First impressions

Hello and welcome back to Sigma Nu Zeta Omicron! My first week went just fine and I hope yours did too.

So, now that I have already managed to survive the first week of classes I have a pretty good view of how my courses are going to be. I’m happy with all of them and I just hope that I don’t get too much overwhelmed with homework. I mean, I do recognize that homework really help me learn the course material, but sometimes all my classes have homework due to the same deadline that I just get exhausted with them. However, let’s go back to the classes.

Beginning with my Calculus class, the most interesting thing about the course is the professor. He is a nice guy that has some funny things, like a orange sun glasses, but his lectures are easy to follow, as he literally writes down everything he says, so there is no chance for you to lose anything. Then, for my Microeconomics class, everything is doing great, I don’t think I ever enjoyed learning something more than what I’m learning in this class, it makes the economy seem so simple and also present some very interesting points. Tomorrow I have a meeting with my advisor, which I scheduled to see if I can get a minor in economics.

Third, my literature class. I’ve been doing some readings and analyzing symbols, historical context and the authors intention. This class is mostly funny because you can see how different other students interpret the same text you read. I think students talk more on honors section classes, so if you have the chance to, take one. The involvement of the class really can be an extra to help you. Following we have philosophy, which I think is going to be great to be exposed to new ideas and to argue with others about your own ideas. It’s been only one week but we already had some very funny arguments. Finally, for my history class, it’s pretty much just going to be history, I still haven’t seen anything else apart from that. What is interesting though is that there is no history majors in this class, so our professor is slightly trying to inspire someone to either pursue a degree or a minor in history.

Apart from that everything has been normal. The only thing I’m still trying to figure out is my relationship with one of my suitemates. So, I don’t really know how they are supposed to be, but last year I knew my suitemates as well as I knew my roommate. But this year I only actually know one of them, and that’s because he used to be my roommate. The other one I’ve only seen during move in day and only spoke for about five minutes. I’ve never seen him ever since. So I hope I get the chance to know him more, but my other suitemate, the one I know, said he goes out a lot with his girlfriend, so maybe that’s why I don’t see him much around.

Well, that was all I had for today. Thank you and see you next week.

Here we are for another semester!

Hello and welcome back to the first post of Sigma Nu Zeta Omicron for the 2017’s fall semester. I hope you all had a great summer and just like me are excited with the beginning of classes.

Well, starting with the summer, I went back home and saw my family and friends. I also volunteered on a school that helps people with mental disorders, traveled a little bit, and drove my siblings to their school. I enjoyed driving again, since I still haven’t got my American driver’s license, I will try to get this done this semester. Overall, my summer was really funny and I had plenty of time to relax.

I already feel a little bit strange coming back, because now I’m a sophomore. Just like my age, it took a little time for me to realize it. The other day I thought I was 18 instead of 19. Hopefully it won’t be long till I can stop telling people I’m a freshman and then correct myself. Another major change was at my work, I’ve been promoted to Student Lead, which is kind of a sub-manager position on the dining halls.

I’m pretty happy with all of my classes. I mean, we have just gone through the syllabus, but I really liked the descriptions my professors gave me and what we are expected to learn. Coincidently, I noticed that most of my classes, that is: Introduction to microeconomics, Interpretation of literature and introduction to philosophy; have pretty similar themes and I think I will be able to apply things I will learn on one class to another. I think it is a great experience when you can connect the subjects you are learning, because it gives you a feeling that what you are learning is going to be useful throughout your life. My only real worry is the amount of homework and readings that I expect I will have, but I guess this is all part of the college experience right?

Well, I know it is too soon to be thinking about the end of the semester, but I’ve already made a list of things I want to accomplish by the end of it. What I want, as follows, is:

  • To be ready to run a half marathon with my father and sister in the beginning of the next year. (For that I will wake up early and go to the gym every Monday, Wednesday and Friday before classes).
  • To keep my grades as good as last semester. (So I will have to keep the hard work, or work harder. Either way, I know it’s not going to be easy.)
  • Get my driver’s license. (This one is pretty straightforward).

I will probably add more to the list as time goes by, if anything changes I will let you know.

This first week I also had the chance to see the solar eclipse! I admit that I wasn’t that excited at first but when my Calculus professor canceled our lecture so just we could see the eclipse. At its finest moment I started to realize that something amazing was going to happen. It was a little bit cloudy so sometimes you couldn’t really see that much. Some students started to distribute dark glasses so we all could see it, and it really was beautiful. I could put the glass on my phone and take a decent picture, which I will try to post.

Well, that’s all I had for today, see you next week!

I will try my best to post on a weekly basis, either Tuesdays or Fridays. See you soon!

 

 

 

 

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.

Conclusion of my classes

Hi! Welcome back to Sigma Nu Zeta Omicron!

The weather here is very strange. The sun started to come out and warmed Iowa City for two days and then it was gone again, and the cold took its place. It’s funny how the weather can go complete extremes overnight, like I would understand if one day was a little bit warm and another a little chilly. But what happens is that either it is super warm and everybody can go out to study, play sports, have picnics or even sleep on the outside,(one very good spot is the grass areas in front of the pentacrest), or it’s super cold and people seek shelter on the buildings. I just hope the weather have made his mind for when I come back from summer, so I won’t be caught out of guard. However, this may be true just for me, because It’s very easy for me to feel cold. As an example, I always carry a jacket around campus, even on warm days, because some of my classrooms and lecture halls have their AC on and I feel cold. So it just be me who is worried about cold days because I’m used to warm weathers. Still, it’s never something I can’t stand, I feel uncomfortable on the cold, but I can stand it.

Another thing that is funny is time. For some reason this semester went faster than the others, the feeling I have is that the weeks start on Mondays, is very strange. I think this happened because of the amount of classes I took, (overall, I got 18 semestral hours’ worth of classes), since I always had something to do, time just flew. Also, when I think back two or even one day, it seems that it was a long time ago. The feeling I have is that the beginning of this semester happened at the same time my first semester started. But things started to get a little bit more quiet now that we are approaching the end of classes.

Overall I enjoyed all the classes I took this semester, I have no regrets, I really feel like I learned new and important things on all of them. I usually hear that school is the place you go to be formed as a person and university is the place you go to form your career plan. But I feel like my personality grew this semester and I took a lot of valuable lessons with me. Rhetoric helped me analyze things more deeply and prepare my arguments to express myself. Fiction writing helped me better understand how others think and how they write based on their personalities, it showed me that everyone can write, even if you don’t dedicate your whole life to it. My class about the Beatles helped me explore more the things that I’m interested into and understand how a creative process occurs and how an idea can be developed. My math class prepared me for my next class and helped me understand how to solve problems by using more concepts than memorized formulas. My chemistry class… Well let’s just say that chemistry showed me that the curve can be both your best friend and your worst enemy.

Oh right, now that I mentioned my chemistry classes, I’m glad I’m done with my labs. It’s not that I don’t like them, some were very interesting, is just that I feel like I don’t belong on a chemistry lab, like I’m often lost and have no idea why I’m doing something. I mean, I only understand exactly what I did and why after I’m done with the experiment. II feel that I’m just blindly following instructions, and I can only see what I done after everything is done. Maybe I should have studied more about the labs before going to them. They have this big lab manual available and I can proudly say I read everything on it. Still, I wonder if I could have done a better reading of it, to go to the lab understanding the why behind of what I was doing. I just hope that I can avoid chemistry labs in the future. And papers, I don’t like writing papers either. I don’t think I can, but I will try to avoid classes where I have to do papers.

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

Almost there!

Hello and welcome back to Sigma Nu Zeta Omicron. We are near the end, but there’s still a lot to do.

Although I’m more than ready for summer break, I still need to take care of several things. The first of them being finals, I have three of them, from which two will be at 7:30 a.m. I really don’t know why, I don’t even have classes at 7:30, I hope I will be on good conditions to take these exams. I will have to change my schedule to be well rested and focused for them. Still, even though they are the most important of the obstacles towards summer, they are the last of them, I have other things to worry first.

I will put it on order of how they will come, or at least the order I have to do, submit or give them. First I have a midterm on next Wednesday, for my pre-calculus class, it is supposed to cover few subjects, but I tend to take a lot of time in the problems and time have become one of my biggest enemies on exams. Then, I will have my second and last speech for my rhetoric class. I did good on my last speech, but this one is harder and longer, so I will have to focus more and work hard on it in order to do well. Nevertheless, just like the first one, I’m going to talk about something that I really like, so it should be more fun to work on it than any other assignment just because of my engagement with the topic.  Finally, I have to submit a final project for my fiction writing class, which I hope I will be able to do fairly fast, and hopefully I will have a good time doing it too.

Now, those are all academic related. One last thing that I need to take care of is moving my stuff out of my room, because I will be on a different room next semester. I can’t take everything back home, unfortunately, so I rented a storage room with a friend on Coralville, our neighbors. I will have to move my stuff there and this can be a little bit of an annoyance, but still is something I have to do.

However, those are all thing to come, we can still talk about what happened this week. On Tuesday I got the news that I did great on my job interview and I got an offer to work as a student lead on Hillcrest dining hall, which I accepted. I think is good to know that your work have been recognized and so you are promoted to a higher position, I really look forward to it. Wednesday I register for classes, I only had trouble with the creativity class, because all seats were reserved, so I found a good substitute for it, introduction to philosophy, I look forward to that. On Thursday I had a Midterm for my chemistry class, and I think I did fairly good on it, I just have to wait for the official results, since it’s a curved class, to be sure. Also on Thursday, I went to the spring sale the Hawk Shop is making, I found great deals to buy a gift for my grandparents and a sweatshirt for myself, so yes! I finally brought a UI sweatshirt, but the size betrayed me, when I tried it on, it was too big, so I guess I will only be using it indoor.

Well, I guess that’s all, apart from everything I have to do things are going pretty fine, I hope you all are having a good week too. See you next week!

Life goes on

Hello, and welcome back to Sigma Nu Zeta Omicron. I hope you are all having a good week.

This week nothing much happened, I just prepared myself for a couple of papers I have due next week and a midterm. So I guess the stress came back, but I’m still doing ok since I could organize everything. Nevertheless, I can’t help but think that final exams and the end of the semester are almost here. I look forward to next semester, but I’m more excited about summer. I will go back home and relax, maybe find a summer job if I can.

Oh, right! This week I had my job interview for student lead on Hillcrest Marketplace. I think it went pretty well. They basically had some questions about how I would react in certain scenarios or what was my opinion about something in the workplace. Still, I have no idea how it went, because it was my first job interview ever! I was pretty nervous because I was at a table with 5 other people, all asking questions and taking notes whenever I spoke. It was pretty intimidating. The hardest question they asked was: “Do you have any questions or concerns?”. I immediately thought of answering, “yes, when do I start?” But I decided that it was not the time for jokes and didn’t want to appear to be arrogant, so I just said I had no questions.

Going completely off topic, last week I got a haircut. I went to this barbershop near downtown called Friday’s. I think there’s only one person that works there, probably the owner of the place. I forgot to ask his name, so I refer to him as “Mr. Friday” on my mind. Mr. F has owned the place since 1968 and the place still looks like it’s from that time, except for the big colored TV he has for his waiting customers and a big apple computer. He did a pretty good job and I really like my haircut. I will most surely go back there when I need to cut my hair again and I totally recommend it. The only thing is that it’s first come first serve, so you might as well take a book or something else to distract yourself while you wait. But he also has some magazines for his customers.

Man, it’s almost the end of the semester and I didn’t have much time to do things I like. I mean, I did a bunch of fun stuff, mostly on weekends, but because I had a lot of homework and study to do, I couldn’t keep a hobby on a regular basis. I guess I can count both my Beatles and Fiction Writing class as hobbies since I took them because it’s something I like, but when you are being graded for it it’s a little bit different. It gets more serious than just a hobby.

My classes for next semester are mostly “serious” classes. By serious I mean they don’t involve any kind of hobby of mine. The closest is Interpretation of Literature, because I like to read. However, I like to read just for entertainment, I really don’t make any deep analyzes on my readings. But there’s still hope that I will keep a hobby, because all my classes are in the morning. Only on Tuesdays and Thursdays I have Western Civilization III shortly after lunch. So I might have time for some drawing, writing or reading. We will see how it goes right?

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

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.

Spring break

Hello, and welcome back to Sigma Nu Zeta Omicron. Spring break is here! I can’t believe we are already done with half of the semester. I think I have so many things to do that time just fly by for me. But now I got time to relax! Well, not really, I have to work on my final project for my fiction writing class and prepare a speech.Still, I have plenty of time to do those during the break, and I also think I will have a good time doing them. 

Speaking of work I need to do, I received back both papers that I was super worried about this week. Incredibly my score on both of them were the same 83% which is a B. I’m very happy with them, I expected to have a much lower grade. You see, when I am waiting to get my paper back, I think a lot about it, and eventually realize stuff that I could have included and stuff I could have excluded from it. I may be happy with my grade, but I’m still not that satisfied with my papers. For the next ones, I will put much more effort to make them better. 

I heard a lot of people had several midterms this week. Everyone I know had at least one. I was lucky to have only one, for my chemistry class. So everybody seemed like the “end was near”, studying very hard and doing nothing else, and the feeling was that if you were done with midterms you were done with the week. My midterm was on Thursday and on Friday I had no lecture for the same class. I only got out of bed for my daily(except for Thursdays and weekends), 8:30 Math class. Oh also, I will use some of this time to solve some things for summer break, like when I will leave and come back, where will I store all my stuff, (since I can’t take everything back home), and stuff like that. 

My plans for spring break also include going to Chicago with 5 other friends. We are going by car and we will stay on my roommate’s house, he lives on a suburb there. So I think it will be fun. We leave on Wednesday, at afternoon, and come back Sunday morning. I’m very excited to visit the city, I just hope that it isn’t very cold during our stay there.  

What else can I say, my weeks tend to be always the same, not so many different things happen during it. This week was as quiet as my last one, I didn’t have many assignments and homework to turn in, so I spent most of my free time studying for the midterm I had. I kind of feel bad for not writing that much, so I will leave two pictures today. I know is not much but it’s what I have for today, you will have to forgive me. Unless you want to read about Chemistry, in that case we have plenty to talk about. No? Are you sure? Well ok, I tried. 

See you next week folks! 

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.