Month: March 2019

First Podcast I listened to 

Second Podcast I listened to 

Do we worry too much about the effects technology has on our lives?

Yes, we do. Time spent on restricting web usage could have been used to redirected usage of screen time towards more productive activities. It is reasonable to be worried about technology in our lives as there are more and more cases of internet addiction. but this effect is not just caused by technology, but rather the lack of practice people have on self restraint when it comes to social media and entertainment.

Prompt: “Our student-writers rose to the challenge, producing authentic, responsible and powerful pieces”

The construction of the featured article starts by taking notes during interviews. Finding an angle that can successfully engage your target audience is the most important part of writing your article. Journalistic storytelling for me is only powerful if I can somewhat immerse myself in the life experience of the subject. Before I even started organizing my notes, I have already decided on my target audiences being students in my age group since I gained so much insight about university application through my speaker’s presentation. University is a relevant topic to me and my peers. The speaker also had a vastly different point of view towards university application in regards to financial struggles, and it was very touching to me since it was a facet of the process I rarely thought about. Just the planning phase revealed to me the elements that make an article powerful.

In order to create a piece of article that is appropriate to be released into the wider school community, I had to be a very responsible journalist. My first responsibility would be to the guest speaker who I elected to create a featured article on. Listening to the recordings, and going over my notes during the interview was the first step I took to be responsible for the article I was producing. My subject’s consent regarding how I portrayed her, and how accurately the story they wish to present is being told is important to my process of improving as an academic writer.

I presented my articles to 5 nominated readers including my subject before my final submission. Their comments were one of the most fruitful parts of the writing process. I received comments on structure, register, grammar, and most importantly factual errors, pointed out by the subject. Improving and fixing my article was being responsible to the subject, the school community, and myself as an author.

Learning to write a featured article was an incredible challenge for me during the process of improving my academic writing.

 

Three relevant quotes:

“It wasn’t strength or smarts or leadership potential that accurately predicted whether or not a cadet would finish Beast Barracks.”

“Mental Toughness is Built Through Small Physical Wins.”

“Mentally tough people don’t have to be more courageous, more talented, or more intelligent — just more consistent. ”

These quotes link to our challenge as we did screen free meals, meaning the challenge is divided into small fragments of time. It wasn’t about how hard we tried to keep away from our phones or how much more we could gain from not checking our devices. It was about keeping a constant reminder to not pick up the phone by habit and consistently encouraging ourselves to overcome our desire. This correlates with the idea of end of school year as we should reflect on what we were able to consistently do good on, and be more persevering on subjects we feel are challenging so that we can have an accomplishing school year.

I should have thought about self management more during collaboration. Each of us uploading our recordings, intros/outros and thread recordings are very important to completing the podcast making process on time. I would have thought more deeply about having a calendar reminder everyday on a fixed time period to remind me to upload my daily recordings. I need my partner to upload and complete their part of the work onetime the post. Even though our podcast was completed on time, I still felt that if we both scheduled our uploads and completed our works ahead of schedule we could have created a better product since we would have left out time to improve and reflect.

This scissor was the sharpest tool during this challenge as it is for cutting out distractions. Our challenge is about cutting out phones as a distraction so this tool is highly relevant. There are more distractions in this challenge than the screens themselves. Other distractions can be other family members and friends at the table using their phones, or talking about stories they saw on their device. The idea of using your screen just becomes so much more tempting so I definitely needed to work harder to stop these distractions from disrupting my consistency during the challenge.

My partner and me planned out our challenge and collected our podcasts on our Project Planner

This is a screenshot of the Calendar Reminder we set to keep ourselves organized.

This is the Intro Music, and this is what it looks like in Garage Band (Intro Screenshot)

This is the Outro Music, and this is how I created it in Garage Band (Outro Screenshot)

 

 

Am I worth the education of 20 kids?” was the question Angela asked herself when she gave up a seat at the University of Pennsylvania.

Who would have guessed that just two years ago, she was simply fixated to the idea of attending an Ivy league university?

Angela Noronha, a current University consultant, excelled at school from a young age. Eagerness beamed from her eyes when she talks about Universities in America, simply because of how much the opportunity to study in prestige institutions overseas would mean for a girl coming from a middle class Catholic family in the Philippines.

Amongst all the top universities in America, members of the Ivy league stand out as the finest and most prestigious ones. For most students like her, a
n offer from the Ivy league would be almost mean that you are set for life, and bound to change the world.lies between her homeland and the education facilities in her dreams.

Angela received a scholarship that was only awarded to 11 students in Asia, and the school (Wesleyan University) that offered it also had a reputation of brilliance. The only problem was that the institution was almost unheard of by Angela’s associates, and the ones did described it to be full of spoiled rich kids that are nonchalant about academics. So she unconsciously wrote it off as a university not remotely up to par with the Ivy league.

During the interview, Angela admitted that not being more appreciative of this opportunity was one of a series of questionable decisions she made during the course of her college application.

“I was at the height of my ‘believing yourself, do what you are passionate about’ stage.” said Angela cringing slightly at her past confidence.

Angela’s excellent grades and active engagement in the schools activities caught the eye of several prominent universities in the U.S. Amongst the many offers she received, there was the page from the Holy Bible, an offer from the University of Pennsylvania, an Ivy League University.

When asked about how passionate she was about UPenn, clearly embarrassed at her past idealistic self, she grinned and said “I said no to literally three full ride scholarships to go full pay at Penn, so uhh, dumb decision number 1.”

Even for the young and confident Angela, coming from a middle class Filipino family and going full pay at UPenn was a bittersweet experience. As her parents went over the school fees with her, they discovered that they could just bare afford Angela’s education overseas. Even as a grown up, talking about this dilemma during the interview still makes Angela quite emotional.

Angela now helps with other students’ university application process, and a key concept that she encouraged us to take into account during our own application is “return of investment”. Return of investment for a university would not only consist of your future income, but also how much your school of choice empowers you to do a job that makes you feel self fulfilled. Universities that does not enable you to do what you feel achieved doing, or enough income to self sustain has a low return of investment despite the prestige they might carry, and they might not be the right ones for you.

Angela’s parent had in mind only her financial ROI when they asked her to transfer to the Wharton business school at University of Pennsylvania, “At least we know you will make that money back”. For Angela at that time, the most important aspect of ROI was how significant her external impact would be, and how she can help the most people. Yet she knows the demand is reasonable and after completing her university education she will need a job with a stable income that can support her, as well as her family, for example, the education of her children.

“The reasons that I had for coming here for were wrong.” said Angela to UPenn, after requesting one year’s leave of absence.

Everyone at UPenn was more involved and passionate that she thought. “Everyone thought they were going to save the world or something”, said Angela. She was so involved in different activities and projectand. As the first school year came to its end, the conundrum of choosing between her Ivy League dream and facing the reality of her financial crisis became even more pressing. Acknowledging that she needs more clarity and reconsideration, Angela decided to go back to Philippines when summer break started.

Angela came home to “the biggest storm in just decades, hit Manila and thousands of people lost their homes…” She enrolled in a local college, and started getting involved in local charity work including disaster relief and education.

To her surprise, she felt more fulfilled as she stayed longer and longer at home. The decision she made even bore unexpected fruit as she helped her Catholic parents accept the fact that her brother is gay. “Why should I spend that much money to study overseas just to do what I can do now. I just wanted to help people”, and her university advisor’s response to that was “I wish more students thought about their futures the same way you are thinking about it”

“Where can I love more?”

After leaving UPenn, she asked her university advisor the same question she asked herself when she submitted the request for the leave, “Am I worth the education of 20 kids?” To her astonishment, her advisor exclaimed “Yes, you are!”. Her response to that was, “Maybe life would have been different, but the most important thing is making the best decision at the time, and you won’t look back thinking you should have done something differently.”

Angela joined a college guidance platform after graduating local university to help more students like her that don’t have the right counseling resources available to them. Leaving the dream university didn’t stop her from helping people, she is able to do what she is most passionate about, and going home everyday to her loving family. Don’t let the thick ancient Ivy vines be all that you are able to see in your future, free yourself from its constraints, enable yourself to roam around and embrace all the possibilities the world has to offer you.