Kutztown STATE university becoming PRIVATE?!! SAY WHAT!

In class we discussed the budget cuts which may or may not be happening next semester.  This discussion upset not only myself, but a lot of the students.  The sad thing is this was not the first class it was discussed in.  I actually found myself bitching about how awful life would be if Kutztown became a private university.  The cost of school is already ridiculously priced which is one of the many reasons I decided to come to a state school.  I am an Elementary Education major.  My parents and I discussed why it would not make sense for me to go to a private institution for my major.  If I become a elementary school teacher I would not be making a huge amount of money.  Which my parents explained to me did not make sense to get my education at Salve Regina, a private school in Newport NJ.  This made me upset because I loved everything about the school. 

            Now that Kutztown University may be forced to become an Private institution the tuition will be priced significantly higher. Not only does this suck for me because I will no longer be able to attend school here but it sucks for the teachers that will most likely be let go.  How can one professor get to know each and every student personally if we are going to be shoved into huge lecture halls all the time and not have a voice.  One of the other reasons Kutztown’s education was attractive to me was because unlike most state schools the student teacher ratio was significantly different.  I knew for a lot of general education classes I would be in a lecture hall but I also knew that there would be time for me to be in classes with a smaller population. If I wanted to be a number instead of a name I most likely would have gone to Pen State! 

            Lastly, most of the professors here on campus take pride in their work.  If a lot of them get cut what is going to happen to the teacher that did nto get cut?  Chances are they are going to have to work triple as hard to grade papers due to the bigger class sizes.  It is not fair that education needs to be cut.  I feel there are many other places that we can cut the money.

            I will not be attending the rally being held to protest the cuts however I know my prayers and thoughts will be with those who are being affected by this stupid and selfish new law. 

Music and studying? How is this an experiment!

Hello everyone!  So I was doing homework the other day, Just studying some note cards for my history exam.  Now usually I would study with some classical music in the background but this time I wanted to conduct an experiment.  I wondered if instead of listening to only classical music maybe it would benefit me to listen to rap or pop.  So I turned my Ipod on and put it on shuffle.  I not only realized that when my ipod is on shuffle it sounds like it is having a seizure but I found it extremely difficult to focus when the songs had words.  Instead of focusing on the facts written on my cards I found myself wanting to sing along or even dance to the music.  This was distracting and I was not able get much accomplished.

            In a recent video we watched during class a nureo scientist put people in an MRI and had them try and rap or play jazz music on a key board.  This experiment was interesting because he compared what the MRI’s results were and how they differed from one another.  I do not remember the exact results but I remember that I did not care for this experiment.  There were too many varying factors. 

            For one, I know when I go in an MRI I am not at all relaxed.  The environment is annoying and extremely claustrophobic.  Therefore that would affected his results.  Another contributing factor is that he only studied 2 different genres on music.  In my opinion there were many others he should have added to the experiment.  And lastly, it annoyed me the most.  I believe he had more rappers than jazz players.  How can he even call that a valid and successful experiment without testing the same amount of people?!!?

We are all creatures of habit

We are all creatures of habit in this very organized world.  At college we are forced to go to the same classes at the same time on the same day of the week.  This can make our daily schedules become monotonous very quickly.  Heck, even the food in the cafeteria and the student union building is the same every day.  I decided when I went home this week for my “spring break”  I was going to try and make my schedule as different as possible not only from my days at college but from how it was when I was home last semester. 

            At first I started out with instead of hitting the snooze alarm when it was around noon time to get up from my nap I just got right up.  Next on a normal day I would have gotten right in the shower instead I went downstairs to brush my teeth.  On a normal day I would have brushed my teeth in the upstairs bathroom but instead I moved all of my toiletries to the downstairs bathroom.  This was annoying at first because I wanted to use the upstairs bathroom then I would realize quickly that all of my stuff was in the other powder room.  Now usually I would go out and get my morning donkin donuts coffee but this week I decided to attempt to make my coffee at home not only for this project but to save money.  It worked, well, once I figured out how to use the coffee machine and it didn’t taste too bad.

            Next I changed the way I bathed. Usually I would take a bath and not wash my hair at night and then shower in the morning.  For this week only I tried changing it around.  Honestly, it did not work too well because I couldn’t stand going to bed with wet hair and then waking up with it looking like a poodles fur.  So I quickly went back to my routine.  I also took time to go to the mall by myself instead of calling friends to go with me.  To my surprise I enjoyed this a lot more because I did not need to go to stores I did not want to go to and lie and give good opinions on ugly clothes.  It was very…relaxing!  I think that from now on I will try and go shopping solo. 

            I most likely could have made a few more changes but like I stated before we are all creatures of habit and we will eventually flow back to our normal everyday schedule.