My Last Blog of the Year

    

What can I say about English Comp 1101 with Professor Arrington? It is definitely different from any other English class I have ever taken. It is more challenging than any high school class and will take an enormous amount of time out of your day. The positives outweigh the negatives any day though.

Professor Arrington makes herself very available to any student who wished to take advantage of it. Her phone number and email was always an option if you have a question or wish to stay with her after class to work on an assignment.  Regrettably I didn’t take advantage of this as much as I should have. Many of the other students did and their grade and understanding of the class reflects that.

The theme of the course was “adventure” which I found to be unique. I never knew I could learn so much with this one word which I first thought to be simple but turns out to be complex. Our assignments included defining this word, blogging about this word, comparing our understanding with someone else’s understanding of this word, and living this word. To achieve an “A” in this course, you are going to need to leave your comfort zone to do something challenging and unexpected. I learned that to become a better writer, you don’t need to use fancy words and act like you know everything because you don’t. You need to live in an adventurous way to know yourself better and know what kind of writer you could be. Writing great is not only about what you say, but how you say it.

Some of the more technical things you will learn about is how to use a rhetorical situation to strengthen your writing. This just means that there should be content, style, and a specific audience which writing essays. This is how you communicate effectively. This isn’t just useful for this class and school in general but situations and questions you need to answer in real life. What you way, how you say it, and who you say something to determine how effectively others will understand and respect you.

Time outside of class working on assignments is very important. There is no way to just work in class and get a good grade. It just won’t happen. You need to set time outside of class either privately or with you classmates to work on papers and assignments. Thought, energy, and time are important aspects to consider in class if you want a good grade.

This college course is going to be more difficult and time consuming than any high school class you have had but with that responsibility comes freedom. Professors usually give assignments weeks in advance which means you can plan accordingly. You have plenty time to write and edit and revise with you work to get the best grade you can achieve. Also due dates usually aren’t written in stone. If you are having some technical or personal issues, professors and especially professor Arrington, don’t have a problem moving the due date a little further into the future for your connivance.

In my opinion, this is a great course to take. I thought once I left college, there wasn’t going to be teacher or people who really cared for me or pushed me to do better, but I found that to not be true at all. There always seems to be someone here At GGC that want to help and will take time out of there day to help you achieve your goals. If you are upcoming freshmen I would recommend you take this class to ease yourself into the college experience and make you feel welcome.  

Change in Plans

Unfortunately, since Adele recently had a hemorrhage in her vocal chords, she has cancelled the rest of her U.S. tour for this year. I now need to start planning an entirely new adventure.

I have now decided on having a haunted house for Halloween. I have never been a big fan of this holiday. I never really understood why people would want to dress up and scare each other in hopes of getting a plethora of candy. It has always baffled me. So this year, I'm going to find out what the deal is with this madness.

My good friend, Cristen, has been nice enough to let me and a group of other people just rampaging through her house all Halloween day. We plan on removing all the furniture and putting it in the basement so we can put up a set for our shenanigans. We're hanging  "bloody" tarp on the ceiling to the floor to create a maze which our victims have to get through. The theme is a zombie land type deal. Our job all night is going to be to just scare the living hell out of anybody that comes through the front door and manages to get to the end in a legal, non-touching kind of way.

We are going to have approximately 20 actors, aka people we find who have nothing better to do then to put costumes on and be a creep, to be positioned throughout the haunted house. Each person has a different job weather it be hanging for the noose we have set up or be the undead little girl playing with her headless dolls. My personal favorite so far is actually the part me and my friend are playing. She has an amputated leg in real life so, for the night, she's taking it off and covering her, for the lack of a better word, stump with fake blood and I'm going to be over her with a bloody saw and a fake mangled leg. It's really just disturbing but should be affective.

I will only be doing this for part of the night because I plan on interviewing people outside the house right when there haunted tour is done. I'll be asking them questions to find out if they were scared, what part of it scared them the most, and would they come back next year if we did it again? I'll be doing this in hopes of finding out more about people in general. If there are more people like me who prefer nobody scared her ever or, for the more masochistic crowd, prefer to have that adrenaline rush of "Oh shit, what's happening, am I about to die? Yeah. Sweet!"

Also, hopefully, I'll find something new about myself. Maybe after that night I'll understand what all the fuss is about. Maybe the whole will suck and from that point on if Halloween is even mentioned near me I'll get pissed off because that night was just so horrible. I don't know, I guess I have to wait and see.

Planning My Adventure

The adventure that actually presented itself to me a few weeks ago is I’m going to the Fox Theater in Atlanta to see the musical artist who is quickly becoming one of my favorites, Adele. She has quickly entered my life through the radio a few months ago and now she is becoming a huge obsession for me which if you knew doesn’t happen a lot. Usually what interests me one day, I couldn’t care less for the next.

                This is considered an adventure for not only because this is my first concert but it is inspiring for me since I am also a musician. I believe by seeing a professional at live at work will give me ideas on how to perform better.  It is all very exciting and new to me.

                I think that it is hard to argue that this is really anything else other than a musical adventure. I have been a musician since I was only 7 years old and like I said before sadly this is my first concert in my entire life. Also I would not even be aware of Adele’s existence if it wasn’t for her fame because of her phenomenal voice.  I’m not even a singer and her talent inspires me to no end.

                The preparation for my adventure started 2 weeks ago when me and my friend Jade, who will be accompanying me on this adventure, bought our ridiculously over- priced but well worth it tickets over the internet and arrived at my door a few days later. They probably would have cost less if Jade had not insisted on buying front row seats right in the middle of the theater. We have also been discussing who will be our driver for the evening since we both decided neither of us wanted to drive in the madness we call Atlanta.

                We were going to eat at a restaurant downtown but since were both broke because each of our tickets cost $220 each and we’ve dined down there plenty of times we will be skipping the meal. Any money we have left will be for souvenirs to remember the night and it’s not a bad way to also document the night.

                The concert date is on Sunday October 16 at 6:00 pm. The concert will only be for a few hours  but we are planning on staying a long time afterwards just for the slight possibility of meeting her and getting her autograph which is also new for me since I have never met anybody famous before and I am anything but a fan-girl.

                Jade will be bringing her camcorder and I will have my phone which takes excellent pictures if I do say so myself. I’ve already taken pictures of us holding the tickets after we opened them and I’m sure this whole adventure will be one huge documentary not only for this project but we just won’t want to forget this night. I doubt we’ll be able to take pictures once inside and sitting in our seats but who ever got hurt from a few illegal pictures, who know, except for most of Hollywood.

                Hopefully everything will go according to plan and we end up being best friends with Adele which in my mind is highly likely.

My Definition of Adventure

                The understanding of adventure is almost completely subjective to the individual with only a few known truths.

I believe what we all can agree upon is that an adventure has to be an event or occasion a person has never experienced before and he or she learns a lesson from. That person could either find out that a life of adventure is so amazing they wonder, “Why haven’t I been doing this all along”, or they think, “What was I thinking? What was going through my mind when I decided to do that?”

The subjective part of adventure is where the definition of adventure differs from others. No two people are the same; therefore we all have had different experiences and routines in life. For some of us, we have lived in Georgia our entire lives. So climbing Stone Mountain or watching the Giant Peach Drop every New Year’s is not a big deal. But for those who came here from a different state would find that event out of the ordinary and going down to Atlanta to watch it occur would be an adventure.

There is a certain way a person should feel when on an adventure. It will be unpredictable and you will not be fully prepared for what might come next. As a result, you will feel anxiety and an adrenaline rush. This could either be a good or bad thing, depending on the nerve of the person.

There are a lot of risks in an adventure. If you are purposely finding something to do that will get your heart pumping then, most likely, there will be that element of danger. As some of my fellow classmates suggested, they would like to go cave diving. Adventure, yes. Safe, probably not.  Therefore, I believe that adventures should be planned out ahead of time and completed with someone who has had experience; otherwise, it is more being reckless than having an adventure.

A person should go through with an adventure and learn something valuable from it. The purpose of an adventure is not only to experience something new but to learn life lessons.  It should build character and integrity. Your morals and your willingness to live life to its fullest should enhance. If not, your “adventure” was very original or “out of the box”.  You should, in general, profit from your experience, not be hurt from it.

An adventure is only an adventure the first time you do it. After that, you know what is expected and you probably won’t learn anything new from it. Just like when college started. Most of us didn’t know where to go, who our teacher and classmates were going to be, what we would learn and get out of the class. It was all unknown. But as the days go by, who know where to be and when to be there, hopefully, we have all been acquainted with one another, and we have been over the syllabus and jus the general plan of the semester to the point of nausea.  Since it is school, we are learning something new every day but that is what is expected and we know ahead of time what we are going to be doing that day.

This purely what I believe and have learned from the past. If anyone disagrees or wants to bring something to my attention feel free to comment.