Reflect?

After a whole semester of blogging, I don't really feel like I've gotten much done in the blogger world. Have I revealed strong opinions I needed to get out to the world? Have I talked about pertinent or dire information that needed to be known to the masses? No. I have not. Almost all of my blogs have included the word "reflection."

Reflection.. what a useless word to someone other than myself. In high school, I had to write multiple reflections for classes ranging from speech to theology. But, here in college, "reflection" has become the personal word it should be. I'm not graded on my reflections anymore, it's more of a hobby, like painting. So, I've come to ask myself is reflection, something that needs to be done on my own time, necessary?

The answer, though, is simply not yes or no. I feel as though I can't just go into reflecting mode. I am an engineering student, I do study almost all the time. So, when do I take the time I need for myself? Can I only do that over Thanksgiving, Christmas, and spring break? Will I explode if I don't do it more than that? How can I manage my time so that my whole body doesn't go into a physical meltdown from overwork?

The key to this blog, and the answer to my questions, I believe is as simple as managing my time wisely. I need time to study, but I need a break too. No one should be expected to keep his or her head in a book for weeks at a time without a pause. Like now I took a break from studying for physics to.. yes.. reflect.

After my rant on reflecting, I've come to terms with the word. I can't even not reflect while I'm ranting about reflecting. Fail.

After a whole semester, I think I've learned the most important thing to do is manage my time wisely. I definitely didn't get it down pat this semester, but next year is a whole new slate for me and I'm ready to prioritize my time and use it wisely. BRING IT ON 2010!!

I think from my rambling on in this blog, I learned two things about myself:

1. No matter how hard I try, I cannot get away from that (sometimes) evil word, reflect. I used it... 13 times in this one blog.

2. Next, I've learned that although they might not always be answered, ask questions. And the grand total number of questions in my blog is...8.

the end.

My Video!!!

Project presentations

Today I will tell you a quick little rhyme

about what happened between 3 and 3:50 in time.

That was when iFoundry class took place,

It definitely went at a very past pace.

Informal, the style, and questioning as well,

I feel like the projects went over quite swell.

Points were to be gained in categories galore

From team work to user friendly design, and many more.

Our team in specific was a light-sensing machine

That turned to the brightest light to be seen.

It worked pretty well, I'd say our team was the amazing

Hopefully, we ended up placing!

Reflection in form of a poem

The weather out side is pretty darn cold.

The bread in my fridge is starting to mold.

I don't have time for fun or games,

Because finals are coming, it's kind of a shame.

I should be doing work right now,

but alas I will just scratch my brow.

I can't think of inspiration for posts

Whatever kind of rhymes goes.

That last stanza was really bad

And this one will be even more sad

Our project is done and ready to go

It will be awesome- people's minds we will blow.

I just cleaned out my garbage can

There's stuff in there of which I'm not a fan.

And I have to write two reflections

For a class for which I don't have affection.

This poem is fading away quite fast

I knew it would absolutely not last

More than a few stanzas.

As the year comes to a close

I know a lot of people will be posting Expo blogs soon, but I thought I'd bring a breath of a fresh air and post a reflection of the past few weeks.

I'm going to make this blog a little different by starting with a few seemingly ambiguous statements and connecting them all together.

1. I don't want to study for my Chemistry midterm.

2. Harry Potter is my favorite series of books and movies.

3. My roommates birthday was last week.

Okay it seems like none of these statements should connect at all. But, in a series of many many run on sentences, I will describe to you the reason why I'm writing this blog.

I am writing this blog simply because I do not want to study for my Chemistry exam. In fact, I'm heading off to Grainger when I'm done typing this blog because I don't want distractions. And although all 4 of my suitemates are across the hall watching a movie with Room 211 here at Presby, I find it really hard to concentrate. I think I am so tempted to do other things when I'm in my dorm other than study; and at first I thought that was weird but in Eng 198 class a few months ago, the ELAs said something that really made me realize I'm not so weird after all.

Brett told the class that he cannot ever study in his apartment and that he has to go to Grainger to study, while Jason said he can never study in Grainger, and can only do so in his apartment. So, we are all different and all have different habits- mine being that I am too distracted in my dorm, especially since they're watching Harry Potter 4 across the hall and it's my favorite movie series of all time...And take for example this run on blog that really doesn't need to be this long- clearly I am procrastinating. And I keep finding even more ways to procrastinate. My roommate's birthday was LAST week and I didn't decorate for her room so I decided I still should decorate even though her birthday was five days ago. So, instead of studying for math, I blew up balloons to put in her room. I am so unefficient.

Lastly, I'd like to close this blog by saying, that these next few weeks with tests and finals are going to be terrible. But, I know that everyone else will be sharing my pain, and although I'm not going home until the 18th because I have a final that day, it will all be worth it when a month of break comes around.

And that is all the rambling I have for today.

The story of an Underdog

In the 3 o'clock competition yesterday, October 12th, our team won first runner up in the real competition, most aggressive, and first runner up in straightest car. Although these statistics make us seem successful from the beginning, our car and this race illustrated a true underdog story.

(here is a picture of our amazing award winning steam car)

As usual, the car did not quite run like it did in the tests. The first part of the competition started (the competition to see who's turbine rotated three times first), and our turbine only moved half a rotation. We never foresaw a problem before that.

We discovered that the third wick had not been lighted in the lighting process, and that the wick closest to us was burning from the bottom. Our car became a fuel-eating machine (as one of the judges said- like an SUV). There our failure became a success- we just needed to add more fuel, more times than usual.

Success!

Post- Age of Stupid Feelings

Although I already wrote an entire post about Age of Stupid, and it is old news in ESS, I still can't take my mind off it. Well, technically, I'm not really thinking about the movie, I'm thinking about my actions as a human being contributing to global warming. I know many people around the world have seen Age of Stupid, and/or many other movies just like it (Inconvenient Truth, 6 Degrees, etc.) and are completely unaffected by it. I even admit when I saw Inconvenient Truth and a few months later Six Degrees, the feelings I had about taking action wore off after about a week. But I guess third time is the charm, and I can't get the problem of global warming out of my head; I think I know why this is.

In the movie, when a family stated that they were invited to go skiing in the Alps, but they denied it because they knew airplanes were one the highest contributors to the problem, I was hit, and hit hard.

I can't believe I've flown so many times in my life. I was planning on flying to California this summer to visit my friend who goes to Santa Clara- that probably won't happen. I'd be too guilty. After the movie, I thought and thought and kept thinking about this, and about how my friend from the western suburbs flies from her home to Champaign and vice versa for the weekend because it's cheaper than driving.

And after those thoughts, more and more kept coming. Like, how much energy are my roommates and I wasting by having 3 sets of Christmas lights in our living room to brighten our living space? And how much am I really saving by taking my phone charger out of the wall after my phone finishes charging? And the bus I just took home for the weekend.. I'm glad I took it because it's like a car pool, and more gas would be wasted if my parents came to pick me up. But is it saving more? Does the bus I took have a completely terrible gas mileage? Is the bus driver going over 75 mph for the 2 and a half hours we're on the highway? Because if he is.. well at 75 the gas mileage is a heck of a lot worse than at 55 ... And are all these little things I'm doing actually adding up and making a difference? Or am I doing all this for nothing?

The only thing to do, I guess, is spread awareness. One person doing all the work won't make a dent. But, spreading awareness doesn't seem to be working. Inconvenient Truth grossed $24 million in the box office in the U.S. and over $49 million world wide as of June 2007. Millions more have seen it since then, not to mention every other global warming documentary or movie. No one seems to care enough to change their life styles. It makes sense in our economic recession that people aren't spending cash willynilly on energy saving appliances because they can't afford it. 

But then what do we do?

The Age of Stupid

Tonight, Monday September 21, 2009, my fellow members of ESS and I attended the Age of Stupid premiere. I found it in general to be extremely informative and rather depressing, but I would like to focus this blog post more on how The Age of Stupid is related to two other similar documentaries I've seen, because the Age of Stupid is not unlike what I've seen before.

My junior year of high school was the first time I watched Al Gore's an Inconvenient Truth. It was also the first time I was introduced to the topic of global warming and climate change in such a foreboding way. I saw an Inconvenient Truth as a very informative documentary, which gave me background to this subject that I thought was rather iffy at the time. It warned the population to stop it's gas guzzling ways, and backed up every bold statement the documentary made. 

My senior year of high school sucked me even more into the realities and probable future of the world in which we live. This movie, Six Degrees Could Change the World, explained that because of global warming, climate change is happening. But, it needs to stop right away because as the temperature of the earth increases, disaster will ensue; and the breaking point until total disaster is 6 degrees Celsius. The movie gave future scenarios of disasters that are bound to happen when the human race does not change it's ways.

I found the Age of Stupid to be a combination of Inconvenient Truth and Six Degrees. It gave us a look at what is happening now in global warming, the signs of climate change, and the undeniable future of our world when we don't change our ways.

I found the movie to be certainly re-enlightening and will help push towards what needs to be done at Copenhagen this winter.