Meeting on occasion

On my second day of being at school, before class had even started, I tried to switch from the hybrid class to a three times a week course. However, I was unsuccessful because there was no room in any classes not conflicting with my current schedule. I was originally bummed out because of this because I wanted to have more hand on learning and to meet and see more people on a regular basis. Now, after 4 weeks of classes I am thrilled that I was unable to switch out. Not only have I met some interesting people in my hour and a half a week, but I have also begun to open up my creative writing side. I love the freedom to do work at our own pace and witih our own sort of style. There have been few guidelines on our blog posts and even with project one I was able to narrerate in first person an event of MY choosing. Not anyone else's, but something I could actually draw up some credible arguments about.

So far in the hybrid english class the cirriculum has allowed me to expand my imagination and improve my creative writing skills as well as my basic writing skills. I couldn't have asked for more because this style of writing has been very helpful to me and the class environment is very relaxed and we are given many liberties to discuss our points of view and our styles of literacies.

Facebook Profiling

Honestly, I believe that facebook and other social networking programs are not making people more kind instead they are only making people appear more kind. Facebook is a superficial program in that all of its users know that their information will be broadcasted publically so everyone is aware of what to say and what not to say. If a friend of mine writes on my wall and asks how I am doing I am not going to ignore them. Instead i'm going to be nice and write them back because I dont want other people checking up on me and seeing that three days have gone by and I never wrote back to this person. Also in my opinion the best example of portraying kindness on Facebook is when someone reads on their homepage that it is so and so's birthday. They 9/10 times had no idea but because of this daily reminder they can pretend to be just as kind and wish someone they know well or barely even know a happy birthday just because they know everyone else is doing it.

Basically what I'm trying to say is it depends how you look at it. Sure your going to be kind to a friend who goes out of their way to say hello to you. But your also thinking in your mind everytime you do something on Facebook that others will see so I might as well give a good image of myself even if it is untrue. Most people kind or not, just want people to have a positive idea of the kind of person they are and what better way then to dispaly a perfect version of yourself online?

Probing Bb Vista

Is Drexel culture making us smarter? I guess in order to answer that it depends on your definition of smarter. My definition of smarter would basically be knowing something you didn't used to know that can be applied to real life situations. I would have to say I have definetely gotten smarter since I've been here. Not because of going to class five days a week, but the independent experiences you are forced to encounter everyday.

Since I've been away at school I have had to use and strengthen my problem solving skills to the extreme. An example of that would be using Drexel's online network system. It was a maze for over a week and now I sit down in my computer chair and navigate through the site with ease. I guess frustration set in first when we had to "register our computer." It took me forever to get logged on to the internet. But once I was on I realized that it wasn't so bad after all and the next time I would have to do something similar to that I would have no problems. How this relates to Johnson's theory this making us smarter is that we aren't used to being so independent. I never had to set up my own internet before. Because I had to do this on my own and pretty much everything done at drexel is alone I now am smarter. I would never have imagined my transfer into this university would go so quickly but becuase of my surroundings and all these introductions to modern technology I am becoming very self reliant and by result, smarter.
I am no more efficiant with the internet and installations, even better at following directions. All qualities that can be applied to everyday life.
I would definetly agree that Johnson does have a point when he talks about access to new things allows our new generations to learn and produce at a much faster pace and all my exposure to new things here so far is evidence of that.