Summer on the mind

Ahhhhh summer is just right around the corner. I think it’s safe to say that my mind has officially shut down and is focused on one and one thing only, summer! These last two weeks are the most miserable and stressful on students. You can find students passed out in the library in their workspaces stressing over an upcoming final. Many students’ grades are border line and the final exam is the making or breaking point to getting that grade they need. The other stressful thing is when you have two finals on the same day. How are you expected to learn a full semesters worth of material for two classes in the matter of a week. These next few weeks are filled with sleepless nights, a lot of coffee, and headaches. Though I know how miserable these next few weeks are I can still see the light at the end of the tunnel. As soon as I get home from a finals week I go into hibernation. I sleep for like three days just trying to get my body back to normal so that I can function. Im really excited to be home for the summer because I have the coolest job lined up. Im really excited to make money. I work at my local marina. So I will be getting paid to fill boats with gas, sell ice cream, and hit on girls that need help docking their boats. Words cannot describe how happy I am to start making money doing this. My summers are super chilled and relaxed. I try to use my brain as minimal as possible. We live and have a boat on our lake. I can literally drive my boat across the lake to get to work. I love summers on the water fishing, skiing, wakeboarding, and hanging with friends. I can see the light at the end of the tunnel, but for now bring on the coffee!

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4-20

With 4-20 finally here I feel like theres going to be a huge commotion over the whole marijuana issue. Last night when I was walking out to my friend’s house on willow to watch the hawks and bulls game I couldn’t help but to notice all of the red white and blue lights. They say the colors red white and blue stands for freedom, those colors seem to mean the opposite when those colors are coming up from behind you with a siren. I really don’t see why there needs to be a sudden rise in police force. Im not a “pot head” or “stoner” but I know that students that are drinking are a lot higher at risk of going out and doing something reckless rather then the kid smoking pot eating Cheetos on his couch. Our school is even hosting a hemp fest festival where theyre going to be promoting the legalization of marijuana and there will be a bunch of live bands playing on the quad. How can our school hold such a event but then turn around and be completely against it. I feel as though they are trapping the hippies in a bear trap and containing them in like mice. I really don’t see what all of the commotion is about 4-20. I believe it stands for something completely different then smoking a bunch of weed. I think its stupid that kids use this date as a excuse to smoke weed.

Research papers

Writing papers has honestly got to be one of my least favorite things to do. I feel as though I always have one thousand ideas going on in my head and I have no idea how to put it on paper or I have no ideas and hate what I see on the paper. When I usually do papers I have found that outlines are extremely beneficial to me. When I can get a little direction with my papers it really helps me to get a running start in a direction with my papers. Once I get going with a paper its easy for me to keep going. It always seems to be that first sentence that trips me up. Gathering research has always been the easiest thing for me to do when writing research papers. I love finding cool or new facts about my topic. When I find cool new information that I wasn’t aware of before it fuels my fire. I love taking the new things ive learned and incorporating them into my paper. The new information really gives me something to build the rest of my paper off of. I seem to be really having a hard time finding enough information with my paper on the show Workaholics. It’s a relatively newer show and theres not a lot of background information on the show. Ive mostly been coming up with viewer reviews or general information on what the show is about. My writing style definitely changes as I go from class to class. And it all depends on the basis of what your topic is that you’re writing about. It doesn’t make a whole lot of sense to be extremely punctual and proper when you’re writing a paper on Workaholics. The show is the farthest thing from punctual and proper. Im having a really difficult time trying to come up with 8-10 pages of information on the show. So if you have any ideas about how I could broaden my topic to meet the paper requirements im all ears! PLEASE HELP

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close reading

 Close reading to me is looking at a text under a microscope. A lot of the reading that I do in college is more of a quick speed read with a quick skim. I usually never take the time to look deep into my reading. Close reading is truly dissecting your text and looking at it at all angles. There are many ways to close read and some do it better then others. The best thing about close reading is that anyone can do it. Annotating a text by going through the text and underlining grey areas or other areas that stand out to you can be very beneficial. By underlining the text it allows you to go back and observe the text. If you have a question about a authors purpose of a certain portion of a text, no matter the readers level, you can go back and ask questions and look at it from different points of view. Another good thing about close reading is that you can incorporate it into your speed reading or skimming. As your cruising through a reading skipping over chapters you can still mark or highlight things that stick out to you, allowing you to go back and look at them later. Close reading is something that I was taught in my high school English classes but I didn’t even realize I was doing it. I never really put a name on it. We would be assigned to read outside of class as homework and would be assigned quizzes weekly based on our reading. As we would read we would sit down and discuss the reading like as if we were our own little book club. In these discussions we would annotate the text assignment after assignment. We would break the text down into little pieces and using everyone’s own different perspective on the reading would piece it together. Close reading is a great way to understand a text and is a great way to approach any problem that you may come across.