Many ways to get involved while in college, great for resume

As this is my second semester at the University of Kentucky I feel I have a good handle on what there is to do while you're on campus to get involved and help the community. Some things may fall into your lap, like UK Fusion during K week, but others you might have to search for or work towards to be involved in them. One are Greek Organizations, and not just the social ones. There may be negative views towards the traditionally thought of Greeks, but there are also Academic Greeks that are much better for those students wanting to get involved. Phi Sigma Pi, my fraternity, isn't just based on social activities and meeting new people and throwing parties, but we focus on service, fellowship, and leadership. There are so many different opportunities to interact with the community of not just UK's campus, but Lexington as well. We've thrown a birthday party for kids who go to this afterschool program on 7th Street.

You can always run of offices for the Student Government Senate. You have to get so many signatures then campaign and run, and hopefully get elected. If not, you can always take things to the Student Government Supreme Court if you feel a rule was violated during the campaigning. I took two things to the Supreme Court, where they ruled in my favor. Even though I didn't win the election, I left a mark on the election process.

You can get a job on campus and work helping people with IT problems, working in food services, or many others that are truely rewarding, as well as a nice check in the bank. If your interested in writing or journalism, you can go down to the Kentucky Kernel and get an article for the paper to write or work with the yearbook and write for them. This really looks good if you plan on going into the field of writing, if you put on your resume that you wrote for your college newspaper, plus there is the satisfaction of seeing your name in the paper and knowing people are reading your article all over campus.

There are many other student organizations to join that are really beneficial to people. Just find a niche that you belong and look for orgs that fall into that cateogory. You will be glad you got involved and have like-minded people to converse with and help you with classes or other problems.

Foreign Teachers can be a waste of money for Universities

Many students each semester dread having a class with a teacher whose name they can't pronounce. Many foreign professors or teachers can't speak english well, and the students are trying to understand them the best they can. I currently have a foreign teacher for STA 200, and she is a very small, quiet person. You have to be absolutely silent and try to understand each word she says, when she isn't reading from the powerpoint. She went and was babbling on talking in circles, looking like she was trying to think of how to explain it better to us in english. She says things in class and the rest of the class looks at each other with that "what did she just say?" look. She doesn't even take the entire class to present her lessons. Most instructors, TAs or professors take the entire 50 minutes to present their lesson for the day. She has never filled the class, always letting us out early. They are not really helping the students learn in this environment when they can't understand what they are saying, so they are wasting their money on letting them teach classes.

Day 1: Today is day one of my homework assignment for JOU 101 with Buck Ryan. We are to create a blog and discuss things we want, and generate comments for our grade.

My topic for today is going to be Political Parties. Just to start out I want to let anyone reading know that I am a registered Independant, and not attached to any third party. I don't really like the idea of political parties. As we can see from the current 111th Congress, we are dividing the country into Republicans and Democrats. Obama said he wanted things to be bipartisian, now look at his party in Health Care Conference Committee. Not a single Republican to be found. This should be where Obama sets up and tells the leaders in Congress to allow them [Republicans] to join the talks, where if nothing gets passed, its their fault.

One of our founding fathers, and first President, George Washington advised against the political parties and look where its gotten us. Why shouldn't many people have a chance at running for the office of President at once, rather than having to be on a major ticket and have the backing of one of the two big parties. It would increase competition amongst candidates if there were more of them in the general election. There are those people who are diehard Republican and Democrats who can't even accept there are different views and theirs might actually be wrong. If there were no parties, people might be more apt to realized his neighbor has a good suggestion even though it is radically different, and this could be the case in Congress as well.

Thats all for now. More to come as this is a continuing assigment.