portfolio assignment and other FML moments

So. You guys all know that I was completely stressed out last week because of all the work I had to do, right? Well, last week is gone and I finished all the papers that were due, but this week has been stressful too. You know what? I'm beginning to think that people should like, hire me to worry about things for them - apparently I'm the queen of being stressed out all the time! :)

Anyway, so I was super excited about this week because I knew it was a chance for me to de-stress and just chill a little bit, and I was. Then my computer crashed. And I lost everything. All my work on those three papers. All my work for my portfolio. All three of the papers that were due last week were only drafts...final copies are to be turned in later. Not only that, but I also lost all the research that went into all of those papers.

I have, no, HAD all my documents separated into folders by class. Whenever a paper was assigned for a class, I would create a folder within that class folder specifically for that paper, then within that paper folder would be folders for research, notes, and different parts of the paper. So when my computer crashed I lost everything. Pictures, music, contacts, calendars...and only my entire career as a student. So no big deal, right? Anyone see a cliff for me to jump off of? Just kidding!!! It's just been one (well, 2 or 3) of those weeks where if something can go wrong, it has. But, at the risk of sounding like a really bad Destiny's Child song, I'm a survivor(:

And, because I'm a survivor I'm in the library now, trying to make up for all the lost stuff for my portfolio. Such a great night ahead of me! Gotta jump off now guys.

Peace and love,

Caitlin

argument paper

So I finished my argument paper today, thank God. Now I have 2 more papers to do. One is due tomorrow (Wednesday) and the other is due Friday. I'm just so tired. I'm worn out, physically and emotionally. Something's gotta break soon.

Anyway...about my paper. I'm happy that I did it the way I did it. I wrote my argument, then I wrote the counter-argument and then I finished up. It's like 8 pages long, which I'm damn proud of(: All I have to do is put my folder together, which means doing my self evaluation letter, but that's about it. I had fun doing this paper once I started writing. I think the most fun I had while writing was when I found evidence for my argument and evidence for the counter-argument in the same chapter of Kirkpatrick's book. I love doing stuff like that. Maybe I should go to law school.

Peace and love,

Caitlin

stress overload...

Soooooo I'm seriously on overload right now. I have 5 papers and on some of them I don't even know where to start. Some of them I can't find enough research so I feel like I'm going to get a bad grade, and I'm such a Type A personality that I'm anal about everything being perfect all the time. Which sucks. And I'm freaking out because I lost my iPhone. Someone needs to like, shoot me and hang me from a tree. Just kidding, not really. But damn. Anyone ever had that kind of day?

Peace and love,

Caitlin

Google and other things...

So I got bored today and Googled Facebook. Want to know how many results I got? 5,030,000,000. That's over 5 billion results. That's a lot. Quite frankly it's a little ridiculous. Then I Googled Barack Obama and only got 70,000,000 results.

You know what I noticed? how we are taking nouns and turning them into verbs. Like Google and Facebook. They're nouns, but we constantly say "Google it!" or "Let me Facebook them." It never ceases to amaze me how the English language is constantly evolving.

Can you guys tell I'm bored? I don't really have much to say right now. It's time for me to start getting ready for class. I've been watching a movie called Carolina Moon this afternoon and this woman's boyfriend gave her a puppy and it is the CUTEST little dog I've seen in a long time. I want a puppy soooooo bad!!! Gotta run!

Peace and love,

Caitlin

argument topic, revised

So I've been thinking about it, and I don't think I should limit my paper to just tagging in pictures. I think I want to expand it to include tagging in status updates and wall posts, as well.

I think that expanding my topic will give me more to right about, because quite frankly I was kind of worried about length for this paper. I haven't found much research, though. And that worries me :( I'm not really sure what to do about that part of it. I guess I just have to keep looking. I wonder what I'll be able to find in terms of newspaper articles and such. I don't know. I'll keep thinking about it.

Peace and love,

Caitlin

Argument topic

So I think I'm going to do my argumentative essay on whether or not Facebook users should be able to give permission when being tagged. Like, if my roommate takes a picture of me and uploads it, I think I should get a notification from Facebook asking whether or not I allow this tag. Granted, if people don't want others to see them doing stupid stuff they really shouldn't do stupid stuff. I just think that it would protect a person's privacy a little bit better.

I have a friend who was at a party, and she was drinking. She's my age, 18. She's in a sorority at another school, but before she was initiated the sisters in the house were watching the initiates-to-be like hawks. Anyway, she was caught by the sisters and her initiation was put off because the image she was reflecting to the house wasn't the image that the sisters wanted. She was bringing a bad reputation, and the sisters were finding out about it because she was tagged in pictures.

I'll look into this a little further and let you guys know what I found out.

Peace and love,

Caitlin

Facebook addiction

So I've heard that you can get addicted to Facebook. When I first heard that I thought to myself, "This is ridiculous." But after doing some reading, I've thought more and more that maybe it isn't so ridiculous. Maybe it's a little more scary that ridiculous.

 http://articles.cnn.com/2009-04-23/health/ep.facebook.addict_1_facebook-page-facebook-world-social-networking?_s=PM:HEALTH

It shocks me that people can honestly become obsessed to the point of ignoring their child or jobs or even jeopardizing their marriages for something as silly as Facebook. Yes, it has become an integral part of our culture – connecting millions of people worldwide, starting revolutions – but honestly it's just a pretend world. It's a way for people to escape the daily harshness we have to face in real life. But come on, people. At the end of the day, you still have your responsibilities here, not in cyberspace.

Peace and love,

Caitlin

Facebook Chat and police

http://www.bradenton.com/2011/02/11/2949112/facebook-chat-leads-to-police.html

When I was a sophomore, I went to a national conference in Washington, D.C. that taught all its participants about national defense and security. So all week we (the students) were going to different seminars and places to learn about diplomacy, national policy, etc. I got to go to the Danish Embassy and the State Department building. It was pretty cool. Anyway one night there were different sessions we could go to that had speakers from different agencies, and I went to the one that had the representative from the FBI. She told us that if we were talking to someone on AIM and we wrote "I'm going to kill the President" then we would have FBI agents on our doorstep within 48 hours. I thought that was pretty neat.

So it kind of surprised me a little (and took me back 4 years) to see in this article that because a kid made a threat on Facebook Chat he was taken into the police station the next day and questioned about the threat of taking a weapon into school.

It wasn't like anyone was monitoring Facebook Chat or anything. The guy got into a fight with his ex girlfriend and her sister, and ended up making a threat about taking a weapon to school the next day and the girl's sister showed the message to her mother, who then called the school.

It just amazes me how technology can hurt people so badly that they would make threats like that. He wasn't really going to take anything to school, he was just angry at the girl for posting what she'd said about him and then saying he wasn't man enough to do anything about it. Anyway...so this tells me that no matter what your temper may be, you should never say anything you don't mean online. Or ever, really. But especially online, because once you do it's out there forever. It cannot be deleted, and honestly, it can come back and bite you badly.

Peace and love,

Caitlin

FB Career Chat

http://money.usnews.com/money/careers/articles/2011/02/09/facebook-chat-tuesday-ask-your-job-search-and-career-questions

So I found this article that says that Tuesday, February 15 people can go to a FaceBook and talk about any questions they may have about their jobs. I think that's pretty cool. My guess is it will be a live discussion, so I will be a lot like an online Q&A session. Very cool, if you ask me.

Peace and love,

Caitlin

Facebook Ads

So one of the ads that showed up on my page was titled "White Collar's 36 Hours". It was some game you can play on usanetwork.com. I got this ad because one of the pages that I "liked" under television is White Collar.

The other three ads on my page were titled "French Language & Culture"; "Spring Break 2011"; and "Are you classic or edgy?". Honestly I have no idea why I got these. I looked through pages I have "liked" and I didn't see anything at all that connected to these. The only thing I can possibly think of is the fact that there was a period of about two weeks last semester when my roommate and I would do nothing but take quizes on Facebook, so I think that is where the ad for "Are you classic or edgy?" came from. The others I have no idea.

Maybe the Spring Break 2011 came because I always Google Hilton hotels in places like Hawaii because I've already decided that when I get married I want to honeymoon in a honeymoon suite in a Hilton in Hawaii.

I'm not really sure what made Facebook choose those ads for me.

Peace and love,

Caitlin

FB Chat vs. Skype: What is better?

In my opinion, Skype is better. Why? Because you can talk to people without having to be their friends. You can video chat. You can easily search for people. Sooo my question is this: What experiences have you guys had with FB chat and Skype?

I guess the friend thing is because FB was made to be private. I don't really know if Skype was made to be private or not. Yeah, they have privacy settings, but they also have ways for people to get in touch with you without seeing your profile. Like, if your availability is set to SkypMe then you're going to get a lot more IMs than if your setting is on Online or Away or something like that.

I like being able to video chat with people. The other night I had to spend the night at my parents' house, and I got on Skype (from an app on my phone) and called my roommate and we video-chatted for a little while without having to use my phone minutes. That was pretty cool. Of course, if I hadn't been connected to WiFi it would have made my cellphone bill astronomical because of the use of the 3G data network, but whatever. I only used my cell phone because my laptop never gets Internet at my parents' house.

As for searching for people, it's really easy. All you have to do is type in the person's name, Skype name, phone number, etc. Then an itemized list comes up with possible matches. Like FB, the search comes up with different people and tells you the person's Skype name, maybe their name if their privacy settings haven't blocked it, and maybe where they're from, again if they haven't set their privacy settings to not show where they're from. Now that I'm thinking about it you actually have the option of putting where you're from in your profile at all when you create your account.

I'm Skyping with a friend of mine right now, actually. We are videoing and giving each other tours of our rooms :)

Gotta go, guys. Until next time,

Peace and love,

Caitlin

Facebook and football

This talks about a guy who was recruited by one university and then switched to another because he was annoyed by people on Facebook. Then he was being talked about because he switched - also on Facebook. This just goes to show that with sites like Facebook a personal decision is NEVER personal anymore...even if you don't put it on, someone else will. This poor kid went through a nightmare just trying to figure out where he wanted to go to school.

Why is it that people have decided that everything is their business? Also, what gives them the right to speculate about another person's life, or about his mother's life? Stuff like this just irritates me to no end. The decisions one person makes are not the business of the rest of the world until that person decides to make his or her choices known. Even then, going so far as to say that he switched because of a family connection? Not only is that lame, it's low.

Check out the link:

http://rivals.yahoo.com/highschool/blog/prep_rally/post/Top-recruit-quits-Facebook-following-living-nig?urn=highschool-313954

Peace and love,

Caitlin

Core 412 vs. Core 122

So I was in Core today and we were talking about slavery and whether or not it was right or wrong and how it was defined and protected in the Constitution. One of my classmates pointed out that to Hitler and his followers, what they were dong by persecuting millions of people because of religion was right, even though to the rest of the world it was wrong. After he made that comment, I said "Well, when it comes to right and wrong there is no correct answer. There is no black and white because it's all about perspective." Well, my professor looked at me and said, "Well, this is not Core 412 this is Core 122." I just wanted to cry I was so embarrassed. In my head I was like, "Did I really just get yelled at for making an observation?"

Was I wrong to say that? I'll never know. Oh well. Time for Communications homework. Yay.

Peace and love,

Caitlin

school...classes...stress...

So I've been feeling really restless and stressed out lately. Some to do with classes, but a lot to do with other stuff...

Anyway the last few times I felt restless like this I did some pretty stupid stuff. For example, I helped my friends break into our high school at 2 in the morning and set 700 crickets loose in the halls. Well, more specifically the freshman hall. Then the time after that I got my nose pierced. Then I dyed my hair like, 5 times this summer.

So I think the lesson that I've learned from all that is that I need to find a healthier way to work off all this pent-up stressful energy I have. I'm just not quite sure how. As much as I wish it were it's not something I can channel into classes or schoolwork. I wish I could do that but I can't because when I have all this restless energy I just feel like I need to not be cooped up anymore. It just makes me feel like I need to go out and do something – hence the nose-piercing and hair-dying.

I don't know...honestly I wish I could just jump on a horse right now and ride. I can forget everything when we (me and the horse) just fly. There's no better high in the world (not that I've ever been high, I just can't imagine anything that can take a person to a higher state of euphoria than that).

Maybe I'll figure out something to do with myself soon. I hope so. I just no that I can't wait for the shoe to drop anymore.

Peace and love,

Caitlin

not sure what to call this one

What do you do when you want to trust someone but they did something really crappy to lose your trust to begin with? And then, when you do trust them again, what if you find something out that blows that trust again? But, what if you found that piece of information in a manner that also betrays trust? Should you confront the person about it or try to keep the peace and forget you ever found what you found? But how can you, when that piece of information is vital? Kind of at a loss for what to do.

The Social Network review...

Hey guys, here's a link to a review of "The Social Network". For the record, I completely agree with it. :)

http://www.rottentomatoes.com/m/the-social-network/

Hope you all enjoy!

Peace and love,

Caitlin

Kodak moments...

Soooo when I got back to Queens from Spencer (my hometown) on Sunday night I was really excited because I had found my Kodak EasyShare printer and that meant I could print out my pictures here! Well I tried to set it all up and it wasn't working :( so I went to bed that night really disappointed.

Then tonight (1:45 a.m. on January 26, to be exact) I was doing some writing before I went to bed because it helps me relax. It's really quiet in my room, and next thing I know my roommate shoots straight up and yells "CAIT!!!!!" and makes me jump 10 feet in the air she scared me so badly.

Anyway she wanted to tell me she had figured out how to make the Kodak printer work because she saw it in a dream, or something like that (I wonder if that makes her psychic?). Anyway, after shaking it, slamming it down on the desk, a little more shaking, and a paper jam we finally figured out how to get it working :) it is now 2:30 in the morning...nearly an hour after we started this little adventure of ours.

I'm going to go print pictures now!

Peace and love,

Caitlin

Fight or flight?

When we're faced with conflict we have two options: fight or run away. So what do we do?

Look at a relationship, for example. What happens if you are crazy about someone – crazier than you ever thought you could be about anyone – but the world wants you to be apart? Do you fight for what – or who – you love or do you take the easy way out? Everyone wants to say that they would fight for what they believe in. But let's face it, we wouldn't all do that. And to me, that's such a shame.

"What's worth the prize is always worth the fight" - Nickelback
"Nothing good ever does come easy/ no, nothing good ever comes without a fight" - Everclear

We are surrounded by the idea that love is something that should be fought for no matter what happens. It's going to be hard, but it's going to be worth it. My best friend once told me that if you're right about something, then you have to take a stand for it.

I'm not really sure where this madness came from tonight guys. I could hear my roommate watching The Notebook and it just made me start thinking about this. I guess I tend to hold on to something until I have time to sort it out in my head, and tonight I kind of used this as my organization tool to figure it out for myself. What happened with Ali and Noah gives me hope. That even after years apart, after Ali's parents ripping her away from the man she loved, they were still able to find a way to be together. It's a great story. But is it really possible to have the fairy tale ending with such difficult odds? I have to believe that the answer is yes. I have to believe it otherwise I lose hope.

Peace and love,

Caitlin

Facebook...what's the big deal?

Don't get me wrong, I like having a Facebook account. But am I the only one out there who thinks it's a little scary that something like this could become so popular so fast? Kirkpatrick says that after only a month of existence, Facebook had over  10,000 users. 10,000. That may not seem like such a big number right now, but think about it...10,000 users in just one month? And it was growing exponentially, adding new schools almost every day.

I don't have a problem with Facebook. I don't want people to think that I do. That's not it at all. I'm just completely in awe of how something like this could turn into such a pop culture phenomenon almost literally overnight. I don't understand the logistics of it, and I'm not claiming to by any means. It just makes me wonder...is our generation really this susceptible to trends? I know, I know, I have a Facebook account. I never claimed to be above it. In fact, I only got it because no one got on their MySpace account anymore. I knew that I needed to get a Facebook if I were going to stay in the loop about everything.

I gotta run guys. I'm going to give this some more thought and maybe ask around a little bit, starting with you all: How do you guys think Facebook became so popular? Maybe the more important questions is WHY?

Peace and love,

Caitlin

Visual Rhetoric

Ok so we talked about visual rhetoric in class on Tuesday. This is great for me because I LOVEEE political cartoons. I always think they're funny. However, I didn't choose a funny one to post because political cartoons wouldn't be the same today without the original cartoons...this one actually predates the American Revolution and proudly holds the title of first political cartoon.

In this picture, the persuasive message is that the colonies need to join together if they are to succeed in breaking free from the British. The intended audience is the American people, who were then British colonists about to fight - literally - for their freedom. Ben Franklin drew this and published it in his newspaper, The Pennsylvania Gazette. He was trying to unite the colonies because he knew that there is strength in numbers, and if the British had to fight a war from across the ocean then the colonists would have a fighting chance - but they had to be able to work together.

Hope you guys enjoy this and I hope you learned something!

Peace and love,

Caitlin

First entry...

So I've never really blogged that much (I'm embarrassed to say that my last blog was on MySpace - when it was still cool). Yes, I do keep a diary...when I remember to write in it, that is. My point is I've never really seen the point in blogging. Why would people put something online for the whole world to read and critique? Hey, if people enjoy it then more power to them. It just seems like it would be difficult to put a piece of yourself out there for everyone to read.

I basically made this blog as a class requirement, but maybe I'll actually get something out of it other than a grade. I guess we'll see, won't we? Until next time, all.

Peace and love,

Caitlin