Counting Down

HSI is coming to an end. I’m excoted to be going home, but having to leave all of the people here is going to be one of the hardest things to do. THe friendships I have created here will last me a life time. The memories will always come into my conversations. This three weeks will be what I will remember the most.

The classes I was enrolled into at HSI were the Multimedia class and Unraveling DNA. I learned such an incredible amount of quality information. The use of media to tell the world information will help me to better understand their marketing and how I can apply it to my future journalism classes. In unraveling DNA, the amount of interest I gained from the process of copying our aleles is astounding. I loved taking my classes and I learned so much. I feel like I have grow to a completely new level after just three weeks.

One of the best memories from HSI was definitely one with my closest friends here at camp. My roommate Kelsie, and my friend Gretchen and I were all together in my dorm. We were so exhausted to the point where absolutely everything was funny. We had stolen Kyle’s camera and made a video of us making impersonations of him and Daniel, his roommate. We were laughing so much. I won’t be forgetting that night! I have had so many more experiences here at camp, and I know I will carry them with me throughout my life.

I have definitely grown as a person here at camp. Not only can I take home completely new and important knowledge, but I have learned new ways to communicate, to connect, and to express. One of the most important lessons I have learned, is that everyone has a story, and that your first impression is not always the right one. You really need to get to know someone before you make judgement. I know that I came the first day and had my prejudices about each and every person. After the first week, I realized how completely wrong I was, one of the guys I thought would be the typical guy, turned out to be so funny and interesting, he is now one of my closest friends. It really taught me to step back and listen before I label someone.

College life is something I have yet to experience, but if it is anything like HSI I know I will have the time of my life. It has taught me how you can be put into a group of people and how you can connect so well just by having one thing in common, like where you are staying. I’m hoping that HSI has taught me how to live life as a college student, I want this to be something I can conntinue after the three weeks. I want to reexperience it when it is time.

I can honestly say that my three weeks at HSI were nothing like I planned, but so much better! I could not have asked to change a thing. I would not have wanted it to go any other way. When I get home, I know I will be asked how the camp went. But I don’t think I could possibly put it into words. Nothing can describe how much fun I had. I Won’t be able to retell the stories in a way that truely shows how the experience was. I will tell everyone that it was the best three weeks of my life. I’m so glad I had the chance to come. It was amazing. I can’t wait for the next group to go and get to experience what I did. This camp was organized so well, I am so impressed with how well they were able to get everyone to connect, and to make the experience so life changing. I will miss it so much!

UW Campus HSI

UW Campus HSI, a set on Flickr.

How Well Can you Multitask?

Technology is suggested if not required in school. There is nothing that can completely secure the students attention if there is an option to use internet. Personally I am better than most when it comes to paying attention, but i catch myself becoming distracted easily. It’s a true problem and there is no solution.

A lot of students will argue that they can multitask and listen to a lecture at the same time they are chatting on facebook. Truth is that you can do them at the same time, but your mind will only be able to fully focus on one of the things at once. You miss fractions of the lecture while you pause to chat. Teachers will not do anything to stop it though, they know how difficult it would be to eliminate the distractions at the same time as making it possible for students to use technology for educational purposes.

I know for a fact that I am not good at multitasking, I cannot stay fully focused to more than one thing at a time. I need to be engaged to one thing fully to get everything out of it that I need. I think it is silly for anyone to say they are good at multitasking. It is not a function of our brain to fully focus on more than one thing at a time. You can switch focus easily and quickly, but not two things at the exact same time.

I don’t think that the multitasking will change in any ways in school, students will continue using the technology for everyhing, and professors and teachers will continue lecturing allowing the use of technology for the students.

I think it is a huge problem for our generation and the next. If it gets worse than it is now, there will be no focus on school work and all on technology. There is no way to stop the use, so it’s hard to say we are going to get any better. We are only going to get worse.

Quinn Lamoureux

The room was dark with one blinding beam of light shining down on the podium. A man sat with a cold stare and arms crossed at the table in front of the stage. Grey hair lined his forehead showing proof of stress, not necessarily age. To him, this was just another meet. He could care less who scored the most points.

What he didn’t know was that a young man with sensible fashion, and a dictionary sized vocabulary would tip him to the edge of his seat and bring a glimpse of light to his ever darkening gaze. This student would show him why he began his position in the first place.

The intellect slowly approached the podium. He showed nothing less than courage and confidence. When he reached his position, he cleared his throat and smirked. Even if there was a wall of nerves building up, nothing came to the surface. He was calm and collected.

Quinn Lamoureux. He specializes in congressional debate. On the paper he propped up onto the podium, was a bill on electronic currency. His concept of completely eliminating paper and coin money was one of extreme brilliance.

Another one of the stories he used for debate was one involving the disenfranchisement of israelis unfair political biases against the palestinians. Click here to listen to Quinn’s imput… https://soundcloud.com/denialohman/interview

MTV

MTV has a very crude way of marketing. The information they put onto their show is mostly sexual. They are trying to reach the teenage audience, but there are other ways than just using the one aspect. The show used to focus more on music. But now, the show has few music items, and much more reality tv, and shows like Jersey Shore.

In a video we watched on how MTV markets, they talked about having a Moof and a Midriff. A moof is a male who is obnoxious, rude, loud, crude, and eye grabbing. A midriff is a young woman who uses her body as her interest. She is a sex icon. MTV uses these two items to grab the audience. I don’t like the way they use the two types of people as their main grabbers, but I don’t watch tv, and I don’t know what the market is like, or how they need to do certain things to make their money. If I were to have a show like theirs, I would probably do it a little less, but then again, I still don’t know how their system works.

MTV does not seem like a show I would enjoy to watch. For most people I feel like it is the same. The information seems crude and unimportant. I feel like if I watched some of the shows, I would not feel so cliosed about it, but from the information I hear, it doesn’t sound like it would be that interesting or intriguing. Then again, I need to experience it before I make too many assuptions.

The Code is the Key

When you watch a movie, you remember the plot line. When you watch the movie again, you catch the details. For advertisers to think that putting their products into movies will impact their company in a huge amount is probably not logical. It will work possibly if someone watches the movie multiple times, as well as catche the advertising. They must then have the interest to want to go purchase it. I feel like it could be a good idea in theory, but making sure people notice the product, and also make it appealing for the consumer is a lot of effort and time.

I’ve also seen movies were they make the advertising much too big of a part of the movie, it makes the product less intriguing and makes the movie less interesting. The fine line of placing the product in the movie is tough, and I feel like there are much better ways to advertise, even if they are more expensive.

One thing I found interesting about the video we watched, was the theory of the one gentlemen named Clotaire Rapaille. He definitely had an interesting way to finding ways to make advertising more appealing. He said there was a code to peoples brains that makes things more appealing and more intriguing. He would study groups of people and try and figure out the code. Then he would go to companies and tell them what to cahnge so they could be more successful with their product sales. I personally would love to learn about his theory, and I would have to agree that it would work. People are general made with the same brain set up and to have certain chemicals or certain connections that could pull us towards or away from a product could be very very likely. To be able to know how to control the code or see what the code will do, could make it much easier for you to sell anything to consumers, it would bnenefit to such a massive extent.

Interviews

Interviewing someone takes a lot of time. You want to be able to create a story out of what they give you. If the person is ill prepared, it can be difficult to create anything out of it.

When I was interviewing a different individual, it was interesting to see how they answered the questions. We all have a different way of thinking and speaking, and to think about the question for yourself, but then hear the answer from someone else is strange and interesting. The best part of interviewing would definitely be the answers to the question. The worst part of the experience, was the effort you had to put in to make sure there is no sound in the background. You dont want to hear any birds or any talking. While I was interviewing, A group of people walked by laughing and talking extremely loud, so we had to restart and rerecord everything. Then, farther into the interview, it happened again, only the group sat down next to us. So we never had the chance to finish our interview. Without the interruptions, I feel it would have worked a lot better.

It definitely taught me how to find out about a person with the right questions. It’s hard to think of anything off the top of your head, but with before hand thinking, and rephrasing during the porocess, you could find the perfect information to get the story you need.

Does the Content of the Book Decide Against the Quality?

What qualifies a book to become one of many on a list of “unnacceptable material” for young readers? Many have heard of books like the Cathcer in the Rye, Hucklebberry Finn, and The Hunger Games becoming banned in high school literature classes. the reasoning for these removals can be very diverse. For instance, Hucklebeerry Finn has been banned because of the nudity in one of the chapters. Catcher in the Rye has been banned because of infered references to the main character being homosexual. The Hunger Games is one that is one that may actual qualify as a benned book because of the violence expressed throughout the novel. One topic that personaly should not be considered a topic to ban, is homosexuality and people’s preferences.

In the book And Tango Makes Three, there are two male penguins who appear to fall in love in a zoo, and they are given an egg to care for and to nurture. The story tells of how they grew up just like the other penguins, with the slight different of gender in the parents. Being that the story was a reference of homosexuality, it was banned from schools.

When reading this book, you realize that the story has very good content. With the small exception of what family they are writing about, the author is put to shame, and made a public example of books that are not allowed for the slight chance of ‘corrupting” a childs mind. What about learning about family, and care, and love makes a book unaccpetable? Why should the gender of the parent penguins make a book becoome on a list that makes a story no longer readable? This consept of close minded reading is incredible. No small story is going to completely change someones mind about a subject, we all have our preconcieved ideas and ways of life. Banning a book will do nothing for someone in terms of changing or keeping someone how they are or “should be”.

What is Your Google Search?

Have you ever searched your name on google? Most people under the age of thirteen or fourteen search and find random people with the same name. Not too much is actually about themselves. At the age of fifteen to seventeen, You begin to see yourself in newspaper stories, and your facebook, twitter, tumblr, pinterest, you name it. My point, the internet and what we do on it begins to show up the more we use it. With age, people learn to do more on the interent and hence, the more you find about yourself by just a google search.

My search proved to be a little less than what I would expect. There was a lot of my social networking things that showed up like Vines, and my pins on Pinterest. For college and Jobs, I don’t think that is what I want showing up. I want my name to show up on honor rollls, newspaper stories, community service. It shows how you neeed to be careful what you do online. I am not one to do anything innapropriate or rediculous, but I do spend a lot of time on things like facebook, twitter, and other silly internet access apps. but the time I graduate. I hope to change my google search to less of the silly things and more important intruiging events.

One thing I do not like, is that everything you do online shows up everywhere. I cant have any privacy on facebook. I want to be able to connect with my friends and family, not with any stranger searching on google. I feel like it violates our privacy.

I wish there was a way to show what you wanted on an online search. With colleges, they dont want to see your pinterest feed. If there was a way to just show the beneficial things and show what makes you the person you are in the world, other than the online you, we should find a way to do so.

HSI

High School Institute, or as the participants call it, nerd camp. What about a camp like this would not be a wonderful opportunity? Most people who were offered the chance to send in an application complained about the fact that you would be taking classes in the middle of summer. The catch, these classes are not like the ones you take in high school, they are not worth a grade, they are only knowledge for the student. You take out of it what you want and you put into it what you want. I knew this camp would fit my learning and personality. After sending in my application, I was put onto the waiting list. Nonetheless, they called me and offered me a spot. Of course this was an amazing opportunity, and I am so glad I am here to experience this for myself. As far as being nominated for the camp, I am not completely positive how the school chose nominees. I am thinking they based it off of your GPA.

To be honest, I have no idea what the classes will be like, I know the general subject matter, but I know that what we learn will be in great variety. Not only will the professors teach us, but so will the students participating, as any group, you learn so much from the people around you, not everything comes from a teacher and a book. This is where you learn those life experiences you need for the “real world”. So far, this camp has been fun, not anything like I thought, but I think it will be a life changing experience.