Just got the e-mail that I passed assessment! Totally made my day!! :) So I have my psych final today and I must say that a final on a saturday is a huge downer! It makes it feel like it's not even the weekend. lol

Assessment

I literally just checked my email like 2 minutes ago and it said that if I was getting the email, I passed assessment so I have a huge weight lifted off my shoulder. I feel good.

Finally over

Its all over finally i have never felt more relieved to have a class done with now all i have to do is hope i pass... now more waiting... shit

ahh

okay, so i just uploaded all my work on D2L.. for some odd reason I feel like im missing some of the assignments but i know i ddi them all, maybe i just saved them all in one draft? ahh well. im finishin up my RA and making all the final changes to both of my papers. i hope they are both good enough for a passing grade. this class makes me nervous, especially bc of the grading style. i cant believe we have less thn 2 weeks and its SUMMMER time. yayay :) im actually pumped... even tho i wish it was warmer outside.

GOOD luck to everyone with their papers :) :) :)

I just uploaded all my work on d2l. I have the idea for my research analysis to say that for the presentation I wanted the paper to be crumpled up into a ball and then flattened back out for all the pages, cause that is seriously what i have done like 10 times. It would show all the hard work Ive really put into this paper. Ive carried it around with me to almost all of my other classes, adding stuff here and there. So i beleive that my paper that i should turn in SHOULDNT be all neat and just out of the printer because it has gone through so much traveling in my hands and in my backpack all the time, even all the people who have proof read it and all the emails it has gone through. EVEN THOUGH i feel like it shouldnt be all perfectly neatly printed out, i am going to do it anyway. HMM digity.

This week

this week was pretty blah. Worked on my essays trying to meet the 4th goal. Discovered that the way I was wording things was preventing me from meeting the goal so I have to go back and revise. Other then that the weekend was alright. Helped paint my boyfriends room. Ended up getting a blister on my hand from the roller which sucks, but oh well.

random...

So this whole entire semester I haven't felt like I had a roommate. She has missed over half the semester because of medical reasons and professors have given her extensions on things so many times. Yet I see her facebook statuses and it seems like she's just sitting and watching TV when she could be doing homework for a class. And when she does come back she decides not to go to class the next day, I don't see how she's going to pass her classes this semester....but I guess I wish her the best of luck!

Another non-productive day...

I found this kind of humoring :)

http://www.stumbleupon.com/su/1AIlnE/www.collegehumor.com/article%3A1802364

Driving

I live in Waukesha and I drive to UWM 4 days a week for class.... it's starting to get really old and I am really get sick of bad drivers! I want this semester to be over with... the 30min-1hour drive is getting really old.

and I have learned that I will never ever ever take an 8am class again...

weekend

This weekend was exciting because my sister had her baby on friday morning. I got to see him saturday afternoon. He was so tiny I got nervous holding on to him. Other than that my weekend was kind of boring. Had a bonfire with my boyfriend on saturday and roasted s'mores. Saw a shooting star for the first time, that was pretty sweet. Didn't really get to work on my essay or study for my psych exam tomorrow...should probably get working on that....

:)

So I had my OPI part of my final for spanish today. Totally sucked it up, but it was only worth 15 points towards our final. 15 points for 20 mins of talking seems like a waste to me, but whatever. On a happier note the weather was so nice today! I'm so ready for summer to be here! I think my paper is finally starting to meet all the course goals. Still have quite a few revisions, but its starting to come along now! :)

Shanks

First off I have to say that I thought Shanks website was very well put together and presented. It was appealing to the eye which I think is very important in engaging the audience into the website. The next thing I really noticed was all the photos he used in his blog. They were amazing and he incorporated them well into his blog. I didn't get a very academic feel when I initially started reading, but once I started exploring his website more, the way he asked questions and then used other sources and reasoning to explain his thinking I thought fit with academic inquiry quite well. Obviously depending on who you ask, I think some people wouldn't find Skanks blog/website as academic even though he clearly knows a great deal on what he his talking about. I think this would be based on simply the layout being a blog on the internet instead of being a formal academic paper.

I must say that I loved the photographs that Russian photographer Sergey Larenkov (Shanks-Haunted Media) did when he combined old photos of a place with current photos. They were amazing!

Reading Dooce.com I felt wasn't really academic inquiry. Granted I thought a lot of her blogs were very interesting. Her blog isn't as formal as Skanks and I think that is the main difference between the blogs. I would consider Skanks blog as more academic based on the presentation and facts and research. Now Im not saying that Heather didn't do any research for her blog, but her's is a lot more of a personal blog. It has a lot more personal stories then anything else and I feel a lot of blogs are more closely related to her blog then Skanks. Don't get me wrong though, the woman knows a lot and I think you can learn from her blog posts!

Spring Break

The last couple weeks have been difficult for my family and I didn't quite realize just how difficult until I came home this week. Last weekend my grandma was diagnosed with throat cancer. It's located in 3 separate spots and it's invasive meaning its spreading very quickly. Simple things like swallowing and talking have become very difficult for her, things a lot of people take for granted. As of right now surgery is not an option due to the cancers location. So for the next 7 weeks, monday through friday, my grandma has to go through radiation and then chemo treatments once a week in hopes of shirking it down enough to remove it. With the treatments swallowing and talking will get harder, sores will develop on her throat, and theres a chance she will lose her hair. Basically it's going to be like going to hell and back for her.

When I found out I was with my boyfriend and the comfort of having someone there meant everything to me. Despite the fact that I hate breaking down in front of people this was a time when it was inevitable. It's like you hear the word cancer and your brain automatically links it to death because you hear stories of people losing friends and family to cancer. You hear on the news that there is no cure, but theres ways to prevent the spread, ways to prolong your last few years, months, or days. But in the end there is almost always death. Now I know this seems stupid since we all are eventually going to die, but I think we have come up with this illusion that there is a right time to die. When someone we know dies in a car accident or dies from a heart attack we sit there and say over and over that it wasn't there time to die and we sit there and try to put the blame on every little thing because we don't want to face reality even though we're living it. It's like we're caught up in wanting a perfect happy ending to everything because thats what books and movies make us think is supposed to happen. But it's not realistic and it never will be, and we can't let go of the fact that it's not.

Yesterday was my 20th birthday, but after everything thats happened it seemed almost selfish to celebrate it. I felt like it no longer mattered, it was just another birthday, just another regular day. My parents didn't agree though, buying me dinner and presents, they needed that happy illusion, that escape from what was actually going on. I'm not saying its a bad thing though because I think we're always going to need that illusion of a happy ending. I just think that the longer we hold on to that illusion the harder its going to be to accept reality when it comes knocking on our door.

Paper Progress

I haven't really had any major progress on my paper quite yet. I have about 2 pages written, but Im not really sure I'm happy with them so I'll probably end up re-writing them. After my conference my paper has taken a different turn and I'm hoping I'm going in the right direction now. I'm having some trouble figuring out where to begin though...maybe once I get going things will start falling into place...hopefully!!

First Draft

So I'm excited to finally begin writing this paper. I feel like we have been working up to this point for forever! I still am nervous I'm going to write more of an argumentative or informative paper though or I'm not going to cite my sources the right way. I guess I'll just have to start writing and see what happens, haha

I am very anxious in starting my final paper because I am tired of all these little writing assignments leading up to the big one. I just want to start writing and get on with it..lol. Hopefully it will be time soon...

Topic :)

I decided to write my final paper on whether or not psychiatrists are making america depressed. I'm big on psychology and depression affects almost every person in some way so I thought it would affect a wide audience. I still haven't gotten the whole grasp on how to write for this class, so I'm hoping I don't start to write an informative or argument paper. I hope the information in the next couple weeks prevents me from doing that.

So I have decided to write my final portfolio on serial killers; the reason they do it- what brain imbalances they have, but also if out media has any impact on it. I'm just wondering if mine is going to be able to flow just because I want to include both the media and the science behind it?