Well, I could be wrong, but I believe diversity is an old, old wooden ship

Last Thursday I went to see Ron Paul in the Great Hall of the Memorial Union. I figured this would be a good event for me to go to because I really needed to attend one and he will probably receive my vote when election time comes around.

Ron Paul is a physician, congressman, and presidential candidate from Texas. He advocates for a dramatic reduction in the size of the government and a return to our constitutional principles. He is currently second in most major polls for the Republican nomination. I believe that he is bringing the right mindset to the table.

Being that he really wants to reduce the size of the government, he wants to slash the Federal Reserve and Departments of Education, Homeland Security, Health and Human services, among others. I don't agree with the cutting of some of these such as the Department of Education and Homeland Security, but I do not feel these actions would actually pass a vote.  Paul is all for giving the states all rights that aren't explicitly given to the national government, but I'm really not sure the state governments are ready for this undertaking.

While I applaud Paul for his mindset and thinking that our country needs a major overhaul, I don't think we need to go quite as far as he wants. Nor do I think any Congress would allow this, no matter who has the political majority.  I feel that he has the potential to really turn things around, even if some of his ideas are somewhat drastic.

How I've grown and what I've learned

When I got to college, all of the experience I had was from high school.  While in high school, I didn't really have any responsibilities, I had somebody there to help guide me the whole way.  Here, the Hixson program somewhat stepped into that role, but not near as much as what I had before. I wasn't used to doing a lot of homework or studying, but I quickly learned that I needed to change that right away.  I didn't really have any good studying habits because I just didn't have to do it.  The classes in high school were easy enough that if I did the homework I could easily get an A in the class.  Here it is completely different, from the classroom environment to the way I study and do my homework.

Since arriving at college, I have had way more homework and studying to do compared to high school.  I have learned how to study better and how to get homework done, regrettably I didn't put enough time into this class and I am now going back and doing these blogs I blew off before.  That has helped me grow as a student.  I have also had to learn to manage my time better because I have more homework and studying to do.  I feel attending a major university really helped in my maturing process.  Overall,  I have grown as a person and a student because of college, which I feel will only continue.

What the Hixson means to me

The Hixson Award means a lot to many people.  I was almost certain that I was going to attend Iowa State, but receiving the news I had been awarded this scholarship sealed the deal.  I had been getting to the point that I was sure it had been awarded to somebody else. One day I came home from school and began my normal routine of sitting down on the couch and turning Sportscenter on and relaxing when all I could hear was my mother yelling uncontrollably from the kitchen as she was opening the mail.  Coming from a family where it is a question of whether or not there will be enough money to last the month, it meant a huge deal receiving this scholarship.  I appreciate the fact I was picked because it is nice to know there is someone who cares enough to help me further my education.  It might not seem like I really cared as I slacked when it came to doing these blogs, but this scholarship has been a huge influence on my and the way I look at things now.  I made sure to give it my all in every single one of my classes, just to try and fulfill my part of our groups GPA goal.  It is probably one of the best awards and scholarships I will ever receive, I is a huge honor to have been selected and I have met some of the coolest people since I moved to Ames.  The only thing left to say is thank you Christina Hixson and everyone else for giving me the chance to further my education.

Social Media Week

For this blog's topic, we were to do a week of social media postings. We had the options to choose Twitter, Facebook, LinkedIn, do a youtube video, or create a website portfolio. I wasn't necessarily excited about this project because I didn't see much benefit to it.  This view defiantly changed after completing this assignment.

For social media week i choose to use Facebook.  I choose Facebook because I already had an account and I need to finish it quickly.  I found ten companies and articles related to my field of study, which is Mechanical Engineering.  I choose companies from NASA to John Deere.  There are a lot of companies that need Mechanical Engineers and there are a lot of different rolls an engineer could play while working for a company.  I learned that Facebook and other social media sites can be helpful in finding a job that you would like.  They allow you to view a company without having to visit them on site.

These types of social media can be bad in some ways.  If there are pictures of you not doing the right thing or if you had an inappropriate status at some point, companies could see these pictures or statuses and decide to choose another candidate over you simply because they would not want you representing their company.  I learned that you need to know how to use a lot of different types of social medias and know what is out there about yourself.  After the start of this I went through and cleaned up my accounts, going back over a year and seeing some of the mistakes I had made since the creation of my accounts.