"As the nation approaches its 57th Presidential Election, we're asking the future leaders of this country, students, to define the single most important political issue in this election."

The single most important issue facing this country in my opinion is the economy. We all are suffering from this retched state of affairs; some people are jobless and are losing their homes while others are having to cut back significantly on things, being thankful just to still have jobs. As a student, the economy is an important issue because when I graduate I will have a mountain of debt and if I cannot find a job, no way to pay it off. I, like many older college students, decided to go back to school in an effort to gain knowledge and skills that would make myself more marketable to employers. When I started school, the economy had not yet tanked. Watching the economic practices of this country make the situation in this country worsen over time has me alarmed as well as most Americans.

Every candidate is promising to create jobs, but no one is being realistic as to what it will take in order to do this. As a nation, we have to stop borrowing money we cannot repay or selling bonds we cannot buy back to raise money to fund our government, our military, or anything else the politicians already in office want to spend it on. We absolutely have to balance this budget and begin to pay the deficit down. Partisanship and politics need to be put aside for the good of the people. If we can straighten the economy out and pay the deficit down, the economy will come out of this recession and jobs will be created. 

There are many ways in which we can cut the deficit and create jobs, and one of them is to bring our military home from both Iraq and Afghanistan. A fighting force is easier and more cost effective to run with our soldiers at home or in places where there is no conflict. Close and secure our border with Mexico by taking some of those soldiers who served in Iraq and Afghanistan and placing them along the border to patrol it. Guns and drugs find their way across the Mexican/American border but this would be less likely to be a problem if we had seasoned, trained security to patrol this area, which is a little over 1,900 miles long. Our current border patrol is not funded well enough to deal with these problems.

We need to stop sending monetary aid to countries that do not want anything to do with us besides take our money. We currently send millions in aid each year to Pakistan, a country that clearly does not support our efforts to quell terrorism. Pakistan is infamous not only for not sharing intelligence with us about terrorists like Osama bin Laden but also for harboring these criminals and the organizations they belong to. We send countries like Pakistan money in an effort to try and buy cooperation from them; the politicians who are in charge now apparently do not see that the Pakistanis give us what information they want us to have. I realize that things have to be done in order for our country to be safe and that we may not always agree on what those things are, but it is apparent that sending money to countries where we are so hated is not working.

I would like to close by saying there is no one trick to fixing the economy. Tough decisions have to be made and there has to be follow through. It is up to us as United States Citizens to hold our policy makers accountable for their actions by voting them in and out of office.

This is an official blog entry for the YourLocalSecurity.com Blogging Scholarship. If selected, I'll receive $1000 towards my college expenses in 2012. This scholarship is sponsored by YourLocalSecurity.com

Happy Thanksgiving Munsters style!

Personal

Now that the academic part of this is over, I will make this blog more personal. There happens to be some reservation in my mind as to whether or not I should do this at all. I may not be as personal as I would like to be because quite frankly I am scared. I let too many people in to get close to me and most of them hurt me. I may use this as a tool to help me get past my hangups, but I may just post some musings from time to time. Either way, welcome again to my place.

Week 8

This is the final week in both of my classes. I have learned quite a bit from both classes since I started a few short weeks ago. I have kept posting at least once per week since I started class, which was not exactly required but we were expected to contribute to our ePortfolio regularly. I have made the design of this Blog my own; I felt like it was important for my little piece of cyberspace to reflect my personality a little bit. The symbol that is at the top of the Blog means strength or power. My music idol Eric Carr used these symbols on his drum kit, and I have liked it since the first time I saw it.

This course, entitled CIS 1200, Introduction to College Learning, has been very helpful in that I was able to brush up on the APA Style of formatting PowerPoint presentations as well as papers. I was also able to figure out what my goals were now and see if they were any different than from when I first started school. I have an Associate of Arts Degree in Criminal Justice from the University of Phoenix, and I can honestly say that moving forward I will use my new goal set and new study habits learned in this course in all of my future courses here at Shorter University.

Week 7 Discussion

This week's discussion question is: "Read through Presenting with PowerPoint: 10 Dos and Don’ts and 10 Tips for Creating Successful Business Presentations articles. Describe in a Discussion Board posting (in 100-150 words) the four tips you consider the most valuable for good presentations. Please respond to two postings from others in the class."


Below is what I answered. What do you think?


Keeping the slide number down is important because when presentations become too long people lose interest and focus on what you are presenting. If your presentation is 25 slides long I doubt that whatever you are presenting is going to keep people's interest. Hand material out at the end that summarizes the key points of your presentation. If you give it out before you finish your presentation people will assume that they can get all of the information they need from the handout and not pay as much attention to the presentation. Using photos, clip art, and graphs will help your audience visualize the points you are making. The use of a situation appropriate design theme is also very important because you don't need something that's going to take away from the information you are presenting. Keep in mind who your audience is. These are the four tips that I think are the most important or valuable when making PowerPoint presentations.

PowerPoint Presentation in Week 7

I wanted to share what my PowerPoint for week 7 looks like, so I have included in this post the title slide. I think it looks pretty good, and although I have done more intricate designs in the past, I think this slideshow is pretty good. I just decided to use Shorter's seal and the school colors to accent the text boxes. I think I shoud get a decent grade on the presentation. I did put some effort into the presentation, and I hope that my professor likes it as much as I do.

finger eleven - Paralyzer (Video)

Some Music I like.

Week 6 Material and What my Student Website Looks Like

This is what the screen looks like when I get into the Moodle Website. People often ask me what my classroom looks like, so I thought I would share. It is not very easy to go to school and not get the benefit of listening to my instructor lecture in person. This is significantly different that what I had at another school (which I will not name).  This week in my Introduction to College Learning class we are learning about the APA formatting style. APA stands for American Psychological Association and the APA style refers to a style of formatting papers and reports and the sources used to write them. I have some experience with this, but I am going to review this week's lesson and make sure my skills are sharp.

Week 4 and 5: Goals and Time Management, Preparing for Exams

In addition to this week being the anniversary for 9/11, I am thinking about my goals in this class and my time management. I have come to the conclusion that my goals are right where they need to be but my time management skills need a little work. I am trying to create more time not only for my studies but for myself as well. This will not be easy and it will take some trial and error, but I think that if I can put my mind to it I can accomplish just about anything. I just have to remember not to put any unnecessary pressure on myself by trying to accomplish impossible goals. The key to it all is to keep it all manageable.

Managing time and note taking are essential to preparing successfully for exams. It is important to study material, but no one should spend all night "cramming" for an exam; this process simply does not work. Take breaks during long study sessions but be mindful of how much time you have. Using flash cards is one way that you can practice for exams; you can write key terms on one side and their definitions on the other. Have someone test you during a study session. If you are preparing for an essay exam, write a practice essay to help get your creative writing skills going. Get plenty of rest and do not study when you are tired. You cannot focus when all your body wants to do is shut down.

In Remembrance: 9/11 Ten Years Later

This week I will not be writing about academics. I will be writing about the tragedy that changed America forever. This Sunday marks the tenth anniversary of the terrorist attacks on the Twin Towers and out Pentagon. I had never before felt unsafe as a citizen of this country and this horrific event shook me to my core, as I am sure it did every single American Citizen.

I was asleep when the first two planes hit the World Trade Center, but when I woke up to get ready for work, my dad was telling me what was going on. At first, I asked him what movie he was watching. he said "No, son, this is for real." I stood there watching the Towers on fire in a numb and mute state. I could not believe what was happening. Who would do such a thing? Why did this happen? As much as I wanted to stay and watch the coverage, I had to get ready for work.

As I was showering my mind was trying to understand what was going on. Would work be safe? Should I call in? I was able to pull myself together enough to drive into work where everyone was watching the coverage on a television at the Coffee Bar. There were not many customers at all, and it was very eerie as I looked into the faces of coworkers. Some of them were crying, some of them had shocked and disbelieving looks on their faces. One thing was for sure; we all knew our country would never be the same again.

The front page of the AJC on 9/12/01

Many things have changed in our country since that day. Airport security is tighter, the government is monitoring us more, and we all realized how everything in our lives can change in an instant. As the anniversary of the 9/11 terrorist attack approaches, I urge all Americans to remember and honor those who died but also to honor and remember all of our soldiers, both past and present, alive and dead who have sacrificed so much so that our amazing nation could continue to be the freest nation in the world. We should say a special prayer and thank you to all of the First Responders and their families who lost their lives or loved ones when the Towers came down. Those brave men and women deserve our thanks and our support not just at this time of year but every day because they help to keep us safe by putting their lives in danger.

To all of the Men and Women who serve us both in our Armed Forces and Domestically, from the bottom of my heart, I say THANK YOU for your service.

Week 3: This Week's Material

In my Introduction to College learning class, we talked about successful habits for studying and completing homework assignments. Note taking was also a topic, and more specifically, a certain way of formatting and taking notes called the Cornell System. Here is a link to the Cornell system: http://lsc.sas.cornell.edu/Sidebars/Study_Skills_Resources/cornellsystem.pdf

In our discussion forum, everyone talked about how they concentrate on homework and what our strategy is for completing it. Some of my classmates had some really good ideas and there may be somethings that others have suggested that I will try to incorporate into my homework completing skills.

This Week: Week 2 Assignments

In class, we are learning to format Word documents, using boldface lettering and  the centering option. I think I like the 2003 version of Word better but it is only because that is the program that I used when I wrote all of my past papers. I took two quizzes and got good grades on them both. One was on plagiarism and the other was on different features of the Word 2007 program. It is imperative that we learn how to use this program because we will use it in every class we take here at Shorter. This course will be a good refresher course for me.

Week 1: Classes I am Taking

These are the two classes that I am currently taking. So far, the Economics class is more daunting to me than the Introduction to College Learning class because I have had a class like the Intro class when I was at another school. I am concerned about the level of reading and technical things to learn because I have so much going on at home. I am a full time caretaker for my mother and sometimes she can be more than a handful. I think that there is no assignments that can be accepted late here at Shorter, and that concerns me because oftentimes I end up at the hospital or at doctor's offices all day. I know that other people have difficult situations and some (maybe even most) are more difficult than mine; I am merely explaining my situation. I  know that if I apply myself I can do anything, so right now the anxiety I am feeling can be based upon new school jitters. I look forward to learning and I hope that I can continue to be a good student as well as a help to my fellow students. Well, that's all for now. Have a great weekend everyone.

Welcome!

Welcome to my blog. In this blog I will attempt to discuss some of the things I am learning at Shorter University and give you a snapshot of what my life is like as a student. I hope that you all will find this interesting and I will try my best to make it worth your time to read. I will also post musings and poetry, but if there is anything that you would like to see please feel free to email or leave me a message and I will try to accommodate you as best I can. Again, thanks for taking the time to read my little corner of cyberspace.