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My first three weeks of College have been an interesting experience for me. If you follow me on Twitter or Facebook, I stated that my first day of college was April 2nd. That was almost three weeks ago, and I thought it was time I wrote an article detailing my experience as a first time College Student.

I am currently majoring in Computer Information Systems. I choose this degree because of the lack of Math credits required for graduation. Math really is not my strong suit right now, and I want to make sure that it doesn’t keep me from graduating. I hope to get my Associates Degree at the current college I am going too, and transfer to a University, and get my Bachelors Degree. Then maybe, to farther my education, and just because I love learning, I might start working towards a degree in Computer Science. I want to start out small, and set myself up for success. Then, when I get through my first Degree, I can work on a second one.

Ok enough of me blabbering, it’s time for me to get on topic. I started my first quarter of College on April 2nd. My first class was Algebra I. Pretty much a review of high school Algebra so far. We have already gone over the Order of Operations, inequalities, and next week, we go over graphing which I kind of found fun to do when I was in Junior High. Again, this class is just pretty much the basics, as the term goes on, I am sure it’ll get much harder. And when I start Algebra 2 in the Summer, It’ll be twice as hard.

My next class is Reading 011, a.k.a Reading Improvement. Now, before you go making fun of me for testing into a low class, I honestly do not know why I’ve tested into this class. Even my teacher is wondering why I am in this class since about every test I’ve taken, has had a 100% on it. I might retake the compass test to test out of the class, or just finish the rest of the term, and take the next reading class (Reading 012) for summer.

This next class has to be my most favorite class, why? Well it has everything to do with computers of course! This class is called CS120 a.k.a Computer Concepts. Now this class is just pretty much going over the basics of how a computer works. You would think this might be boring to me because I already now the basics of a computer, I even know how to build, or program one. Well, I thought that at first as well, but after the first two weeks, I realized I do not know as much as I need to. At least as far as Microsoft Office. And in the IT industry, I think its important to know how to use this software, because most companies use it and you may end up having to type up a fancy pants report with word, create a budget with Excel, or create a PowerPoint. In technology, no matter how much you think you know, there is always something to learn.

Now, my final class is only for students who are either first time students to college as a whole, or first time students to the actual school I am going to. And this class is called, HDEV112 (Orientation) This class is pretty much just a support class for new students. They go over many different topics such as Time Management, Note Taking, even pre-paring for a test, and fighting off test anxiety. This class has actually taught me alot in terms of be successful. If this class is offered to you, take it. It is packed with much information that you can use to be successful.

In closing, I want to take this time to give a little advice to any future college students that may be reading this blog post. One thing that can really help you in be successful, and not get over whelmed, is planning ahead of time. I use outlook’s “to-do” list feature to tell me when I need to get certain homework assignments done. (Picture Below, click image for full size. Will open in a new tab/window.)

As you can see in the picture, I even use it to remind me to finish this post, and I prioritized my Math assignment over this post.

That is another thing that will help you is to prioritize your assignments. Always make your classes come first, but your sanity is also important to. Mix it up a bit. Get one assignment done, go do something fun for a hour, and come back and do your other assignment. Before you know it, you are done, and can turn in your work and get a good grade!

Well, that about raps up this post. If you have any questions, or want to start a dialog with me, feel free to leave a comment below, or send me an email via the Contact Me Page. I will be writing more in the coming weeks. So stay tuned!

One main reason was on March 2nd, I switched to a different hosting plan. I went from what is called a “Fair Share CPU” VPS plan to a “Dedicated” VPS plan. In plain English, this means I now have my own resources dedicated to me. I am not sharing it with anyone else. The plan includes 600Mhz of CPU power, 1.5Gigs of RAM, 40GB Storage, and 100MB uplink. Not only will this help the performance of this site, but it also opens doors to more projects in the future. How about a Counter Stirke:Source server?

Now, why did it take me so damn long to get this site back-up? Its March 11th for crying out loud! Well, I have a pretty good explanation for this. I use Kloxo as my hosting panel. Now a recent update happened to cause a bug when you first install it. The Apache configuration file was somehow messed up, and it was not pointing to the correct site directory. How did I fix this? Well, I first configured all my main domain names, and then switched over to lighttpd. I did not stay with it to long because it was not what i needed. Then I quickly switched back over to Apache, and what do you know, it was fixed! So, it took me two weeks to figure this out? Nope, this is where my next setback comes in.

Well, i would not call this a setback, but more of a set forward. (If that makes sense) I was also spending these passed two weeks getting all ready for college. I had just took the placement test back in late February, and met with a Advisor to get my classes setup. And Monday (March 12th) I will be going in and registering for my classes. If all goes as planned, I will be starting April 2nd! I am very excited for this, because, not only will I be working towards a degree, but I am going absolutely crazy with nothing to do here at home. When I do however start school, I will write a post on my first week, and how each class was.

Anyway, that is what has been going on. With College, it will be more of a challenge to keep this site up-to-date. But, I will however try my best.

Abortion seems to be a pretty popular medical procedure in our world today. In this post today, I am going to express my views on this procedure.

Before I begin ranting, and spewing my opinions, I want to make sure everyone knows what it is I am talking about. I am not going to go into the grim details, but, just explain the basics of it. Abortion is the termination of a pregnancy in a human. Basically, the fetus is removed before it is even viable. Now, the fetus may not be viable, but do you think its fair for that human to have it’s life ended before it even began? I don’t think it is…

This is where some common sense comes in. If you do not want to have a kid, do not have sex! Its as simple as that. Of course there are a couple exceptions to this. One of them is, if having a baby could kill or harm the mother, then an abortion would be appropriate. Or if you were raped. But usually a doctor would give you some medication to prevent you from getting pregnant after getting raped. That is if you reported it to the police, and they had the hospital do a medical exam.

I know this was a short post, but there is not much to say about this topic. My opinion on it is simple and straight forward. I am always open to a friendly debate, but when the insults start flying, I will close the comments.

Now with my first term coming up in a month or so, I must make a choice on what degree program I want to do. I am stuck between a degree in Computer Science or Computer Information Systems. Now some may say they are pretty much the same, while in fact, they focus on completely separate ends of the computer industry. Computer Science focuses on the Science side of technology such as math, theory, and algorithms while Computer Information System focuses on the business side such as communications for businesses or applications that are critical to a businesses operation. I could always get both degrees. The more education you have, the better you look to a future employer or client. My plan for now is to get through school, and maybe start a small business while I am still in school doing website design, and IT work for businesses. Anyways, when I do start college, I will make another post talking about my experience in college on my first day!