Middle Aged…

One thing I think everyone should learn by the time they are middle aged is personal finances.  Honestly, they should learn it earlier than that.  My personal experience, however,  is that finances are something most people will screw up a few times before they get the hang of it.  By the time one reaches my age (late twenties), they will likely be in the process of settling down.  Settling down, to many, equates to marriage, children, homeownership, and good old American debt.  Better financial planning at an earlier age can mean the prospect of actually retiring at a reasonable age.  Moreover, a middle aged individual should know better than to overextend themselves with revolving credit.  Sadly, some people just don’t learn (my father, for example).  It’s one thing to disadvantage yourself because of poor decisions, but it’s quite another to affect your spouse or child’s quality of life because you don’t know how to manage your funds.  I fully believe that these lessons can be taught by parents or consultants, but the learning happens by getting burned once…twice…thrice…

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What I Learned

One new thing I learned this semester in English was how to set up an argument. Before this class I never had heard of a rebuttal and counter-argument. I liked how majority of the papers we wrote were very challenging. The last project we did was very challenging to me; however, getting help, helped me to understand how to set up an argument. At first I didn’t know what direction my argument should been, and I felt like I was rambling on about nothing. I will know take what I learned in English and apply it to real life events such as arguing with someone and knowing what and how to react to the other person’s statements.  Also I can use knowing how to set up an argument for future courses that I have to take. I think overall learning how to set up my argument was very important not only in the classroom, but also in the real world.

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Last Q of the Week

I have learned a lot from this class. One new thing that I learned was what rhetoric really meant. I kind of had an idea before, but now I really know what it is. It can be anything from the way one presents one’s self through attire or through an argumentitive speech. I realized the importance of rhetorical situations from this class and how to navidgate them well. I already new about the rhetorical appeals, but it was interesting to see them put into action through writing. I am very glad that I now have a deeper knowledge of rhetoric and how to use it- getting my words to do what I want them to. This is a very important skill and is very helpful in the real world. When my view clashes with someone else’s, I want to be able to confidently defend my position with good rhetoric. I feel this will be very useful in everything that I do, because there are many other people out there with many different views. If I cannot defend my own, I will simply fall for theirs. I understand how important it is to have a good ethos when arguing, which means that I need to present myself as a credible source and show that I have a real basis for my view/argument. Thank you for helping me learn this skill.

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What I learned…

This class might have been challenging, but it was the good kind. I learned how to properly cite sources in this class. Yep, that’s right. All those years in English and I have not been 100% sure on how to do so. Not only was I introduced to different websites that show you how to so, but my teacher told me what was the right and wrong way. I now know that they must be in alphabetical order and depending on what the source is (website, website with no author, blog, etc), there must be a specific layout. I used to just put them all or the place and it was a mess. Now the next time I am writing a paper, I can properly organize my sources. Even if i forget I now know some sites I can go to, to refresh my mind on how to cite. Its perfect and this class taught me a lot as well as challenged me.

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Learning while you’re learning…

In my case, this semester I’m learning to reverse-engineer some habits that I picked up from my many years in the workforce.  As a manager, I’m inundated with tasks, very few of which I personally complete.  Both a joy and tribulation, I must delegate significant portions of my responsibility in order to perform my job.  I also have learned over the years to prioritize tasks effectively and in many cases that means that insignificant tasks fall by the wayside while I tackle the more significant or impactful projects.

As it relates to school this semester, I have learned that in some cases prioritizing is still useful.   However, those smaller tasks can only be delayed, not omitted.  This is very different for me.  In high school, I skated by on high test grades and brilliant projects, but didn’t complete most homework because I didn’t need it to learn and retain the material.  Going into college courses, I expected differently and set out in the beginning of the semester with the best of intentions.  Somewhere along the way this semester I began to omit by prioritization some of the homework due for my classes, with very different (and less lazy) reasons than my high school tactics.  I was overwhelmed with things going on at work, keeping our apartment clean, financial obligations, and three classes worth of assignments.  I defaulted to my failsafe from the corporate world – extinguish the largest flames first.

I read the Syllabi for my classes in the beginning of the semester.  My understanding of the weight of my various grades became distorted by my imperative to survive the semester intact.  I learned the following things about homework throughout the semester, sadly too late to have a significant effect on my grades:

• College math after 10 years out of the game is insanely hard.  Homework is the best way to study this subject, and can be salvation for your grade in a class where the tests are weighted heavily.
• Similarly for math, if I am struggling I need to get a tutor EARLY in the semester!
• In courses involving writing, I am no longer graded against my peers – I am graded against my progress over the semester.  This is a new format for me.  I not only have to “step up my game” on projects, but I need the insurance of smaller assignments.
• I’m still very good in language courses, and I picked up Spanish without difficulty thus far.  The homework may have been inconsequential to my performance over the length of the course, but materials I learned in the last two weeks of the semester didn’t involve the same amount of in-class practice.  For the purpose of retention for future classes and for final exams, I should have put more of an emphasis on the regular homework.

Overall, I don’t think it’s worth beating myself up over.  The most important thing is that I have learned from this experience and will make time for more homework in the future.  I committed to sacrificing whatever necessary in order to go to school.  This semester, that went from to-the-letter execution to a pleasant ideal as the weeks passed.  As my first successfully completed semester in college, it hasn’t ended quite the way I wanted it to, but I’ve learned invaluable lessons.

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Audience Analysis

I’ve never had the flair or interest as regards anything related to English or paper writing but just do it for the credit. This was my mindset when signing up for ENGL 121 for the present semester. I still had that opinion going into the first week of class right up till the point of the first essay to be written. Thinking upon what approach to start to with and through the help of the instructor, I realized the importance of identifying one’s audience. Audience Analysis is one major concept that helps you determine how you want your message to be interpreted. By understanding the audience you writing to, you get a clearer picture and layout of how your message will be conveyed. This concept I plan on using continuously in interacting with others and in other classes or field I find myself.

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Question of the Week 10

Excuse me while I act like a nerd and answer the question of the week the same day it was posted… but c’mon, it’s the last one! Show some enthusiasm people! WOO 😀

Anyway:

What’s one NEW thing you learned this semester in this class? Identify what you learned and how you imagine you’ll apply it to some other aspect of your life.

Before I took English 121, I did not now the first thing about a “rhetorical situation”, let alone the importance of my audience. When Professor Ludeker stood in front of the class and asked us what we thought a rhetorical situation meant I was confident that I had the answer. But then she said it had nothing to do with rhetorical questions. Oops.

As Ms. Ludeker explained to us, a rhetorical situation is pretty much any circumstance that involves one person using any sort of communication to influence or change the perspective of another person (or persons). That means that a huge portion of our own communication can probably be categorized as a rhetorical situation.

Of the four elements that make up a rhetorical situation (author, text, audience, and context), I think the most important one is audience. If there is one thing that I could take away from this class, it would be the importance of identifying my audience and knowing how to reach them. When you are trying to communicate, you have to know who your audience is in order to figure out what exactly they are expecting out of you.  Otherwise, the whole purpose of your message will be useless. For example, if you write an essay to PETA members telling them to buy the new premium steak you offer at your restaurant, your inbox will probably fill up with hate mail pretty fast.  

I think understanding who your audience is will be beneficial in all circumstances that require communication. Anytime I need to persuade, argue, or define a certain topic to people, I can do it properly because I’ll know how they (my audience) will want me to communicate with them and I’ll also know what their expectations are in regards to the topic at hand.

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The Problem- Q of the Week

I think one of the worlds most prominent problems is people’s obsession with spending money far beyond their means. This has been visable in both government and private spending policies all over the world, especially in America. This contributed greatly to the huge stock market crash a few years ago. People cannot seem to be content with what they have and therefore go on expensive spending sprees spending money they don’t have. When people couldn’t pay all the credit card bills at the end of the month, they went bankrupt. Bankruptcy in great amount caused the stock market to plummet and thus cause many other to lose great amounts of money. This is also a problem in the federal government. Congress has spent so much money that we are in almost unpayable debt. This is a serious problem. In order to fix this problem we must stop spending money for unnessecary things. Just because we don’t have the most expensive car or the biggest house does not mean we need them. This obsession for more “stuff” has driven the economy into the ground. We cannot keep spending limitlessly without consequences as we have previously seen. A brand new BMW is not worth an economical disaster. If that is what you can afford then that is fine, but if you cannot afford it, don’t get yourself caught up in endless loans and payments to have what you want. The economy is not just in the hands of the government but also the hands of the civilians.

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Question of the Week 10 (last one!)

What’s one NEW thing you learned this semester in this class? Identify what you learned and how you imagine you’ll apply it to some other aspect of your life.

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Gas Prices are Outrageous

The gas prices are absolutely ridiculous; I mean come on 4 dollars per gallon. That is a HUGE problem to many people now. I am a broke college student there is no way I can afford these gas prices. I don’t know a lot about politics, but what I do know is there is no reason that gas prices should be 4 dollars. I have a Free State Gas Station near my house and that gas station always seems to be the cheapest out of all the gas stations around me such as Sunoco, Exxon, and BP. Free State has not hit 4 dollars, yesterday I filled up my tank and the price for regular gas was $3.97. Then two weeks ago I filled my car up at Sunoco, and the gas price was $4.14, that 17 cents makes a huge difference. The economy is not superb and yet the gas prices are outrageously expensive; however, people need to get to places which means no matter what the gas prices are they are going to fill their tanks up.

What should the solution be? 

1. The government needs to increase the American Oil Production this would allow the gas prices to go down, which in all means NEEDS to.
2. Civilians need to boycott the gas stations such as Sunoco, Exxon, and BP so that maybe they will notice that their prices are outrageous and that they should do something about it. Like lowering the prices!
3. Civilians need to start to riding bikes and walking everywhere because gas prices are just too darn expensive.

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