the best choice for you

MAN WHAT A YEAR!

The last year has been great playing baseball and going to a school like SCU. It hasn’t been easy but I definitely feel like I made the right decision coming here. School has definitely been the hardest part about the year studying more than I have ever studied before and meeting with my teacher more in one year than I did all high school. When you get done with high school they tell you college will be the best years of your life and I think that’s one thing that will stay true the whole time I’m in college. The friends and memories I have made this year I will never forget

MY FIRST  YEAR IN COLLEGE

CAN’T WAIT FOR NEXT YEAR!

This post is going to be pretty short and you might be thinking why would I post something like this. It’s because It just feels right and all I’ve been posting about is school topic and I feel like the last post I do for a while should be something personal. The best part of the year by far has to be getting to play college baseball with 35 guys I love and would do anything for. We didn’t have the greatest year but hey we always have next year and so few get to play college baseball I’m happy just for the experience. Not every day was perfect but overall I had a great year and can’t wait to see what next year brings me.

This post is going to be the longest post because I’m posting the reflection I wrote about my infographic along with the infographic even though I have already posted it before. I’m just doing so because I feel that the reflection will make more sense if you can look at the infographic at the same time.

The Issue of On-Campus vs. Off-Campus Living

    I made a graphical representation of the pros and cons of living on campus or off campus at Santa Clara University. The split view illustrates the separation and differences between the two choices of living on campus and living off campus. The images used show the main issues and thoughts that I wanted to convey when students think about the benefits or differences when making the decision to live on campus or off campus. I chose to keep the message simple and straightforward by using simple images to convey the advantages and disadvantages of both choices.

KEEPING IT SIMPLE

The main reason for keeping the message simple and to the point is based on the demographics of the audience. The audience is made up of busy students attending Santa Clara University, between the ages of 18-24, who currently live on campus or off campus, and use some form of social media. Because students are busy and very often receive their information through social media avenues such as Twitter, Facebook, and Instagram, it was important to keep the message simple and the graphics direct and uncluttered. I used Adobe Illustrator to create this layout and the icons were found on the site: www.flaticon.com. The icons used were easy to understand and conveyed a quick message to the reader; how much does it cost, do I save money, what are my living arrangements, do I have more room or less room, who pays for utilities, do I have a curfew, do I need a car, etc. These are all questions that were easily answered with a few simple icons and one easy to glance at picture.

THE ISSUES THAT CAME UP

In the process of doing research for this project, two important issues stood out. Number one, 48% of all SCU students currently live off campus, and number two, many of them have chosen to live off campus to save money. For this reason, it was important to show the possible savings and costs on both sides of the discussion. Therefore, it was important to highlight the cost and the savings with icons and figures at the top of the infographic. Many other issues such as eating habits, more or less space, levels of freedom, transportation needs, and other pros and cons were also highlighted, however, the driving force behind the decision to live on campus or off campus has always been about money.

THE SCU COMMUNITY

As I approached this project, I was certain that I was one hundred percent positive as to what the final outcome would indicate, based on my previous readings and research. However, the longer I spent investigating the cost factors involved in living off campus, I realized that it was not a clear-cut decision. It is not guaranteed that everyone will save money. Santa Clara University and Santa Clara as a community has one of the highest cost of living averages nationwide and this increases the uncertainty of saving money when you live off campus. However, it can be done if you make the right choices.

SOME TIMES IT’S GOOD TO GO WITH THE FLOW

Most of the time when I write a blog post, there is a purpose in placing the information. However, this time I’m just telling you how everything is going in my life. I am usually very structured, but sometimes it’s a good idea to just go with the flow. I think it can be for the best to change things up so you’re not always doing the same thing over and over again, because when you do, you tend to lose the opportunity to be creative.

SOMETHING DIFFERENT

The last couple of weeks I’ve been writing about a couple of different essays that I’ve been working on for my English class. However, for this blog post, I will just talk about another class that I have been taking which is called sociology one. I just finished a project on how advertising affect men, women and what different ads do to target those groups of people.

A NICE CHANGE OF SUBJECT

I thought it was really interesting looking at how ads really objectify women and try to sell them a lot of beauty products that will supposedly make them look like the models in the air-brushed pictures in magazines. It was also pretty cool to look at all the ads that I see every day as a guy and really think about what the message of the ad is and what they are trying to get me to do. I don’t know if most of you even care about this stuff, I just thought it was interesting and might be a nice change the subject and write about something different for a change.

CHALLENGES ARE WHAT MAKE US BETTER

I’m not one to say that the last couple months of writing English papers hasn’t been fun, however, I’m happy that this quarter is coming to an end. These papers have been challenging for two reasons. Number one, the papers have taken a lot of writing and they have entailed a lot of research. However, being challenged is what makes us better. As we near the end of this class, we have started to think about what we might want to do for our final multimedia project. There are a number of things my teacher said I could do for this project, such as a video presentation, voice over, or a simple info-graphic that presents our argument in a clear manner. With all the different options that I could go with, I think the best option for me to present my argument in an info-graphic. With this in mind, my next project will be to arrange my ideas together with a series of images that will tell the story. What’s different about this assignment is, it does not have to have the full argument with all the facts and reasons.

SHORT AND SIMPLE

All you need to have is the main points of the argument that are most important to the audience that your presentation is geared towards reaching. I feel like my presentation will go really well because of how I’m composing all my information. I believe that the amount of information I have will get my point across, however, I know that because I have chosen to use a info-graphic, I must keep the message simple and clear to understand. Overall I feel really good about this project and can’t wait to present it.

MY LAST ENGLISH CLASS OF THE YEAR

So last post I talked about my infographic I was doing for my final English project. Today we had our last class which was mostly for a final look at our projects. At the start of the class I thought this class was going to be a waste of time because there really wasn’t anything else for my teacher to teach us and all we have left is our final project to turn in. As the class went on and it became my turn to show the class what I had come up with. After I showed the class my project I realized that it was really helpful to have come to class and have the other students look at my work. The class gave me some great advice to

improve my project so it’s the most clear product I put forward to my audience. My class told me that to make sure in my paper that I make it aware to my audience what each money symbol means on both sides of my infographic. That was great advice that I think will help to make my project even better. The best thing that happened out of this is instead of waiting till I turn my infographic to my teacher I’m going to post it now but I’m only posting the infographic. I will post the explanation of it and my write up of the project later.

MY INFOGRAPHIC

Still can’t believe it’s the end of my freshmen year as Santa Clara. Last blog post I talked about my final project for English and what I was going to do for it. At first I wanted to do an I-movie because I thought that was going to be the best way to convey my message to the audience that I Am trying to reach. The only problem was as I worked on the I-movie and tried to put together the information I wanted on it I started to realize I wasn’t intothis and I was just going to be turning in something that was not my best work. So I started to work on something called an infographic because as I did that it really seemed to help my ideas flow and come together. I did two of these infographics one is my final one that I will  turn into my teacher and post on her in a couple of days but I thought I would show you guys the other one I did as a joke.

NEARING THE FINAL STAGE

With it being the last week of classes I’ve finally started actually working on my final project for English. It feels good to finally start it since I’ve put in a lot of work preparing for it to make sure it’s the best project I put forward. I think the best part of this whole process is going to be getting to see my final work on the screen when we present these in class. It will be nice to see all my hard work on the board and to see the expressions on the other students faces and to also see how my message reaches the students in the class.

THE WAY I FEEL

I have to be honest at the start of all these papers and this project I’ve been doing I really wasn’t to happy  about doing all this but as it’s gone on I’ve learned a lot and enjoyed it more and more. I think the main reason for all that is I started to understand and learn why we were doing all of these papers and work. The point of all this work was to really prepare us for research papers, how to find the proper sources that are credible and how to do multi media projects that we may also have to do for other classes. The end of the year

man what a yearis a time filled with mixed emotions you’re happy to be done with the long year but you’re also going to miss those classes you loved to go to. But you also know that with this year being done all that means is you will be starting a new year where you can show off all you learned from the year before.

With it being the end of the year for college students who are now getting ready for finals and  trying to decided what they want to do for the summer it can be a stressful time. Being a first year student as well as an athlete is stressful enough but to add finials to the mix just makes it even tougher. In college teachers are asking you to remember stuff from the eight and nine weeks ago while you’re competing on the field for hours, plus working in the weight room when other kids are spending time studying. Now as an athlete you’re probably asking yourself why are teachers doing this to us? Don’t they know everything we are going through and have to do on a day by day basis. You also probably are thinking all these classes are a waste of time and there is no point of going or doing any of this work. My perspective was a lot like most athletes who come to school just to play sports and feel like school is just something they have to put up with to play their sport.

JUST STEP BACK AND TAKE A BREATH

Now I’m not saying there is anything wrong with having this attitude but what I’m saying is if you’re an athlete you need to have a second thought about how much effort you put into school and what your attitude toward school says to your teachers. My attitude is that don’t write school of so quickly it’s not as bad as you think it is and it can help your athletics in some way.

IF I CAN DO IT SO CAN YOU!

For example I’m finishing up an English class this quarter that I was not to happy about taking just because I was ready for the school year to be over. But something changed I got a paperback that the teacher said I missed some key details and that’s why I got the grade I got. At the time I was think this teacher just want’s to create more work for me but I then took a step back and started to realize that all she is trying to do is make sure I understand the material and that I pay attention to the minor details.. Now you might be thinking what the is my point, my point is that don’t think of school as a waste of time because it can make you better in your sport just like my teacher made me realize I need to pay attention to the minor details to make a paper not just good but great.

NEVER GIVE UP HOPE

So for the last couple weeks I’ve been talking about my English class and all the papers that I’ve been working on for a couple reasons I want to make sure I pass on what I have learned to those that are younger so they don’t make any of the same mistakes I did and why learn something if you are never going to teach someone else about it. All these papers I’ve been doing for English have been tough but I think in the long run all this work in the class will be very good for me. I haven’t liked doing all the work for these paper but the one thing that I have liked and thought really helped me was a library session we did as a class today.

My learning break through

The librarian showed us the right way to cite our sources say where we got them who the author is, why they are important and how to make our research paper as good as if it was peer reviewed. I think the reason I really liked this library session and thought it was so helpful was I really made a lot of progress on the next part of my research paper which is going to be a ton of work. I know I should be focused just on the process and everything that goes into writing a good paper but it’s nice to see some results that let me know that I’m on the right track. But by far the best part of all this is I really feel like I’m learning something and not doing mindless work like you do in so many classes. The lesson you can take away from this is no matter how rough or hard something is getting, you will get through it and be a better person and smarter student because of it.

CHANGING MY MIND

As you go through college you learn different tricks and tools of the trade to help yourself get through things much more smoothly. A lot of that has to do with your classes and how to navigate through all that your classes require of you. I’m going through my seconded quarter of this english class I’ve been taking  over the year. We’ve been working on a few essay’s that all build off each other and are supposed to prepare us for the next one. The paper we are on now and that I’ve been working on involves a lot of research on the topic. With me doing all this research it has forced me to learn a lot more about my topic then I thought I want  or had to learn but it has also showed me any gaps I have in my research.

WHAT COULD BE MISSING

It even forced me to change my research question so it could reach a larger number of people then it was before. The research question I had before was a good question in my mind but it was a limited one that was just not giving me the information or sources I was hoping to get. This experience also forced me to do a better job of actually reading my sources to make sure they fit my argument and help my paper. With doing all that I learned of some gaps I had with my sources like them being popular sources and not scholarly. Now you might be thinking none of this really matters and as long as you write a good paper what do the sources really do. The point is that the little things in college really do matter because you being aware of the gaps you have in your sources and how that affects your paper can be the difference from an A or B.