It's been a handful of days since I actually did a post. The month is ending soon and June will be here soon. You better enjoy every moment of the summer you can. They say time flies when you are having fun. In this post, I will give a commentary or remarks on the articles that I shared this week. As you can see from previous posts, I have read a few good and interesting articles both from magazines and online news. They are among the other random articles that I read through the week. I can't say that the article on the Buket guy was a random act of kindness, but random acts of graffiti. It is interesting how daring he marked his signature on public transportation? Also, he decided to do a little decoration on the overpass. I don't think I am brave enough to go that far with my artistic skills that I lack. I am impressed with this type of art work to an extent. After all he vandalized property and is now facing the consequences. This could be a hobby for Buket or public property is his form of pen and paper. In one of the articles that I found worth reading in the first place , plus it talked about college education, comes from June's issue of the Atlantic Monthly. I only shared portion of the article, but I found it fascinating in the way that the professor who wrote the article shared with the readers that a college education is not for everyone. If it is not for everyone, then who is to have a college education? The writer talks about his perspective of teaching two English Composition courses. In my opinion, he talks about how one student lacks the requisite skills that are needed for the course. It generally a good idea to go straight into college during after high school so that you will have a continuing education without really having the worry of forgetting certain concepts. I'm not bashing older adults who want to go back to school after years of graduating high school, but there is a point where you should want to go back before you reach that age of being too old of returning to college. Getting a degree is easy for most and sometimes hard for others. You can also start with a community college and transfer to a university. It's all about the choices that you make that will change the smallest detail in your life. I didn't provide a link to the rest of the article on procrastination. Procrastination is not a good excuse to tell your boss or teacher if you have a report that is due or a big paper that you are putting off until the last minute. I think the article says it all. Though the entire article is not posted, it is a nice article to read and you could learn something from it. Instead of putting the "to do" list on the back burner, you should actually complete the items that you have to do that is on the list. I even procrastinate during my first year of college. I still procrastinate with the tasks I should be doing rather than just thinking about doing them. Thinking about doing a paper, house chore, or any other task is not going to get completed that way. We have to get off out lazy butt for a day and force ourselves to do something we intend to do, but we just are lazy! If you don't feel like doing anything it can be consider being lazy. Laziness and procrastination are two different things. I don't have much else to say on this subject. The word speaks for itself. On a personally note, I have been thinking about my changing my major. However, I wouldn't know what other major I would choose. I would mostly like stay an English major and have a minor or two. With this said, I have to keep these factors in mind as I start my second year this fall. College students, especially in their first two years, should find a major and stick with that one major since it will be difficult to change once they start the classes beyond the chosen degree.
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Email Picture YouTube "Buket" seen applying his moniker to an MTA bus in broad daylight as passersby and passengers watch in surprise. Authorities say 'Buket' is responsible for $150,000 in property damage in the L.A. area. By Andrew Blankstein, Los Angeles Times Staff Writer 2:13 PM PDT, May 27, 2008 » Discuss Article (73 Comments) "Buket" is one of Los Angeles' most prolific taggers -- but he doesn't exactly work in the shadows. The tagger is featured in several heavily viewed YouTube videos defacing signs and buses. His most popular video -- with nearly 170,000 page views -- shows him scaling an overpass of the Hollywood Freeway near Melrose Avenue and tagging the structure as traffic speeds below. 'Buket' YouTube video (Strong Language) Authorities say Buket's moniker had adorned hundreds of freeway overpasses, concrete walls and transit buses across the state and southern Nevada. He is believed responsible for upward of $150,000 in property damage along the Los Angeles River and in the areas patrolled by the Los Angeles Sheriff's Department. But sheriff's deputies said today that "Buket," whose real name is Cyrus Yazdani, could be out of commission for quite a while. The 24-year-old man was detained this morning when he showed up to meet his probation officer. He is expected to be booked on multiple charges of felony vandalism, sheriff's officials said. Law enforcement deals with hundreds of taggers across the city. But it is how and when Yazdani chooses to vandalize property that has earned him special attention from law enforcement, said Los Angeles County Sheriff's Sgt. Augie Pando. "It's blatant disregard for other people's property," Pando said. Rather than work clandestinely or under cover of darkness, sheriff's deputies say Buket prefers an in-your-face approach. Another daylight attack captured on video appears to show "Buket" applying his moniker to an MTA bus as passersby and passengers watch in surprise. The Internet, whether it's YouTube or social networking sites, is helping fuel a new explosion in graffiti tagging, albeit with editing and soundtracks. But investigators say it also is helping them build better cases against the vandals. Earlier this year, another prolific tagger, Gustavo Romero, was sentenced to a year in jail for etching his "Guser" moniker on dozens of Metro buses. Romero, 23, of South Los Angeles, caused at least $108,000 in damage to property over a two-year period. He pleaded guilty to 49 felony charges.
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Not many people know the history or background of the word procrastination. We all know what the word means. Sometimes we let it control ourselves. Other times we just left it control daily activities that are planned. I read this article from Slate.com and it is very interesting. I think it is interesting enough to share it with you. You can visit their web site for more articles on this topic since they did a special issue. Though this is not the entire article, only a portion, I'm sure you will gain extra knowledge from reading the history of this common, everyday term. Pro·cras·ti·na·tion How we got a word for "putting things off." By Ben Zimmer Posted Wednesday, May 14, 2008, at 7:01 AM ET Read more from Slate's special issue on procrastination. Pro·cras·ti·na·tion. How fitting that the word is lengthy and Latinate, taking its time to reach a conclusion. Alcoholics Anonymous founder Bill Wilson once wrote that procrastination is "really sloth in five syllables." And yet the word denotes so much more than mere sloth or indolence: A procrastinator meticulously organizing a sock drawer or an iTunes library can't exactly be accused of laziness. Likewise, procrastination is not simply the act of deferral or postponement. It implies an intentional avoidance of important tasks, putting off unpleasant responsibilities that one knows should be taken care of right away and setting them on the back burner for another day. The promise of "another day" is the key to the word's origin. It derives from the Latin verb procrastinare, combining the prefix pro- "forward" with crastinus "of tomorrow"—hence, moving something forward from one day until the next. Even in ancient Roman times, procrastination was disparaged: The great statesman Cicero, in one of his Philippics attacking his rival Mark Antony, declaimed that "in the conduct of almost every affair slowness and procrastination are hateful" (in rebus gerendis tarditas et procrastinatio odiosa est). When procrastinate and procrastination began appearing in English in the mid-16th century (a time when Latinisms were flooding the language, mostly via French), the words suggested the classical repugnance toward inaction at critical moments. But procrastination soon took on a dire new meaning: Christians used the term to remind sinners that postponing the repentance of one's wicked ways may lead to damnation. A 1553 sermon spoke of dire consequences for "he that doth prolong or procrastinate" the confession of sins, while a 1582 tract on "The Foolishness of Men" warned, "Take heed therefore, that by procrastinating repentance ... thou wittingly and of purpose, do not tempt the Lord." With the dawn of the Industrial Revolution, Christian moralism fused with commercial pursuits. Procrastination not only forestalled salvation in the next life but also the goal of financial well-being in this one. Thus the evils of procrastination worked their way into the oft-repeated adages of the new capitalist era. "Procrastination is the thief of time," wrote English poet Edward Young in 1742. A few years later, Philip Stanhope, the Earl of Chesterfield, penned the words: "No idleness, no laziness, no procrastination; never put off till tomorrow what you can do today." Ben Franklin is credited with a similar saying, mockingly transformed by Mark Twain into the procrastinator's motto, "Never put off until tomorrow what you can do the day after tomorrow." (Those who follow Twain's wry advice don't just procrastinate, they perendinate, a useful word meaning "to put something off until the day after tomorrow.")
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June 2008 Atlantic Monthly The idea that a university education is for everyone is a destructive myth. An instructor at a “college of last resort” explains why. by Professor X In the Basement of the Ivory Tower
Illustration by Marcellus Hall I work part-time in the evenings as an adjunct instructor of English. I teach two courses, Introduction to College Writing (English 101) and Introduction to College Literature (English 102), at a small private college and at a community college. The campuses are physically lovely—quiet havens of ornate stonework and columns, Gothic Revival archways, sweeping quads, and tidy Victorian scalloping. Students chat or examine their cell phones or study languidly under spreading trees. Balls click faintly against » bats on the athletic fields. Inside the arts and humanities building, my students and I discuss Shakespeare, Dubliners, poetic rhythms, and Edward Said. We might seem, at first glance, to be enacting some sort of college idyll. We could be at Harvard. But this is not Harvard, and our classes are no idyll. Beneath the surface of this serene and scholarly mise-en-scène roil waters of frustration and bad feeling, for these colleges teem with students who are in over their heads. I work at colleges of last resort. For many of my students, college was not a goal they spent years preparing for, but a place they landed in. Those I teach don’t come up in the debates about adolescent overachievers and cutthroat college admissions. Mine are the students whose applications show indifferent grades and have blank spaces where the extracurricular activities would go. They chose their college based not on the U.S. News & World Report rankings but on MapQuest; in their ideal academic geometry, college is located at a convenient spot between work and home. I can relate, for it was exactly this line of thinking that dictated where I sent my teaching résumé. Some of their high-school transcripts are newly minted, others decades old. Many of my students have returned to college after some manner of life interregnum: a year or two of post-high-school dissolution, or a large swath of simple middle-class existence, 20 years of the demands of home and family. They work during the day and come to class in the evenings. I teach young men who must amass a certain number of credits before they can become police officers or state troopers, lower-echelon health-care workers who need credits to qualify for raises, and municipal employees who require college-level certification to advance at work. My students take English 101 and English 102 not because they want to but because they must. Both colleges I teach at require that all students, no matter what their majors or career objectives, pass these two courses. For many of my students, this is difficult. Some of the young guys, the police-officers-to-be, have wonderfully open faces across which play their every passing emotion, and when we start reading “Araby” or “Barn Burning,” their boredom quickly becomes apparent. They fidget; they prop their heads on their arms; they yawn and sometimes appear to grimace in pain, as though they had been tasered. Their eyes implore: How could you do this to me? The goal of English 101 is to instruct students in the sort of expository writing that theoretically will be required across the curriculum. My students must venture the compare-and-contrast paper, the argument paper, the process-analysis paper (which explains how some action is performed—as a lab report might), and the dreaded research paper, complete with parenthetical citations and a listing of works cited, all in Modern Language Association format. In 102, we read short stories, poetry, and Hamlet, and we take several stabs at the only writing more dreaded than the research paper: the absolutely despised Writing About Literature. You can read more of the article by going to In the Basement of the Ivory Tower.
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This happened while I was gone to Ohio for summer vacation last year. I decided to be brave and go on another coaster for the second time in my life. I find that funny. I've decided to write a narrative from the top of my head about the experience. I know there are times when we all get scared to do the unimagined, but we have to face that fear and overcome it. Cedar Point is an awesome place to go with family and friends. An experience riding a rollercoaster with big, frightening drops made me think twice about riding another coaster. When I first stood in line, it was very long, but I ended up on the coaster in less than an hour. After I had stood in line as long as I did, I was excited about riding the rollercoaster. However, When I finally got my change to take my seat, I wanted to get off. Instead, I decided that I was going to stay on it. Finally, the ride left the station, and I was excited. I sat in the seat, and the first drop came; I scream. This ride scared me as it went up and down the wood tracks, In seconds, the ride was over, and I hopped out of my seat. Although it was frightened from the ride, it turned out to be a fun experience for me.
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· Webster Dictionary defines personality as “the quality or fact of being a particular person; personal identity; individuality.” · A member of an organization who holds a position of the executive board of an organization must have a distinct personality, but a moral one. A person in leadership holds the responsibility of making sure that his or her organization serves with a purpose. You want to have leader who is in the right frame mind to be able to take any position of the board of any organization. · A role in an organization links to the expectations of how a person performed within a group or organization. The outcome of the role whether good or bad reflects the person who has a certain role. Ex: the president of an organization must act as a leader with an open mind in taking all suggestions by members and deciding what is best for the organization. The president must not just use the skill he or she may have that maintains the qualification of the positions, but he or she must also influence the other board members as well as the members of the organization. · One way to help improve and organization is to make sure the leaders are in good condition. You do not want anyone to just be a vice president who wants to be the president by out doing the leader himself or herself or a terrible treasurer who can not keep up with the amount of money being spent and donated. One issue that is going on today is finding and training more people to become leaders.
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In this country, on a broaden perspective that are goals and documents set out to help everyone near and far. There are also plans that are more personally and sought out on a smaller scale. These documents may be written out by a person, a group of people, or they can be written out for a business. This compact is something that is called a manifesto. A manifesto can be written for different reasons whether it is a goal to life, or if there is a need for a change, and even if its something that help us political wise. The manifesto, in general, can motive in some way or another to expand our ideas and broaden the horizon of building a better society and change communities to reach for the goal of teamwork. A manifesto can be a plan to change our view of the world, a document that will allows everyone to get up and do something about an issue that is very important in their lives. This manifesto is a combination of my thoughts, ideas, and how I feel about the today’s modern society. - Diversity is among us everyday. Everyone is from a different ethic group. Accepting the fact that we go about our everyday lives with multicultural people is a good advantage to broaden the scope of accepting people into our lives, work, and school environment. I believe that we all should take the time to get to know each other outside of our race. Accepting diversity and culture is important. If someone refuses to associate with other people other than there “own people”, that person is on the road to discrimination. Diversity helps build up a friendly, sustainable community for everyone to enjoy. Not only will acceptance of diversity into our lives will help us on a personally level, but it will also give way to a better government.
- Going to school from elementary to graduating high school and going off to college is a standard path in life. Most people are playing a big part of our education while others really do not care. The future of education will be in the hands of future leaders. Education is like a button on a coat. It is something everyone needs to make it through today’s world. Everyone should care about education, the schools, the teachers, and just the concept of being educated will be like in a few years. As we all know that a mind is a terrible thing to waste.
- Being a better person is a good thing. Everyone can not be perfect nor can they be a stuck up aristocrat. I believe in just enjoying life to the fullest. If parents see that their children are happy, then it should be taken that they should be happen as well for their children. I believe that when everyone else is happy or I have done something to make them happy it makes me a better person to know that I have affected them in a certain way. In other words, we need leaders. Leaders that will lead others to better themselves whether it is personally or within the community. Leaders are to set examples so we call be become decent people and go through the process of changing lives, or if not changing the, influence of changing something from a bad habit to a good one.
No matter what we do in life we should learn how to become a better person. Yes, there will be the good days and the days where we are not ourselves, but we should not give up. Building a better society is a goal that should be throughout thoroughly. Not everyone will have the same ideas, but at least they will be set on the same mind frame of doing something positive improve our global community. My manifesto is a bit long, but the goal is to express what I think and feel to everyone that there is a time to become a team and realize that there is work that must be done.
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Through reading a novel or play we can begin to understand a character and the message that the writer of that particular writing piece is sending us as the reader. Not only is there a message to be told, but we should be able to come to a clear definition when we have to relate a character in our personal life. Sometimes we can go further into the describing the dramatic character and how he or she is different, but yet, similar to us in multiple ways. Furthermore, to narrow the relations of a dramatic character to how he or she relates to me, I will say that this chosen person is Medea in the provoking play Medea by Euripides. In this play Medea goes through some personal problems. She is jealous because her relationship with Jason did not go so well and it started to fall to pieces. She seeks out revenge on his new girlfriend. As the story goes on she plots to hill the Creon and Glauce. Overall, Medea is trying to achieve the goal of hurting Jason by killing their two boys. If I was in Medea’s place and Jason was a young lady, I think I would have treated this situation in a different way. Instead of killing people and going insane, going to talk to the mother of the children will be best. Violence will not solve anything; more so it will be a bad influence on the children. If talking it out between each other, then going our separate ways will be best. If my heart got broken, I would take time out to recover, but I will move on and let the past be the past and just think about the future. In this play, I think Medea had one interesting relationship with each character. For example, she loved her children dearly. On the other hand, she also loved Jason, but that feeling inside her wanting to seek revenge. I think she is like most women these days that goes on a killing spree to murder someone without cause. Aegeus is comes and be a hero to Medea by offering her to stay in Corinth. Knowing that Medea committed a crime, I would want to flee to another state or leave the country. To continue on with relationships, the nurse is trying to help Medea and give her advice. From her point-of-veiw, Medea has a cruel mood and a dangerous woman. I can’t seem myself relating to Medea since I am not a person with such mood or spirit as she possess. The communication with the Chorus should have been handled a different way than what Medea responded. I can relate to her on this part because sometimes I’m hardheaded and do not listen to anyone when they are trying to help me with a problem. Though I have not been in a relationship with anyone, I don’t think Medea and I have anything similar when it comes to thinking and having a well though out plan for seeking revenge. To this end, I have not been in a big circumstance that would put myself or another person at danger. I guess that is something that is a difference between me and the character. I can say that Medea does not really have any friends. Though the writer does not go in depth about them, however, I don’t have many friends. I don’t think it is good to have too many friends since you can’t really be with them all at once. What I’m saying is that this point or matter in life is important. If the dramatic had closer with the current people she knows or builds them up with her mother, than she probably would not want to seek revenge. Simply getting a divorce is better than killing people because they are with the love of your life. That is just making herself appear to be insane. Though we call can relate to a dramatic character, I think I could best relate myself to Medea since she shows one aspect of her personality shown in my life.
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The play Animal Farm deals with animals and their revolution to overtake the human mankind. The theme is centered on animalism, the corruption of an organized union of humans versus farm animals, and the concept of higher and lower class. This play involves the history and symbolism of the Russian Revolution. The main idea of this entire writing piece is the dream Old Major has that the animals of Manor Farm will be changed to Animal Farm as they rebellion against the humans in order to live in paradise. To make the dream a success, they must work hard to fix everything up and plan the windmill as support. The relationships between the animals and humans are like the relationships of friends and foes. The way the actors performed the play was in the third person unlike the actual text of the play. However, the play was along the same lines of the text. I will want to say that the actors presented the play in a better understandable way where the reader can see it on stage. At some point of the play, a couple of actors appeared as if they were over acting or not really acting in harmony. I can say that the performance was like a story as the book in the sense of it was not like another play where you will actually relate to the actors and that the viewers were not watching people on stage. As I saw the actors go across the half emptied stage, the space could have been used more as the set had minimal props. During intermission, the stage was pitch black as the crew made minor adjustments and rather not major ones that could help better impose the action out the book into the stage. The way the actors were talking in third person ruin the way they could have better expressed the characters. It really threw off the relationships of Old Major, Snowball, and Napoleon, and Benjamin with the other animals. The way I saw the play is a support to the novel rather than just a substitute. Going back to the set, it was hardly any props on stage that could really show the audience that the animals were on a farm. The wooden fence and windmill was the only thing that actually caught my attention. If they had more directive actions to adding more interaction between characters, or actors, and the set, it would have met a better expectation of the audience. Though this may be the director’s decision or choice of a viewer, the actors were not dressed as actual animals. This could have been an interesting factor in the way the actors could have better performed their roles. The costumes looked ordinary except for the farmers and the pigs. The pigs were dresses different than the rest of the animals. The death of the animals was shown in the form of the lights. Since the animals were killed the, red lights shined onto the stage to set the mood of a dramatic scene. Each time the lights changed a different color, it set the mood of what was happening. Another example is when the brown lights were shined onto the stage as the pigs got drunk and was having happy hour. Most of the sound effects were typical such as a gun shot, or the actors stumping their feet to show that the animals were mad or ready to take charge towards the farmer. The sound effects were included into the play as regular sound effects and typical action scenes. Before the play began and people were coming into the theater, during the play and intermission, and after the play the music of the time period was played. It helped set the mood of what type of play will be performed. The upbeat songs were necessary of being a part of the performance in order to set the mood and get everyone comfortable. I can tell that the tone of the music was ushering in the play as a country theme or significant performance. Overall, every element mention or not mentioned in this critique helped this play be unique, but stay within the story content. Some changes can be done to this performance to make it better and meet audience expectations.
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When one person thinks about school assessment, they will probably come to the conclusion of student tests. Many questions arise when school officials are testing the students and figuring out what they have learned during the year. Teaching pattern is different from school to school. With this said, students will find out how much they know after they take the test. Most school educators are on the path of trying to restructure the education system. Every student learns the material that is taught in the classroom differently. Making higher standards to raise the bar of high expectation is slowly happening across many states. As years pass the curriculum will be different than the past education system. Reforming education may sound like drastic change since it is upgrading the standards to higher curriculum. Sometimes change can be good whereas the satisfied people will want everything the same. I will not say that changing the way students learn is bad. The No Child Left Behind Act has left out the cultural arts. Subjects such as social studies and science have been left out to only focus on mathematical and reading skills. In order to give a student a well-rounded, quality education, they should be taught everything to the fullest by the teacher. The No Child Left Behind could be used as an alternative curriculum rather than the one used by the local school district. Just bluntly saying the law signed by President Bush is outright wrong is not the right way to approach this issue. Giving out more assessments will help out if it is done in a good way. There is nothing wrong testing students to see how well did in given school year. The real reason to testing the students is to find out how to better prepare our students to be able to think critically and be success. To restructure the education system is to make changes that will benefit the students as well as students. If the parents are not trained or not active in their child’s academic life, than there are failing on their half of the game. Giving school assessments can be good to see how a school district is doing and if they need an improvement in a certain area. The issues that are going on in schools now are limiting the teachers to be able to take full control of teaching their students. Solving the other issues that are roadblocks in the way of a student to learn will help the focus of education. To reform the learning process includes the foundation. It should be sought out to find the mission statement in order to keep the focus on why students are in school and the learning goals. This is a good desire that is needed. Getting down to the basis of school assessment will help the American school system. Playing the blame game will not change anything nor will it help a problem come to a conclusion. Related Posts
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In Tara Parker-Pope's article in the health column, "College's High Cost, Before You Even Apply" and "The Burden of the College Admissions Process," talks about the stress of juniors and seniors in high schools dealing with stress in order to be accepted into one of their top picks colleges. She even asked three students in difference locations to discuss how they feel about applying to a college and how important it is to them to build up their application. In one of the articles, Phoebe Lett, a student from a boarding school in New Jersey, said something very valuable and meaningful that caught my attention. In response to the question by Parker-Pope, Lett says, "As I rack up as many extracurriculars, community service hours and “beneficial relationships” (college-prep speak for impressive recommendations), I can’t help but think that it’s not good enough. Better grades, higher scores, more varsity letters, more leads in the play: have I been bulking up an application that perhaps doesn’t reflect who I am, but instead just represents what a college wants from me? That is my true fear." The reason they this stood out because trying to earn community hours and participating in school is important to students as they are on the path to college. Some students do enough in order to get accepted whereas others do not really care. This student is wanting to go attend college, but the competitive schools and their qualifications are made to either get her through or get rejected. I remember when I applied to a university in St. Louis. They could not wait to get my ACT scores back; therefore they closed my account. On the other hand, I had enough qualifications and requirements to get accepted into the University of Memphis. I don't think that the university is a challenging school to get accepted. The question I may inquiry is what type of students they don't accept. My first year at college was stressful as I hurried to meet deadlines and eagerly make excellent grades to get more money. The medicine specialist Dr. Kenneth Ginsburg mentions that "parents can help children develop resiliency for coping with life’s ups and downs. The key, he says, is to teach them that their parents’ high expectations of them aren’t tied to grades or accomplishments. “It means teaching them, ‘I know who you are deep inside, and I always expect to see that compassion and generosity in you,’ ” says Dr. Ginsburg." To add my commentary, I will say that there are parents that set the bar of expectations for their child too high. Too high to where they will fail a course and will hide it from his or her parents because they will know the consequences for failing the course. Since they hide the fact that they failed, they will be afraid to tell their parents in order to please them and not feel like a horrible child and unloved. Getting accepted into college was anxious for me. I did all my high school work, made good grades, and kept a good enough GPA to show the people at the university that I wanted to be there and that they should accept me for being me and not out of any stereotypes. They should not be stressed out because of the application process or they don't have enough to complete the application, but they should relax. The last thing a student wants to do is to get sick or depressed if they are not accepted. When I got accepted and done with all the paperwork, I felt the burden go away. Now that I am in college, the mission is to pass all courses with excellence and get involved and just have fun. When it is all done there will be a career at the end of graduations waiting to be filled by me.
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