"Re-Assessing the Honors Institute"

I joined the Honors Institute in summer 2007 and actually this English seminar is one of the first honors classes I'm taking so I have little idea of how the Institute work.

I would say though that we should have more honors classes in the SCIENCE SUBJECTS!

Otherwise I think we do not have enough information on cultural and academic events around here. I think it will be great to know since attending them would be a good part of enlightening our intellect. It would be a way for us to stay open minded.

Also I know it is more difficult but we do not have a large choice of honors classes each quarter. Or the classes would have a really funny schedule time so that it will not be compatible with our other classes.

The level of academic achievement required is good though, I feel like I'm learning a lot in my other Engl 1C for honors. I alsmot feel like Im not gonna be able to make it through actually but the challenge is interesting.

Response to Steve Jobs Speech

Wow, Steve Jobs is for sure an amazing person. I really enjoyed reading the speech, it is inspiring.

I believe that it is really fundamental to study what we want to. As Jobs says, our time here is limited so we definitely need to enjoy every second of our life!

When Jobs said that he felt bad "wasting" his parents' money for studies he did not really enjoy, I totally understand him. My parents also support me financially at nearly 90%. I always make sure to take the classes required for my major (that I enjoy by the way) and be careful not to drop it when it is no longer refundable. Yes because I'm paying non-resident fees so it is quite expensive, almost the same as international fees...

Sometimes I do feel really bad for my parents having to pay everything for me so I can focus on my studies so I put even more effort to make sure everything is worth the price. And I thank my parents a lot, they're awesome.

As Steve Jobs' example I think that you become really successful when you do whatever you are passionate about. And even if life is hard, as long as you stick with your ideas then everything should be fine. The obvious example is when you study something you really enjoy, you tend to get good grades really easily and reverse when it is something you do not like.

What I think is incredible with Jobs' journey is that he had moments of epiphany where he realized that some things were better for him that way (even if its a flashback moment). Those moments are the most helpful in your life and you definitely get to appreciate whatever happened to you and be grateful to life in general.

Weaknesses as a learner

I am a really lazy girl. If I have time to do nothing I would just sit around or take a nap instead of doing the work I'm suppose to do. I think I have a hard time to get started with something, especially papers or revisions...

The good thing though is that once I start, then I can be really efficient and do a lot of study. It's just the starting part that slows everything. What could I do to make it better? I don't really know, usually I would push the work until I know I cannot do it anymore and finally start doing it. A little like procrastination except that it is not it because I don't have anything else to do (except napping) and I am not scared of my work being not good. Just laziness, pure laziness.

Last quarter I was so sure that I was the type of student who learns better from the textbooks than from the lectures. Turns out, that's not so true. This quarter, I started to pay attention and take notes in lecture and it actually works fine for me! I think what happened is that usually my lectures are at 2 pm, which is nap time basically so I would just fall asleep in class. Now my lecture is still at 2 pm except that I decided that I was going to pay attention in class for once. So maybe it is just the fact that I'm being sleep deprived that affects my learning.

The funny thing is that usually I can work fine on 6 hours of sleep a day (+ 1 hour nap during lecture). So that now I'm not napping anymore, it throws off all my schedule sleep and it results in the fact that I'm tired the whole day. I'm glad we have coffee...

There is no apparent solution to my lack of sleep problem unless somebody comes up with some sort of drug that supresses the need from our body to get some sleep. I'll be really grateful if somebody can find that.

I think as long as I do the work I need to do during day time, I can go to sleep early and get 7 hours of sleep and stop coffee. Yay.

Response to Paul Graham

Again another article on procrastination... So this time, Graham deals with two types of procrastination, the good ones and the bad ones.
I think that is actually a really good way to see procrastination because I do believe that not all procrastinators are lazy and unproductive people.

People might take good procrastination as being careless about yourself but if you read Graham's paper then you realize that it might not be such a bad thing. Although to be honest not doing laundry or omitting hygienics, that sounds impossible to me. But it is true that you do waste serious time cooking, keeping up with your emails, reading a book, watching TV, hanging out with friends. I guess after it's just an issue of balancing what is truly important to yourself.

Now I feel less bad not answering all my friends' emails haha. (It's because I'm doing good procrastination)

I think it is interesting to see how different people deal with their own view of good procrastination because it just reinforces the idea that each person is different so that you cannot get a specific definition of what is good or bad procrastination.

Response to CalPoly paper

I thought that was a really good description of what a procrastinator was. It gives the characteristics, the behavior, what those people think and how they might overcome it. Compared to Perry's paper, the CalPoly one is much more formal.

I liked both reading actually. Perry's one because you get to read someone who is directly affected by procrastination. It is like you witness the problem.

The Calpoly paper on the other hand gives you detailed symptoms and conditions of procrastination, and even suggestions on how to minimize your procrastination side.

On the other hand I think it might be really hard for somebody affected with procrastination to actually get better by himself. First of all you have to realize that it is a problem in your life. Some people will also deny the fact that they might have severe procrastination.

Procrastination has something to do also with the way you feel about yourself, especially if you are a perfectionist. Therefore, it's gonna take more than self-discipline to overcome it.

But overall, the CalPoly paper was a really interesting paper to read to learn what in scientific terms was procrastination, how does it show in people and what might be the solutions to it. If you are interested in psychology then it is a really good article to look at. For me, it was a little too much of a dry reading. Actually I had to skim through more than actually reading in details...

Response to the structured procratination

Wow, I thought first that I might be one of those people, procrastinators, but clearly I am not a structured procrastinator. Or not quite.

As I was reading John Perry's article I was thinking that it almost looks like it requires a lot of work to be a structured procrastinator. It is like a mental state where you believe that it is better to do anything else than the work you are supposed to do, even if it means to do extra work in order to avoid the original job. That is so interesting. Frankly, I'm such a lazy girl that I would always weigh whether or not it is worth it to do the assigned job or search for a way to avoid it.

It is true that there is quite a lot of people who wait until the last moment to do a work. Just look at me doing my tasks for week 6 the night before its due... Actually it's quite good since usually I will wait until tomorrow. But that doesn't make those people procrastinators necessarily. People might just feel lazy, or do work in order of priority etc...

But I guess the definition of a procrastinator will be that of somebody doing the work at the last moment under no means of pressure.

This almost sound like a psychological situation. Really interesting though.

So now what is it about procrastinators? I mean, do those people need some kind of help or is it just something that we need to understand?

Do procrastinators chose to be like that or is it something that you cannot control?

What is funny is that after reading this article I felt like I should start doing my work as soon as I have time rather than waiting the last moment as usual. For some reason the article's issues about being so late on all the work totally freaked me out. I guess I don't want to have to do two months worth of work in only three days.....

yay, let's do homeworks now!

The Journey

So about my journey, I could refer to “the call’ part of my life. It’s quite boring but oh well, it’s the assignment. (Oh and I cannot find another part of the Journey that I can refer to right now…)
So last night I get a call from my friend Victoria and she tells me she is at the mall. No, just joking, I’m describing the “wrong” call.

During my last year of high school, I had to start thinking which university I was going to attend and in which country. What usually happens for students in Tahiti is that we either go to the local university for 2 years before having to transfer to France, or go directly to France. For multiple reasons, I didn’t want to move to France and I knew that biomedical researchers over there where underpaid and had trouble finding a job. Not really a motivating situation and I knew I wanted to come to the U.S. It was really unsure that my parents would send me here away from them but I knew somehow that I had to come here to study. Up to now, I don’t regret my decision and I am glad my parents supported my decision.

Talking about the present moment, I would say that I am facing some kind of giant ugly Ogre, and the worse part of the story is that I have to figure out by myself how to get rid of him.
I am at a point of my life where I don’t know how to organize my life. My schedule is always crazy and it’s not because I am taking 21 units of major required classes, it’s because 1/3 of those 21 units are dedicated to my dance classes. It’s funny but I never considered dancing as being a “hobby” or “exercising”. It’s simply just a part of my personality. Now that Foothill Dance Company is approaching show time, I have rehearsals until really late at night even during the week. It is then really challenging to get all my homework done (in time), get a maximum of 6 hours of sleep and stay focused in class and at work. I am not complaining since this is my choice, but I am also planning to go to medical school and that means I am supposed to start getting involved in research projects. I know that at some point I am going to have to reduce my dancing hours and eventually stop in order to study, and that makes me really sad. I am trying to make myself believe that I will always find a way to manage some time to dance but who knows?
The question then becomes WHEN do I stop? Should I really stop? To what extent am I willing to sacrifice study time for dancing? This is something that I haven’t figured out yet.

Oh and just to clarify something from today’s discussion, I just wanted to let know professor Lankford that I actually do not consider “not talking in class” a weakness in my learning. It might sound strange but I actually don’t think that participating in class makes you learn better… I am used to learn from a textbook, maybe that is why, but every time something is not clear, I usually manage to figure out by myself, meaning that I would at least try before having to ask the teacher. I find out that asking too much questions in class makes you become a “lazy” thinker since “you get served as soon as you ask”. But that is just my personal opinion, no offenses.

Cloud Computing

So much tools for students and teachers, isn't it awesome?

I already experienced couple of those Google Applications:

The iGoogle is basically setting your own "homepage" . You can personalize it and they offer a whole range of "ornaments" you can add on: pictures, games, calendar, fake aquarium, reminders, time, news, weather etc. A whole load of "stuff" to let your personality printed on the homepage.

I used iGoogle for lets say 3 months or so, after that too busy to go and check on it. Also I like to have Yahoo as my homepage just because my primary email box is on it. The only I really liked was the scheduler. Really helpful when you forget all your appointments and also you can get to see your friends' schedule if they give you permission to do so.

iGoogle is really for a personal use, it is not shared between people, it is basically to make your main page "lookable" and not so boring. Some people might have some fun with it.

I've also experienced Google Groups and that was really useful especially when teachers posts assignment on it, grades, notes etc. People from a same group can communicate really easily just by sending internal messages. The privacy system is not so bad because you have to be invited in the group in order to join and benefit from it. The only drawback I could think of is when the group is to be terminated, I think they actually don't tell the users so that we do not really know if all the "stuff" on it was completely erased. But I could be wrong.

Google Documents is basically a place where you can share files with people you invite. It has already the "excel" type format so it is easy and convenient to work with. It also keeps tract of any change made in a document and by whom.

I think having all these tools are great for sharing files between people with a certain extent of privacy control. I am going to say that actually I did not really understand the question for task 1 assignment...ha sorry about that. So I am just going to say that all the Google Application definitely gives good idea of how to organize an ePortfolio in a efficient way. It is almost complete: emails, pictures, documents, homepage, notepad, reader...

Digital storytelling

When I first started reading about the storytelling text I could almost picture kids in a future time before going to bed, instead of having their dad reading a book, just going on their own computer and log onto a web page with digital stories. And not that it doesn't sound pretty at all, after all you can have way more colors and pictures and sound effects from a computer, but still, I would feel sorry for those kids if that situation is ever to happen.

Anyways going back to the subject, I think the digital storytelling tool could be quite interesting to explore. Although the only reason I would probably use such tool will be for school purpose... Like let's say you have a project to do, or a research paper to write, you can use the storytelling mode to make the project or research more interactive and less boring.

I think the only problem I have with the digital storytelling tool is that you are expected to record your own self and voice so that everybody else can watch and see you. Honestly, exposing myself in such way will probably be a hard thing for me to do...I'd rather stick with my paper. I would prefer people to be convinced or read my real words instead of having to be distracted by any other factors raised by digital storytelling. These could be in fact: the way you sound, the way you look (people tends to judge you a lot), the quality of the video, quality of the sound, the background (where did you record yourself).

It is also true that watching somebody talking directly at you can be a more convincing "exchange" than just having to read a flat paper.

I also read something about the languages saying that basically you could record yourself speaking a different language and sharing with people. I thought that was a great idea. Also that reminded me that you could display some web pages in different languages by just clicking on the one you are interested in. So that gave the idea that if I had the skills and technology to do so, I will probably have my own web page in french and English!

Overall digital storytelling will be an interesting area to keep an eye on as ePortfolios are becoming more and more popular. But even so, I doubt that I will use such tool in my ePortfolio, but who knows?