Tag Archives: homework

Expect the unexpected

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A lot of unexpected things have been happening on campus over the past couple of weeks. On Tuesday night of last week, gastroenteritis, which came to be known on campus as the McVirus and the McPlague showed up unexpectedly. (In our college campus bubble, not many people were aware that gastroenteritis had been going around Carroll County for a couple of weeks.)

This week, something more delightfully unexpected happened: yesterday at 4 o’clock in the afternoon, the College announced that we would be having a snow day today in anticipation of several inches of snow. While many people on campus had been expecting snow for a couple of days, none of us expected McDaniel to declare a snow day so early.

To celebrate the snow day announcement, four of my friends and I went to Denny’s for “second dinner” yesterday evening before the snow started falling. It was nice to go out, since I hadn’t seen much of my friends because I had been sick, and I ordered enough food to have leftovers for today so I wouldn’t have to go outside to get lunch.

Though the snow ended up being not as dramatic as we thought it would be, having a snow day today has been nice. I spent a lot of time sleeping today, so tonight I have to work on returning to reality by getting some homework done. Fortunately however, since the school is closed, I don’t have any activities to go to tonight, so I still have plenty of time to accomplish things!

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I’ve been busy!

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It was a busy week for me here on the Hill!

In addition to attending my three Monday-Wednesday-Friday classes, I devoted much of my Monday to helping out the Honors Program by eating at the luncheon for prospective Honors students and spending time in the Honors study lounge, the Room of Requirement. I had a lot of fun meeting prospective students and answering their questions.

On Tuesday, I went to support the McDaniel Free Press by having s’mores and hot chocolate in Ensor Lounge, where organizations can reserve a fire pit for s’more roasting. Spending time with my friends and fellow Free Press members was a lot of fun. After the event, I went straight to the Free Press meeting, where I picked up an article to be submitted on Sunday and pitched a well-received idea for another article I’d like to write at some point in the next couple of weeks.

On Wednesday, I went to the second meeting of More Love Letters of the semester. More Love Letters is a fun and laid back new club on campus that is based on the organization of the same name that promotes sending love letters to people in need. In addition to writing letters to people suggested by the More Love Letters website, we’ve also been working on letters and notes of encouragement to hide around campus for people to find. I have a collection of over 20 letters that a friend and I made over the past couple of weeks, but I am guilty of not being able to make time to hide them!

On Thursday evening, I went to the Ridington Lecture, the first major lecture of the semester. It featured Dr. Muqtedar Khan, an associate professor of political science and international relations at the University of Delaware, who spoke on Islam and contemporary challenges faced by American Muslims. Thought it was longer than I would have hoped, it was an interesting lecture. Afterward, I put a lot of time into writing about it for the Free Press (this was the article I had signed up for on Tuesday).

It may now be Friday evening, but I’m still busy! In order to fit all of my assignments in without overloading myself on any given day this weekend, I’m going to have to tackle some homework tonight. I’m also participating in the Scrabble tournament being hosted on campus tomorrow, so that will also keep me busy for several hours this weekend! (I’ll be sure to let you know if I did well!)

Taking 20 credits instead of the typical McDaniel 16 plus being active on campus certainly keeps me occupied, but it’s quickly teaching me how to work harder than ever before, which I know will help me be successful throughout my life.

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Online assignments

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This semester, I’ve noticed that I’ve been turning in a lot of my responses to our class readings via email or Blackboard journals. Now that we’re in the third week of the semester and I’ve turned in online assignments for several of my classes, I’ve decided that I prefer this form of submission as opposed to printing out my reflections and handing them in during class.

There are several formats that our professors use to collect our responses. Some encourage us to engage with other students, while other assignments are private and only the professor can see our responses. For example, in my African American Literature class, each weekend our whole class engages in discussions based upon prompts from our professor. This is helpful because the class is only on Mondays and Wednesdays, so discussing our thoughts over the weekend keeps the content fresh in our minds even when we are not physically meeting. On the other hand, we also turn in individual responses via email for that class. Our professor writes feedback and hands it back to us during class, so we each get individual attention from her even though the class is fairly large.

Two of my other professors have us write weekly journals that only they can see and respond to on Blackboard, our school’s academic website where we can see our grades and send assignments to professors. Within a few days after I post my journal, I can log onto the site and see my professor’s responses. This will be convenient when I am studying at the end of the semester or brainstorming ideas for papers because all of my journals and professor’s comments will be easily accessible and organized.

Beyond the ease of posting online and the individualized responses, I like doing exclusively online assignments because it saves so much paper! Even though we get $20 of printing money for the semester, I prefer using as little as possible and online assignments make a huge impact!

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