Personal Challenge

So my personal challenge was to record at least one song. My friend and I actually did that over the semester. He had a studio at his house out in Elgin where we recorded it. The song itself just came about from us messing around. It was a challenge because we could never get anything done, we always ended up goofing off. So us finally getting a song recorded was an accomplishment. It was actually the first time my friend recorded a guitar. He was able to record keyboards and drum machines but never had the chance to record a guitar. So it was an experience trying to get the tone right. The biggest challenge was the rhythm, since we had a fast rhythm at the end of the song. The song itself is mainly industrial but ends in thrash. So that was my challenge.

Final Thoughts

I really enjoyed University 101 actually. I thought it would just be a complete waste, but it helped me transition from high school to college, mainly in the class atmosphere. In most of my classes, people rarely talk together or participate in class discussions. But in U101 we all were open to talk to each other. It was really nice to have that, especially in the first semester. I doubt I'll find it again anytime soon. Blogging has been both beneficial and a burden. Sometimes I had a lot to say and blogging helped me organize my thoughts and put perspective on the course content. Sometimes I had absolutely nothing to say and had to find ways to make my responses long enough. I won't continue blogging though. I usually keep to myself and don't like to put out personal matters. So I guess this is the end. Oh, so now I shall reveal the meaning of the title "Between the Blog and Me" First: Blogging is kind of like a public journal. Second: It's a reference to my favorite band (the one you'll usually find me going on about how they are one of the best bands around and they are on the level of Queen in musicianship, but that because they are) Between the Buried and Me. So that's the end...

Capstone Conversation

So I went to listen to Steven Garcia speak a few weeks ago. It was pretty short, only about 15 minutes. He just answered questions people had. Some of the questions were trivial while some were more in depth. Overall it was fun. He didn't seem to have the typical football player ego that I knew in high school. He was really chill and didn't seem full of himself. One question someone asked was "how do you feel playing in front of all those people?" and he said "I just try not to think about it." This one interests me a lot since I get quite nervous in front of a large group of people and I actually hope to one day play live with a band. Hopefully I can take his advice to heart and just not think about the people there and just play as if it was by myself.

Capstone Cinema

So I missed the Capstone Cinema, but I was able to watch the Story of Stuff online. I got an email with the link and it said to watch it if I didn't go to a cinema and write a page long reflection on it. So The Story of Stuff was pretty interesting. I thought it was very biased though. But then again I think it was made as a short film so there is very little room to cover all the view points. But really liked one point she made, consumerism. I agree with her on that we fell into this scheme over consumerism, where we value our lives solely on what we have. I know that many people go out and buy things to feel better, even I'm guilty of that sometimes (but I buy music, so I think it does a lot less damage than buying a whole bunch of clothes or some really expensive electronic). In order to solve the crisis of dwindling resources and excess garbage we have to cut back on the consumption.

Hot Cookie Friday

So I went to Hot Cookie Friday, almost a month ago I think. I went with the people I carpool with to Hand. We didn't stay that long. The cookies were... hot and melty. Still tasty. I felt out of place there though. I mainly stuck around the people I knew and even still I left after like 10 minutes of being there (but that's because I had plans with a friend). People seemed pretty social, but mainly among their friends. But then again I'm a fairly shy person, so I can't say that I tried really hard to mingle. So I didn't really meet anyone. So speaking of socializing among Capstone Scholars, I have yet to meet another Capstone Scholar whose into metal. I'm starting to wonder if I'm the only one out of all that does. But then again, I don't live in Capstone, so I haven't met all of them. But at least at all the social events I haven't met another metal head. Eh, I guess I just have to keep looking.

Thanksgiving

Ok... this one's kind of hard. My family is British, so we don't exactly have traditions or anything for Thanksgiving. What used to happen was that our neighbors would all come over and my parents would have cooked the whole traditional meal and what not. But since we moved we don't do that anymore. Now it's just a small traditional meal among us. We don't do anything crazy or interesting. We just follow the playbook, say what your thankful for and eat turkey. That's it. So... this year we're going to England. We're going to go visit relatives since we didn't visit over the summer. I doubt we'll do anything on Thanksgiving but then again we may. It will be fun either way, I love going there. It's a really beautiful country and I kind of associate it as my actual home, even though I was born and raised here in the U.S.

Leadership

My strengths as a leader are that I'm determined, can play off other people's strengths, and can be pretty organized. My weaknesses are that I'm shy, have trouble keeping people's focus, and I can be lazy (but when your a lazy leader, you can just hand off all the work you have to do to someone else). I've learned of these strengths and weaknesses only recently, as I have become the president of the USC Metal Club. I had to get everyone organized together so that I could actually make the club official (all the stuff is ready to be turned in at this moment). I hope to make a difference on campus through the USC Metal Club. Uniting all the people interested in metal will be awesome and will hopefully churn out some really awesome bands from musicians meeting each other in the club (almost everyone in the club so far plays an instrument). Also, we can probably educate some screamo scene kids on what metal really is (they are a huge problem at local shows...).

Mentoring So Far

So far, mentoring has been pretty good. My student can talk to me about how school is going and what not. We play a lot of games together, which he seems to really enjoy and helps him relax. For the most part, I let him choose what to do and I try to engage him in conversation about school, though it is kind of hard to get him to talk about it in detail. Saying goodbye will really be tough. Today actually, I told him our next meeting will be our last and he seemed really upset about it and asked if I can continue mentoring. I didn't plan on doing it but now I am considering doing so. I signed up as saying I was interested in continuing but ultimately it comes down to my schedule next semester. If it doesn't work out though, I'm sure we can handle saying goodbye and moving on.

Spirituality

Religion, faith, and spirituality are all different. Religion is more organized and has rules to follow. Faith is the belief and trust you have in someone or something. Spirituality is the understanding of your conscious. I have had past experiences in this, especially in middle school, however they were negative. Long story short, I had friends that were extremely fundamentalist. The South reflects religion and some faith, however many people go to church or respective place of worship because of tradition rather than wanting to go. The South is a fairly traditional place though. USC doesn't reflect this so much, at least in it's students. I have met many atheists and agnostics here, a lot more than in high school. It's refreshing to me at least, because I knew a lot of people who were die-hard-religious.

Relationships

Pretty much the only new relationships I have formed here are new friends. Though I still hang out with friends I knew before coming here. All my friends though, new or old, are helping me through my first year. One of my friends whose a junior helps find where things are and how to deal with certain things. However two of my friends that I regularly hang out with are leaving next semester, so I will have to find other people I can regularly hang out with, since my many of my new friends are usually too busy all the time.

Since college, I haven't spent much time with my family, even though they are close. I run into my sister on campus once in a while, but I rarely see my mom. But I see her tomorrow. My relationship with my parents is good, I think. I'm really independent of them, I don't need them check up on my school work or anything like that.

Wellness

I guess I'm living a balanced college life, i try to eat healthy and walk to all my classes. But it is still hard to eat healthy with half of Russell being fast food, and normal food takes forever to get. But I still try. Most of the time I'm hanging out with friends. I still keep on top of my school work and stuff. I wish I had more time to play guitar, however it's not a time issue, it's that I don't like playing when my roomate is around. Something about that just bugs me. Probably just self-conscious about my playing. Anyways, I think I'm living a good lifestyle, because I'm trying to do good at school and make time for friends and what not.

Mentor Meeting

My first meeting with my student was kind of wierd. There were awkward silences. I learned I'm deaf though because I could hardly hear anything he said. But he seems cool, my meeting with him this week was really good. The first meeting we just walked around and he showed me his classes and what not. He plays music, which is cool because I play music too. He seems to not know exactly what subject he likes, though he is leaning towards math and science, which I'm good at, so if he has trouble I can help him out with that.

Diversity

Before college, and still today, I would define diversity as the cultural, ethnic, and personal differences among a population. A population with many different thinking people is diversity. It is when a group of like-minded people are together is when there is no diversity. You cannot just define diversity as differences in religion, skin color, and gender. Personal beliefs, interests and ideas play the major role in diversity.

Since coming to college, my view diversity hasn't changed. I went to fairly diverse schools, where I learned diversity truly was. Coming here only reinforces the definition I have, as I have met many people who may look like me, but they have completely different ideas and beliefs.

Another factor left out of diversity is economical. Some people are in poverty while others are in wealth. We learned that at Hand Middle School, there is a mixture of both rich and poor, which aids to diversity.

The Semester so far...

This semester has been interesting to say the least. A lot has changed. Everytime I see my parents they say how much they miss me, even though I literally live 15 minutes away from them. My friends changed to. I rarely hang out with a friend that I used to always hang out with. I hang out with almost every day with a friend from my old job. I've met new people and have been doing new things. School-wise this semester has been alright. The work-load isn't bad, even though I find myself staying up to 2 am working occasionally. However, even though I feel that I know the material, when a test comes around, I botch it somehow, not too badly of course. It also doesn't help that I've lost interest in my major, and most of my classes are based on my major.

The hardest thing for me so far has been just keeping up with things that I need to do, sometimes I slip and forget to do something. I want to change that, hopefully by writing down in my planner when things are due and what not.

Service Learning

To me, service learning is doing a service to benefit others but also benefits you as you learn something from it. It could be something skill related, such as helping build a playground, which helps you get better at constructing things, or it could be personal, such as mentoring someone and finding out something about yourself. Service learning gives you hand on experience and can be taken to looking at one's own life. What I mean is that while someone is helping out a poor community, one could truly see how good they have it and have a new appreciation for their life. Service learning, particularly mentoring, helps one discover new things about themselves. This is brought about by either their mentoree asking them questions about their mentor or things the mentor teaches the mentoree. So basically service learning not only helps the community but also helps the one doing the service.

First Organization Meeting

The metal club so far has had one meeting, just so we could figure out what we would do during meetings and to get to know each other. There was about a dozen of us. I was hoping to find people with extensive taste in metal and people I could possibly play music with. However, it didn't work out that way. A lot of the guys there only liked old-school death metal and thrash. When my friends and I mentioned some experimental bands, no one else knew who we were talking about. Also, everyone except for my friend played guitar, and some were already in a band, so that ruled out playing music with them. However, it was still fun and I hope to continue to go. But the guy who was in charge didn't like the turnout. He apparently thought some of the guys acted like 8th graders and were only into metal to scare people. I somewhat agree, as some people just tried to act all metal. I still want the metal club to happen, so if the original guy who was going to do it doesn't want to, I'll try heading it.

Hand Middle School Visit

I expect my experience mentoring at Hand Middle School to be interesting. The school itself seems like a well rounded school with a good bit of diversity. Out of this experience I hope to learn something new about myself. I know that when you are mentoring someone else, you really have to look at yourself so that you can help your student. I also hope to get to know someone and get their perspective towards life. I also hope to make a good impact on my student. One big thing is I hope we could talk about music and may be able to help him find some good music or learn how to play somethings on the guitar or bass.

This experience will be both fun and challenging, as I do have to learn how to communicate and identify with someone who is much younger than I am. I always had that problem, so hopefully after this experience I will finally be able to do that.

Mentoring

I'm pretty nervous about mentoring a 6th grader, mainly because I don't like being around kids. However, they are 12-13 so it won't be so bad, at least I hope. I am hoping that this will help my transition to college, as I have learned that the best way to learn something is to teach it. So hopefully through mentoring both the student and I can learn something.

Expectation wise, I am hoping for a student who loves music, as that way we have something in common and I can give him some good music, depending on what he likes of course (none of the metal stuff though, I don't want the parent to call complaining about that, which is pretty lame). Actually thinking about it, maybe me telling him about some good music, such as Explosions in the Sky and Jesu, may help him in his transition, as it did help me in tough times.

LASSI

The LASSI was pretty pointless, at least to me. Some of the results I disagree with, especially attitude and concentration. My attitude about school isn't bad, sure some classes I don't like, but I do believe school can be fun and is very beneficial to me. Also, I can concentrate pretty well in school (I made it through a two hour lecture!) and I know when I lose focus and how to get back on track. But some things pretty much told me what I already know, such as my time management. I know from one side it looks like they are bad, but to be honest it works for me. Procrastination helps me get my work done because I know it needs to be done then or I'm in trouble. Study Aids didn't make sense to me on how they measure it, mainly because not everyone uses study aids. I just practice the concepts a lot, I'm not big on using study aids, mainly because I feel that practice makes perfect.

Community Service, or lack thereof

To be 100% honest, I have never done community service. The only time that I volunteered to work for no money was at a rock concert selling merchandise. And to be honest we didn't do much, we just hung around because people just went straight into the stadium. I never volunteered, mainly because I didn't have time, especially my last two years of high school, where I was going to school and working 30-40 hours a week. I don't have a strong passion for any communal issue, which I guess also contributes to my lack of service.

There was one time that I fondly remember. When I was younger my dentist died in a hit and run accident where he was riding his bike. There was then a massive bicycle marathon in the area that was in his memory and helped fund the charity organization that he funded. My dad and I participated in it. I wouldn't actually call it community service though, as it was more for charity than doing an activity that directly helped the community.

Organization

My plan to keep things organized at USC is to write all my assignments and their due dates in my planner, so that I can keep on top of them. I also plan on keeping all my typed papers and homework in folders on my laptop so that I can easily access them. To be honest though, I'm a fairly unorganized person. Throughout grade school, my book bag was full of papers and I occasionally lost some of them. Binder checks, where my teachers would check if our binders were organized, always went bad, I would always have a bit missing. I'm hoping to change that, mainly by doing things electronically, which I keep way better track of.

Time management was also a big problem for me, especially in high school when I worked. Everyday would really be go to school, come home for an hour or two, then go to work until ten at night, and pass out on my bed. Then on weekends, when I finally had free time, I would just chill and hang out with friends. I found that if I don't get enough time to just chill, then I'm constantly burned out and can't get any work done. Now that I'm in college and my classes allow for more chill time, I can really focus on my work when I need to do it.

The Student Organization Zoo

The Student Organization Fair was insane. People would just run up to me and yell "WANNA JOIN _____ CLUB!! ALL THE COOL PEOPLE ARE DOING IT!!!" It was fun though. I got to see all the clubs and student organizations on campus. The big one for me though was WUSC, the radio station. I met someone during my first week who worked at the radio and talked to her about music. She said I should really try to do it and that I was completely capable of doing it, so at the fair I signed up for it. I really do hope that it goes through. Another big one was the metal club, which hasn't come into existence yet, but I did sign the petition to get one started and got some other people to sign it as well. Soon we will probably get everyone together who signed it to draft a constitution and then get it started. I was considering the skydiving club, because I always wanted to skydive, even though I have a fear of heights. I really think that skydiving would help me overcome my fear of heights and other things as well. The Pastafarian club seemed interesting, but friends of mine told me about how they are really one-sided and not open-minded.

My hobbies are music and games. I love listening to music, playing music, and talking about music, which is why I'm extremely excited about the metal club, as a lot of people who listen to metal usually play an instrument. I used to play games all the time, but now I just play them from time to time, though I still love them.

Carolinian Post #1

I was born and raised here in Columbia, SC, and practically lived in the same area my whole life, up until now that is. I grew up in Northeast Columbia, living the typical suburban life. Played soccer when I was young, lived on a cul-de-sac, my neighbors were all friends of mine. Not much out of the ordinary to be honest. I went to Windsor Elementary, then E.L. Wright Middle, and then Spring Valley High. It was in high school that I truly discovered my love for music and when I learned how to play music. I expected USC to be a lot bigger than it is. It seemed so big coming from high school, but now that I'm actually here, it doesn't seem like such a big change. I expected long walks, but they are much shorter than I had anticipated. The past few weeks have been interesting. I have met some really cool people and been very social, something I wasn't back in high school. The classes are more difficult than I expected though. Homework, is more complicated and takes more time, but having breaks in between classes helps me stay on top of it. The Carolinian Creed really holds value to student life, especially when living with a roommate. You do have to respect their privacy and property. Being open minded to diversity is important here as well, because there is so much diversity among students and faculty. You really have to understand what their customs and lifestyles are and respect them.