Survey Question Anyone?... anyone?

It's hard to track people down to ask a simple question. 


In the past few weeks throughout my inquiry classes I have been really thinking about the toll of technology use on our minds and how we function. I ended up asking two questions to a random sort of people, or whoever I could get my grasp on. 

1. On average how many times do you think you use your phone throughout the day?
2. Do you feel weird when you don't your phone on you? 

I got many varied answers. The reason I asked these questions in the first place was to see how attached people where to their 'instant gratification devices', which is something I came up with while thinking about how people react to their phones. If someone wants an answer, they will get one within minutes using their phone. Or maybe someone is bored, they can instantly fix that with all the apps that are available to download onto their phone. Endless possibilities to conquer the need for instant gratification. 

The results to my questions further helped me see how 'glued' to our devices we really are. To the first question, everyone I asked said that they use their phones at least, or very well over 100 times or more throughout the day, they also added that "that count may just be texting alone though..". Instant messaging on the go to accommodate you where ever and whenever. 

The answers to the second question I asked people were actually shocking. Everyone put some thought into how they would feel without their phone. One person said "if i am struck with awareness that the weight of my phone is missing from my leg, there is a moment of primal panic. On more than one occasion I have checked facebook on my phone while on facebook on my computer. Sometimes I feel vibrations that are not there, and when I rip my phone out of my pocket to the black and print-smudged screen, i am crushed."

In the end all I saw was repeated uneasiness when I asked someone what they would feel without their phone. Honestly, I wouldn't like the feeling of my phone being somewhere else either. 

Part instant gratification and almost seems addictive as well. Could our phones soon be able to send out addictive waves where we can't control ourselves, or maybe we are already there with technology. 

An article that shows actual results from tests and explain how teens in general felt the same way as people I surveyed. 

Where is my time going?

Almost like grains of sand flowing, keeping track of time, my sand is disappearing right out sight. Desperately I try to get my 8 hours of sleep otherwise I feel as if I am barely functioning throughout the day. When my weekends come into sight I end up sleeping up to 11 hours, how I end up doing this mind-boggles me. The rest of my weekend hours go to studying and doing whatever work I can for the week coming up. Mostly art, reading art history, and studying German. Throughout the week I try to cram so many things in before I go off to work from 4.30-10 Monday, Wednesday and Thursday. Rest of my hours in the week I am in school or driving to school, sometimes eating. 


I wish I could stop my sand from slipping away and take a moment or two to think. 
I miss contemplating what I'm doing or saying, or going to say or do. Now I seem to say either yes, no, later, can't, bye bye bye. Everything blurs here and there as information jams up in my head giving me a constant annoying headache. 


I know I am not the only one frustrated with it, I know complaining won't help it. That's why in the end I pick studying all day on the weekends instead of going out. If I have time at night, I treat myself and have fun. 


In the end sadly, this won't be a stress-less easy first semester in my book, it'll be more of a headache with time and me running against the sand that's slipping away. 


Wanna take a break? Find a show you like and take a load off your shoulders with the help of my favorite thing, hulu. :)

Number Seven, A trip to get fit

I took a walk to the fitness center between classes and decided to look around. Two students at the front dress asked if I wanted to sign up, I already have a membership at another gym right by my house, but I decided to take ask some questions.



The hours of the fitness center are as followed:
Monday- Thursday: 7 am - 10 pm
Friday 7 am - 8 pm
Saturday 9.30 am - 4.30 pm
Sunday 2 pm - 7 pm


The fitness center is equipped with many machines ranging from treadmills to lat pull-downs and chest presses, shoulder presses, and leg presses, you name it, they have it.
It costs a little more than my own gym, but if I lived on campus it would be more convenient for me to go there. It is 60$ per semester or 35$, a reduced price,  if you start during the middle of the semester.


While I was asking about prices I thought about how much the classes were. When you pay for the semester all the classes come free as well. So I decided to look at what kind of classes they offered. First and only one I wanted to attend was the yoga class. Yoga is so calming and can make you feel great all throughout the day.
Of course they only have yoga classes when I have class or work. But yoga can benefit anyone and everyone.

If you're thinking is silly but you're stressed all the time take a look at this. Maybe yoga can become a thing of your life like I wish it could be more of mine.

What is Really Important?

My task : Look at fellow classmates blogs and judge which ones could be ranked as "A" material.

I don't know how it is for everyone, but I am absolutely horrible, terrible, god awful at picking and deciding. I read almost every single person's blogs, a random post from each one, and that didn't help. How am I suppose to rank them. Each person has there own set mind on what they want from their blog, how they want readers to feel or think. In the end I picked those that made me laugh, talked about things they liked that personally I never got into, and one that was just what we were suppose to do.

Louie's happy blog time, is just that. He makes corny jokes through all of his posts and makes me giggle as I read them. He finishes the assignments we are suppose to do, but he adds his own personality into them and makes me feel as if he is talking to the reader, which could be anyone.
Rachel's blog sends off a feeling of gentleness and ease. Its background is bright pink and her personality just like Louie's shouts out at you. In the beginning I know Rachel had some trouble with starting up her own blog but you can easily see that she is getting more comfortable with it and writing about herself.
Finally there is Kelsey's blog. In her posts she is clearly just doing the assignments she was given and put little of her own personality in it. She is very organized and her post flow very nicely. Only thing is I wish she would put more Kelsey into her writings.

To sum it all up, I like to see variety in everyone's writing, which is why I choose such different blogs. In my opinion everyone is ranked differently. Sometimes though, words describe better than a letter or number.

A little spice of Art

Shifting and searching through blogs is not a common thing for me. First thing whenever Google something is artwork, instead this time I looked at art teachers and what they had to say. 

• Art for Small Hands
• Adventures of an Art Teacher

These two blogs above caught my eye. They both are art teachers but go about writing and explaining art in different ways. One teacher explains how to bring art up into a child and let them grow, the other shows art projects of her students along with instructional blog posts. 


Of course these two blogs are influential on me and I even bookmarked them so I can go back and get some inspiration from them. The two teachers made me want to teach art even more. In both blogs the women seemed to love art and children just as much as I do. 


Others though who might not be interested in art education or art in general might still be fascinated with these two blogs. A babysitter could easily get some quick ideas to make crafts with whoever they are watching. Or maybe a person is insecure about their artwork. In all honesty, anything a person makes whether another person thinks it is good or not, it is artwork. 


Art isn't just for 'artists', it is for everyone. It can be a stress reliever, or something that helps you think. A boredom reducer. Art can be whatever you make it to be. 


Here is an easy low relief project made out of simple cardboard that anyone can do: 

It was one of the projects made by Katie Morris. 
Try it out and you may have more fun than you thought you would.

A little Trip From Here to There. #3

Every day, every signal day, I walk by the Health center and all these buildings around it. I really didn't know what was in them, I figured they were offices.

I am a commuter, an oblivious student to Southern. I know where my classes are and where the student center is, everything else on campus just looms over me like an abandoned building.  I'm rushed on time when I'm on campus so I never had the chance to look around. Either I have back to back classes, which all of mine are, or I am running home to get some studying in before work.

Honestly, I didn't want to go places I didn't have to. But when I got to the health center I asked to talk to a nurse and told them how I wanted to ask a few questions on help issues here at Southern. I waited for a little bit and talked to one of the wellness managers, or assistants, I'm not sure which it was. Everyone welcomed me in and told me as much as they could.

I talked to a nurse one-on-one and she told me some common health issues. To my surprise nothing seemed surprising, flues, colds, strep, mono, and a few STD's were all things I figured were going to be common. Then the nurse mentioned stress related illnesses. She told me that so many students get run down and get colds and flues very easily because they are so over stressed.

Simple enough though, the nurse went on to explain that all of these common health issues are too easy to avoid. All you need to do is exercise good hand washing, get a flu shot every year, sleep right, and make healthy food choices and safe sex.

I'm not really worried about getting sick any more this year. I told the nurse I get sick very easily and she told me that if I don't stress myself out and get enough sleep I should be perfectly fine, just make sure I avoid anyone coughing.





If you think you're stressing yourself out just go here  Understanding Stress, and see if you need a quiet day of relaxation.

And for everyone who is living in a dorm, the health center had this nice poster with some cool information:

Technology Twister

Just about everyone who can access technology most likely uses it. Who wouldn't. 
As you read my blog on the internet you're, I'm guessing, either on a computer or a smart phone. 

Now my question is, are you reading this blog out of curiosity, maybe you're bored, or maybe just maybe you have a technology problem. I don't want to sound insulting or rude, but maybe you should step away from the internet and get some fresh air. If you want to understand some interesting ideas about the over use of technology in your life and how stressful it could be making you, then go ahead and be intertwined with the internet. 

First off, personally, I'm on the internet too much than I would prefer and I can only dream about escaping and going hiking or even go rafting in a river for days on end. I was very jealous of theses scientists that got to do just that.

Five scientists spent a week in May at a remote area of southern Utah, rafting in the San Juan River, camping on the  banks and hiking the tributary canyons. It wasn't a vacation or even a get-away. The main point of this lovely voyage was to understand how heavy use of digital devices and other technology changes how we think and behave. This trip was to show how a retreat into nature might reverse those effects, hopefully.

Through out the trip little changes occurred. A non-believer of this trip, Todd Braver, stopped wearing his watch saying he just forgot, which he never did. The scientists under went a type of relaxation and by the 3rd day completely pushed away any technology and was so content at watching the stars and hiking the day away. 

People end up forgetting about how nice it is to get away from technology and relax. For these five scientists in the end, they all agreed the trip was a success. 

From that short trip do you believe our brain needs to cool down from societies busy schedule? I sure do. 

Digital Devices Deprive Brain of Needed Downtime : In this link, the article tells about how people get upset when technology is taken away from them. People feel the need to multitask and distract themselves because they don't want to feel 'bored'. 

Do these people ever think about downtime their brain needs to be able to function better. Sleep is great to regenerate for your body, but your brain needs some downtime of just sitting back and being unplugged. 

For many people, technology isn't a problem, but for others it could be causing a lot of stress on you and maybe your relationships. 

For another read click here. Hopefully it's not too late for you and maybe you can escape into the wilderness and get some relaxation for you and your overworked brain. 

Day Dreamer to the extreme

After reading The 'Learning Knights' of Bell Telephone and How to Become a Deep Thinker at College I thought of a few interesting ideas.


One huge idea was that the workers at Bell Telephone were put on a 10 month intense program called the Institute of Humanistic Studies for Executives during this time they had no other time then to read and think about their courses. But because of how intense the program was it led these workers to becoming deep thinkers. This thought connected back to How to Become a Deep Thinker at College. 


This one little connection, this little thought made me sit and think about my own thinking process, my time spent of analyzing and processing my classes and questions I have about them. In the end I looked at myself as a day dreamer, swiftly drifting through the day trying not to analysis a thing and just going with what everything seems to be.  


In college and in life, everything isn't what it seems. These two articles made me actually consider about how much time I put into just thinking. I don't want to let my brain run free and day dream about random things just as much but be more productive and achieve a deeper thinking on class work and on my own life as well. 

I shouldn't lose precious thinking time on day dreaming. 


In addition, I looked up other articles about critical thinking to see what others thought about the topic. I came across the article Thinking Cap: Angst Before High School on Nytimes.com. The article talked about research being done to see if students going to more renowned High School score's had a different long term outcome than those who had equal testing scores but didn't get into the school. The results were that the students really didn't show much difference. I thought this article related to deeper thinking because even though the students that didn't get into a renowned school they ended up having more time to think and practice and to keep up with their counterparts who did attend the renowned school. 

A foreign Language

Learning a new language is not a simple task. 

In High school I hated going to Spanish class every other day. It was the only thing I dreaded so much before. So now, taking yet another language and on top of that German, I didn't know if it would have been better for me to drop the class, change it, or take another language. Truth is, I really didn't want to fail the class. During this week I went and talked to my German professor, A. Geibel. Her office hours are Mondays 10-11. Of course we haven't even had class on a Monday yet so I had no idea what to do. Professor Geibel though she would make any accommodation for students to be able to see her, so I saw her on Wednesday at 12 instead. 

I asked her about her way of teaching German to her students. She explained how teachers use to give verbs to their students and tell them how to change the steams of the verbs and change the endings. Professor Geibel how ever did not like this approach at all. Instead she wanted her students to delve right in and understand the different conjugations of the verbs on our own. She feels that making us memorize the different conjugations of verbs will not help us in  the long run of understanding the language. 

In addition I asked her about how we will be tested or quizzed on for our vocabulary and how much I should be studying to understand and memorize everything. Professor Geibel explained that my class won't be tested on till the end of the semester. She also added on that I should be going over little by little each day. She told me that going over the words each day would help me be familiar with them and help me understand more when she is talking in German. 

She told me if I ever had questions on something to feel free and email her at geibela1@southernct.edu. Or check her office at Eagleman Hall at D 147, but I would need to make an appointment. 

It's Just the Beginning

A little baby step to becoming a self supportive individual, and that step is going to college. For some college isn't the place to be, others maybe have they skipped it and even gotten a job right after high school, but for me college is something I had to do to be able to achieve what I want to do with my life.

As I contemplate the aspects and weigh the goods and bads about college, I can't help but to think what college really is to me and so many others. The answer came faster than I thought it would, college is yet another stepping stone put in place that people either pick or don't pick to do. In all honesty, I envy the people who don't have to follow the norm or the mainstream aspects of America and do things in their own way; those are true self motivated people who are strong in so many ways.

College again is something I have to do, because I want to become an art teacher and inspire those who aren't very interested in art to find something special about themselves. I know I don't have to be a teacher to inspire others but I thought long and hard about how to inspire people. In the end I found out the best way was to start some where young, where people can still grow and mature.

This same idea about catching people at a young age reminded me what my college experience is actually helping me out right with now. My classes i'm taking now and the experiences I am learning with them are being taught to me at an age where I understand them and can actually grow and mature even more with them. This is what college I feel is going to teach me the most, a more broader way to understand, to learn and to grow.

In the end, I can set goals for myself to see how others are helping me grow so I can do just the same later on in life when I finally become an art teacher and have students of my own.

Some Little things about myself first..

Five little words to describe Me.


Morals.

I've constructed my life around morals I set when I was younger. Some are simple like be nice to others, don't hit people, say thank you, wash your hands before eating. Others are put yourself in others shoes, feel what they feel because you may never know what they are going through. Help people no matter what, even if you hate their guts because a person is a person and should be treated with respect.
People might have their own morals but for me, my morals are who I am and who I have grown up to be. Just the word moral can say so much about myself.





Strength.


Psychically I like to work out, run, jog, climb, bike ride, and swim, or anything where I don't have to sit still. But when I say strength is a word that says something about me, I mean the psychical aspect but I am also talking about the mental aspect too. I am a very determined individual and it takes a lot to bring me down or to push me around. I would like to say strength and endurance is one thing I take great pride in.










Caring.



Most people are caring. Just as well so am I. I like to go above and beyond to help my friends or someone I know that I could do something beneficial. Caring isn't just wanting to do something for others but actually doing it and wanting to. Caring is part of my morals to follow. I will and always will go out of my way for anyone, weather I feel like it or not. Everyone needs some help at one point or a shoulder to lean on. I put myself out there to be the hand that's pulling you up when you didn't notice it before. I like to be that smile that brightens up everyone's day. As I put it for so many people, "Try to help someone every day or get them to smile because if you get someone to be happy then maybe that person will try and brighten up another's day and you'll create this cycle of smiles in your life."





Devotion.



My passion, my oppression, my creation. My art work is what my whole life is devoted to. I want to become an art teacher. Not just any art teacher that goes through the day annoyed with kids you don't care about what art is becoming any more. I am devoted to becoming an art teacher that will help others be inspired to create something of their own. When you think about art, you are creating something out of nothing, out of a simple piece of paper or a stone and make it into something wonderful. Through the rest of my life I want to continue to show people that they can be good at art or anything they choose, they just have to find their inspiration inside of themselves.

The final word to describe myself, is actually pretty hard to think about. Which is weird since how can you only put a few words to describe yourself when a person is made up of so many different qualities and traits, it's impossible to number them. So, I guess my last word is just that, weird. I say i'm weird because i'm not following any trends or the norm of anyone. I pick who I am and that for many people is 'weird'. I read my life away, I can watch hours of anime and read manga. I eat sushi almost everyday and all of that is perfectly fine with me because that's who I am and maybe that is what weird is. But no matter what label I have or  words I pick to describe myself in the end I am only Tori and that is perfectly acceptable for me.