Author: Deagan Voorheis

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Procrastination Rocks

Yesterday, instead of doing homework and studying for my finals like I should have been doing, I was scrolling through Facebook and Pinterest. While I was scrolling, I came across a video called “EVERYBODY DIES, BUT NOT EVERYBODY LIVES” by Prince Ea. First off, if you have never seen this video, I highly recommend adding a tab on your computer and watching that video instead of reading this blog. And if you have seen it, watch it again, because it never gets old. That video, is one of the most inspirational videos that I have ever seen and can actually relate to. Yes Leo’s documentary on Climate Change “Before the Flood” was very inspirational but the video by Prince Ea relates to college students a lot more than Leo’s does.

I do not want to live in a world of regret. I want all of my adventures and mistakes and my friends and family and every little aspect of my life to come together to form MY life. This video helped me realize that everything happens for a reason and you control everything that happens in the life that you live. Every little decision that we have made in our lives all add up and bring us to where we are now. Every one of us made the decision to apply to this school. I’m sure that everyone got other acceptance letters, but we all chose to go here. We all signed up for this class out of all the other options and here we all are. Getting ready to finish this semester, frantically counting our blog posts and writing more, and revising our essays 12 times. Every little decision-no matter how big or small it seems in that moment, counts.

Our lives are full of so many choices and although they don’t seem that important, they really are. These choices define us. So, do you want to be someone that is on their death bed saying that the regret not doing something? Or do you want to be someone that lives in the moment and makes “a brand new ending”.

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Reflecting on 2016

As finals week approaches, some people are nervous and studying like crazy, and other people (like me) are just ready to be home for a month. With that being said, good luck to all of those that are spending late nights in the library, sacrificing sleep and your social life while praying that your GPA won’t be crushed too much. However, even if you study until you can’t study anymore and you still don’t get the grade that you wanted, think about how much fun you are going to have over break.

For many people, this is the first time that you have seen your family since Thanksgiving and although you might get sick of your family within the first 24 hours of being home, think of how amazing your own bed is going to feel and being able to sleep in until noon everyday with nothing to do but see your family and friends. Winter break is one of the best parts about being in college. No matter what holiday you celebrate, everyone celebrates New Years. I don’t know about you, but I have been planning my New Years Eve since I left for college and the time is finally here. But with that being said, the idea of leaving 2016 behind is overpowering.

So much has happened, even in the last couple of months, that I cannot even think about what happened all the way back in February. When reflecting back on 2016, I think about everything that happened in order to make 2016 what it was. With the help of my friends, traveling, family, and school, I would say that my 2016 was a pretty eventful year. However, I cannot wait for 2017 to come. I have so much already planned for 2017 and although the election did not have the outcome we had all hoped and wished for, that is just part of what is going to make 2017 interesting.

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It’s okay to have a bad semester

How many times have you heard that “everything is going to be okay”? I hear this on the daily from my parents, my friends, and my professors. But sometimes, everything is definitely NOT okay, and knowing this itself, makes everything okay. People struggle all the time. Some people don’t make it through high school, and look at all of us, enrolled in one of the best schools in New York State. It’s important to know that even on your worst days, everything is going to be okay. I am a firm believer that everything happens for a reason. It is something that has been said to me since I was little by my grandmother and my mother. I have come to believe that no matter what path I go down, what I do in my life, it all happened for a reason.

This semester has been interesting for me personally. I haven’t had the best grades and have had to make some difficult phone calls to my parents. But everything happens for a reason and everything is going to be okay. My advisor-whom I strongly recommend to anyone in the education field, is one of the nicest, most caring guys I have ever met. He knows how hard I try in my classes and he knows that my grades are not where I want them to be. Every time I go into his office, he points out a card that says “RUDE AWAKENING #457. NO ONE CARES WHAT YOUR GPA WAS”. This is something that over the past couple of months has really hit hard. Your whole life, you were instructed to “get good grades so you can get into college so you can get a well-paying job”. Well, its okay if you have a bad semester. It’s okay if you have a bad year. Because no one is going to look that in depth into your transcript and think “hmm in 2016, ____ got a C- in a math course, lets not hire them” even though you are an English major.

One semester is not going to kill you, one bad grade is not going to destroy your GPA. I know that while getting these grades, it feels like the end of the world, but you have multiple courses and multiple grades adding up to make your GPA what it is. One bad grade does not matter nor does one perfect grade. Its all about staying consistent and earning the marks that you deserve, no matter if they are good, or bad. And just remembering that everything is going to be okay.

 

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High School vs College

Just recently I had a meeting with Professor McCoy, talking about my old essay and brainstorming ideas for this new essay. While talking about the old essay, she asked why I had done the revision the way that I did. I replied that in high school, we were taught to make the changes that our teachers had asked us to make. She pointed out that just like she had mentioned in class, her comments were not a checklist for us to go through. Her comments were an idea for how to make our piece better overall.

While talking about our new essays, I showed her what I had been working on and then explained where I was going with what I had already written. She commented back that my ideas seemed interesting and that I could easily write an essay off of what I had spoken to her about. I then explained my next point in the essay which was contradicting everything that I had already said. I said that I was thinking about switching my prompts and she looked at me as if I were crazy. She said “why would you think that you need to switch your prompt when I just told you what you were writing about was interesting?” I replied, because I just contradicted myself and usually once you see a prompt, you have to stick with it and follow what it says.

While I was saying this, I realized that everything that I had said during our meeting was something that I learned in high school. No professor wants you to stop learning after you graduate high school, they are there to help you continue on your education. Thanks to McCoy’s help, I realized that I need to stop focusing on what I learned in high school and start focusing on what I am learning in college. It’s important to keep an open mind when looking at new topics and while you will always have those old learning techniques from high school in your head, you need to clear some space for new techniques.

Interdisciplinarity is all about combining two things into one whole. You learned things in high school and now you are learning things in college. It is important to combine these different learning styles together and form a technique that will hold the things you learned in high school but then also expand your knowledge and add to it things that you have learned in college.

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Interdisciplinary in education

I am going to school to be a teacher, both of my parents went to school to be teachers. My mom was an English concentration and taught first grade and my dad is an AIS reading teacher. My genetics line is full of different traits, but teaching English is the most prominent one.

Throughout the semester, we have discussed different ways that Interdisciplinarity fits into our everyday lives. From taking walks around campus to reading different books, we have all realized that interdisciplinary makes up the world around us.

Before discovering that I wanted to be a teacher, I made a list of pros and cons to teaching. I love working with children, but I hate writing lesson plans. I love grading papers, but I hate looking at a child that hasn’t had the subject click with them yet just seem so frustrated and exhausted. One of the best things about being a teacher, is when you see a student finally understand something and their face lights up and you feel as if you have just done the impossible.

Students use all different types of methods in order to have this light bulb go off in their heads. Teachers use different methods in order to help the students have their “I understand it” moment. All of the methods that teachers and students use, have the common goal of helping a student learn. Helping the student achieve understanding is what every teacher wants in their classrooms.

By having these methods and these people come together to create the common goal of learning, interdisciplinarity is formed in the education field. It is true, that interdisciplinary is all around us, it just takes looking more in depth to see this and to discover it.

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Interdisciplinarity and Archives

During class, after putting ourselves in order based on our last names and then first names, we were instructed to walk around outside and try to find different archives. My group immediately went to the ISC where we found many science archives-old bones, rocks and even a timeline. While doing this activity, it reminded me of the reading in Interdisciplinary titled “Literature and History”. This section starts on page 114 and talks about how things are organized. Moran states that no matter the subject, they all have one thing in common, “courses tend to focus on the most up-to-date scholarship, with the assumption that the history of the discipline is merely a long prelude to a contemporary state of enlightenment. Even today, though, when issue- or theme-based modules are increasingly prevalent on English degrees, most courses organize themselves in terms of periods and make some attempt at chronological coverage” (Moran, 115). An archive is an example of one of these forms that is organized by time periods. These forms (paper, paintings, sculptures, tombstones) of art come together to form one discipline. We, as students of a college that was built a long time ago, are lucky enough to have archives all around us. Everything is an archive, including buildings, cemeteries, art and even us. Something important to note when looking at an archive is that if you are not careful with them, they can be easily destroyed. Some special archives are kept in cases or boxes so that people do not touch and wreck them. However, other archives are out in the open for anyone to touch and unfortunately wreck. In the books that we have read, archives have played an important role and often times, the reader does not notice or pay attention to the fact that things such as a cemetery, books or letters are in fact archives.

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Toomer and Myself: a Similarity

The United States is made up of many different people. No two people are exactly the same-not even twins. These differences is what makes the United States such a special place to live in. People live in different areas, they celebrate different holidays, they are different races. All of these different people come together and make the United States what it needs to be-a melting pot. We praise peoples differences and make people proud of who they are and where they come from.

When Toomer did not identify as black or as white, he was no longer celebrating who he was or where he came from. Some people could interpret it as if he was embarrassed of his past and did not want people to know anything about him. He thought that by doing this, he was removing himself from the chaos. Instead, he was creating more.

If someone did that today, they would be frowned upon. The United States is such a wonderful place to live in and for Toomer to be born in Washington D.C where the president lives, and not want to celebrate his race is shocking. So many people come to the United States to be free and start a new life-Toomer was destroying his on accident.