Social Change Wheel

From the Wartburg College Social Change wheel I exhibit characteristics of socially responsible daily, behavior and direct service. I really attempt to help keep the bathrooms and other areas toe. I make sure to recycle all my cardboards from my room. I also, recycle all my paper waste. I always try to be responsible in my daily life.

For direct service I have helped at the elementary of my home town. I helped with the behavior disorder children. All of these children that I helped were not bad kids they are just misunderstood. They just have difficulties understanding the difference between right and wrong when they get worked up.

Other service activities I am involved in is Habitat for Humanity. A couple weekends ago I woke up at 7:30 a.m. to travel to Waterloo. A group of eight of us worked on a house. House's are built for individuals that have problems with making money. These people have to volunteer a certain amount of time to be able to come into possession. Over the course of eight hours we built two porches and finished the opening to the attic.

Since I have been in Wartburg, I have learned how I can help out my community this is done in a variety of ways. The ways that I do help out my community is just by being a responsible citizen and by volunteering in varying organiztions.

Mort Machir impersonating Seth O'Conner

First off, I don't like sarcasm. Secondly, I never apologize, I'm sorry, thats just the way I am. Third, I don't make excuses, besides they are too hard to come up with anyway, and I'm normally too tired. Fourth, I attend NWC ( I abreviated Northwesetern College to save space.). Fifth, I never procrastinate, at least not until tomorrow because I don't feel like it today.

I'm not saying that I am a mutant, but I do have a wicked crazy hitchhikers thumb. Let's say that I am walking down the highway and I need a ride to the next state, retractable metal claws or lasers for eyes aren't going to get me a ride, but ah! I have a great hitchhikers thumb! Suck that wolverine and cyclops!

When I go to the mall I often times see Brad Pit in the dressing rooms. Of course this is until I realize its just the mirror and my fantastic sculpted body.

I'm not an organ donor......but I do have a piano for sale.

I am way more humble than you.

I don't know how to dust my wood surfaces but I pledge to find out.

I know you were staring at me because I didn't take my eyes off you for a long period of time.

I am never redundant for you fyi. So stop saying that I am, asap as possible.

My friend leads up  a train company. One time a lightning bolt hit the back of his train and went all the way up and shocked him, I guess you can say that he is a good conductor.

My body wash says it removes dryness. Hopefully that doesn't include my sense of humor.
As you can see my friend, Seth O'Conner from high school, thinks he is quite a comedian. He says witty stuff like this all the time. Even my our senior year he used his humor to drop calculus even though he had an A-. I was in the guidance office at the same time and was forced to make my guidance counselor laugh before he would let me drop that aweful class as well. It was very difficult for me to be funny on the spot like that and I am aweful at telling jokes. I finally made him laugh by butchering a joke so badly that I gave away the punch line in the first couple seconds and he couldn't control himself it was so painful. No matter how corney my friend is I will always find his little witty sayings funny and hopefully he can provide everyone some much comic relief too.

The joys of a roommate

I heard horror stories before moving up here about having a roommate can be so problematic and it is just aweful having no privacy. What if your roommate is gay, man or what if they are a slob? (not that there is anything wrong with that because there isn't) Maybe like what if your roommate is really... How do I put this friendly with the opposite sex. What are you going to do if... the list goes on and on. Fortunatly, I lucked out. My roommate is actually really cool. All of his friends are mine friends and vice versa. I feel like I could tell him almost anything. Its really nice to have someone like that conveniently living in the same room you are.

The first week went pretty well except I sleep talk in my sleep and I said some things that well could be taken the wrong way. To name one I literally said "but he is always in the room" when I was sleeping. I haved told people that but it always begin with he is really cool and thats because he is. Also kind of funny I find out that I already knew of him before we moved in together. He ran track in junior high and was a pretty stellar athelete. All my friends actually remember him as the half-black kid from Ballard that was winning all the sprints and jumped pretty darn high on the high jump. Its just weird what a small world this place we call earth is sometimes and how good things can happen and do all the time. We just have to open our eyes and acknowledge them.

Sunday is the day of rest?

How Sunday has changed...I used to associate Sunday waking up for church good and early and being very sleepy. I would make it through the sermon. Go home and have a lovely lunch with my family. Then my brother father and I would watch football the rest of the day with not a complaint in the world and who knows probably take a nice two hour nap that day.

This is no one. The Sunday which I had once loved for its leisure quality is now gone. I wake up get some brunch and then head over to the library and furiously work on all my homework which I have put off for the joys of Friday night and Saturday. In fact, I haven't seen one NFL game this entire fall. Not one, this is kind of outragous I think. I loved watching football, all kinds of it. I would play football Friday night watch high school highlights after the game, get up watch college football on Saturday and then proceed right into to Sunday and watch pro ball.

I would like to say this is a phase my Sundays will start to improve. But I honestly can't even get myself to believe my own lies. It is truely tragic. I am luckily going to have a reprieve coming up next Sunday when I am home because it will be fall break and not much studies will be happening.

I hope that when I am not in college anymore my Sundays will change back for good.Thats one of the few things in life that keeps me going, the idea of a relaxing Sunday...I can see it now the journey will be very long and tiresome but it is coming all I have to do is have patience.

Outfly

Outfly in German is "Ausflug." It is a student-facilitated one day holiday and it got started in the 1890's. Only the student body president and the president of the college know the exact date it will be held. To this I call BS, better known as bullshit. It is indeed a crazy idea to keep students stressed while playing a guessing game of when it will be. Freshman students try to "guess" when this day will come. To which I say if ever come. I hear freshman telling each other gossip about whats going on with the college and "how the lawn was just mowed", better yet "there is tons of abnormal food in the mensa that is being opened up today or best yet "I know this girl thats, umm.. lets say very friendly with the president and she told me its going to be wednesday." Ohh yeah thats what your going off of they just mowed. Really they mow every week. There is food in the Mensa? Wow, no way that never happens and you know this older girl that is nice to Rex. Really? They are in on it they are not freshman.

I have come to believe outfly or "Ausflug" is really just in our hearts. Something to keep our hopes up of tomorrow being better than today. Well I am not that guy. It doesn't keep my hopes up at all. It has been disappointment after disappointment for me these last couple weeks. I get so excited stay up late and enjoy life and then I wake up to the same boring alarm clock every morning. Outfly I have to believe is the weekend that is our only days of leisure. Unfortunatly leisure doesn't come easy when you are becoming buried in homework. My venting will hopefully sway others into the fact that, that fateful day is not our fate. We will get up the next day go to class as displease as we are today.

The Freshman Fifteen?

   The freshman the general term that has been to people that go to college and gain weight. The reason that many students gain weight at college is farely simple. These reasons include stress, lack of exercise, unhealthy eating, large portion size, and unfortunatly metabolism starts to slow down from where it was in high school.
   Four of the top things can be controlled the first is stress. Stress may seem like an inevitable thing about college that can't be solved but it can be managed. Some things that can be helpful are studying with friends or people of like majors. You don't have to take on studying for a test by yourself and other peoples ideas can help with learning. Even papers you can seek advice through services provided by the college. Your paying good money to go to school so help is always out there. Also kind people are out there that can help and someone will.
   Next is lack of exercise. Exercise doesn't have to be for hours at a time. A quick workout several times a week will not only increase you metabolism and burn calories but also it will wake you up or provide a mental from your studies. Just twenty minutes a day can help you to a smaller waistline.
    Unhealthy eating is a very big problem on colleges campuses. Getting your recommended servings of fruits and vegetables is important. They provide key nutrients that take a while for your body to digest keeping it from turning into fat. Healthy foods keep you full for longer so you won't be running for unhealthy snack after snack. Another great idea is avoiding very fatty foods. Fatty, greasy foods aren't good for you and provide more calories than your body can burn.
     Controlling portion size is important. A way to do this is eating smaller meals more often snacks are good as long as they are healthy foods like an apple or granola bar. These smalls meals will keep your metabolism up and keep you from binging on food.
    Since metabolism slows down with age in the natural course of life, more effort needs to be taken on taking care of your body even if its only to fit in those new slim fitting jeans you just bought.

Wednesday

    My alarm goes off at 8:23 a.m. Darnit I was having the best dream too. I hit the snooze and attempt to forget my day thats in head of me. Unfortunatly sleep is impossible now. I feel like I have been laying there for ten minutes. I look at my phone and its been a mere two. I get up, yawn, stretch and hit the showers. I scrub off the warm water feeling so good early in the morning. I can hardly make myself leave the warmth of the shower because its cold all around except in that lovely stall.
    I dry off in my room shivering as I do, why can't they turn on the heat yet...its definitly cold enough by now. I slip into the warmest clothes I can find. Unfortunatly, I didn't bring all my warm clothes from home yet. I figured I would be fine by the time I go back. I was wrong.
    I pack my adidas bag with my pencil case, books, notebooks, planner and calculator. In my other bag I only carry my computer due to the fact I am paranoid that it could somehow get hurt. People tease me about my two-bag system but it works for me. Even though this is a small campus I don't like having to go back to my room to get a couple books. Why not carry them?
   I leave my room at 8:45 even though class doesn't start until 9:00 and it is like a two minute walk if that. I get to class early find my favorite seat in the second row so I can engage in biology conversations with my professor and see the board which is kind of important.
    Class ends and I am off to the Konditorie to buy my lovely raspberry parfait. I love them so much even if it does clash with my flannel shirt and scruff I have going on. While I eat that I look up my facepage. Do some creeping (thats what people do on facebook don't take that the wrong way; its just a saying) get bored then off to my second class of the day chemistry.
       I stroll to lunch and get some good eats and then go back to my dorm where I find my roommate Jordan Jackson watching Tom and Jerry and loving every second of it. I can't help but chill until my next class and take in the humor. Mainly the humor of his laughing at all the child ish jokes.
    I get to my IS five minutes early and have a chat with several classmates. Tom gets there and just brightens up the room... Oh Tom Wright was indeed right about you being the perfect man.
    I have one more class to go and this is the worst. Applied calculus, guranteed headache everyday. I barely make it through that hit up the library and go right to dinner from there. I stay in the mensa for about an hour talking to my friends. Luckily I have co-ed volleyball tonight which always makes my mood improve. We lose like normal but we all have fun and the game was really close.
   I go straight to math lab to actually learn the material from Dr. Scott. Who isn't actually a doctor at all just a very helpful student teacher.
   Finally I am done for the night and can take a load off in my room with all my roommates and I's friends for movie night. I gently fall asleep during the movie from mental exhaustion. Lucky for me I know tomorrow I will have a much needed respite. I don't have class until one and it is maginificent... You just have to enjoy the little things in college like a much needed small break.

Paulo Freire

    Paulo Freire lived a very hard life. He taught the rural poor in Brazil and was exiled from his country in 1964. He used education as a tool to help the poor and oppressed. In his writing, The Banking Concept of Education it is pretty noticable his neglect for the style of education in his country. He begins his writing talking about the student-teacher relationship. Teachers have knowledge and students don't. Teachers must bestow there knowledge onto the student. The student is a receptacle for knowledge and must be filled by teacher. Knowledge can't be acquired without the grace of the teacher. In this way teaching becomes an act of "depositing" this information into the "bank." This creates an issue though because students are just memorizing information they are not actually appyling this knowledge. They learn to not think for themselves but for someone that is smarter than them only for the fact that they have a position of power.
       Power is held by a few. They hold onto this power by means of teaching. They organize knowledge so it is advantageous to them. They keep the majority oppressed so they can maintain power. When people don't think for themselves and can't teach themselves it makes them reliant on the person that can teach. It turn we become mechanical beings only doing what we are told and how we are told. If a true problem arrises we won't know what to do further increasing the reliance on the few and powerful.
      After hearing Paulo Freire talk in this manner I feel like I understand his life better. I understand the oppression that he went through and fought agaisnt in Brasil. I may not know what exactly took place in his life but I do know that these experiences led him to become a stronger more independent man. He used his experiences to help people out in situations like him. Paulo was a strong complicated man that innovated the world of education.

Biology 151

    My professors for biology 151 is McClung and Foster. They both have different subjects in biology that they are passionate about. McClung throughly enjoys the anotomy and physiology of cells. He could talk about the componets that make up different cells parts for hours on end. On the other hand, Foster loves ecology. She loves how members of a community work with each other and give ecosystems their characteristics. We started off the first unit of biology learning about ecology, trophic levels, biomes, hiearchy of life and populations. I have been over all these subjects before but not to this extent so I didn't know what to expect exactly. A couple concepts really had me worried one of which is the nitrogen cycle. Other things I was worried about was the characteristics of all the biomes. Not only did I need to memorize these characteristics I also needed to apply this knowledge to answer questions.
  Being my first exam I started studying a week in advance of the test. I started my studying by going over some, what I belivied to be, key terms. I didn't know where to focus my attention so I focused on basically everything that was ever said during class or read from the text book. This was a night and day approach compared to high school which I could just drift by and not worry because the teacher would always have to slow down for the less well-versed in biology students, if you will. Its hard accepting that I am not one of the most naturally intelligent people in the room, but I have learned one thing through my studies in the short time I have been at college, hard work does go noticed. After numerous hours of studying I recieved exactly what I wanted and the was an A at ninety-six percent.

Laundry

       When I first got to college I didn't really put much thought into the normal essientials of life... one being laundry. My dirty clothes hamper was starting really pile up and I was starting to get nervous. I have never done laundry before because I had a lovely mother that would do anything for her little boy. The first time I did laundry I was a little confused to say the least like which clothes do you wash together, the temperature of the water, how long does it take, what tumble cycle goes with what?
       Luckily by this point I had aquired some friends that were actually pretty adept at being independent. Shockingly the people that knew how to do laundry were women. My roommate and several other guys on my floor were having difficulties doing laundry and I was not alone. We thought about forming a support group for the ground south males. Fortunaltly a girl going by the name of Bree was kind enough to show us the tricks of the trade. She didn't want any compensation in return but she received the up most respect and friendship from us all.
      Besides learning only like-colors wash together, whites in hot water, darks in cold water; I learned that kindness goes a long ways in making friendships.