Ignite Talk

Leadership: Leadership Roles - Chapter and Panhellenic, EC & PC, other organizations Scholarship: -Keep good grades for Nationals and UNCC -Smarty Panties, Library Hours Sisterhood: -Gain new friends that are always there for you. -Siterhood events (lake day, carowinds, crafting) -Big/Little reveal Service: -Habitat for humanity -operation sandwich -animal shelter collection -relay for life Philanthropy: -PHA Circle of Sisterhood -ZTA Breast Cancer Awareness and Education --Thnk pink week x2 --panthers games(pink ribbons) --Race for th cure --Yoplit lids --pink crown classic Greek Unity: -Greek Week --Greek games --Airband -New member mix & mingle -Convocations After college: -connections -alumnae -resume Famous Sorority women: -Erin Andrews - ZTA (Sports anouncer) -Betty Nguyen - ZTA (CNN News Cast) -Carrie Underwood - Tri Sigma (American Idol Winner) -Nancy Grace - Alpha Delta Pi (TV Host) -Laura Bush - Kappa Alpha Theta (Former first lady) Famout Fraternity Men: -MLK - Alpha Phi Alpha (civil rights leader) -Brad Pitt - Sigma Chi (actor) -Will Ferell - Delta Tau Delta (Actor/comedian) -George W. Bush - Delta Kappa Epsilon (Former President) -Mark Zuckerberg - Alpha Epsilon Pi (Facebook Creator)

Final Project

College Readiness

 

 

https://maps.google.com/maps/ms?msid=201387759381963843345.0004da6caca5e469d7f0a&msa=0

 

This Google Map describes where I grew up and how these different places influenced my preparations for college.

 

N.d. Photograph. n.p. Web. 28 Apr 2013. <http://www.empowernetwork.com/3djohnboy/blog/empower-network-chicago-event-ticket-to-get-money/>.

N.d. Photograph. n.p. Web. 28 Apr 2013. http://www.tom-brown.com/articles/One-ten-British-children-mental-health-issues/.

N.d. Photograph. n.p. Web. 28 Apr 2013. <http://americanamanda.blogspot.com/2012/04/top-5-top-5-ways-to-be-prepared-for.html>.

 

          When I was growing up, going to college was never even a question.  I was so used to seeing people in my little hometown graduate and proceed to college. It never even occurred to me that there were other paths I could take. I knew my parents history with college, my mom never went and my dad stayed too long and partied his way through it. But that didn’t seem like the way to do it anymore. My sister is five years older than me so I got to watch her go through different experiences and learn from her. She was definitely my role model growing up, but don’t let her know that I said that. She was always the smart one, bringing home straight A’s almost every report card. When it came time for her to graduate from high school, she got accepted into her dream school and my parents were so proud. I thought “I want to be just like her when I grow up”.

            Once I got to middle school, I realized I wasn’t like my sister. I didn’t ever bring home straight A’s and I wasn’t in with the cool kids. Then high school came around and I started to become my own person. I started to accept the fact that I wasn’t as smart as my older sister and I stopped trying to fit in with everyone. I made my own group of friends and was finally content with myself. I worked really hard with my school work and I graduated with honors and a 3.75 GPA, I was proud of myself. I applied to three different schools but I wanted to go to UNCW just like my big sister, it had always been my plan. Towards the end of senior year when most people were getting acceptance letters and planning the years to come, my family and I were hit hard with financial issues. My world was turned upside down in a matter of a few months. I had to worry about helping support my family by working my minimum wage job and college was not on my mind. My sister had already graduated from UNCW and was moved back home while looking for a career, so paying for school wasn’t something she was worrying about. One day I was having a really hard time dealing with all the recent events. I was packing up and moving things into our new house when my mom told me I had mail. I didn’t think anything of it but when I opened the envelope I was overjoyed! It was my acceptance letter from East Carolina University. I was finally excited because I knew now that I was indeed going to college.
            A few more weeks went by and things started to get better, but only a little. I got home from school one day, and as usual I checked the mailbox. Inside it I found a small envelope addressed to me from UNCW. I was weary when opening it because of how small the envelope was. When I did a found a letter telling me that they could not accept me for the fall semester. I was devastated. This had been my dream school for over five years and I had been waiting to hear from them for many months. I told my parents and then had to break the news to my sister. I was so embarrassed to tell her that I hadn’t gotten in to her school, but when I did she was so supportive. She helped me get through it. I realized that I was okay with not going there. About a month later I received my acceptance letter from UNCC. My mom took me to tour the campus and I could really picture myself going there in the fall. I made my final decision and was finally content with myself. I was my own person and my sister was proud of me and that was all I needed.
            Needless to say my experience was not like many others. I thought I had everything figured out, but sometimes life throws curve-balls at you and you have to figure what you’re going to do. I chose to become my own person and not live in the shadow of my sister. This ended up being the best possible thing I could’ve done because I am so happy with where I am in life and my family couldn’t be any more supportive.



 

Reflection

                Throughout this whole process, Lacy has been pushing us for to do some revision. Well I have to say that I have done enough revision work on this final project than I ever intended to do. I started off with a picture essay and I don’t think I quite got the meaning of it. So next I worked with the website Storify (which I ended up having a lot of trouble with…) and I ended up really liking the way it was set up. But for my last mini project I decided to try to map out my college readiness experience onto Google maps. Lacy seemed to really enjoy this idea but I still wanted to include Storify into my project in some way. So when it came time to bring in a draft of the final project I had made a Storify explaining the whole college readiness plan and I added my personal story along with my Google map. I sent it to Lacy to see what she thought of it and she said how she really liked the map and my personal story but that the whole beginning part was just too much. So in the end I didn’t use Storify, I just ended up putting it into a blog post and adding an attachment to my Google Maps. I’m really happy with the way it turned out.

 

Academic Source

                As for the academic source I chose to read a journal titled College Readiness and Academic Preparation for Postsecondary Education. This article focuses on first-generation college students. The authors of this journal said “The postsecondary educational process for first-generation urban college students starts long before their first day in college” (Reid, and Moore). Some parents start planning for their children’s future before they’re even born. In today’s world, more and more people are getting college degrees because it’s harder to find jobs. Educators, administrators and school counselors need to help push the need for higher education throughout grade K-12 (Reid, and Moore). Students need to realize this early on so that they are prepared for what is ahead of them. With doing this we can prevent school dropouts and have more college graduates. As for test taking, just because a student’s test scores are high doesn’t mean there has been enough preparation for postsecondary education. In this journal there was a qualitative study done on 13 first-generation college students who had all graduated from the same high school. Some of their main suggestions for students trying to get into college were to take AP courses, as many as you can, and to apply for lots of scholarships based on sports teams you played on, clubs you were in, or honor societies you held positions in.

                Now for students who are first-generation college students, they have it rough. Personally, my mom never went to college and it took my dad eight years to get his bachelor’s degree so I could be considered first-generation since my dad didn’t do so well. Other than my sister who is five years older than me, I had no other type of guidance. First-generation college students have many disadvantages compared to other students. They could have low educational expectations, low academic preparation, low support from parents and schools in planning and preparing for college, and low family income (Reid, and Moore). I know for me, my parents never really checked my grades. It’s not that they didn’t care it’s just that they never really thought twice about it. The writers of this journal said “First-generation college students have disadvantages because parents have no knowledge of the process” (Reid, and Moore). Also my family had money problems growing up and college wasn’t always an option.

 

Reid, M. Jeanne, and James L. Moore. "College Readiness and Academic Preparation for Postsecondary Education." SAGE Publication. (2008): n. page. Web. 28 Apr. 2013. <http://uex.sagepub.com/content/43/2/240>. 

Mini Project 1

This is what people expect from you before college.

You start preparing for the future as soon as you're born. some parents even start planning before.

Throughout your school years you learn about college and your teachers prepare you for it.

Once you get to the highschool it's crunch time. You start taking your SAT and start applying to colleges.

Although your school years probably influence you the most about college readiness; friends, family, and the media definitely play a big role too.

Forest View Class

                Last week in English we met with the classes at Forest View High school. I sat in a group of two college kids, including myself, and four of the highschoolers. We started off the class with a picture made by the four highschoolers and it had what the thought and expected from college. The described everyone’s point of view. We then made another picture and we included our college perspective. Our picture had a collage of all the things that we thought influenced us as students. My favorite part of the class was the very end when we did the interviews. It was really interesting hearing all of their questions and remembering when I was in their shoes last year. I remember being so curious about what to expect and that’s exactly what they were asking. I’m really glad that now I get to put a name to my letter that I will be sending to their class.

Phrases

                So in class the other day, Lacy had us go outside of the classroom and find two sayings or groupings of words that were posted somewhere around the building. At first I was having a really difficult time trying to figure out what exactly she wanted. I ended up finding the two that I wanted, “Get connected and stay connected” and “You’re cordially invited to”. Once we got back into the classroom we were to write the two phrases on the board. She then told us to make up a poem out of all the different phrases on the board. She gave us her example, but that didn’t seem to help much. I’m not much of a poem writer.

Images

                A few days ago in class, Lacy gave us this assignment where we paired up on groups of two and each group received one of these pictures. The pictures were of TV shows and movies. We were told to look at the pictures and analyze them as if we had never seen them before. This task was fun to do because most of the pictures, I hadn’t seen. This allowed me to be completely honest and take in whatever stood out to me. Lacy had us write in the margins key words or thoughts of what we saw. Once we had written what we wanted to we had to pass them on to the next group. We rotated all of the pictures around the whole room until everyone had seen every picture. At the end we received our original pictures. This was really cool because we got to see what other people thought about the picture and we got to see what other people thought of our own ideas.

Hero Narratives

                Last Wednesday Lacy had us split up into our writing groups. Earlier we had created a list of narratives in the form of movies, TV shows, and music. She told us to make a list of ten random narratives from the bigger list and describe if how or even if there was a hero. The assignment was pretty much opinion based which made it more interesting because we got to converse with our group members on whether or not the narrative had a hero in it. Once we figured this out, we were to post a comment for all ten of our choices on the Google doc that Lacy had made. At the very end of the assignment we had to go back and look through alllll of the comments that everyone had posted and write in our daybook what we saw and what questions we might have. As I looked though the comments I noticed that most of the narratives people had listed had some type of hero in it. I think this goes to show that we need heroes in our everyday life and anybody can be one.