Urban Life Building
Urban Life swing set. People usually come out of here to relax and study.
Uniquely styled classroom in the Urban Life building. Has kind of an old feel to it.
Nice looking bench that is right outside of the Urban Life building. Students usually sit here when they are waiting on class to begin.
The Atlanta Hawks have been my favorite team ever since I was a little kid. I try to go to as many games as I can afford each season. This sound that I have uploaded is of all the Hawks fans chanting “defense” at the Hawks vs Spurs game. Unfortunately we lost that game, but I still had a great night. Go Hawks!
I found this article to be fascinating. I liked how the author gave me a point of view that I had never even thought of before. One of the examples the author used was how an average person would look at a three seated park bench with arm rests and think it was only a part of the design, but how the person who engineered the bench might have been thinking that this bench would make it more difficult for homeless people to sleep on. This example goes to say that many of the architectural designs around us such as highways, transits, and roads all have many different reasons for being the way they are instead of just being the common thing that we see every day.
With me living in the suburbs of Georgia for most of my life I have always had a few questions that I wanted to be answered that did not make much sense to me. Why is it that Marta does not have a station in Johns Creek, Georgia? Why is it that there is so few bus stops around my neighborhood? Reading this article answered these questions for me. The author explains that many wealthy white neighborhoods in the suburbs refuse to have Marta in their neighborhoods because it would give easy access to poor people. This means that most of the suburban jobs would be inaccessible to many poor people that don’t have cars because of the amount of difficulty that it would take to get to the suburban areas. As you can see in this picture, Marta does not run in many wealthy areas.
With many architectural designs being made for the purpose of excluding this has made situations dangerous for people not familiar with the area. For example, a young inner-city girl by the name of Cynthia Wiggins took the transit over to her job at the mall and the transit did not take her all the way to the mall therefore, she had to cross a busy road where she was hit and killed by a dump truck. This all happened because the owner of the mall refused to allow the bus to stop on the mall’s property. Allegedly, there was a conversation between the owner and another person where the owner was saying that he did not want to attract the kind of people that were being let off the bus that Cynthia Wiggins rode.
To go along with many architectural designs being made for the purpose of excluding the author talks about how earlier on in history, walls were built to separate white neighborhoods from black neighborhoods. Some of these walls are still present today. For example, in Detroit, there is a wall that was constructed in 1940 called The Eight Mile Wall, and its purpose of being constructed was to separate an old black neighborhood from a new white neighborhood. We can find another example in Hamden, Connecticut where a 1,500-foot long fence was constructed to separate primarily black public housing from a primarily white suburban neighborhood. Fortunately, the fence was removed in 2014, but the fence did cause a problem for residents living around the area. Just to go to the grocery store was usually a 3-mile trip, but with the fence being there it took 7.7 miles. Many people living in the primarily black public housing didn’t own cars so they would have to hop onto two buses and make a two-hour trip just to attend a grocery store. 
I enjoyed reading this article. The author gave me a viewpoint that I had not even noticed before, and I found what the author said to be very insightful. The part that I found most surprising is we live in this world every day and fail to realize that a lot of unfairness is still going on in our communities. I believe that Atlanta needs to be more inclusive. I don’t think that you should be given more or less opportunity based on where you come from. Overall I enjoyed reading this, and I would recommend this article to a friend.
This chapter talks a lot about being involved in different organizations. For me I have not been too involved in the organizations and activities that have been provided on campus. For some reason I keep on telling myself that I’ll get up and sign up for something, but what I have noticed on campus so far is that the school spirit is not very good for Georgia State to be this big. Although this is the case I believe that I can make the most out of this by becoming more involved in my second semester. This will give me the chance to experience some new things as well as meet different types of people.
It is important to be able to manage your money right, especially if you are in college. College has been pretty expensive for me and my family. I actually applied for the un-subsidized loan and the subsidized loan, but I have not touched that money. I just want to have it in case of an emergency. My family and I all came to the conclusion that the common goal is for me to come out of college debt free and I really thank my parents for the amount of hard work and sacrifice that they have put into me having a fantastic education. I also have to play a role in my parents continuing to pay for my education by maintaining the HOPE scholarship. So far everything is going as planned and we are making it work.
In this chapter I learned the importance of having good test taking strategies and having the right preparation for an exam. During my high school years I was the type of person that could do well on a test or assignment without taking notes. I guess you could say I was more of an auditory learner. Now that college has hit I have tried to continue with my auditory learning style, but in college it does not really work as well and I had to find that out the hard way when I scored a 72 on my government exam. It was a tough lesson to learn, but it was needed. Since then I have started to take good notes in all of my lecture classes to make sure that I do well on my tests.
In this chapter I learned about the importance of scheduling an appointment and meeting with your academic adviser. Coming to Georgia State I did not really know what I wanted to do and this was a problem for me because I did not want to take classes that would not end up helping me towards my future. In the very first week I was able to get an appointment with Mrs. Jenise Stafford and she was able to help me find out what I was interested in. We came to the conclusion that Computer Information Systems was probably the track that I should take for right now and I was able to switch out of my Anthropology class and my World Religions class for Statistics and Macro Economics. Mrs. Stafford was a very kind lady and she made the process super easy and comfortable. I would recommend anyone that is lost in the academic process to go ahead and schedule an appointment .
In chapter 9 I learned the importance of having a good relationship with my professors and making good decisions because they will follow me around forever. In my first few weeks at GSU I had a question for one of my professors and I called her “Mrs.” and before I could even let my question out she was like, “don’t call me Mrs.”. I’m not sure why, but I felt like that was kind of rude. A few weeks later that same professor ended up helping me out with a problem that I had and she ended up being very nice. I judged her too quickly when I should’ve been trying to establish a relationship with her during those weeks. It is also important to make good decisions. I try very hard to watch what i post online. I do not curse or harass anyone because what you put online is what everyone can see. I don’t want employers to judge me based off social media. I want them to judge me based off of my knowledge for my craft.
In this chapter I learned about the importance of utilizing the library and the steps that you should take to ensure that plagiarism does not occur. Going to the library was a new thing for me at Georgia State as I did not even know where it was until Monday September 21st. I was able to reserve a room where I could study for my government test and have some quiet time while I wrote some essays. While I was writing my essays I made sure to quote everything accordingly and add a works cited page along with in-text citations because I just really do not want to be in a situation where the school is telling me that I stole someone’s work. That’s just a bad situation because if you do indeed get caught doing that then it’s an honor code violation and those stick with you throughout college.
I have always learned that managing your time is apart of growing up. Since I have been at Georgia State I have definitely had to make it a priority to manage my time. This experience has been way different than high school because I have a lot more free time now. With me not having classes on Friday I can either choose to mess around and play all day or I can use that as an extra day where I study and catch up on my work. So far I have used Friday as that day where I do nothing but school work so that I can have a mixture of fun time and study time on Saturday then relaxation on Sunday. This has helped me feel very stress free and I will continue to do that while I am at Georgia State.