Unit 10 All Done!

I am definitely doing my last few assignments late but things at the home haven't been so great with family members and alcoholism problems.  But things have finally settled down enough to get my last few assignments done and check my grade on how I did.  I am so relieved that I got a good grade on my paper and able to keep my A!  Now to pass my exam for my nutrition class and I can keep that A as well!  I think the best advice I cold give based on my experiences is time management and organization will be a big help in writing a quality paper.  Setting up a designated days for researching, note taking, and writing is extremely productive especially when it comes close to finalizing a paper.  I did research up until making my paper completely final and found myself crunched for time because I didn't realize how much work was going to be needed to make my paper final.  I still feel that if I would have managed my time better and spent more time working on my paper I could have had included another point on the dangers of non nutritive sweeteners making my paper a whole 6 pages instead of making each of my paragraphs so long.  I feel that there could have been more Paramedic revision done to my paper than what I did do If I had given myself more time.  As for organization, I had a mass amount of tabs open each with a different article and I forgot 2 references when I turned my paper in because I didn't keep all of my sources organized.  Luckily I woke up 2 hours after turning my paper in and realized I missed those 2 references, I would have been so upset if I would have gotten in trouble for unintentional plagiarism.  I think no matter how well I write a paper, exam, assignment, or project, I think I will always feel that I could do better and try harder the next time because I really want this degree and I want to do it as best I can.  I don't want to just barely pass my classes, or just barely pass an assignment, I want to get good grades, keep my honor roll and high G.P.A. and really be proud when I get my degree. All of my terms have had things happen and obstacle pop up and I don't expect any of my other terms to come to be smooth sailings.  So with each passing term I make a mental note of what did and didn't work such as insomnia and morning classes do not mix well and figure out the things that will work for future classes to come.  Swimming upstream is very tiresome and something I would prefer to avoid during the course of next few years of college if possible. 

Unit 9 Almost Final

For once I am trying to knock out some assignments early especially since my husband I are finally getting to go camping this weekend. At the moment I still have a some to do before my paper is final and can be turned in.  I still need to write my abstract, add a little to my 2nd and 3rd paragraph, and go over my paper a few more times to make some last revisions.  Aside from those last things to do I feel pretty good about my paper.  I think the difference between how I felt about the paper I wrote last term for Writing Composition 1 is that I got a really good grade on my first draft for this paper, whereas I didn't get a very good grade for my formal outline last term and a lack of help from the professor.  So the confidence of a good grade and really putting forth an effort to use the information I learned last class really helped for me to write this paper.  I do however think that my writers block and the different obstacles that occur make a big impact of how well my writing flows out and onto the paper/screen.  I feel a little nervous when I think about what I have to do and if I'm giving myself enough time to do it, and all the errands I have to do and things that pop up and make making time for school work difficult or my brain not working and wondering when it will work when I need it to!  But I remind myself that I do always get it done so I try not to over worry myself.  When I turn it in I will probably celebrate with a drink and feel good that I am done and spend the next day relaxing.  At this point my idea of writing hasn't changed much from how I've always felt about writing.  Sometimes I am really good at it without trying and other times I stare at my screen confused and dumbfounded, sometimes my writing flows and other times I can't get anything to come out.  I have definitely learned a lot from Writing Composition 1 and 2 and I don't think my papers would be good enough without these classes.  When I write papers in the future I will remember the things that I was taught in these classes and know where to look for help and what areas I need to pay attention to so that I continue to get good grades and be able to evolve as the classes get harder and more professional.  There are a ton of topics that I would love to research and write about such as herbalism, natural products, aromatherapy, acupuncture, chiropractic, ways to be healthy, what works, what doesn't work, etc...  I want to build a collection of all of the papers that I write throughout college so maybe I can share them with others in the future.  I would very much like to be an influential voice in helping people take an in depth look at health and be more aware of what is going on in the health world.      

Unit 8 Comments Or Lack There Of

 Oh man, finally getting to go on a 2 hour hike since being home made all the difference for me!  However drinking for my brothers 21st birthday did not help with trying not to procrastinate with my school work.  At least I am in better spirits!  Sitting in the half finished computer room at my half finished computer desk with my classical music has really helped to keep me focused and away from distracting people like my husband and mother!  So I guess my biggest issue throughout this writing class has been self discipline, distractions, and not having a set schedule for this whole term.  My sleep schedule has been extraordinarily messed up making it really difficult to get up for morning class, and hard to get up and get going for the day.  

When it comes to socializing I'm half and half.  Half of me is extremely shy and quiet and not many people see this side of me.  I'm mostly shy when it comes to meeting people for the first time, or being at a new job, place, environment.  The other half of me is loud, talkative, and rambunctious, the side most people see because I know them, they know me and I am comfortable enough in my settings to let loose.  When I chose online school it was because I wanted the detachment from people so that I could focus on school.  I have never wanted to go to an on campus college or university and be around tons of people.   I guess since I have been so focused with school that I haven't built any connections with other students.  For this class I tried to add all of the classmates for the blog assignment but I only had one person add my blog.  At times it can be frustrating to not have any comments but at the same time it is just a blog, not everyone is used to them and at least I get comments on the discussion board.  Besides it is only my 3rd term, as time goes by and the more there is to learn the more opportunities for educational and intellectual connections will be available. 

I definitely wouldn't want to get rid of my blog page because it is a part of my journey in my education and where I want to go with it.  Who knows maybe it will come in handy for the other classes I'll be taking and if not I can use it for a place for me to write since I don't use my other blog anymore.  My other blog is on Myspace and I haven't touched it in a year!  Before I used to blog all the time about anything that I found interesting, a big reason was because I was getting so tired of peoples' bulletins talking about how bored they were and the endless surveys of nonsense.  So I decided to start blogging about topics such as politics, oil companies, clean coal technology, even Captain Planet :).  I'm not sure yet what direction I'll be going with this blog but I am going to keep it. 

Unit 7 Peer Review

I think peer reviews are an essential part of the learning process because constructive criticism and feedback helps see things that may have been missed the first time around and also to see what areas are going well.  I know there are times in my writing where I am unsure of myself due to trying to be a perfectionist and when I receive reviews from my peers  they help to let me know that I am on track.  My experiences with peer review have been pretty good.  They seem to get better as the terms roll by and the classmates get to know one another better.  In the beginning it was a bit more difficult being new and not knowing anyone, I didn't receive a lot of feedback when school first started.  This could have been because I was usually later posting than everyone else, however this made me look for the people at the end of the week that didn't have any comments so that I could give them some positive feedback.  Sometimes I find it a bit more difficult to find people that don't have any comments already.  When someone has a ton of comments it makes it harder to write a review that isn't saying what everyone else has already said.

So far I don't think I have had any Ah Ha! moments during my 3 terms.  Mostly because these 3 terms have been extremely stressful with moving last term and then moving again this term.  I usually end up having to cram assignments and work and there are many days where my brain decides to just not function at all.  Good thing I am good at turning my stress into facilitating stress when I have to get things done last minute.  Somehow I always manage to get things done and do a decent job at it, every now and then I have to turn something in that I know I am going to lose a few points on but have ran down to the last minute.  Granted I wish that my life could go a bit more smoothly so I didn't have to stress and cram at the last minute.  I may be able to get the work done but while doing so I'm not the most pleasant to be around while trying to get it done.  I'm pretty lucky too when it comes to research and being able to find what I need to write my paper on.  Same with writing, I guess it's more of an all or nothing kind of thing.  I either have terrible writing block and can't get anything accomplished or I am down to little time and it all comes pouring out.  I wish my writing would come pouring out when I want it to not when I am freaking out because I have only a handful of hours to produce something.

I don't think there has been anything too shocking or intriguing during the writing process or during my research.  I've always known that artificial sweeteners are terrible and why, but it is nice to have a lot of data to back up why it is and to actually have a paper on it.  Makes me feel like people will be more willing to listen to what I have to say instead of just brushing me off like I'm some idiot or something.  It's also nice to be able to use what I learned from last writing class and apply it to this writing class and also learn more to perfect the skills of writing.  I'm still a bit nervous for future classes when they get harder and the grading gets harder too, but my husband has faith that I'll just get smarter as the classes get harder.

Unit 6 Topic, Ideas, & What's Been Going On.

6 weeks ago my husband & our roommate got home from their 3rd deployment.  For my birthday I got a computer desk and a nice computer chair, that I rarely got to use because everyone wanted to sit in my chair, use my lap top, and use my desk.  With the boys being back and so close to getting out of the Marine Corps their friends wanted to go out, come over, and run around everywhere.  This made it difficult for me to get my school work done, a lot of times I would cram school work so I could hang out because this is the first time in a long time that I have had weekends off.  Mainly the entire time we were in Twentynine Palms I cooked, cleaned, cooked, cleaned, and tried to find time and space to get my school work done.  I became pretty depressed being away from home, friends, and family, being in a crappy place to live where it's so hot you can't even leave the house.  Having people over all the time and doing so much cooking and cleaning and not being able to use my computer desk and chair when I needed or wanted to started to make me feel very unappreciated and not respected at all as the woman of the house.  Most times I would hide out in the bedroom to attempt to get school work done.  Last week we drove all the way home to Washington and I swear it was the worst road trip I have ever been on in my life.  We left in the middle of the day when it was well over 110 degrees instead of the night before or early that morning, California campgrounds are a total joke to me (what happened to tent camping?),  we got stuck for 4 hours in Northern California because the tow bar was literally tearing away from the frame of our 74 Dodge Ram Charger (that could have been really bad if we wouldn't have stopped), we finally camped at 5 am, had to stay extra days (cutting into my school work time), ran into traffic from Portland, all the way to our town in Northern Washington.  When I got home I had to cram so much school work in to one day that was all I did from dawn till dusk.  Now we have been attempting to unpack our stuff, while trying to do school work, and see friends and family.  I took 2 days off from school to find out that there is a lot of work to do this week...  But when I think about it, all of my terms thus far have had some pretty major obstacles and bumps in the road and I have still managed to get my work turned in on time, get good grades, and get the terms done.  If all of my terms were easy breezy I wouldn't be as apt to take obstacles and bumps in the road head on as well.  I have been trying to slowly change my school schedule so that I can still get school work done, take care of responsibilities, and have fun, without having to cram, stress (freak out!), fall behind, etc...  It's a work in progress...  

 On the topic of my topic of how dangerous fake sugars are my ideas about the subject are very passionate.  When I was a little kid I was a sugar-aholic, there was one incident where I was at a restaurant and grabbed a packet of sugar and poured it into my mouth... it was a packet of fake sugar!  Worst taste ever!  Another incident my mom had bought me one of those flavored sparkling waters, after a couple of sips I started to get an excruciating migraine, I looked at the ingredient list and saw Phenylalanine in bold so I decided to look it up online.  The first thing that popped up was "causes cancer, kills brain cells!"  No wonder my brain was hurting!  My husband thinks that I am a fanatic about sugars but what I try to get him to understand is that my body is super sensitive to what I put in my body and what I put on my body.  Most chemicals are a no go.  However even though I am a very passionate person does not mean that I am a 100% biased when it comes to any of my research.  I research both sides of a story, the pros, the cons, peoples opinions, and my opinions and I try to show people the information that they probably don't know, or if they do know it is an opportunity to have a intellectual conversation/debate (and I do love to talk).   Even though I love to talk about almost anything and everything and am open to ideas and opinions I know that not everyone else is and I respect other peoples opinions and feelings.  If I am talking to someone about a subject they had no idea about I tell them to not believe everything that I tell them, but to also look into it themselves because I'm not trying to make up their minds for them I'm just trying to inform them.  When it comes to future research I am going to look mainly for information that is going to back up my opinion and the point that I am trying to get across.  For research papers in the future, I more than likely will pick subjects that I feel are important, need to be talked about, and that I find interesting.  Granted I can research and write about whatever I am assigned because we are learning to be health care professionals so most of what we are going to research is going to be in that field and is going to pertain to what we are trying to learn.  

Unit 5 The Writing Process

My personal writing process is very informal and casual.  My favorite technique is the free writing or the brainstorming, where I write down everything that comes to my mind in no particular order.  When I do this it is easier for me to get all of my ideas down as fast as I can without blocking myself by the "Judge."  After reading that chapter on the artist and the judge it made a lot of sense to me about when I have writers block and why.  So if I try to write in a very structured style such as a formal outline in the early stages of writing I definitely self doubt myself and criticize myself to the point that nothing is good enough and my thoughts turn blank.  One of my academic challenges thus far has definitely been time management.  If I can procrastinate I normally will, it is not the easiest for me to set up strong schedules and stick to them, I have a terrible memory and tend to forget classes and assignments, and once a habit forms it's difficult for me to change it.  For example right now I take Wednesday and sometimes Thursday off from doing school work, Friday and Saturday I get the initial discussion post turned in and maybe some other assignments, if something is going on I'll take the weekend off from doing school work as well (It's been a long time since I've had weekends off), then Monday and Tuesday I'll get the last of the school work done and turned in.  This schedule however leads to a lot of time not spent on school work and a lot of time spent doing school work the day before and the day of that the school work is due, which most times leads to unnecessary stress.  So far school up to this point in time has been very rewarding.  I have always loved to read and learn and am very passionate about nutrition and health
so it is nice to finally been in college after 4/5 years of waiting for the opportunity.  So far I have earned great grades and am on the dean's honor roll list, and my goal is to make the honors list every term.  My friends and family are all very proud and extremely supportive because they know I can do it and I'm on the path for my goals in life.  Okay well I would write more but my husband and I are in the middle of the last day of living in the CA Desert and we still have much to do before we leave tomorrow morning for WA.   

Unit 4 Plagerism & Citations

Citing sources is important because the words are not ours they belong to the original author so it is not our credit to take.  Also when we are talking about a topic and use the work from another author we need to cite that source so people know where to look to find that authors work.  I know there are times when I have read a great study book and looked for their references so I can find the other authors to buy their books as well.  In high school in my World History class we had a huge project for the year where we had to write 5 essays per each letter of the alphabet.  Soon the work got so overwhelming and I was majorly lacking sleep that my paraphrasing was not up to par.  Needless to say the teacher and I had a conversation on plagiarism and on how I was struggling to keep up with all of the book work in all of my classes on top of that huge project.  In school though I don't remember them explaining why plagiarism is wrong, just that it is wrong and how much trouble you can get into.  After that I realized that it wasn't my work so I couldn't take credit for it.  If it would have been the professional world and not high school  I wouldn't have been given a second chance, I could be fired from a job, lose my credibility as a health care professional, or even sued.  I think more people need to know why it is so wrong to plagiarize someones work and be aware of the consequences.  The internet does blur the lines when it comes to sites such as You Tube and other sires.  It is a little harder to see that plagiarism is happening when it comes to movies, televisions shows, and music that is so easily accessible on the internet.  Some people think that it's a big movie company they made a ton of money on the movie why is it a big deal to download this movie for free.  But that's the same mind set as stealing products from a big store, just because they make a lot of money doesn't meant it is okay to take products for free.  It's the same thing, it's stealing no matter how you try to justify it. 

Unit 3 Being An Online Student

In high school when the educators emphasized college and tried to figure out what further education each of us wanted to pursue I knew that I wanted to do online college.  The reasons I knew is because I like being able to work at my own pace and on my own time with the few deadlines that school work is due.  There was no way I was going to commute 2 hours every day, live in the city the college is at, spend way too much money on housing and gas going to college, and most importantly I really did not want to be around the college atmosphere.  I am a big people person but I really didn't even care for being in the crowded environment of the high school let alone would I want to be around an even bigger crowd of people.  To me it seems there is so much drama with schools such as partying, groups/clicks, etc, I want to go to college to learn, not make friends or party.  One of the perks that I enjoy about being an online student is that I can move around and be anywhere and still do my school work.  last term I moved to California and then back to Washington, and now this term I've been doing the same, if I was going to a campus college I wouldn't have that flexibility.  In the future when I move again I don't have to worry about transferring colleges either I just have to stop along the way and get the school work turned in on time and attend the seminars.  One of the challenges that I personally have faced with online college is trying to figure out when the best time for seminar is.  If I schedule my classes at night I have the tendency to forget about it even with an alarm set, but if I set up my classes for in the morning I end up being cranky and tired all day and usually unproductive.  The day of the week makes a big difference too, when seminars are at the beginning of the week they are more helpful for doing the school work throughout the week.  This is only my third term of my first year so I have yet to really build my school connections yet even though the classes have us post our A.O.L. instant messenger names, and emails.  I have a terrible memory so at times it is really hard for me to remember everyone in class now or that I've shared classes with before and build any type of school relationship.  I don't really have any ideas on ways to create a closer class community, I think I just need to take more time to add everyone and get to know everyone.  Even just talking to a few class mates makes school feel a little less intimidating and a little easier to move forward.  Okay, well I would write more but one of my pets died today and I'm a little under the weather.  

First Blog

I'll use my first blog as sort of an introduction to what's going on right now.  Currently my husband and I are in Joshua Tree, California because he is in the Marine Corps.  Lucky for us he's put in 3 deployments 2 to Iraq and 1 to Afghanistan and his 4 years are up and we are going home back to Washington State on the 5th of this month!  Yay!  I've only been away from my friends and family for 6 months but boy not only does the desert blow, but it sucks being away from everyone I know and love.  We are extremely stoked to go back home, I miss the big trees and bodies of water around every turn.  Though I have met some amazing people while being here in the desert (they usually aren't from here though, don't ever move here!).  Aside from that I am super happy to finally be in college and being on my way to getting my Bachelor Degree in Nutrition Science.  For 4 years I've been wanting to start college, but alas school costs a lot of money.  During all that free time I spent it hanging out at my Denny's or in the mountains studying herbalism, crystal therapy, alternative healing, quantum physics, astrology, color therapy, food, nutrition, anything I could get my hands on.  I've always eaten healthy being taught well by my parents and being healthy and knowing health has always been like a second nature.  I figured I know a lot of this already I might as well get my degree and get paid for helping people and be able to help people that want to help themselves.  My ultimate grand goal is to own a big building with offices for chiropractors, sports therapists, physical therapists, nutritionists, dietitians, alternative healers.  I also want to have supplies available such as, vitamins, herbal supplements, all natural products, crystals and crystal jewelry, and books lots and lots of books.  I want a place that people can come to for all of their health needs and where people with the aspiration of helping people can all work together towards that goal.  I get so anxious thinking about this goal that I can see my sign on the building, plain and simple, "Natasha's Nutrition and Well-Being."  Well for now I'm signing off it's getting late and I need to be up early tomorrow to finalize this units project.