End of the Semester Scaries

Image via Pixabay

As the year ends, we take a look back at our semester. What could we have done better? What went the way we wanted it to? How could we have done better throughout the year? These are questions almost every college student asks themselves at the end of the year when things like their grades are at stake.

I believe I have progressed greatly throughout this class. As the class went on, I gained more confidence to talk and was always trying to help other people out. Specifically, I used to be too scared to raise my hand and talk and now I find myself just blurting out the answer (if it’s okay to in the moment) and also raising my hand for participation credit more. In regards to the blogs, I actually think my blogs got better too. I started talking about more relevant content and connected my own experience to the class which I thought was good. I think that this and this were my best two blog posts and my best responses were on Jared’s blog post and on Alex’s blog post.

There are always people in your classes that you admire. Two students that influenced me in class were Anika and Shannon. Anika and I were in the same group for Project 2 and she was always asking what she could do to help and always was ready to talk in class. Because of this, it made me more confident to talk in class as well (which as mentioned was a fear I had). Shannon also sort of did the same thing, although I was not in a project group with her. She always knew what she was talking about and although I did not comment on any of her blog posts, she commented on mine a couple of times and her responses were always really relatable and made really good points. Her blog is also really good and has a relatable feel which I like. I think I would nominate Shannon for best blog because I enjoyed reading every one of her posts and they were informative without being boring.

Anxiety at Schools

By John Hain [CC0 or CC0], via Wikimedia Commons

I don't know about you, but there have definitely been times where I have been too anxious to go to class, office hours, or even club meetings that I have had. One time, I was going to be 10 minutes late to a 200 person lecture, and I was still too scared to go in. I think that anxiety effects way more people than anyone thinks, since anxiety has surpassed depression as the leading diagnosis in college students. Not a lot of people talk about it, and I have noticed that mental health is very much romanticized on social media sites such as Twitter and Tumblr. There are countless accounts that glorify having anxiety, depression and other mental health disorders and it really bothers me because it's not really something that should be romanticized and glorified. I was looking through Tumblr and the amount of self deprecating jokes that I saw was ridiculous. People just make jokes about it and don't seek help, but I do think this is partly because a lot of students don't really know where to get help. On our campus there's obviously the CAPS center at campus health where you can go in and talk to someone, but I don't think it's that widely known. I think that if ways to get help were more widely advertised, a lot more people would go and get help. People have really unhealthy coping mechanisms, especially at UofA (which is known as a 'party school') and I really do think there's a lot of ways to live a healthier lifestyle. 

"Never use Wikipedia as a reliable source"

Image via Wikimedia Commons

I feel like all throughout my school career I have heard everyone tell me "You can't use Wikipedia as a reliable source". Not one of my teachers has ever said it was okay to use it. But why not? I feel like as long as you check the references, it should be okay, especially in the cases of subjects like science. Science is just cold hard facts so it would be sort of hard to fake or lie about that, but other subjects I understand. But, is any other information on the internet more reliable? How are you supposed to know what sources you can and cannot trust? This article has many insights about Wikipedia, even saying that there is little difference in accuracy between Wikipedia and traditional encyclopedias such as the Brittanica. Surprisingly, Wikipedia actually has a lot of different people in place that settle disputes between facts and even have "nearly two thousand administrators, who are empowered to "protect, delete and restore pages, move pages over redirects, hide and delete page revisions, and block other editors" according to this article. Wikipedia is basically just a huge conglomerate of everyone's knowledge, whether that be good knowledge or bad knowledge.

Memes

Image via Wikipedia

Memes are probably the backbone of today's society. Where would we be without memes such as the Salt Bae meme or doge? Memes are all around the internet and even infiltrate into our lives. I have even found myself sending memes to my parents who are not 'hip and happening' as they would say. Memes are a way to spread content around the internet in a comical way that has the potential to reach millions of people. For example, I know a lot of people aren't really into politics and do not follow the presidency, but there are some really funny twitter accounts that take the President's tweets and put them side by side so you can see the hypocrisy that is going on. I also think that memes are a universal language and that they are an easy way to connect to people all around the world. Although they are mostly used for fun and games, they also can be used to spread information and spread awareness about different topics.

Reddit- A Plethora of Everything Good and Bad

By reddit.com; SVG version by User:Svgalbertian (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/File:Reddit_logo.svg) [Public domain], via Wikimedia Commons

Reddit is an abyss of topics. There's pretty much a subreddit for everything. I was poking around reddit and found a bunch of truly touching stories, one in particular that stood out to me was a story from a man that played the Goofy character at Disneyworld for over 20 years. He posted in the Ask Me Anything subreddit and people started asking him a ton of questions. One thing I noticed that is new to Reddit is the fact that users can verify their profession with a moderator, and when they do, a little badge pops up underneath their username saying things such as "journalist" or "actor/entertainer" and it really brings a quality of credibility to the website. After exploring Reddit for a while, I really started to understand why people spend their time on it. It's a website full of facts, memes, funny stories, touching stories, and sometimes famous people do AMA's (ask me anything) and they answer your questions. Reddit is honestly a really cool, interesting website and if you haven't checked it out yet I suggest you do.

Presentations

Image via Pixabay

If there's one thing I hate in this world, it's presenting to a group of people. It does not matter if the audience is my family or complete strangers, I will freeze up and not be able to say anything. Which is exactly what happened today. In the middle of our presentation I couldn't speak for a minute and I go "oh, sorry". I really could not tell you why I thought I needed to apologize, but, I do think that our presentation and all of the other groups that presented today and on Tuesday did a good job. Our presentation was about the show Friends and we played the intro/theme and at the part where the clapping happens, someone in our class clapped and I thought it was extremely funny. If for some reason you live under a rock and don't know what I'm talking about, you can watch the intro here. I also forgot to mention that in the middle of our presentation, the wifi stopped working so the other members of my group had to basically wing it with no visuals. I will conclude by saying good job to all of the groups and especially to my group!

Copyrighted Work-- To Use or Not To Use?

By Unknown  [Public domain], via Wikimedia Commons

I remember when I was in middle school looking up lyric videos to popular songs and hearing the song be distorted. I always wondered why. It was not until way later that I realized it was because the songs were copyrighted, but if the person who posted the photo distorted the song, it would not be considered illegal. After viewing this Prezi, I learned a lot. The Prezi states, "Here are the rules: If you use your imagination to create it from scratch and put it out there (recorded, on the computer, or on paper) then of course you are allowed to do any of the following with it: copy, distribute, perform or display, or change into something new". I also learned about a little thing called fair use. Fair use "helps keep our society's creations in circulation". There was a lot of things about copyright and copyright infringement that I never realized until I looked at the Prezi. I find it very interesting that someone can get sued for using a song in their video that's not yours.