What Hixson has taught me

When I figured out I had to take this class, I did not know what to expect from this class since it was simply called university studies. I had just assumed it was a class that was somehow about the scholarship. But now having gone to it, the name makes sense since the class has taught me about things about the university and things about going to classes and related subjects.

After going to this class for the first semester, I'd have to say that I've learned some useful information among other things. I learned about resources and activities on campus along with opportunities like study abroad. I've also learned a lot about time managing, which I am still learning, and study habits and strategies. Beyond that, like I mentioned in my previous post, I have learned how to be more social among people and that has given me hope to make more friends in the future.

Although this class has been a burden at times since my other classes like to time review sessions or events at the same time as this class, the class has been beneficial to me in many ways.

Thanks for a good semester
Alexander

What the Hixson Award means to me

The way I found out about the Hixson scholarship was on my school's scholarship list that was posted and updated in the guidance office of our school. I applied for it shortly after I saw how much it could help me with paying for college and the requirements were actually possible for me. I was honestly surprised when I learned of being chosen for the scholarship, since it was the only one I actually got out of the ones I applied for.

This scholarship actually means a lot to me. It means the possibility of my education without a massive amount of loans, and it also has helped me be more social. The benfits of the money aspect of the award are obvious. It makes it so I don't owe as much and also is a very large scholarship so it helps a ton. The other benfits however come from the meetings we have. Going into college I knew no one but the few friends from my highschool that go to ISU and I'm not the most social person. So with the mini section meetings I've gotten to know my fellow section mates which has helped me gain some confidence in befriending people outside of hixson. It was one of my goals to be more social starting college and hixson has helped me accomplish that.

I am very greatful of this scholarship and can't say how much it has helped and will help me in the future.

A.S.S.

As the title implies I went to the alcohol, sex, and stress diversity event at the MU. It has been a while, or so it seems, so I don't remember much. The event kind of started by waiting outside because of a fire alarm where I met Luis waiting as well. Once we got in, I was expecting some generic seminar over sex and alcohol and such that you always hear through high school and other places over the course of your life. However what I got was much different. This event, was more about responsibility than anything else. The speaker recognised that since we are in college, we are going to get stressed, and also the fact that it is most likely inevitable that we all will have experience with some sort of alcohol and/or sex related activies. Instead of condoning these things or stating the risks of everything like many others have done, the speaker simply expressed the importance of thinking before you act and taking things in moderation and to never let any of this get in the way of your studies. Overall I thought it was a very infomative event and might influence me in the future.

Cultural Diversity

Diversity is a very important thing in the lives of everyone. Learning about diversity can make people aware to all the different poeple or ideas out there and can make them more tolerant of people who are different from them. Whether the difference being race, sexual orientation, religion, etc. I very much enjoyed the presentation. The speaker kept everyone awake by being active and showing videos and such. He also taught me a lot about diversity in people's lives when he showed the class the videos of how students were scared to go to school in Oakland. That really surprised me because I had no idea that there were places so bad that kids just didn't go to school. For all of my schooling I went to Nevada, where everyone knew each other, where there was practically no crime, and you didn't really have to worry about anything. I really couldn't imagine being scared to leave the house. After the whole presentation, I really did see the importance in realizing the different people and their situation around the world no matter where your from.

Social Media Week

         I can't really say I learned anything from this activity, cause I didn't. The only thing that I could say I learned was how much I hate using Twitter and most social media in general. Maybe if it was with Facebook I wouldn't have had as big a problem, but I really don't like Facebook much better seeing as I only use it for communication with friends and I really only have one because my friend made it for me years ago. If you couldn't already tell, I don't really feel good about using this type of medium because it feels kiddish to rely so much on social media even more so on Twitter than anything else. I feel like that if anything was going to help me reach my goals. I would much rather use more professional things such as email, phone or talking in person to coummincate and accomplish things.
        What I learned from one of the readings was how much other companies/people rely on your online profile rather than how you actually are in person, which kind of sickens me. I can understand companies using your social profile for maybe a quick glance, but it's going a bit too far to judge if someone is worthy for a job position based on how they are online or how they are outside the work place. For example, I am way different in the work place in comparison to how I act online or outside the work place in general.
        Not to sound like a complete downer or anything, but overall I really didn't like doing this assignment for this class.

MBTI

When I finally got the results back from the MBTI test, I wasn't too surprised at the results. I didn't so much learn anything about myself as the test just clarified things about myself I already knew. Such as how strongly intorverted I am and that I'm pretty much right on the fence between sensing and intuition. Like I said I pretty much knew these things, the test just reinforced them. Something I did learn however was that my type (INTJ), is part of one of the smaller groups among the others. There's only three in the whole class for example. I don't really have much here, because I guess that's really all I learned since there really wasn't anything new to me.

My Bucket List

I'm not much of a person to look too far ahead in the future, I really do prefer to focus at what's going on in the present, but there are those things that I want to do sometime in the future. My bucket list for life past college and during college isn't very big, but there are some noteable things.
I've only been at Iowa State for what seems like a very short time, when acutally it's already almost been a fourth of the semester, but I have put together some things that I would definitely like to do in my time here.

First and foremost, I want to do well in my classes, so I can be a master at my area for when I go into a profession. I also want to stay here at Iowa State after my initial four years and earn my Master's degree because it will help me greatly in getting the job I desire and live the lifestyle I wish to lead.

Past the more obvious goal of doing well in my classes I wish to learn archery. Right now I'm not sure how well that will work out since I'm currently trying to decide on and balance various clubs, but archery will be high on my priority list.

Another goal and desire of mine, which can also apply to life past college, is to get to know more people and become more social because I confined myself to my friend circle in highschool and wasn't very open. I hope to change that at ISU and make more friends since there's so many more people here to meet.

So, that was a few of my goals here at ISU, but now I'll get on to the bigger picture goals.

My first goal is a pretty big one, and that is my career. I hope that after my education, and maybe a few internships, I can land a job designing hardware for computers, or designing computers in general. I'm not really sure for what company, I will come to that when Im out there looking for a job, but for now I have a pretty good idea of what I want to do.

Eventually, I want to have a family and a semi luxurious lifestyle. I haven't put a whole lot of thought into either of these, but I want it to be something like, have one child, so not a huge family. And I'd probably want a decent sized house with a large yard among other things.


I'll end this with one that I wasn't sure where to put in the list. I want to maybe learn how to play an instrument, namely the violin. I'd just have to get the money and time together to do it, hence why I didn't put it under my college list, but at the same time I didn't see it as a life goal either.

When I was at my best

A time that I was at my best was really a time when me and my team were all at there best. In high school I was a part of our IT club and was in the game design venue with my friends and some others in the team. The first year I was in on the team we didn't do a whole of work on our game til the last minute and it came out kind of bad when we took it to the IT competition that was held yearly at Hilton. But the next year we all planned to do better and work everyday at our IT meetings and even a little bit out of our own time. Throughout the school year we all worked very hard during our meetings and even worked outside of them. During this time we all worked on our respective parts, like one group worked on programming, one on design, etc. Me and a few others worked on the programming and I believe that during the whole school year of working on the game we all worked at our best and I even did little bit of leading the whole game design team with a few others so we could get everything coordinated. Unfortunately, despite all our hard work, we got a bad score on our game for the reason, and I kid you not, the game was too hard. But aside from the let down of our game scoring bad, the group and I worked very hard on the game and we knew it was good. If there's anything that I took away from this experience it was that no matter how hard something is, or no matter the outcome, you need to persist and do your best.