As the semester comes to an end it is often interesting to see the people who emerge from SNHU. Students and teachers have been working hard all semester and the last two weeks of class and finals are the culmination of all that work. Students often feel stressed by the amount of review and reflection they have to do and how it all turns out in the end may not be a true reflection of the work they have done all semester. But, this is the way it happens and this is the way we get used to it.

Many freshman struggle with their first, end of the year, finals. It is their second set of finals, so most have gotten the hang of it, but some still have a hard time catching on. Luckily it gets easier as it goes. Other students, remembering the pains of finals, start preparing for it ahead of time. They shift class schedules around to make it easier when the end comes. They even do all there work on time to help alleviate the pressure of finals week.

But no matter what you do, there is almost no way to avoid ALL stress during finals week. However, it is easy to take care of and forget about the stress. I personally like to listen to music and rock out until my neck hurts from head banging too hard. Some others like to get away for a few hours. It doesn’t matter where they go, just to get away.

As finals near a close, you also have the issue of saying your goodbyes to all your friends and acquaintances that meant anything to you. Hopefully you will see them next semester, but occasionally you will just have to wish them well into the working world. So as this semester comes to a close I say goodbye to you all and I hope to see many of you in the fall!

Posted by Daniel Smith at 3:28 AM | Permalink | Comments (0)

Walking through the door of my room I wasn’t sure what would behold me. I had never seen the room before and I wasn’t sure what it would be like. I stood in the doorway taking it all in and wondering who was lying on the bed near the wall. I thought to myself, this man is much to old to be my roommate. He quickly sat up and said that he was the electrician called in to fix the outlet that my new roommate had shorted out. Phew I thought, as he went about his work, I did know what this “college” experience would bring me, but I hadn’t expected that.

This was my very first moment in college. I had no idea what was going on or who I would meet. Now I am 3 years wiser and a whole lot stronger. I have made many friends and many acquaintances and acquired the knowledge to know the difference. My first year in college was a blur of class, clubs, friends and fun. I did an immense amount of work (more than I was expecting) and had an amazing amount of fun.

Making friends was one of things that I thought would be hard in college, but as I quickly found out, everyone who was there was in the same situation as I was. They had just been placed into college and knew no one except the advisors who had been talking to them for two days. It was interesting to see the friendships that came about. People grouping together like you would never have seen in high school.

I loved my first year in college and I learned a lot from that experience. I hope that everyone can have as good of an experience as I did, but there are always ups and downs in life, so you have to roll with the punches.

Posted by Daniel Smith at 3:12 AM | Permalink | Comments (0)

What is it about vacation that makes us long for the days of childhood? Is it the freedom we experience from school and work? Or is it the sense of fleeting you get when you know it will soon be over? For some it is the freedom and for some it is the fleeting, but moreover it is the feeling we get from being trapped in a cage of scheduling and activity. We plan every minute of our day to ensure we get the most of our time. And when a minute goes by without planning you have to compensate by re-exerting yourself at some other point in the day. You feel as though you must make it up or catch up with your schedule. Vacation is a time when schedules become meaningless and time becomes infinite. Your reality is the moment and your future seems far away.

We all need that feeling once in a while. If we do not get it we can be forced to do rash things like binge drink at a weekend party or OD on pain pills after a hard day of work, all in an effort to reach that feeling. Not to be so grim most of today’s college students get more than their fair share of this feeling. They spend each weekend in a mindless stupor hoping they had done their homework the week before. Then they get vacation and decide to spend the little money they did manage to save on a cruse in Jamaica trying to pick up hot Jamaican women and men. In my mind this is an overabundance of that feeling.

There are also some who do it right. They work hard all semester and on weekends do extra curricular activities including community service and clubs/ organizations. They spend their nights doing papers and discussing mind-expanding topics with their friends. So when that vacation comes there are ready. They are ready to get a healthy dose of that euphoric feeling that comes with the schedule free time. They take it in and enjoy its warm embrace and after a logical amount of time they brush it off and go back to work.

That is the way vacations are supposed to work. Unfortunately most people fall in to one of the other groups. They either over-indulge in the euphoria or under-indulge by working through vacations and not spending enough time on themselves.

I fall into the later group I spend every vacation working and trying to get ahead. I take very little time for myself and spend way too much time on every one else. In the past two years I have taken three stress tests and not passed a single one of them. Normally I would say its ok and I will be fine, but as I have just said there is a point where you need to stop and enjoy a little bit of that euphoric feeling that comes with vacation.

Posted by Daniel Smith at 12:29 PM | Permalink | Comments (0)

So spring break is upon us and we are all happy. Most of us are taking some time off to relax and enjoy time without classes. I, however, am working almost every day of spring break. I have scheduled myself for work every day but Easter. This would normally be a hardship, but I am in dire need of money so it is ok with me this week.

Work seems like an archaic term used to describe what people do when they hate their job. Luckily, I have no job that I truly hate. And that’s saying a lot, especially because I have four jobs. I work for ROCK 101 as a street teamer, SNHU Residence life as an RA, SNHU Student Affairs at Copies Plus, and at Monadnock Regional High School as a substitute teacher. I am not too fond of being a substitute teacher, but it is not the worst job in the world. However, I love my other jobs.

I have worked for Copies Plus as an associate for three years now including one summer. It is a fairly easy job. It does not require much creativity or know-how. Most of the skills you need can be learned in a matter of hours. But, the thing I really like about it is that it allows you to be creative and knowledgeable. I have worked there so long that I would have been very tired of it had I not been able to do that.

ROCK 101 has always interested me. I have worked for them for almost a full year now. I started off as an intern and am now on the payroll as a member of the street team. I enjoy working there for two reasons. One, I am constantly updated on a lot of the cool stuff happening around Manchester. Two, I have the chance to be part of a Radio Station that allows me to branch out and do more than just my job description.

My last job is working as an RA. I have been at this for two years now and I have really enjoyed it. I am really glad I got into it when I did because it has opened my eyes to a whole new career path that I had never thought of before. I am now seriously considering going into the student affairs aspect of college.

So basically this is my spring break post. I am currently sitting in my old high school library taking care of a bunch of 11th grade students who are supposed to be working on a project.

Posted by Daniel Smith at 8:45 AM | Permalink | Comments (0)

I am 20 years, 8 months, 25 days, and 23 hours old. I have experienced a lot in that time and I will continue to experience more. I have seen great things and I have seen terrible things. I have experienced miracles and I have experienced disasters. I have been privy to incredible information and I have been left in the dark. I have done and seen many things in my life, but what has it all been for?

As of late I have found myself observing more. I have been observing my surroundings and the events that run my life. I have found two things evident in everyday life. Everyone lies. I have seen it time and time again, when backed into a corner people resort to lies. They use them as a crutch to find there way out of a situation. The issue with this is that they then have to make up more lies to cover up the first lie and dig themselves even deeper. I have also observed how once these lies are uncovered that they can destroy peoples lives. It can destroy friendships and marriages. It can destroy reputations and credibility. Lies can seep into every aspect of your life and when uncovered destroy everything you have worked so hard to create.

The other thing I have observed is that the way we interact with each other varies so intensely that it is almost impossible to generalize it. For instance, if I say to one of my roommates “hey do you want to go to the store?”, they would say yes or no depending on there own needs and weather or not they actually needed to go to the store. However, if I were to ask almost anyone else it would be a matter of weather they wanted to spend time with me or not. No one can ever predict every relationship a person has and how they interact with him or her.

In pertaining to SNHU, which I always like to do, both of these things can be observed on campus daily. The destruction of relationships due to lies and the impossible generalization of the way we interact with people. We are constantly involved in all of this and yet somehow we make it through. Somehow we come out of it with our heads held high and regretting nothing. Is it an issue of questionable morals or is it an issue of knowing deep down that nothing you do now matters more than how you interact with the outside world. College is a bubble of knowledge, inspiration, and opportunity. What we do within that bubble is up to us.

Posted by Daniel Smith at 11:37 PM | Permalink | Comments (0)

As a child you are always told not to rely on first impressions. This is generally good advice. It is reliable and will often prove itself useful. Now, you may be wondering to yourself “if this is such good advice, then why don’t people follow this advice?” Well that puzzles me as well. I have had many situations in the past where either I was judged too harshly on a first impression or I judged too harshly on a first impression. I believe that we make those first time assumptions about people for two reasons. One, we need a basis of judgment for our next encounter and two, we have a need to categorize our thoughts and labeling people allows your mind to do that.

The problem with first impressions is that they are often wrong or at least misguided. For example, I often come across as a little harsh and distant when you first meet me, but when you get to know me I am the opposite of that. Once a person has multiple interactions with someone they are able to form a new and more guided opinion of them. They form opinions based on multiple interactions and therefore those opinions are more credible. Yet, even after having many interactions you cannot truly know what a person is like or whether your view of them is correct or not. This is why we form relationships, in an effort to become closer to people and solidify our conceptions of them.

This lends itself to the college atmosphere where everyone thinks they know everything about everyone and where gossip runs through campus like blood through your body. This is not to say that all gossip is bad. Gossip can have its good points. It is a good way to get people involved and interested. Most people do not realize how much gossip invades their life. They start forming opinions about people they have never even met or changing opinions about friends without verifying their facts. This is a rule I like to call “Facts Not In Evidence”. Court cases are primarily based on evidence and when “facts” are brought up that are not previously in evidence they are objected by “facts not in evidence”. That is what I call a situation in which a person alters his or her perception of someone based on “facts” that they themselves have not verified.

Most of what I just described was started in high school and when you get to college it is stepped up a notch and refined. This is not to say that college is nothing but gossip and false image. College is a time to expand your mind to the world around you. It is a time to experience all that you can in a short amount of time. College can be the most rewarding time in your life or it can be the worst experience of your life. I personally believe the reason most people hate their jobs is because of the way they got their job, whether it be because they had no choice and needed the money or be it coming off of a bad college experience. The reason I believe this is because the people who truly love there jobs are not doing it because they need the money and they are not doing it because they went to school for it. They are doing it for the pure enjoyment of it. That’s all anyone is looking for out of life. College is a big part of most people’s lives and most people will never truly appreciate everything they learned in school in or out of the classroom.

“The moral of the story” is that if you let the little things (gossip) get to you, you will end up miserable.

Posted by Daniel Smith at 3:40 AM | Permalink | Comments (0)

For the first two years of my college career I did not own a car. For the last 8 months now I have had a car with me and I hadn’t seen much difference in my lifestyle until this past weekend when I lost my car for two weeks (due to repairs). I have found myself missing my car more than ever, which has made me re-evaluate my need for the car. I had originally gotten the car so I could travel to and from work, but I now use it for more than just that and I really don’t need to.

The point of this is that while the simplest things can make you realize the error of your ways. I drive way too much and waste way too much money on gas. I am now appreciating not having a car and will hopefully be able to do a better job of cutting down on its use when I get it back.

This Car post is more than just about cars, it is about life and how we take things for granted. We all need to learn to slow down and appreciate what we have. If we don’t we will wear out too fast.

Posted by Daniel Smith at 2:52 PM | Permalink | Comments (0)

I was always under the impression that the busy time of year came when I was preparing for finals or working on a major paper, but I have recently found out that the busy time of year is when you have a billon little things eating away at your time. The more you try to juggle them around, the more they keep falling off. There is a point where you need to cut your losses and work with fewer things to juggle.

The problem that I face every time is that I don’t want to drop anything and I feel as though I let people down when I do. However, sometimes you have no choice but to do it and hope for the best. This is one of those times.

Posted by Daniel Smith at 2:52 PM | Permalink | Comments (0)

Procrastination-

Many say that the reason we don’t get things done is because of procrastination and I believe that is true to an extent. The dictionary defines to procrastinate as delaying an action, which would agree with the popular definition of procrastination. However, I believe that it is much deeper than just putting off an action; it involves what is behind the action of putting off.
If I were to put off a paper for science until the night before it was due, there is a reason. It could be caused by a myriad of things including not knowing the subject or just being so busy that I had no time to write it. One may say that these are just excuses for my procrastination, but excuses often have a grain of truth or what we think of as truth. I may have been so busy that I chose to prioritize the other things I had to do before this paper or I may not have known the subject so I spent extra time researching it so I would be prepared to write it. Or maybe I was just too lazy to do the paper on time. Any way you look at it, it is more than just the fact that I delayed the action it was the reason I delayed the action.
So at this relaxing and calm time of the year, why do I speak of procrastination? It goes back to the promise of a new semester and the reflection on the semesters past. Reflecting on what has happened and what is to come. We all need to realize the mistakes of our past actions and look to correcting or at least not repeating them in the future.
Procrastination is one of the biggest mistakes a student can make. It can ruin a semi-perfect semester by putting you weeks behind. Procrastination has, at times, plagued my college existence. The parental view of there children is a view of productivity and timely-ness, but it is far from true and every college student struggles with balancing there newfound freedom. The freedom most college students find themselves with can cause many issues. One of those issues is procrastination. In college there is no one telling you when or how to do your work. Yes, there are guidelines that will guide you to what the professor wants. But, as a whole you have sole responsibility for you success or failure in college. Manny freshmen students find it difficult to find there groove and end up with poor grade the first year. I was one of those people. I did not do well the first year because I was unable to get a good grasp on my new found freedom. I ended up with a 2.0 my first semester and only a 2.3 my second. This GPA caused me to loose my small, but important, academic scholarship.
Now I am in no way telling you all this so you will be scared and feel unequipped to handle the stresses and joys of college. I am saying this in hopes of having all of you take a lesson from my experiences, which is the reason I write this blog. In my second year of college I realized that I no longer wanted to be a culinary student and switched to the exploratory studies path. I started taking classes with the sole purpose of trying to figure out what I want to do with my college career. By the end of my second year I had decided on graphic design and started working with a new advisor to figure out what classes I should be taking. The staff in the academic advising office helped me immensely with the challenges I faced in switching majors. All in all I believe that my college experience has been the most rewarding experience of my life and I truly enjoy my time here.
In my second and third years I have made a complete 180 in terms of grades and social interaction. Since I switched majors the first time, I have not had a semester under a 3.2 GPA. This has allowed me to be an active member of many clubs and organizations. I have hit a high point this year with being part of six clubs and organizations. The most important of which include Radio SNHU, The Observer, The Enterprise Yearbook, and the LTI program. Through these and other organizations I have been able to grow my leadership and personal style.
The many organizations I participate in have helped me conquer the strange mistress of procrastination by developing my personal organizational and leadership style. My grades have improved and for the first time this semester I have attained a spot on the deans list. My achievements in academics have only been possible through my involvement on campus and I am grateful for all of the encouragement and support that the staff and faculty on this campus has given me.
So to wrap up what has become an incredibly long posting I will say this. When looking at procrastination and the past mistakes of your academic career always know that there is an underlying reason for it and the is always someone willing to help you find your groove!

Posted by Daniel Smith at 9:29 PM | Permalink | Comments (0)

Posted by Daniel Smith at 2:31 AM | Permalink | Comments (0)