Inquiry Final

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=lucLZv2NZGg

Next Semester

            Well, for next semester i hope that i can stay on top of my work as well as i did during the coarse of this semester. I want to be able to do work finish it then be able to have fun, i was able to do this very well this semester. I hope next semester that i will still be able to manage my time so well. In my first semester of college i learned how important it is to manage your time. In college to truly be successful you have to be able to manage your time. I also want to be able to make more friends next semester so that i can keep my group of friends in college very open. I also want to remain friends with the people i have met in my inquiry and English class. i have made so many friends and already have accomplished a lot in one semester and i hope i continue to do so in my next seven semesters of college.

Successes and failures

            During the course of this semester i have had many successes and a few failures. One of my successes that i am very proud of is me getting acclimated to a college surrounding. For me i think that getting acclimated to a college surrounding was a huge deal. The reason for this is because i thought at first that college was not for me and that i was going to hate everything about it, I thought that i would hate having to share a room and a bathroom with other people. Honestly it is not that bad, i have made many friends and i like SCSU and all that it has to offer. One of failures in school that i did not get the right start to my art history class.  i thought that it was going to be easy and i really did pay attention and i would let myself doze off in class and sometimes just stare into space. I did not take this class very seriously because i never took art credits very seriously even in high school i did the same thing. I was just never able to take art credits seriously at all but college taught me that i was wrong and i needed to care about art history even thought it is definitely the most boring subject ever offered in the history of classes. So since starting here i feel like that i have grown a lot and just one semester has taught me a lot.

INQ experience

               The experience of having the same people in two classes was very good. The reason i say this from this class alone i got to know so many people. If it wasn't for this class meeting people at college would have been very hard. These classes helped me feel more at home during my transition to SCSU because at first coming to classes and not knowing anybody is a little unsettling. So this class really helped me ease my way into college and really was a great experience. In inquiry and english we did many group projects and activities that really helped get to know each other. I can say that i have made very good freinds with the people in my classes. I will miss some of the time in inquiry and english when we are all in different classes. It will be different next semester not being with the same people but i know that i will still see my freinds that i have made in this class.

Life after college

            My ideal life after college would honestly not be college education "fueled" the reason for this is because I hope to be a white glove mechanic at a European car dealership. Even though I would not be using my college education right off the bat but it will come into play in the long run. My reasoning for this is once i build my way up in the dealership world with my business degree and what i learn from the head people at the dealership i hope to one day own a dealership of European cars. I can put all of my business knowledge to use. Once I graduate college the summer before i start in the real world i hope to see the world i want to travel around for about a month before i start my life. 

Chicken cutlets

            My favorite food in the whole world has to be my grandmothers chicken cutlets. They are very basic to make and taste so good! My grandparents taught me how to cook when i was only nine years old. In this blog post I will tell you how to make really good chicken cutlets. There are only a few things you need

1. Chicken breast (obviously)
2. A meat tenderizer
3. 4 eggs
5. Flour
6. Bread crumbs (preferably make you own bread crumbs but store bought is fine too)
7. 3 medium sized bowls.
8. large deep frying pan ( any deep pot will work)
9. 1 measured cup of extra virgin olive oil

Okay, now that you have all of your ingredients ready you can begin to prep your cutlets. First thing you want to do is on a SANITARY surface you want to put the chicken breast down and begin to tenderize it. You do this by hitting it until it is almost flat and looks like a waffle. After this you want to do this to multiple pieces of chicken so they all look the same. Once tenderizing is done you want to set out your bowls, fill one with 4 cracked eggs, one with flour and the other with the breadcrumbs. Once that is set you want to stir the eggs around in the bowl until it is completely yellow. Okay, now comes the fun part. Soak one chicken breast at a time in the egg yolk once it is covered dip it in the flour and next the bread crumbs. When you do this make sure to stack the raw cutlets on top of each other not side by side because they will begin to dry and lose flour and bread crumb. After you have all your raw cutlets stacked pour your cup of olive oil into your pan and bring the oil to light simmer. Once you hear the oil popping and cooking you are good to put the raw cutlets into the hot oil (BE CAREFUL NOT TO DROP THEM IN OIL SPLASHES AND IT HURTS). Begin to cook and eye the olive oil as you cook to make sure that it is not getting to low, feel free to add more if  you begin to lose oil. Cooking is the tricky part because you cannot take your eyes off the cutlets while they are cooking for more than a few seconds. Eye the the side of the cutlet that is cooking once it is a golden brownish color flip it so it cooks on the side. Once both sides are a golden brown you have yourself a chicken cutlet.

Follow the Leader

            The one time i had to really step up to the plate and be a leader was when i had to stay home and watch my brothers a few weekends ago. My brothers are old enough to watch themselves at night they are 16 and 9 and they are very mature people. One weekend my parents had to go away a for a wedding and when i was not home my 16 year old brother Evan was home watching Will my 9 year old brother. One night i had plans with my friends and i was going to leave. When i was leaving i saw Will struggling with his math homework. I sat down with him to see what he was having trouble with and it turned out that he did not get his math homework. I sat down with my brother and I saw he was having serious problems with his math ans numbers. I knew that this was going to take a while and i knew i had to step up as an older brother so what i did was is i went over math and borrowing from numbers to make him understand. I called my friend and told him that i could not hang out till later. This is how i stepped up as a leader.

Difficult situation

            During this semester the most difficult time that I have had was definitely preparing for midterms. The only reason i say this is because i did not know what a college midterm would be like. I did not know what to expect from these tests so the next night i studied very hard for my first midterm which was art history. I went and took the test and it was a lot easier than i had expected so my mind thought "oh maybe college midterms are not that hard". So this lead to me the following night to believe that there was nothing to worry about for my history exam even though a passed with a high grade on that exam it required to much trying to remember things from class so that is when i know that i did not study enough. So what i did to prevent this from ever happening again i just always study to my max till i know that i am done. I make sure to study a good amount not to much and not to little. this is exactly what i did to solve my dilemma that i was having with my college midterm study issues.

Intellectual Stimulation

             The class where I feel the most intellectual stimulation is honestly my history class. In my history class we talk about American history starting from the reconstruction after the civil war. In this class I feel the most intellectual stimulation because I am able to see the way that our society was directly effected from past happenings. I have always found any type of history very interesting because you can see how society is effected today and you can see history repeating itself. People like to argue " where is history ever going to get us" history is a very important thing to learn because you are learning about the place where you come from or a place that has directly effected the place where you come from. Not only that but it is proven that history classes work a part of the mind that nothing else can exercise and it is very important to exercise these parts of the brain because they control how a person is able to memorize things. My history class brings me a to a deeper thinking,  thinking about how things could have been prevented, how they could have been changed and how things are different in today's society.

Favorite place to study

               On southerns campus I can honestly say that I do not have a favorite place to study. Reason being I like to study at night so that really limits me to the library and my room both are not really that great for me because I do not like studying in the library and my hall at school is very loud I do have a favorite place to study on the weekends though. My favorite place to study is actually at my girlfriend’s house at her kitchen table. There are actually a few reasons why I enjoy studying at this place. My first reason for enjoying studying here is usually when I am there doing work most likely everyone else in the house is doing some sort of work also. Her parents are always working on something for their jobs and it is very quiet atmosphere with very little distractions. This was my favorite place to do work or study when I was in high school. In my house I have two younger brothers who refuse to get along a mother play referee and a father who speaks very loud. Even though it is not impossible to study at my house and libraries are very good too but just for some reason this place is just the best place to study for me. I am naturally just a very distracted person so this is how I know that this is a truly distraction free place. I can sit there for hours and just study and study until I am comfortable in knowing that I will do well on a certain test or when I am done with a certain homework assignment. In high school this was almost like my library to go to and study.

Favorite place to study

                My favorite place to study is actually at my girlfriend’s house at her kitchen table. There are actually a few reasons why I enjoy studying at this place. My first reason for enjoying studying here is usually when I am there doing work most likely everyone else in the house is doing some sort of work also. Her parents are always working on something for their jobs and it is very quiet atmosphere with very little distractions. This was my favorite place to do work or study when I was in high school. In my house I have two younger brothers who refuse to get along a mother play referee and a father who speaks very loud. Even though it is not impossible to study at my house and libraries are very good too but just for some reason this place is just the best place to study for me. I am naturally just a very distracted person so this is how I know that this is a truly distraction free place. I can sit there for hours and just study and study until I am comfortable in knowing that I will do well on a certain test or when I am done with a certain homework assignment. In high school this was almost like my library to go to and study.

Midterms

            For me i was actually pretty happy with my midterm grades i think for the most part i am right where i want to be. All my grades are pretty much what I was expecting to see. I am pretty much happy for all my grades except for my art history class that class is a lot harder than I thought it was going to be. I really need to get my grades up in that class by studying more and reading more of our assigned readings. For the most part besides my art history class i say that all my hard work has paid off very well.

                To step outside of my comfort zone I attended and participated in a discussion at the student center about alcohol. The way that this is stepping outside of my comfort is because I am terrified of participating in a huge group of people for some reason. All my life I have just not been able to do this, just the idea of any type of public speaking makes me very nervous. At this discussion however I put all my fears aside and was able to actively participate in this discussion.  The main person in charge was a guy from Columbia University in New York. He spoke of all the stages of being intoxicated and asked questions that we had to answer. Even though I am petrified of public speaking I was able to answer the questions that he had and even was able to hold a conversation and ask my own questions to him. I say that even though it does not sound like anything huge I definitely stepped outside of my comfort zone.  

My video project

Peer Mentor

            Recently in my inquiry class we had an upper class men from our school pretty much come in and help us figure out who we are and what we want to do with our lives or what we want to do in general. I think that this is a really good program because a lot of college kids come in not knowing at all what they want to do but all they do know is that they're parents want them to go to college. I and a good percentage of freshman and sophomore's are in this same situation so having an upper level student come and talk to us telling us what they struggled through and how they found out what they wanted to do with they're lives. I think that this a great thing to do because I know sometimes I feel lost like i have no clue what I am going to do with my life or the work load that i have but knowing that my peer mentor went through the same thing so I know that I am not the only one who is going through struggles.

Peer Mentor

            Recently in my inquiry class we had an upper class men from our school pretty much come in and help us figure out who we are and what we want to do with our lives or what we want to do in general. I think that this is a really good program because a lot of college kids come in not knowing at all what they want to do but all they do know is that they're parents want them to go to college. I and a good percentage of freshman and sophomore's are in this same situation so having an upper level student come and talk to us telling us what they struggled through and how they found out what they wanted to do with they're lives. I think that this a great thing to do because I know sometimes I feel lost like i have no clue what I am going to do with my life or the work load that i have but knowing that my peer mentor went through the same thing so I know that I am not the only one who is going through struggles.

Being bored

              People try to tell me that being bored is indeed beneficial. I do not believe this at all because in these days who even has he time to be bored? I know for a fact that I don't, I am at school from Monday through Thursday then Thursday afternoon I leave SCSU's campus to go to work for the weekend and I work ALL weekend. Why? because these days there are two things that people are after in life and those two things are higher education and money. Honestly it is no different for me I want a college education because it is something that everyone needs and I work all weekend because I need the money just like everyone else. With this economy and the competitiveness if this life in general higher education is a necessity and frankly there is just no time to be bored. If you are bored then you are truly doing something wrong because no matter what for me there is always something to do whether it is school, studying, homework or one of my jobs there is just no time for me to be bored. I believe it is the same for everyone who works and has to go to school, people think that college kids are crazy partier's but in reality we are just hard working people.

Business man

        


               Ever since I was really young one thing has always been my interest throughout my whole life. This is interest of mine is cars. Okay, I know what you readers are thinking, What does that have to do with the  business program in college? Well in the past years of me driving i have developed an interest how cars run and the engines, suspension and braking of cars so I began and still to this day work on cars. So where does the business come in? Well one day I hope to become "white glove certified" this means being a mechanic for strictly only one brand of cars. Only a few brands of cars offer this type of certification these brands are Mercedes Benz, BMW and Audi. I hope to one day be able to do this and learn a lot about the brand of car that I am working for. Doing this is very good amount of money and a very good living and a lot of work. How ever I know you are still asking the question, WHAT DOES THIS HAVE TO DO WITH A BUSINESS DEGREE!? Okay, well after one day when I have learned enough about the car business I hope to own my own dealership. I hope to take my knowledge from the business and automotive world and put it to use. I have met quite a few owners of car dealerships and all of them at one point have been mechanics and all of them have said that they wish when they were first starting out owning the dealership that they had taken some sort of business class instead of struggling through the business world or paying someone a lot of money to figure it out for them.


                                                  








Audi Turbo Charger                                                               V8 BMW M5 Engine

Blogging for Dummies

          

  As a contributer to the blogging world i must that blogging is not as bad as i thought it was going to be. Simply because the only way to be good at blogging is that you must state how you feel and your true thoughts on something your interested in. Contrary to belief that writing is boring I have found that when writing about something your interested in or on a topic you have a strong opinion on, the words just start to flow and your already finished and if you really had to you could probably write more. I believe that in order to make a good blog you must relate what ever it is that you are blogging about you must make it personal to yourself. For instants if you are blogging about something like cooking talk about your favorite food or maybe even something that you like to cook. It is very easy to make yourself interested in something you must just relate to it. This is why I say blogging is easy, you must just find yourself in every thing you blog about, because we all know talking about ourselves is really easy. Thats how I blog I relate to the topics that i am writing about

Involvement

            For my upcoming project I am doing it on the topic of involvement. The reason that I have chose to do it on involvement is that in college or any different environment is crucial. I say this because everyone thinks that involvement is so important but what exactly is it? To some people being involved means just going to class and talking to people. Some people may see involvement as joining a sports team or even a club. I see it as making friends and stepping outside of your comfort zone. It is unfair to say everyone has to join a club, what about people who have jobs? I believe people need to step out of their comfort zone to be involved in something. This is exactly why I am doing my project on this subject solely for the fact is that there are so many ways to be involved. My project will be able to show this by asking people what being involved means to the people. I want to interview different people so that we can get different answers on what people see as involvment.

Involvment

            For my upcoming project I am doing it on the topic of involvement. The reason that I have chose to do it on involvement is that in college or any different environment is crucial. I say this because everyone thinks that involvement is so important but what exactly is it? To some people being involved means just going to class and talking to people. Some people may see involvement as joining a sports team or even a club. I see it as making friends and stepping outside of your comfort zone. It is unfair to say everyone has to join a club, what about people who have jobs? I believe people need to step out of their comfort zone to be involved in something. This is exactly why I am doing my project on this subject solely for the fact is that there are so many ways to be involved. My project will be able to show this by asking people what being involved means to the people. I want to interview different people so that we can get different answers on what people see as involvment.

College Humor

                             About a week ago I experienced something truly wonderful and amazing it is called the College humor tour. This was a tour of 3 comedians who talked about college life and poked fun at the flaws of college and everything else. I must say I went into thinking how possibly funny could a free show be. I was very surprised about how funny it was. I laughed literally the whole time I was there. The three comedians were these guys named Jake, Admire and this guy named Skeeter. Jake and Admire did the beginning of the show and started with what they show was going to be about and even the beginning was hilarious. After the introduction with Jake and Admire this guy named Skeeter came on stage and he is the one who did the main show. Skeeter talked about everything from getting fat to bad tattoos. He also he included people from the crowed to come onstage to  help in his comedy.  Also at  the end of the show they had questions for people to answer to win prizes. I must say if I had to rate this show on a scale of one to ten I would definitely give it a ten

Time management response

   For me the time management articles seemed way to over thought the fact that people put that much time into planning there day every day seems far to tedious for me. Why? you may ask, simply I can put it that peoples lives should not be one giant agenda. When you are sitting down on a Sunday night or a Monday morning at you kitchen table with you little schedule pad going "Hmm I wonder when I would like to schedule in time to eat dinner with my family, or spend time with my family" I believe that gets unhealthy. People should not have to "schedule" free time for themselves or it is not truly free time. People today depend on their schedules far to much to enjoy life. Some people will go day to day doing only what their schedule says. Can someone please explain to me why this generation of adults run around like robots doing only what is written in their agendas.
          For me my time management depends on that of priorities and discipline. How? very easy all you have to do is make everything a priorities and rate it on its importance to you. Tomorrow there is a huge math final and you know you absolutely have to study. That is easy you know studying comes first and that you should let nothing get in the way of that. Then after that your brother needs help with his homework you promised him that you'd help him the night before. So what do you do? you study for yourself then you help him. Not to say that studying for math is more important than your brother it is just that your priorities are to study for your math final first. After that you get to the things that you believe are less important like playing X box or sitting on facebook.com. Simply we should not have to run around like a society of robots who can't do anything without their schedules we should just learn to discipline ourselves.

notable blogs

            I must say that I was surprised  of how the blogs on the internet that I actually enjoyed. The blog that I found was about cars and auto repairs. The site was http://autorepair.about.com/b/ which was about exactly what it sounds like. this blog was simply just an informative blog about common car problems and ways to boost performance in your car. I like the organization of this blog because most auto blogs that i have found trying to do this review have just been very unorganized and all over the place. This blog was very organized in the way it set up repair, tools, types of tools and how they are used. The next blog that I found was the best automotive blog that I actually used to use a decent amount before i became very interested in auto mechanics the site is http://www.certifiedmastertech.com/wordpress/. This blog is extremely organized in, it goes by car parts, what they do, their importance and how to even install them. This blog is updated close to everyday.

Outcasts united

            The book outcasts united by Warren St. John is about a soccer team of refugees from Africa to the Middle East. This is not a professional soccer team that the author was writing about he was writing about a little league soccer team. Okay I know what you are thinking, how interesting can a story be about kids who are some little soccer team. Well this isn't some little soccer team, this is a soccer team that is discriminated against in Clarkston, Georgia a "football town". The coach who is a women named Luma who has been through a lot in her life does not want to want to let the town start to treat these players who have come through so much like nothing at all.  In this book it goes through each of the children players lives, where they came from and what life for them was like at home. Not only did this story go through the lives of the players but the coach Luma and all of her trials and tribulations. It starts out with Luma in her home country of Jordan where she played soccer and was a very happy young school goer. She began studying in the United States with intent to return home until she decided to stay in the united states and was then disowned by her parents. She started the soccer team the fugees which was a team of children who grew up like her. The team went through a lot and were forced to play and practice at different places because the mayor of the town did not want soccer to be a sport played in his town. So through this book it is the team struggling to be recognized for what they are.

Struggles in college

               What are my roommates going to be like? Are they going to be weird, creeps or crazy partiers!? How much work am I going to get? Am I going to make friends? All worries of the college freshman, I believe it is very normal to feel like this. To be worried about how your new stage in life is going to be is very nerve racking. However for me in my first week of college none of the things that I was worried about ended up being my struggle. In my first week of college my biggest struggle ended up being concentration, As expected my first week of college brought a work load for me. Not like in high school where you can expect absolutely no homework for about the first few weeks. College jumped right into the work without hesitation, I was completely ready for this. The thing that I was not ready for was the constant distractions of literally everything. In my dorm I tried to do my thirty page reading assignment for my history class. As I was reading just about everything seemed way more interesting to me except the task at hand.  I was just not used to this, in high school I was just used to locking myself in my well lit room with absolutely no distractions and get my work done. In this college atmosphere I could tell that it was going to be quite a struggle just to be able to concentrate let alone getting the work done. My lack of concentration was nobodies fault except for my own. I would talk to my roommates, see what people were doing in the common room and listen to the song that the kid from four doors away was blasting.
             I tried to think to myself what I could do in order to get my work done and actually be able to comprehend my reading. This was not going to be easy, I tried going to the library surprisingly enough still too much going on for my short attention span. I tried reading in a quiet common room when it was empty. Nope, this was not going to work every time the elevator made a ding I would lose track of where I was in my reading. Finally I found that sweet spot, I was in my quiet dorm at my desk with my history text book and my history notebook. I waited till my dorm was quiet and my roommates were doing there homework because that may be one thing that is more boring than homework, homework that other people are doing. At this point I was able to work quite affectively. I read and every paragraph I finished I took notes on and wrote down the main idea. This was great being able to concentrate in fairly new place was a success my one and only struggle was over come. All of my college worries ended up being nothing, my roommates are just two normal guys, I am making plenty of freinds and the work load is exactly what I expected

Procrastination...The Cure

            Oh how I love the days that I just can not seem to concentrate on my work. It is as if everything in the world is more interesting than the work that I am supposed to be doing. Also I had the problem that the only time I could get myself to buckle down and actually do the work was when it was do the very next day or the next class period even. Sometimes sadly, my procrastination would not allow me to finish my work surprisingly enough as that is. However it is not the times that I did not finish my work that created my whole procrastination problem. It was the times that I got Away with it at the spur of the moment. This made me more comfortable with my procrastination thinking that it was an okay thing to do. I used to finish my work at the last minute, get a barely passing grade and be completely happy. Till one day I revelation, one cold February evening i had absolutely nothing to do so I decided to actually do the work that needed to be done on time. The next day  I realized what I have just done. I could not even believe myself this was the first time in my high school career that I had done this. I handed in the work and received  a passing grade, not just my regular bottom of the line passing grade but an A-. I was very impressed with myself so that night I tried to do the same thing. This time I was not as lucky I was back to square one. I could not just get myself to do the work again, why? you may ask I do not have the answer. I went through many trial and error experiments to try to get me back on track but nothing was working. Until one day I said I would let my mind wander, I did that. After i was able to let my mind wander just for laughs I returned to my work. I almost fell out of my chair when I realized "WOW I am actually concentrating!". I finally did it, I found the cure. Once you feel yourself growing weary of your work it is perfectly normal to let your brain take a little break from its labors. So if you have the same problem I had, go ahead take a little break and let your mind wander.

College to me and setting the tone

What is college to me? The meaning of college for has changed in the past few days. Before a came here and even during my orientation college to me was this big scary thing. College to me at first seemed like a place where you would come on your first day and get assinged a twenty page paper on your first day of class. College to me at first was a place where you come and live with two total strangers and pray that you don't end rooming with total slobs or just someone completely insane. However now college to me is a very different place, it became a very different place in just a few short days. Right now college is place where you come to bring your learning to whole new level. You come here to step outside of your comfort zone to make yourself a better person and to build character. That is what college is to me right now, it is a place where you take your learning to the next level and where you come to make yourself a better person. Going to college accomplishes many things things that can help in your future and during the present. We all know that going to college leads to better jobs and higher pay, but what can it do for you in the present? College helps you step out of your comfort zone thus leading you to become a more outgoing person. If you are a very shy person in college you may realize when you go somewhere and know very few people that you have nothing to lose and come out of your shell and start being very social. In the present College can also help prioritize, in college nobody is there to tell you when its homework time or when its ok to watch television. In college you don't even have someone to yell at you to stop getting side tracked and stop procrastinating. College is all about self reliance and this is a big help because that is all you have when you are in the work world you have yourself to rely on. At Southern Connecticut State University there are many things here you can do to make yourself a better person besides taking classes. There are so many things to join in this school from sports to clubs. Southern Connecticut offers numerous clubs for people with various interests. All these things can help one come out of there shell and become a more social person. Some Goals that I have for myself are to get the highest grades possible in all my classes also to never stop working hard. I hope to also make a lot of new friends in my time at SCSU.

The five words to define me

As I sit here on this very hot august day in my sauna of a dorm room I can not help but ponder to myself if had to choose five words to define myself what would I pick? After a large amounting of thinking and pacing back and forth in my room I was able to decide on five words. The first word I would have to say is cordial, this word relates to me because of the way that I am very out going to meet and talk to people. I am able to strike up a conversation with people I have just met. Another word that I can use to define myself is listener. This relates to me because I am a very good listener. I am able to listen to people and recite everything back to me that was just said to me. I am also able to process what is said to me very quickly. Apprehensive is another word I would use to describe myself. The reason that I use this is that in front of big crowds of people that I must speak in front of I suffer from a little bit of stage fright. I am unable to to talk to big crowds of people such as you would see at some sort of presentation and still remember what it was that I was supposed to say. The fourth word that I would use to define myself is assiduous. I say this because i am very hard worker whether it is for school or even my one of my jobs. I have had a job since I was of legal age to do so I attended a private high school that I helped pay my way through with all of the hours of work that I put in a week and I am currently working on helping put myself through college.  The last word that I have chosen for myself is reliable, as any of my bosses can tell you I am an extremely dependable person I have been working for the past four years now and I have never called out a day of work in my life. Also as any past teachers can tell you when ever I work with groups in class my part of the work is always done on time and it is done right. These are the words that I choose to best represent me.