sjh008's blog

In journalism class, our assignment was to pick a sheet of paper that listed an object and go out onto campus and ask complete strangers for the object.  Some had chewing gum, others rubber bands.  My object was a piece of good advice.  This object seemed very simple to retrieve.  As I walked out of the library, I saw a man doing landscaping.  I figured I could ask him, but then I chickened out.  I figured he had better things to do than answer my silly question.  I kept walking and couldn’t stand how windy it was outside so I just went into Lewis Hall.

I walked by an entire class and didn’t ask a single person my question.  I always thought that I was pretty outgoing, but this assignment made it difficult because it required to have an awkward conversation.  I walked up the steps and through the door and saw a girl sitting at the front desk.  She looked like she was working on homework so I didn’t really want to disturb her.  I stood in the entry way playing with my phone trying to not look like a complete creep.  Finally I realized that I was also doing homework and my question wouldn’t take very long.

I walked up to the desk and asked the girl if I could ask her a simple question.  She greeted me with a smile and said sure.  I’m sure she thought my question was going to be about something she could help me find in the building.  I explained that I was on a scavenger hunt for my journalism class and I needed to acquire an object.  I then explained that my object was information and I needed a piece of good advice.  She had a confused look on her face and asked me what class if was for again.  I told her and she thought for awhile and awkwardly laughed.  She then said “study hard” and made it seem more like a question than a statement.  She asked me if I wanted her to explain and I simply said sure.  She said that studying hard meant to look over your notes every night and highlight, read the chapters, ask people in class for help, ask the professor, and make practice quizzes or test questions.  She then asked if I needed anything else and that’s when I asked for her name.  She told me her name was Maria Bohling.  I said thank you and make my way back to the library to write my story.

The process for getting into college can seem very stressful for many high school students.  Six students, two high school and four college, paid up to 2,500 dollars for somebody else to take the SAT for them.  The person they had take the SAT was a sophomore in college that used to go to the same high school as they did.  The young man used fake IDs to take the tests and even used one for a female.  The administration figured it out when the scores the students got did not match up with their grades in school.  Also, the tests all had the same handwriting.  The young man that took the tests is pleading not guilty and his lawyer says that this is something that the court should not interfere with.  He says that the school should deal with it.  However, this is indeed cheating and since the SAT is a test that many students across America take, it is definitely not fair.  If they would have gotten away with it, they could have been taking the chances away from another student.  This is news to me because I am in college and I had to take a test like the SAT.  Even if I didn’t get the grade I wanted to get on it, I still took it myself.  These tests are used to see if students will succeed in certain colleges, they have a purpose.

Presidential Candidate, Newt Gingrich, came to Morningside College on Tuesday to talk about his plans for presidency.  Presidential Candidate Newt is a Republican and former speaker of the House.  He started with an opener, talking about some things he has done previously, then moved to open questions.  During the entire speech he kept emphasizing making more jobs for the American people.  He wants to take people off of Welfare and Food stamps and help get them jobs, this way government debt would be reduced and it would increase government revenue.  He expanded on the jobs by saying that the main reason why people are on Food Stamps is because some people don’t know how to keep a job.  He wants to teach teenagers how to work and save money because, “America only works when America is working.”  Newt wants to work with China to make sure everybody makes more money from their job than what they would make on Food Stamps.  He asked everybody in the room “Don’t be for me, be with me.”  He said it would take as much as 8 years for the change to completely happen.

One of the things a lot of people in the room cheered for was the fact that Newt wants to control the boarders more.  This way America would have less drug trafficking and more jobs for the American people.  Newt also wants to make English the official language, which a lot of people liked.  As far as citizenship goes for illegal immigrants, he would not kick out those aliens that already have families and ties to Americans.  However, he would deport those who have only been here for a couple of years.  Also, immigrants that moved here at a significantly young age and immigrants with ties would receive worker cards.  The cards would have to be swiped by the immigrant’s employers.  Newt does not believe that illegal immigrants should be able to gain citizenship.

Newt went on to talk about how Obama is hurting America and how he is preventing jobs and costing money.  He gave the example of the “Canadian Buses” Obama uses.  He said that our tax dollars were spent on those buses and we pay for them to get air lifted from city to city.  He also went on to talk about how Obama was more concerned about Gibson Guitars than controlling our boarders.  He sent 26 armed agents from Homeland Security to raid places that had Gibson guitars because of their use of Indian Wood.  However, the Indian government gave Gibson permission to use their wood for Gibson’s guitars.  He said Obama is not using his resources well.  Newt talked about education saying he wants to make a Pell Grant for K-12 so parents can pick which schools their kids attend.

In 1989 an off-duty police officer was shot and killed in Georgia.  Today at 11:08 p.m. Troy Davis was given the lethal injection for the murder of Mark MacPhail.  After many new trials, the Supreme Court finally decided that he would get the death penalty.  Troy Davis said that he was innocent and even 7 of the 9 witnesses that said that he killed the police officer recanted their stories.  Many protested saying that there was not enough evidence for a death penalty to take place.  For 22 years Davis pleaded guilty and many people believed it.  It was a very controversial case.  Davis refused the meal and prayer before he was injected.  Before he was injected, Davis told the family, “it’s not my fault; I did not have a gun,”  according to witness Rhonda Cook of the Atlanta Journal-Constitution. “I did not personally kill your son, father, brother,” he said.  After that, he looked at the at the prison officials and said “may god have mercy on your souls. May God bless your souls.”

This is definitely news because of the amount of people it affected.  There were people protesting outside the prison because they believed that Davis did not commit the murder he was being punished for.  They did not think there was enough evidence for such a harsh punishment.  There were even people in London protesting Davis’s death penalty.  People put together petitions which one had over 240,ooo signatures against the execution.  This is also news because this trial took so long since the murder was committed in 1989.  The case was appealed one hour before the injection was scheduled and they decided to go forward with it.  Also, the fact that the recant of 7 of the 9 witnesses did not have any impact on the decision is very odd.  They went ahead with the execution and made of a lot of people throughout the world have different feelings about the case.

Morningside College is a private liberal arts school in Sioux City, Ia. It is a four-year college, founded in 1894. Since Morningside is a private college it is pretty small. The college spans out across 68 acres and has 21 buildings on campus. One of the 21 buildings houses most of the college’s freshman as well as other students. That building is called Dimmitt Hall. Dimmitt Hall is the third oldest building on campus. Because Dimmitt Hall is one of the oldest buildings on campus, it doesn’t have any air conditioning. This makes the beginning and the end of the school year quite miserable for many students living there.

I used to live in Dimmitt for my freshman and sophomore years of college. I am now a junior and decided to move off campus. I do miss living on campus, but don’t really miss living in Dimmitt. The cold long walks up the hill to class in the winter were not very splendid, especially since all my classes were in the building on the other side of campus. Another student at Morningside agrees. Kendra Timmerman, a sophomore at Morningside has been living in Dimmitt since she came to college. “I don’t like it because it’s such a long walk to the science center where most of my classes are. I decided to live in Dimmitt because I figured it’d be more social. I feel like Roadman is more social now because most people move there after their freshman year because they don’t want to walk up the huge hill. The reason why I stay in Dimmitt is because it’s a very social place and everybody is friendly there.” One of the nice things about Dimmitt is that there are a lot of people that live there. There is always something going on at night downstairs in the informal lounge.

The informal lounge is basically a game room. It has a pool table, a foosball table, and a ping pong table. There are also couches and TVs for people that just want to hang out. The floor above that has another lounge called the formal. This area has a lot of couches and chairs and students mainly use this for doing homework or working on group projects. During the days, Dimmitt Hall is a pretty quiet place. People are usually in class, at practice, or studying in their rooms.  It’s so quiet that people can hear the washers and dryers running in the next room.  The smell of laundry detergent fills the air, especially on Sunday nights.   At night, things get a little more rowdy.

On Friday and Saturday nights students are getting ready to go out for the night.   On the girls floor, the smell of perfume and hairspray is very potent.  Some rooms in Dimmitt turn into party places and you sometimes see drunk people running around and can smell the alcohol.  It’s funny to see what some girls wear.  Even when it’s freezing outside, girls will wear tight, low-cut tops and short skirts.  When Sunday comes, the quiet comes back and so do the sweatpants as everybody is rushing to get done homework they put off all weekend before class Monday morning. Dimmitt is always changing depending on what time you decide to visit.

Dimmitt may not be the most pleasurable place to live on the hot summer days or may not be the most fun place to walk from on your way to class. Although these things are true, there is always something to do for the residents living there. Every day students make the long jaunt up the hill to class and enjoy their time studying in the formal lounge. After all, Dimmitt is a place that many students on campus call home.

For people that have ever flown on a plane, they probably realize how much of a hassle airport security is.  Loading all your luggage is just one burden.  After that you have to take off your shoes and get rid of all your metal belongings and put them into a tiny bin for it to go through an x-ray machine to make sure there aren’t any risky items on you.  The last thing you have to do is walk through a scanner.  This is where things get weird.  Since 2007, the scanners have looked at people a little too closely.  The Advanced Imaging Technology (AIT) basically showed the naked body.  This is something that has been highly criticized.  However, the House Subcommittee on Transportation Security passed an amendment to eliminate the naked scanners out of airports.  This was a unanimous vote and they decided to go with a different type of software.  The new software only shows a stick figure and points out the parts of the body where there may be dangerous items.

This is definitely a better software being used by airports.  This way people don’t have to be insecure about walking through a scanner.  I didn’t even know that airports had scanners like this.  If I would have known, I definitely wouldn’t have gone to an airport in fear of being seen naked by strangers.

Morningside College is a private liberal arts school in Sioux City, Ia. It is a four-year college, founded in 1894. Since Morningside is a private college it is pretty small. The college spans out across 68 acres and has 21 buildings on campus. One of the 21 buildings houses most of the college’s freshman as well as other students. That building is called Dimmitt Hall. Dimmitt Hall is the third oldest building on campus. Because Dimmitt Hall is one of the oldest buildings on campus, it doesn’t have any air conditioning. This makes the beginning and the end of the school year quite miserable for many students living there.

I used to live in Dimmitt for my freshman and sophomore years of college. I am now a junior and decided to move off campus. I do miss living on campus, but don’t really miss living in Dimmitt. The cold long walks up the hill to class in the winter were not very splendid, especially since all my classes were in the building on the other side of campus. Another student at Morningside agrees. Kendra Timmerman, a sophomore at Morningside has been living in Dimmitt since she came to college. “I don’t like it because it’s such a long walk to the science center where most of my classes are. I decided to live in Dimmitt because I figured it’d be more social. I feel like Roadman is more social now because most people move there after their freshman year because they don’t want to walk up the huge hill. The reason why I stay in Dimmitt is because it’s a very social place and everybody is friendly there.” One of the nice things about Dimmitt is that there are a lot of people that live there. There is always something going on at night downstairs in the informal lounge.

The informal lounge is basically a game room. It has a pool table, a foosball table, and a ping pong table. There are also couches and TVs for people that just want to hang out. The floor above that has another lounge called the formal. This area has a lot of couches and chairs and students mainly use this for doing homework or working on group projects. During the days, Dimmitt Hall is a pretty quiet place. People are usually in class, at practice, or studying in their rooms. At night, things get a little more rowdy. On Friday and Saturday nights students are getting ready to go out for the night. Some rooms in Dimmitt turn into party places and you sometimes see drunk people running around. When Sunday comes, the quiet comes back as everybody is rushing to get done homework they put off all weekend before class Monday morning. Dimmitt is always changing depending on what time you decide to visit.

Dimmitt may not be the most pleasurable place to live on the hot summer days or may not be the most fun place to walk from on your way to class. Although these things are true, there is always something to do for the residents living there. Every day students make the long jaunt up the hill to class and enjoy their time studying in the formal lounge. After all, Dimmitt is a place that many students on campus call home.

Everyday in Journalism class I sit in the same spot. There is a man to the right of me by the name of Derrick Freese. He has red hair and usually always wears a hat to class. Today, he was wearing jeans and a Packers t-shirt because the Packers is his favorite football team. Not only is Derrick into football, but he’s also into wrestling. He ran cross-country in high school and wrestled until he blew his knee out and needed to have surgery on it. This may explain why he doesn’t play wrestling in college like his brother did for Morningside College. In fact, the reason why he came to Morningside was because his older brother graduated from the same college.

In order to get through college, Derrick works at Hy-Vee during the school year and works on a cattle farm during the summers in Treynor, Iowa. He is a Junior at Morningside majoring in Graphic Design and lives on the third floor of Roadman South. Derrick enjoys watching sports, playing video games, and listening to classical rock and country in his free time. Derrick seems like a pretty cool guy to sit next to during Journalism class.

A wildfire on Tuesday left 1,000 homes in Texas completely ruined.  The wildfire burned about 40 square miles and was due to Texas’s year long drought.  Not only did the drought make matters worse, but the strong winds from the tropical storm made the fire spread all around, completely devastating the Bastrop community.  Evacuation processes were initiated, yet four lives were taken by the blaze.  Commenters say that there are federal grants being given the the devastated Texas community, yet the emotional distress won’t be able to be reimbursed.  Homes and timber are ruined from the giant blaze as 11 other fires took out part of the county.

I consider this article good news because it happened in the United States, so it’s close to home for many people.  It is an emotional piece because of the detail as to how large the fires were and how many people were affected by this fire.  It gave reasons why the fire happened and told how the tropical storm accelerated the fire.  Along with the text, there were pictures provided for the reader to understand just exactly how big of a disaster the wildfire was.  The author gave good facts and implemented quotes well into the piece.

Morningside College has a lot of nice looking places on campus.  I walk by one place every day on my way to class, the fountain.  As I sit here I can’t help but notice how hot it is outside.  It is 91 degrees outside and not a cloud in the sky.  The temperature makes me want to put my feet in the fountain while I write this description.  It is pretty windy outside, blowing the water out of the fountain, making me have to sit on the left side of the fountain in fear that I will get my computer wet.  The sound of water being dumped on top of other water is all I can really hear.  By looking out beyond the fountain, I can see the softball complex and the apartments.  Looking even further I can see the stadium lights at the football/soccer field.  The view here is actually pretty good.  The fountain seems like a relaxing place to sit on a not so hot summer day.  However, I would much rather be out here than in a class.