...it was about time

     The day has come, finally. During this whole semester I dreamed about this moment, the moment when I wrote this closing blog post. As you may have notice by the way I wrote on my posts I am not a writer neither a reader. At least not in the literary artistic sense because I do like to read other stuff. You may be asking why did I enrolled in this Journey, well I did because I had to. This has been a very demanding assignment, I had never wrote so much in my whole life.

When they told me I had to make a blog for this class

    I was waiting for this day since the day I had to open the gmail account. For me writing is not very attractive and I have never been prone to do so by myself. I come from a school that inculcates Science and mathematics from an early age. They did have a humanities program in which the more creative students had the opportunities to express them self and had the space to create. But I was not one of those students I was in the realm of science and mathematics from early on. Being so I like to learn and discover not create, because I don't believe you can create knowledge you can only discover it and make it available. The easy post were the ones I just needed to tell an experience like the tourist for a day one. The hard one were the ones I needed to read some piece of literature and write about some aspect of it. Those were a headache.

     So why did I enrolled in a class were I had to make a blog and write an average of 4.667 blog per month? Well I did int knew. But really I did int though it would be so hard and time consuming. One of the reasons I think this was so hard for me its because I have a structure of writing that was first establish in my 10th grade. This one was general, an essay. I remember that my first graded essay had to be a persuasive essay. I did it about the dangers of drinking sugared beverages, especially sodas. It was what we consider in Natural Sciences, tertiary literature, because it was an article based on other sources that were not necessarily primary literature which are papers published in Scientific Journals that have been subject to peer review. So then that structure was reinforced and molded to the scientific way of writing when I arrived to college. When I encountered with this project that the writing is based on non concrete things it was a shock to the structure on my head. I did not knew were to start how to organize the ideas. That's with out mentioning the creative and interactive part of it, making hyperlinks, making the page look pretty, adding images. This is something I don't even remember doing in high school and even less so in college. So when I though I was finished I had to go back and start to see what could I do to make my post look more interesting. That could easily take an hour.

     The great thing about this experience of making a blog post is that it is really practical and useful. This can be a great way to build an audience for some kind of business. I believe the greatest benefit I have gained from this is not the creative writing but the practical skill of having a blog and managing it. In today's world this is a great tool.

Every time I had no ideas for the blog post's.

On "A Small Place" by Jamaica Kincade

     A Small Place by Jamaica Kincade, talks about the Britain's colonizers in Antigua, during colonial times and about how they influenced in all aspects of the local culture like politics, economy, social and cultural traditions. Her tone is very sarcastic but with a littel bit of hate and anger in it. Essentially the writing is direct attack towards the colonizers. Completely normal I would say.

     As a Puerto Rican I can relate very easy with this writer. Being born it to one of the last colonies in the world puts me in the same place as this writer but I don't share all of her opinions and attitudes against my colonizer. But this was not always the case. In my house and my whole family are statehooders with means they agree with the American presence in the island and that they would like to become part of the republic. But since I can remember I was always more of a "Lefty" kind of guy the idea of indecency was always of great passion to me. The ideals of the Puerto Rican Nationalist's party and of the Independent party resonated with me and I always had something to say about the topic. Essentially I was OK with the facts that we were subject to the approval of another nation criteria in every aspect of our political, legal an economic themes the only one in which we had "freedom" was in our cultural aspect. I was one of this guys who always had something bad to say about the "yankees".

     But something happened when I entered college that little by little I started to change my mind. I think the big detonator was my Social Sciences class, yes this sounds like a paradox. The class that everybody takes and gets a little bit of communism into their head was the one I took and completely changed my point of view from a "fuck yankees" to a "yea if you could send a little more money that would be great". I am still in this debate about what do I want for my country and the fact that elections are coming soon puts a little more pressure but I guess that's part of it.

     Kincade exposes that the universities established by the English colonizers were biased and hat the education they provided did not resonate with the island cultural background. Now I am not very sure about how the UPR was founded but I'm pretty sure it was with gringo money and even more so today the university operates with mostly federal funds. So if the education were biased, winch is not, I would not be mad at all because they are the ones paying for it, the least they could expect is to receive some credit for it.

UPRRP Tower.

OAPI Students Activity

     This is a job to compensate for the Literary contest  awards I could not attend. I was not able to attend because I had already confirmed my participation in the OAPI Student Health and Well being
Fair. My participation was in collaboration whit the "Circle of Nutrition and Dietetics" which I am part
off. The activity was held in the Student center from 10:00 am to 1:00 pm. When I arrived at 10 we were assigned a table and some chairs for the display of our educational material. The other tables were
all ready filled with stuff and people were starting to arrive and looking for some brochures and some
souvenirs but we had none of them because the person who had our materials had not yet arrived.
We could not do much because when people looked at our table they saw nothing, it was empty so they did not  even bother asking for information.

     So in the mean while I started to look at things in my surroundings. I looked at the other tables and
there contents, there were some with musical therapy, artistic therapy, dance therapy, sport therapy and
much more. There were others that had free health test like a thyroid test, HIV test between others.
Finally at 11:10 am the person in charge to bring the educational material arrived with it and handed it
to us. We started to organize it and rapidly discussed what we were going to say and not say because
this was a special population we were dealing with. After we had organized and prepared everything people started to approach our table but they were kind of scared to come in close, we don't know why. So as they came in we ask them if they knew what healthy eating was, if they knew what was the "My Plate" representation and if they knew what it meant. Most of them had saw it previously but did not know how to read it and what foods were cataloged behind each category. So our primary job was to educate them on how to make good use of this tools and explain the food groups to them so that they could make better choices. Some of these people looked completely fine and no one would have though that they are OAPI students other were extremely shy and didn't say a word except from "no" and "thanks". The hardest part of the activity was having to give a talk when someone was playing and instrument or something because the volumewas stupid high.

     This experience was really touching for me because I am very sympathetic towards others and having to see a great amount of people not being able to don some things we give for granted or just being different was really hard. Even tough I liked the experience and that it was of great enrichment, I don't see myself working with people with special needs. It takes a great deal of patience and ease characteristics that are not my strong ports. Also in the times that no one was approaching our table and that we were free, we talked and share as partners, we were more than one int the table, so it was also enriching from that part because we shared experiences and our thoughts. Finally the best part of the activity was that we got free food and snacks! That's always a win.

This is not the actual activity but one in wich we were doing the same thing, I dont have one from the OAPI activity.

Conference

          Last Wednesday I had the opportunity to present an investigation about the tourist perception towards Puerto Rico in a forum held in one of the amphitheater of the general studies building, DMN. My group was composed of two other members, Sabrina and Barbara which were the ones who made this job came together and I thank them both for their effort and commitment. The presentations started at 1:00PM so I arrived at 12:55 and I saw Sabrina and Barbara on stage already and I freaked out. I though that the hour was changed and I was not aware of it and that I would get zero points and that I would fail the class. It took me a couple of minutes to realize that they were in charge of the previous presentation and that was the reason they were on stage so early.

     So finally the forum began and I was sitting nervously waiting for my groups turn. When it was finally our turn to present my heart started pumping really fast, my hands got sweaty and I was trembling. I tried all the relaxation techniques I could do with out making it to obvious that I was doing them. Breathing deeply and controlled, counting backwards from a 100, making power poses but non did work at their full potential. When it was my turn to talk I was struggling with the microphone because you had to put it certain way so you could be heard properly. My first part I had to read from the power point presentation because it was a long cited work. The first part was over I had read the decently and broke the ice with no big problem. For the second part I had planned to read quickly the bullets and talk about that topic. This was what I had prepared for and I was doing ok but suddenly some lady in the back literally yield and laugh really hard, so much that everybody could hear her and all of that while i was talking. As she interrupted me my whole face changed I went from being very nervous to being so angry I wanted to insult the lady. Apparently everybody in the room notice my anger by the way my face changed when I heard the comment. After this I lost focus and I started to make very stupid errors in my pronunciation of words and lost my rithym. After finishing the presentation we ran out of time for the Q & A section which i would have loved to address the lady that interrupted my presentation.

     Overall this was a very professional experience I like to dress up for this occasions because is the only excuse I have to wear my good clothes, even though I am always in shorts and tank tops I do like to dress properly. Speaking in front of an audience is something that is very challenging to me but that I want to master, so this was a good starting point and I know I have along way ahead to become a great confectionist.

Journal Review Blog

     This was a free writing activity in which we had to make at least five entry's a week for eight weeks with a set of simple rules which were; Don't cross-out, don't worry about spelling, punctuation and grammar, don't get logical, go for the jugular and finally keep you're hand moving. At the end of this activity I had completed 46 entrees. My writing changed a little during this period. At first i could not avoid getting logical with the things that i was writing because that's just me and it was hard breaking that habit. About half way into the activities the change was more appreciable. With regards to grammar I have never been very strict about it and it was really easy not thinking about it. Also with every session I noticed that I became more structured  with the way I wrote like I adapted to writing without lines. Writing the first though was the most inconsistent thing for me because that was dependant on the type of thought and how i felt in that particular moment. On January 30, 2015 I made an entry in which i talked about what happened to me the night before. I started explaining the environment and the circumstances of the situation and half way I had arrived to what would be the climax of the story. Then after that i was expressing how i felt about what I just explained. This activity was of much self enrichment, I as wrote this things I realize that i am a very emotional person and also a sensitive one because everything that happened in my surroundings had an impact in the way I felt. Also as a writer I learned that I am very structured even when i am traing not to be so, and that's reflects a lot about me and who I am. As a puertorrican I learned that I am very proud of my culture but very angry towards my people or at least some of them. This activity makes me discover the traveler inside me after describing the things I saw in many of my entrees I understood that I enjoy looking at things and traing to understand their function in their surroundings.

Blank Paper, the hardest part was to begin writing

On Jim Cooper: "Theaching English"

        In this script Jim was talking about the hard time he had teaching English tom Puertorrican students at the "Colegio". First I have always asked myself, why are professors at college so different from teachers in high school? Teachers did all they could to help you learn and get a good grade. In contrast professors they just do the minimum effort they are required to and don't care much if you pass the class or not. The difference between the two relies in that, teachers want to teach it is their vocation but professors don't want to teach, they are investigators. A teacher goes to college to learn how to teach he learns the skills and methods about teaching in contrast a professor goes to college to learn a specific subject and becomes and expert in it. Even if they continue on graduated studies a teacher will study the subject of how to teach a professor will study the subject of his interest to a more profound length. This is important because this is probably the most determining factor that affects student in their transition from high school to college.

       Most professors in college or at least in my faculty, the faculty of natural sciences are scientist they are investigators that is what they like to do. They are hired by the university with the condition that their investigations will bring funds to the institution.Thus the institution provides the facilities for the professor to do his investigation but he has to give a mini mun of credits hours per semester. This is why most professors could care less about their students because they just give lectures that are on such a basic level for their understanding that they get bored and just don't want to do it because it is interfering with the time they could be investing in their investigation. I think i went in a little bit of a rant there but I guess that's what blogs are for.

        In high school I had a PROFESSOR, he was the only one who did int study pedagogy, he studied mathematics and he went on to getting a masters Segre im no sure if he got a PhD, well probably he did because prior to giving class in the high school he was a professor in UPR-Cayey and at "La Politecnica". I remember when i got to 11 grade were he teached pre-calculus, every body was telling me "he is the worst","you are going to fail","he is the demon". But i did not listen to them because i though it could not be that hard. So as the semester went on I recognize that the course was had and that he wanted to push us to our limits he wanted to get us out of our comfort zone. He was more of a trainer or a coach than a teacher. But I at the end of the year I got A in the two semesters and was one of the two students that were excuse from the final test. During the semester I got to know him better and I talked to him on a daily basis and to this day he is one of the only teachers that i go and visit once in a while when i go to pick up my siblings.

This is Mirabal "The Profesor" from highschool and me at the graduation ceremony.

On Jim Cooper: Helping

          In this writing, Jim Cooper exposes the educational differences between the American system and the "puertorrican" system. The big difference that he exposes is that the American system is competitive and the puertorrican system is cooperative. But where does this sense of competitiveness or cooperativeness comes from? Is it intrinsic from the educational system or does it has socio-cultural roots? In analyzing this we have to take in consideration the time at which this was written because the Puerto Rico, and the conditions in it, are not the same to the ones we have today. In other words we cant be ana-cronical about this. For instance back then we were not as "Americanized"as we are now, because we have now been under direct American influence for over a hundred years. Back then it was just a couple of decades so we were still as "boricuas" as we could have been.

     Now we have adopted a lot of customs and traditions from the US and we have lost some of our traditions, but I think its not that we surrender our traditions to adopt the ones from the US but that the capitalist system, in which virtually all country in the world are part of, has forced us to adopt certain customs that are more convenient in this kind of system. The fact that we take them from the US its due to he fact that first we are part of it and second they are probably the best ones in this capitalist system so why not copy the best one? Hey it is helping! In this same line of thought a competitive systems makes a perfect "training" for a capitalist society in contrast a cooperative system its not the best way to go in a system in which you have to fend for you're self and that if you don't know how to do something you will get run over by others.

     Now, I am not saying that being cooperative is a bad thing but neither I am saying that being competitive is also. But that a system is probably a reflection of the society and its circumstances. But here we are talking at a collective level, sociologically we should say. If we go down to an individualistic  level or a pshycologial level it takes a whole new meaning. This is because at an individual level we may have different motivators such as not liking the person at our side so we will not help them. Maybe we know the teacher personally or a family member does and we are afraid that helping others could bring a bad situation. But then again it comes down to the circumstances.

Jim should have tried this.