides are also very useful when they give them to you, but I’ve learned that that doesn’t mean nothing else will be on the exam.

On my next exams, I plan to use one of the strategies I learned for the multiple choice questions that involve looking out for absolute words, such as “always,” “never,” and “only.”This process of elimination is a great way to try to figure out the correct answer for the test. Another one I plan on using is trying not to talk to people before a test, I’ve learned that it can undermine my confidence on how I will do if people are doubting themselves or saying how hard its’ going to be. I don’t need to psych myself out and it’ll be better for me to focus and review the material. The third thing I plan on doing is to try to get more sleep in order to give my body enough rest to function properly and at my best abilities mentally. The last thing I will look for and that I didn’t know about is that for fill-in-the-blank questions, if an “a” is in front of the blank, then it wants a consonant word, and if there is an “an” in front of the blank then it wants a vowel word; which can be helpful, since some of my test have fill-in-the-blank questions.

What I learned from the presentation, chapter, and the power point, is the different ways to use test formats to your advantage, finding clues to help jog your memory or eliminate the distracting answers. Also, that to worry too much about a test can strain your focus and enhance your test anxiety, so it is better going in with a positive mind, well-studied, and to not panic.

I honestly did not learn much from the Library tour, and I didn’t kind of knew the basics anyway, but I believe the five resources to utilize at the Willis Library would be the staff, the copy/printer, the learning lab, wifi internet, and the books of course. The librarians and staff are there to help, ask questions, and depend on if you need assistance. The copier, scanner, and printer are great tools to use if students do not have one or need to use one in the library. The learning lab is a place for students to get help on their courses or technological assistance. The free wifi internet is a great perk in the library that I always use when I go to study. Lastly, what else is a library for if not books; books that range from all kind of topics to use as resources for classes, sources for paper, or just for pleasure. They also come in handy when you have to write research papers like I am currently doing for my English class. I did not know that there was a little café in the library, along with a vending machine/snack center. After finding out about this little fact, I will definitely use this on the nights that I stay late and get the midnight munchies from late night studying hours, and it’s apparently on the same floor I typically study on. I also did not know about the elevators in the back, believe it or not. Though I’m more of a stairs person, it is definitely a good thing to know just in case. Oh, and I did not know that the fourth floor was really quiet and that the second floor consisted mostly of books.

Research in college is a little different than high school because it is definitely more independent, all of it is outside of class, and you’re expected to find valuable sources yourself without the teachers help. I am currently doing a research paper for my Honors English class, and I feel like my AP classes in high school really prepared me for the necessary skills needed to do well on this project and be more independent in my search. Although, I have to admit I have found research in college to be much more difficult to conduct than in high school. It is much harder to decipher what is credible enough for my classes, as well as how to cite my sources correctly and accurately. I feel like I do not know all the resources available to me or I’m not utilizing them to the best of their abilities, so I don’t know. I hope after my English course and this one as well, both of which are making me do research, I will become more familiar with the process around here, the resources at my disposal, and how to give my teachers what exactly they are looking for.

When conducting the career search on Google Scholar and the Library search, I actually found it quite difficult to find just a simple resource to give me a description, overview, or facts about the job. Honestly, I must have typed in over twenty different variations and options consisting of the job occupation I want to research for my Road Trip Nation, such as graphic design, graphic design jobs, job salaries, communication design, jobs for art majors, how to be successful with an art major, etc… And I got nothing valuable or that I can even add to my tumblr, I was lucky if I got any results at all and I’m a little frustrated. So I’m sorry but I don’t know where to go from there or if I did something wrong in my search, but in the future I think I’ll just use regular Google to make the process as easy as possible.

My character is Claire from Modern Family

Personal Values:

·         Independence

·         Family-oriented and help others first

·         Have a happy and loving relationship

·         Be in control

·         Live life through emotions

Work Values:

·         Lead by example

·         Stay persistent in goals

·         Have ambitions and ideas accomplished

·         Help make a difference in others lives