Category: Academics

academics

The end. (only of the freshman year, there will be more after summer break)

We have reached the last blog of the Sigma Nu Zeta Omicron, spring 2017 series. I hope you all had a great time this semester and that you enjoy your summer.

When the end of the semester arrives, you see two kinds of people, the ones that are celebrating that there are no more classes and the ones that are sad that a class is over. As for myself, I am a little bit of both, depending on the class I’m talking about. For example, I’m more than glad that my chemistry class is over, I really prefer small classrooms classes over lectures and the labs just terrified me. The last attempt that my chemistry class made to try to put my energies down is that they decided my exam is going to be on Monday at 7:30 a.m. I don’t even have classes at 7:30 and I’m afraid my mind won’t be at its finest at an early hour like this. Looking at the bright side, this is going to be the first final of them all, I guess, so I have that going for me.

Apart from chemistry, I felt a little sad with the end of my classes. On math I am sad because the instructor was amazing and I wish he could keep teaching me for all my other future math classes. For Fiction Writing I felt sad because I really enjoyed reading the stories of other students and discussing them. For my Beatles class I felt sad because I really like the Beatles and I wish there was more to learn, but my professor got my spirit up by inviting us to go to Liverpool as an alternative spring break in spring 2018, so I look forward to that.

However, of all my classes the one I felt sad the most by its end, was rhetoric. I admit that I kind of underrated rhetoric at the beginning of this semester because it is an obligatory course, so I had to take this class and I didn’t know why. But this course changed many things about my life, the books we read made me realize many problems that our society is facing that I never realized or never thought of doing something about before. I got to understand that there is always a purpose behind things, like somebody doing anything with a reason behind it, so I started to analyze things I see and read and I became more critical about it. I actually enjoy watching commercials whenever they pop up before my videos begin or on the TV, because now I can “judge” them.

People say that your experience with rhetoric, and your grade, depends on the professor you have. I think that’s kind of true, because the feeling that I have, (based on my experience with this course and from what my friends told me about their classes), is that you can either have an instructor that knows you are there because it is an obligatory course and who only seems to grade you and others that don’t care about why you are there and whose purpose is to teach you all you can. Luckily, I had the second professor, and I learned a lot of important things that for sure changed the course of my life.  She also created the classroom environment that I like: A small classroom where everyone seems to know one another. I also learned some strength and some things I need to improve that I have. I’m glad I had the chance to have the class I registered to.

So, even though I registered to and went to my first class thinking that this class wasn’t going to add up too much in my life, I now realize that this was the most important class I had this semester, and my second favorite one too, (the favorite one being the Beatles class, because unfortunately we don’t have the chance to listen to Beatles songs on Rhetoric). To sum up, if you are a going to be a freshman here at the University of Iowa, I want to say that the Rhetoric course can be very important for your future life, don’t make the mistake I made of not giving importance to the class because it is obligatory, have in mind that you can take an awesome experience out of it. I was fortunate enough to be on a great class, it all depends on how your instructor treats the course. So, if you really look forward to it, I encourage you to choose your Rhetoric class by searching the instructor of the class and seeing if you identify with him/her and how do you think they will guide the course. That being said, I strongly recommend Professor Margaret Murray, be warned that to do well on her class you need to be dedicated to it, and that sometimes it can be hard, but she changed my life and I hope she can do good for you too.

I guess that’s all I had for this semester. Thank you all, and see you after summer.

What changes?

Hello and welcome back to Sigma Nu Zeta Omicron. I hope you are all doing fine.

Well, nothing much happened this week and everything is pretty normal. I have classes every day and papers all weekend. Also, I’m reading more this semester than I used too. The only thing that is bad about it, is that even though I’m reading more, the pace of which I read the pages are the same. I think I read very slowly, (I take about three minutes per page), I could really save more time if I read faster. Well, let’s just hope that this is something that I will develop with time.

Even though I’m kind of busy all the time because I’m taking 18 semester hours of classes, I will take the same amount next semester. Still, I hope that my classes will be calmer. I mean, with less homework, or at least with fewer papers. I really don’t like writing papers. Last semester I was lucky enough to not have to write any papers for any of my classes. I hope this happens again. Oh, talking about next semester, a great opportunity appeared.

Hillcrest Marketplace, the dining hall where I work, opened applications for student leads, which is a kind of sub-manager. I applied and this week they told me I got an interview. I really look forward to that, but I’m also very scared, because I never had a job interview before. I think I can stay calm in nervous situations, and I hope I will do well. I really want the job, and if I get the job, I will start next semester.  It’s funny how some things that change between semesters we can control, like the courses I will take and my “new” job, and others simply occur throughout the semester without us barely noticing.

For example, last semester I used to go with my friend to the mall on Coralville every Saturday. That was the “Saturday tradition” that semester. But this semester I have only been there a couple of times, I think. What became my “Saturday tradition” is going to the movies at Film Scene, a non-profit movie theater, that has a partnership with Bijou and offers this program called “Bijou late hours” on which they show a movie every Saturday at 11:00 p.m. free for students. The movies they show are pretty good too, this Saturday they will play Donnie Darko. Also, they always give away prizes before the movie begins, I have won two DVDs there. I really recommend it for anyone. I wonder if this will be my tradition next semester too or if I will find something else. One place that I always wanted to go in is the “Forbidden Planet”, a pizza place with arcades, but I really haven’t had the time yet.

Well, that’s all I have for today. See you next week.

Back for the break

Hello! Welcome back to Sigma Nu Zeta Omicron. I hope you all had a good spring break. Here’s what I did on mine:

From Saturday to Monday I spent the entire day working on the first draft of my final project for my fiction writing class. I managed to write 18 pages, and it turned out to be a project of bigger dimension that I will probably continue to work on in the future. I also did some other homework, like a speech for my rhetoric class. I organized everything I wanted to say and practiced it a lot. Then, on Wednesday, I went to Chicago with some friends.

We left in the afternoon and had dinner at “the famous World’s Largest Truck Stop” on I-80. I called it famous because I always pass it while coming or leaving the University of Iowa, and I could only wonder what it was like. From the inside it doesn’t seem that big, I’ve been to bigger stops on other travels. Still, they weren’t truck stops. The place looked like a small shopping food court, with some stores selling clothes, DVDs, and CDs. They even have a truck museum there. But I expected nothing less from the country with the most museums in the world (I guess, I remember I heard it somewhere).

Speaking of museums, I went to two of them in Chicago. The Chicago Art Institute and the Field Museum. The Art Institute was my favorite. I got to see a lot of cool paintings that made me think a lot. Also, the way they were put together seemed like they were “talking to each other” like they were seeing one another and reacting to them. Then I moved to a photograph exhibition named “Provoke”, I didn’t get into many details of what it was about, but as far as I know they all were taken during a period of revolution in japan. They were amazing and I liked them a lot. I ended my visit with the miniature rooms exhibition, which consisted of miniatures of historical rooms from the past centuries. It was also very cool. That’s all I could see in one day, I guess I would’ve needed at least one more to see the entire museum.

The Field Museum was nice and everything, but it wasn’t really my thing. I liked an exhibition they had there about ancient Egypt and about dinosaurs, with their fossils. Still, they were very quick and I really had no interest in the other things there. Fortunately, two of my friends were feeling the same, so we separated from the other two and went to the center of the town to walk around and see some things.

On the last day we spent all our time in the city, walking the streets and seeing the most famous places. The next morning we came back to Iowa and I took care of the rest of my homework and practiced more on my speech. Overall I had a great break, but it made me very tired. I felt like taking a break from the break. The come-back week has been fairly good, very calm and quiet. But I already have two Midterms next week, so I have to prepare myself for that.

I think this was all for today. Thank you and see you next week.

A good week

Hello! Welcome back to Sigma Nu Zeta Omicron. Even though I’m late on my post again, this week was the most relaxing one that I had since the beginning of the semester. I think that getting done with the papers I had, even though I’m still waiting my grades on them, what makes me a little nervous. I don’t think I did good on them, a couple of days after submitting them I realized I could have done better. Also, I didn’t had any exams, which gave me a more relaxing atmosphere. The only “problem” I had this week was that I usually do my math homework on Tuesday evenings. But ICON went off on this day, preventing me from doing my homework on the time I wanted. Still, it came back by the night so I lost some time of my sleep doing it. It’s no big deal though.

This week was not only relaxing, but it was also very happy. On Tuesday, (it feels that everything happened on this day right?), I received an e-mail from the university congratulating me, because without me knowing, my manager at Hillcrest dining hall filled a form for me and indicated me to be the “student employee of the year”. I didn’t even knew they had something like this. The e-mail said that they received 42 indications and I was on the 22 finalists that were reviewed for the prize. I didn’t won, but the university is going to give me a “student employee of the year” water bottle and my name is going to appear on the Daily Iowan on April. Nevertheless, what is more important for me is the recognition I received from my manager and co-worker, it really is amazing to know someone is noticing all the work you are doing. My workplace also started applications for student lead, which I applied. Now I’m hoping for the best.

Speaking of work, a minute after I wrote here that I wanted to become a Chemistry I gave up the idea. Because I went to the web-site to learn more about it, and it turns out that I have to make my own appointments with however is seeking my help and discuss the payment with him/her, so I would not have a fix salary, and I’m very bad at negotiating when it comes to money. Maybe I can work on Saturdays as a tutor, if I have time.

Time. Time is passing by too fast this days, it seemed that the semester began yesterday and next week is already spring break. Unlike thanksgiving break last semester, on this one I’m not staying on campus. I’m going with 5 more friends to Chicago, and we are staying on the house of my roommate. I think it will be good, let’s just hope it won’t be too cold.

Oh, yeah, I almost forgot. I do not have any papers for the moment, but I have to prepare a speech for my rhetoric class. I’m very worried about it. It’s supposed to be a four minutes length speech, including the time to show a commercial which we have to talk about. But I have a lot of concerns about my English, what if I make unforgiven mistakes and murder the English grammar during this four minutes? But it will be what it has to be, so I’m prepared for whatever the outcome of this will be.

Well, I think that’s all for today. See you whenever I have time again. Have a good week.

I’m late again. But wait! there is more this time!

Welcome Back to ΣΝΖΦ. I won’t even bother to apologize this time because I think it will become a common thing for me to get delayed. So I will really only write for the blog when I have free time. This week I had some free time because I didn’t have Math homework, courtesy of the Midterm for this class that was this week too.

At least all my efforts are being worth, I had only good grades until now. Even on my Beatles class Midterm, I that I thought I had done horrible because I forgot some of the names of important people. I’m really very bad with names. Is not that I don’t care about the person, is just that I’m very bad at memorizing at all. If I can make the thing I’m trying to memorize have some sense, it should be ok for me to record it. But names are very hard to give a meaning. Luckily I learned a great technique for memorizing peoples name at my rhetoric class. On one of our first classes our professor made us stand on a circle and we had to say a characteristic that begin with the same first letter of our name. Also we had to repeat the name and characteristic of the people that spoke before us. So, in short, when I meet someone new now, I create an adjective for him/her on my mind.

Now that we are speaking about rhetoric, I think it is important to share my experience with this class, because it’s one of the hardest classes I have and is mandatory for all new first year students. Well, some students already took rhetoric on high school, like most of my friends, so they are pretty comfortable about it. Still, you can find people like me, who didn’t even knew the meaning of rhetoric when I went to my first class. It is the class I did more work so far, not because it is difficult. But because I have to do things I never did before, like these things that professors and students call “papers”. I had never written a paper before in my life. I wrote essays yes, but nothing with the format of a paper, with all its formats exigencies and citation quotes formats. Nevertheless it is a work I’m happy I did. I mean, I recognize its importance and I’m happy I did it. Obviously my paper is full of mistakes, but I’m glad I made them, (as long as they don’t interfere too much with my good grades), because that way I will learn better, which is my main purpose here.

You see, whenever I get an exam back the first thing I do is to go over my mistakes. Usually I find mistakes that I did by distraction. One time I was in a rush and calculated that 5 times 6 was 36, you can imagine my reaction when I saw that after receiving my grade back. Still, sometimes I do find problems that I got wrong because I did a horrible mistake and, when I do, I fell very happy. I guess those are two of many of my guilty pleasures: Understanding the subject being discussed on class, and being able to detect my mistake and learn how to correct it.

I think that’s all I had for today, But I still feel guilty for not being able to post on the blog, and because of that I will put a bonus today, one beginning of a short story I had to write for my Fiction writing class. I hope you enjoy. See you next wee… Whenever am able.

(the story have no name, I’m sorry)

Julia finally took a seat on the kitchen table after preparing breakfast for her daughter and husband. She stared at the empty chair on the other end of the table while playing with her hair. With the other hand, she grabbed her piece of bread with butter and started to eat. They are quite late tod… She was thinking before Tom appeared on the room. “Good morning my darling,” he would usually say. “The food smells good”. But nothing came out of his mouth. He sat on the chair next to her and opened the newspaper, protecting himself behind it. Julia wanted to see the face of her husband and not the picture of a “missing child” on a page of the Chicago Tribune. She waited. Is he not going to say anything?

“How are you darling?” She finally said.

“Good, good” He answered.

“Did something awful happen on today’s news, for you to be so quiet?”

“Not on the news, no” Tom said while closing the paper.

He smiled at her. But something was different on his smile; He smiled like one of Julia’s student’s about to receive a grade when they weren’t sure whether it would be an A or an F. Usually it was a F. She took her cup and noticed she forgot the coffee. “Oh silly me, I forgot the coffee, I will make some more”. Julia said.

“No no no, sit my darling, I will make the coffee”. Tom said.

He put his hand on her shoulder, forcing her to sit down. He got up and started to make the coffee. Julia was amused by how her husband seemed quite unworried about his job this morning; he never had time to do anything before going to work.

All her thoughts went away when she saw a portion of a piece of paper coming out her husband’s pocket. Was it an envelope? Tom came back to the table. “It will take about five minutes for the water to boil”. He said. The same smile was on his face, but that’s not what was concerning her anymore. When Tom mentioned time, Julia looked at the clock and realized that her daughter was late. “Christine!” She shouted. “You are going to be late for school”. Silence was here response. The same silence that had been filling the house the entire morning, silence that was a new guest on the house.

“If she’s not awake by the time the bus arrives,” She said. “I’m not driving her to school”. Tom’s smile vanished from his face when she spoke her daughter’s name. So he got a F, Julia thought. She knew something was different, something was wrong. “What’s the matter?” she said. Tom looked at the table; he got up to finish the coffee. But before doing anything he took the letter out of his pocket, weld back a tear and put the envelope in front of her.

 

Finals week

Hi! Welcome back once again to another Sigma Nu Zeta Omicron post. Probably the last one of this year,(there there, calm down, there’s no need to cry), Because we are on finals week and afterwards we move into winter break.

This weekend and beginning of Monday made me notice that there are two kind of people in this university. Those that panic and start to live on the library trying to learn a 16 week work on a single weekend and Those that worked hard during the whole semester and now are just chilling on Starbucks or someplace like that, because they are confident with what they know and see the final as another common exam. I would say I’m somewhere in the middle. Because I studied the whole semester long and so I’m confident with what I learned, still I really need to do well on these exams to keep my good grades. I’m only a little bit stressed because I don’t know how the exam is going to be like.

In the end the semester ended up being like my weeks. I use all my free time during week days studying or doing homework so I can just relax during the weekend. And I spent my semester studying a lot and doing everything I could, now I can relax a little because there are no new things to learn or study, jut review. It’s all about making a choice, you can relax in the beginning and rush and work hard with everything in the end or keep a pace working during the journey and rest in the end. Everyone eventually have free time to relax and have fun, what makes the difference is when they choose to have this time.

Let’s stop talking about finals week and start to talk about what comes after them, winter break. This break I’m going back home, Brazil, and I am very excited to see all my family and friends, and my dog of course. But most of all I can’t wait to eat Brazilian food again, I miss it so much,(oh, no I noticed that I haven’t eaten any Japanese food since I came here, I will include that on the list too). For some reason I only started to strongly miss my home now that I’m near to going back. I missed home since I came here, but not as much as I do now, maybe because I had a lot of things to do and study before, so I couldn’t think a lot about it. I feel very bad for some of my friends that are only going back to their home on summer break. I don’t really know what you can do here during the break.

Well I guess that’s it. I would like to thank all of you that read my blog,(I don’t really know if anybody does), but even if nobody knows about my blog, it’s a good thing for me to sit down every Monday and reflect about the past week. Also it’s great to have these texts. I’m going to save them for the future. It really was a great opportunity that the University of Iowa gave me and some other students by entrusting us with this blog. Thanks all of you and thankyou UI for the blog and a great semester.

P.S: If there’s somebody there reading my blogs I would really love to see comments. Don’t worry I don’t bite.

See you all next semester!

P.S(2): here follows a photo of me and my friends celebrating Christmas ealier this Sunday night before finals week.

Hello! And welcome back again to more paragraphs of Sigma Nu Zeta Omicron. I hope you all are doing well.

Last week was pretty good. The good things started on Tuesday, that was the day that I took the third midterm and final exam for my math class (this is the course that I finished earlier). And so, after Tuesday I don’t have to attend any math classes until the end of the semester. I had to do some extra work in order to achieve this, but it was worth every minute, because now I basically only have my chemistry course to worry about,(the others are ESL and Arts, so they are not a big deal). You might be wondering what I do, now that I have more free space on my schedule. Part of me wish I could answer: “I’m sleeping more”. But the other part of me is proudly answering: “I’m having breakfast at Burge Marketplace,  because they have omelet!”. In fact , sometimes I sleep more. I used to wake up at 6a.m, now I wake up at 8a.m, but sometimes I also go to bed a little bit later than usual, so I sleep the same amount. (But don’t worry, I still get my 6-8 hours of sleep every night).

Tuesday was also the elections day.(I won’t say may opinion about American politics and their parties because it’s not my country for me to know who is better and to decide anything). But I found it very cool that all my American friends were with their eyes fixed on their computer screen following the results the whole night. I never saw anyone so worried about elections before. On my country we care about them, but we don’t follow the results that with all that conviction, we just wait for the final word on the tv.

We can now jump to the weekend. Saturday night something very interesting happened, I was on one of my friend’s room and he just decided that he wanted to go to Starbucks(at 9p.m). I said, “why not” and so we gathered two more friends and went there. It was a home game night, so there was a lot of people on downtown. I never saw that much movement before. The nightlife on Iowa is normal, but on Saturday was too much. It was cool to see that we have that much of movement here too.

On Sunday I went Ice skating with my friends at the mall. I have only ice skated once in my life, but I was very little and couldn’t remember anything. So I consider that as my first-time ice skating. And I will let you know that I only fell 7 times.(yes, you have permission to laugh, I laughed every time I fell too). It was a funny experience, but I still have a lot to learn. I could walk a little bit and somehow I managed to make turns even without knowing what I was doing. It was a funny experience. The worst part was seeing small children ice skating like fish swimming. They were even playing tag and racing against each other and not a single one of them fell. I guess some are born to ice skate and others to polish the ice with their bodies.

Now entering this week. They are going to repeat the pick one event tomorrow and Wednesday. This time I hope that the men’s volleyball club are there, I really want to join them and at the pick one event on the beginning of the semester they weren’t there. The woman’s volleyball club were generous enough to get my e-mail to give to them. But I guess that never happened, only God knows what was made of the piece of paper where my e-mail was.

I believe that is all for today. Have a good week everybody. See you later.

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concerns

Hey! It’s good to see you again. Welcome back again to Sigma Nu Zeta Omicron. This week nothing very interesting happened. But it brought me some concerns. I really hope I can handle them well.

It all started with a e-mail I received regarding Thanksgiving. The coordinator of my residence hall wanted to know who will be here during the holiday, and that made me start to question what I will do. My original plan was to go to Chicago. But I realized that it won’t be that easy. And I also don’t have anyone to go with me, since all my friends already have plans. So the new plan is to stay here with a couple of friends and discover how to survive during this time. We also plan to participate on the Black Friday, because we never had the chance to see how they really are. Therefore, all I can do is wait to see the outcome of this decision. I’m hoping for the best.

I think e-mails are the devil’s invention on how to bring concerns on a fast and convenient way to you, since my second concern also came with an e-mail. Do you remember when I said I finished my math course earlier? Well it turns out that nothing comes for free. I will have to take my third midterm and the final exam for this course. But both will be on the same day, tomorrow. So now I will have to deal with a 3-hour math exam in the middle of the day. Isn’t that fantastic? I hope I do well, because I am very worried about this exam. Well, it will be what it will be.

My third and last concern is about my courses for the next semester. On Saturday my friend started to make his schedule for the spring classes. I realized that it was a great idea to come up with a plan and show up to my meeting with my advisor with it to see what he thinks about it. Hence, on Sunday night, it was my turn to make plans for my next classes. I was aiming for keeping my classes all in the morning, because this semester the majority of my classes are in the morning and that is working very well for me. But, none of the classes I need have a 7:30-8:20 a.m. class. The earliest one starts at 8:30 a.m. So my evenings were invaded a little bit. Another problem I had was with my photography classes. I wanted to take a photography course, but the only one available for my level is a 6:30-9:00p.m class, and that is too late for me. They have other beginner classes, but they require the completion of other classes. So I will take “basic drawing” in order to move to introduction to digital photography. The good part is that now I have more time to save money for my camera.

Ahh, I almost forgot. This Saturday (November 5th) was my birthday. The first that I passed away from my family. I Facetimed them, which made it a little bit better, but I still wish they were here. Still, I had a great time with my friends. They filled my door with lots of post-it notes saying happy birthday. Now when I open the door a couple of written compliments fly away. And for the first time ever I gave myself a present. What is funny is that I brought me a jacket. That is funny because I have never bought clothes before. But I guess I need to change to survive the winter. It was so strange that when I told this to my sister she stared at me with a strange face and said: “did you buy it because you need it or because you wanted it?” (in Portuguese: você comprou porque quis ou porque precisava?).

So in short, that was my week, when concerns started to show up. But it is ok. An important philosopher (I forgot whom, but I would bet it was Socrates) once said: “a life without problems is not a life worth to be lived”. That being said, let them all come! I’m ready for them!

See you next week!

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