Author: Nicholas (Page 2 of 3)

Would you rather live in the dorms or live in a house with a number of friends? Many college students dream about living in a house with a group of friends. This idea is glorified through movies based on the college life. 

Whether the goal is to host massive parties every weekend or just feeling more independent and having your own place to escape to when the stress of college starts closing in on you, moving off-campus is a process. Maintaining off-campus living is an adventure in and of itself. 

The process of moving off campus consists of two very important aspects: finding a place to live and finding people to live with. Anthony Ventura says that being able to choose who you get to live with is one of the upsides of living off-campus. Ventura went on to say, “If you choose the right people to live with, off-campus living is awesome because you can surround yourself with awesome people.” Taylor Duncan says, “Some of the positives of living off campus are that I have my own room and I like the people I live with.” Duncan said he was aware of the peoples’ habits that he moved in with before they became roommates so that made the transition a lot easier. Make sure if you move off campus, you are with people you can tolerate for a year. 

When it comes to finding a place to live, the most important consideration is the cost of living. Depending on your financial situation, you may be looking into cheaper or more expensive properties. Rebecca Riley, a senior at Morningside says, “Get a job first, if you’re an athlete and can’t keep a job throughout the school year, work a lot during the summer and save your money.” While Riley said this, she put extra emphasis on the last three words of her statement, “…save your money.” Ventura says, he worked during the summer to save up his money and he also works weekends in order to keep money coming in throughout the school year. Most people will find it easier to work on the weekends due to heavy course loads during the week at school or extracurricular activities like sports. 

Saving money is key when in college and living off campus. Riley said that she has a monthly budget that she tries to follow as close as possible. This budget is made up of the cost for rent, utilities, food, and car maintenance (gas and cleaning). Riley also said to “limit how much you spend while out on the weekends.” One piece of advice from Riley is, “if you work more than two jobs, put one whole paycheck away into savings or bill paying accounts and use the other one for your spending money.” She said this allows her to stay on top of not spending too much money in a month.

When asked what he does to make sure he has money for the necessities like rent and bills, Ventura responded with, “I make it a priority to separate my wants and my needs. It’s really easy to buy something you want like a new pair of shoes and then realize at the end of the month that you’re short on the Wi-Fi bill, so like I said separate your wants and needs.” Ventura went on to explain that he did not mean you can’t buy anything for yourself, but he meant that you should have your priorities straight. Taylor Duncan said cooking at home and not eating out helps him save money. Duncan also said that the total amount for rent over his year-long lease is less than the cost for two semesters in the dorms on campus. This allows him to save even more money. All of these have the same aspect of keeping priorities straight, so if you’re not good at prioritizing, learn. Otherwise, you’re going to realize that learning to prioritize the hard way is not the way you want to learn. 

Many people advocate for off campus living because of the independence it grants and the growing it allows. The people interviewed for this article all said that they grew as a person when they were responsible for their own bills outside of school. “It really makes you to realize how much work goes into just living,” said Riley. 

In an article written by Karen D’Souza, a writer for the East Bay Times, two Bay Area cities are placed in the top 10 for safest California cities.

This article begins immediately with pathos by connecting to peoples emotions. It talks about how if one has ever lived in a bad neighborhood, then they know how safety is always a priority because of the things that one may experience in a bad neighborhood. The article then goes on to explain the factors that the surveyors take into account when ranking the cities. The study looks into “FBI crime reporting statistics and census data to establish which cities are safe havens.”

60 percent of the cities in this ranked list are located in Southern California but the Bay Area has a couple cities in the top ten. The two cities from the Bay Area that are highly ranked are Danville and San Ramon, which are both located in the affluent San Ramon Valley.

Danville is ranked first out of the 228 total cities surveyed having only .35 violent crimes and 7.83 property crimes per 1,000 people. The population of the city is currently at 45,088 people.

This article is relevant because of proximity. The cities are close and within an hour of the people who this newspaper is written for. This article is also relevant due to its currency aspects. The people of the Bay Area are dealing with tons of safety concerns right now like, future earthquakes, multi-day power outages and even air pollution levels. Knowing which cities are dubbed safest can be helpful for people and families trying to escape some high impact or densely populated areas.

Overall, I think this article was helpful for a person living in the Bay Area. It is to the point and presents facts and statistics to support the “why?”. The article is also presented in inverted pyramid form, presenting the important information in the beginning and lesser needed information at the end.

Article:

In an extremely passionate speech by Greta Thunberg to the United Nations Climate Action Summit today, Thunberg addressed the leaders of the world on the effects of climate change.

Thunberg was asked what she had to say to world leaders and she responded, “We will be watching you.” When referring to we, Thunberg is speaking for the young people of the world, the ones who are still to grow up and hopefully live long lives on this planet. She mentions that “entire ecosystems are collapsing” and we are facing a “mass extinction” that can not be solved with “business as usual.”

Thunberg says that the idea of cutting our emission in half in ten years will still only give us a “50% chance of staying below 1.5 degrees.” This runs the “the risk of setting off irreversible chain reactions beyond human control.”

Thunberg is sure to inspire the youth and to jumpstart change within the world. She is passionate and intelligent and knows the information she is relaying. Since the time she gave the speech earlier today, 65 countries have already announced their efforts to achieve net-zero emissions by 2050.

Would you rather live in the dorms or live in a house with a number of friends? Many college students dream about living in a house with a group of friends. This idea is glorified through movies based on the college life. 

Whether the goal is to host massive parties every weekend or just feeling more independent and having your own place to escape to when the stress of college starts closing in on you, moving off-campus is a process. Maintaining off-campus living is an adventure in and of itself. 

The process of moving off campus consists of two very important aspects: finding a place to live and finding people to live with. When it comes to finding a place to live, the most important consideration is the cost of living. Depending on your financial situation, you may be looking into cheaper or more expensive properties. Rebecca Riley, a senior at Morningside says, “Get a job first, if you’re an athlete and can’t keep a job throughout the school year, work a lot during the summer and save your money.” While Riley said this, she put extra emphasis on the last three words of her statement, “…save your money.” 

Saving money is key when in college and living off campus. Riley said that she has a monthly budget that she tries to follow as close as possible. This budget is made up of the cost for rent, utilities, food, and car maintenance (gas and cleaning). Riley also said to “limit how much you spend while out on the weekends.”

The New York Times posted an article written by Aurelien Breeden titled, “Knife Attack at Paris Police Headquarters Leaves at Least 4 Officers Dead.” This story explained how four officers were killed on Thursday at the police headquarters in Paris. An employee, who had been working at the headquarters for more than 20 years. It was stated ‘that the suspect had “posed strictly no problem” in the past.’

The article went on to explain how this event has made sure that security concerns will be brought back to attention. This is because there have been many attacks on Paris in recent years. It referenced the attack on the Charlie Hebdo newspaper, where 12 people were killed and the terrorist attacks later that year that “left more than 100 dead.”

I think this article is important to the people of Paris. The situation may be concerning being that they still do no have a motive for why the man attacked and killed the people he did.

The article was well written and straight to the point. It had some in depth information about the attack and I feel it informed the public well.

Article:

In an article from The New York Times titled, “College Admissions Scandal: Parent Gets 4 Months in Brazen Scheme”, a father was sentenced to four months in federal prison. According to the article, written by Kate Taylor, Devin Sloane “ordered water polo gear online and had his son pose in it for a photograph in the family’s swimming pool.” Following the photoshoot, the father hired a graphic designer to enhance the the photo to assist in securing admission to the University of Southern California, “for the price of $250,000, some of it paid as a bribe to a U.S.C. official.

Sloane pleaded guilty to one count of conspiracy to commit mail fraud and honest services mail fraud. The article also mentions the recent trial of actress Felicity Huffman, who was sentenced to 14 days in prison for paying $15,000 to cheat on her daughter’s SAT.

This article is newsworthy because a number of people have recently been attempting to commit fraud in order to get their children into college. This is a result of the rising difficulty and competitiveness in the college admissions process.

Overall, I thought this was a fairly well-written article. It was short, detail-oriented, and got the main point across. The article brought up some good points around the subject of different sentences being handed out to different fraud situations. The article was also put together well, in the inverted pyramid form.

Article:

While tasting a Pirouline for the first time, I was pleased to taste the dark chocolate encased by crunchy wafer. This snack is light and crunchy. The center is filled with dark-chocolate, which is creamy and smooth. The sweetness of the chocolate contradicted the saltiness of the wafer in a heavenly sense.

The Pirouline provides the comfort of a blanket and a fire on a stormy day. It gives a reminder of grandma’s baking and brings back memories of childhood.

In writing my first article titled, “College athletes soon to be paid”, I put the most effort into writing a clear lead. One thing I could have put more effort into was finding more effective articles on the topic.

The hardest part about writing this article was finding articles that are not repetitive. Many of the articles said the same thing, but just had slightly different variations in the people that were being quoted or referenced.

In an article from the New York Times titles, “Football Players? Or Lab Rats Who Can Run and Pass?” written by Zach Schonbrun, the multimillion dollar facilities of big name colleges are referenced.

The first program and facilities that were brought up were Louisiana State University’s. L.S.U. recently got a new $28 million football operations building. Included in the building are jetted tubs, antigravity treadmill, sodium-infused water coolers, and even a centrifuge. “The centrifuge is used for a blood work for injury treatments such as platelet-poor plasma therapy and stem-cell injections.”

The article even mentions how the athletes get their sweat analyzed for “nutritional deficiencies” and they also swallow digestible electronic pills that monitor body temperature.

I think this article is news worthy because of the awareness it brings to the ongoing advances in college athletics. Some people would think that these methods are over-the-top when it comes to analyzing peak performance of athletes.

Some of these methods can be seen as bizarre, especially the digestible electronic pills. They may also fall under Human Interest, considering these are people that they are running these tests on. Overall, this article was very interesting.

Article Used:

Today in class, we were tasked with finding people around campus to help us fulfill the requirements of the scavenger hunt.

The two requirements on my scavenger hunt were to ask someone for their favorite motivational quote and to find a creatively bent paper clip.

Evie Williams, an English major, told me her favorite quote was “Get busy livin’ or get busy dyin'”, which is a quote from the movie, Shawshank Redemption but is referred to many times in her favorite Hulu series, Last Man on Earth.

John Dolphin, a worker in the Registrars office supplied me with the creatively bent, paper clip. She formed it into a rope-looking shape. When asked what situation she would use a rope in, she replied, “I would use a rope if I ever needed to escape from anywhere, I bet it would come in handy.”

Overall, this experience was interesting. Finding reasons to approach a random person for a very random task was probably the most difficult aspect of the task. It was enjoyable and a good learning experience for future interviews.