My last entry before the semester ends and I leave this school for good.

This really isn’t the most involved blog entry nor is it informative or deep in anyway but I just wanted to say that I really enjoyed this class and I feel like I’ve learned a lot. This isn’t me sucking up (per say) I just thought people should know that Prof. Savaglio is awesome and I would recommend her to anyone who needs to take this class.

Also as to answer a comment I received on the review I did for the Julia Nunes album, I would never publish in this school paper because I believe it is water downed, politically biased, uninteresting garbage and I would never want to put my name anywhere near it.

RESTORE THE REPUBLIC
PEACE THROUGH MUSIC

-Hayly LeMond

Why am I always so tired? When does the work cease?

As a college student I constantly find myself having trouble staying awake in class. I’ve tried everything from taking caffeine pills to chugging redbull but no matter what I do I can never seem to be alert and focused. This has become a chronic habit and I had to look into my  own schedule and see what has been making me tired all semester. After thinking deeply to myself the answer soon became more and more clear to me. The amount of work I had been expected to do this semester is completely outrageous. On a nightly basis I found myself staying up till 2 am doing mounds of work only to get little or no sleep. Soon professors began to wonder why I’m constantly sick or unfocused and all I kept telling them is with the amount of work I get on a daily basis I don’t get a healthy amount of sleep. According to doctors world round the average amount of sleep a normal human being should get is 9 + hours yet here I find myself constantly getting 4 to 5 hours a day. Because of my lack of sleep I can’t get anything done because I always have to nap in order to even begin to function. Something must be done to stop this problem of sleep deprivation. In my opinion professors should get together and discuss deadlines on assignments so no major assignment is due on the same day forcing a student to spend countless hours awake at night. However, in today’s day and age with a demand for excellence from students across the globe, unfortunately sleepless nights will remain to be linked with college and that will never change.

SEAC (Student Environmental Action Coalition)

Throughout the campus of the University of Tampa there are so many garbage cans, that it is a wonder why we see litter on the ground. Are students lazy to throw their trash out? Do they litter for a laugh from their friends? Does garbage come out of the garbage cans or other places by wind or other unintentional causes? These are some of the questions we ask about the state of the sanitation of our campus environment.

Judy Etzel, a graduate student attending the University of Tampa for chemical engineering, has started the Student Environmental Action Coalition in hopes of remedying the situation. The SEAC hopes to target specific occurrences such as the condition of recycling on campus. How many times have you seen a recycling bin in a dorm building? The scarcity of them is unacceptable and if more are implimented, we believe many people will use them religiously.

As the SEAC has just recently been founded, we are looking for more members. Not only would each member be participating in helping the environment, but being part of the group would look good on a resumé. Anyone who is interested in joining up with the SEAC can contact either Judy Etzel (President) at Jetzel@ut.edu or myself, John Dolan (Vice President) at jdolan@ut.edu.

Left Right Wrong by Julia Nunes—An album review by Hayly LeMond

In a world of over produced pop princesses and desperate record deal hungry bands, it is hard to find a genuine do-it-yourself musical sensation in the lime light. However, thanks to YouTube, many at home musicians can produce and present their songs to a world wide audience. Julia Nunes is one of YouTube’s most subscribed musical acts boasting more than 45 thousand subscribers and millions of views. Mostly a cover artist on YouTube, she has done songs from “Build Me Up Buttercup” by The Foundations to Spoon’s “The Underdog”, all on ukulele. Her first album Left, Right, Wrong is comprised of twelve original songs played on guitar. She self produced the record in 2007 on her own label—Rude Butler Music—pretty impressive for a nineteen-year-old college freshman.

Her music is simple; just her richly melodic voice accompanied by guitar. Nunes’s musical style is a balance between talented pop-guitar compositions and insightful lyrics communicating perfectly the awkward but intriguing feelings that come with post adolescent love. Nunes’s lyrics are clever and deep, sometimes self defeating, and easy to relate to. “Blushing Cheeks” is a straightforward anthem of an unrequited crush “please ignore my blushing cheeks, my ears are redder/and I’ll endure these lonely weeks ’til things get better/and I’ll be there for you/’til my heart rips in two” and “A Century” illustrates the inner dialog of a smitten girl hopeful but riddled with insecurity “Just shut up. He thinks you’re cute/ Well I wish I could just stay mute/ But I bet I mess this up again/ And he’ll think we’d be better off as friends/”. In Nune’s lyrics she shows her want for maturity but still holds on to her bright-eyed perspective of love; she writes like a teenager in transition between discovering the desire for a substantial, adult relationship but still wanting the simplicity of puppy love.

Her voice is not pitch perfect but rich and soulful enough to draw in listeners. Writing and producing her own music better transmits her emotion as if you can hear her smiling when she sings. On her YouTube videos she often overlays harmonies which make her songs rich with sound. Besides guitar she also plays the ukulele and melodica which are both sadly absent from the album. However, she promises that her latest record, coming out this month, will feature all the missing elements in Left Right Wrong including harmonies, the Uke, and even some drums and bass.

Overall Left Right Wrong is a solid first attempt by Julia Nunes to break into the music industry on her own terms and with her own style.

Score: B+ 87%

The Revolution: A Manifesto by Ron Paul—Review by Hayly LeMond

This much is true: you have been lied to-so reads the inside cover of Republican Ron Paul’s most recent book. The seven chapter manifesto is brief but enlightening to those who ready for a real change. Ron Paul, a doctor and ten term congressman from Texas, explains in straight forward terms how and why the government has lied about everything from the collapse of the dollar to the war on terror. Though the book was written during his 2008 run for President, Dr. Paul makes it clear that for us to have a real revolution requires more than just an position in office; we need a complete government overhaul. The book addresses the government’s abandonment of the Founding Father’s noninterventionist ideals, the recent administrations negligence of the Constitution, and the misguiding, false choice in American politics. As Barry M. Goldwater puts it “this book takes a wrecking ball to the political establishment”. The Revolution: A Manifesto is a blueprint on how to bring freedom and prosperity back to the United States and Ron Paul is the perfect visionary to lay the groundwork.

Cheating in College

I recently watched a program that discussed technology and how it is used by students that cheat in school.  Technology has changed cheating from writing the answers on you leg and hiking your skirt up for answers and writing tiny print on wide rubber band bracelets into less obvious and more easily “accepted” methods.  For example Texas Instrument 83 calculator allow students to download and save information  including formulas and answers to problems in the memory.  If a student is taking a math test, partial answers, if not all, are available to assist students in passing the test without thinking for themselves.  I’m grateful that my university consist of small classes.  Image students in auditorium sized classes with cell phones.  It is easy to text a friend for the answer to a problem without being noticed. I have several concerns with this issue.

My first concern is for the students that are cheating.  I hope that they are not medical students or accountants, because more that likely, they wont know what they are doing and the patient or client will suffer loss.

I’m also concerned for the students, like myself, who are not cheaters.  I spend hours studying and completing assignments to be a high achiever in school and a student who could care less about anything but a grade comes up with a creative way to get ahead, and on the surface, suceeds. Where is the fairness?  How can we judge merit in that situation?

My philosophy is to let them eat cake!  Eventually their deception will catch up with them.

Watch this video on cheating and blog what you think!

www.metacafe.com/watch/956273/cheat_professionally/

A Third Party Perspective

The media as well as the government like to condition the people to think that they have two distinct choices in our electoral process, that the Republicans and the Democrats are so vastly different that your decision should be clear of whom you find best fit to lead. However, it seems that as each election year comes and goes the parties begin to blend more and more, both often abandoning the historical ideals and meeting at the center. It is rare that one party or one candidate represents all of a person’s values perfectly but when we are only presented with two viable options people often end up having to choose between the lesser of two evils. However, there is often one over looked option; voting for a 3^rd party. There is a great hostility to third party voters by those who buy into the two party system. People seem to believe if you do choose to vote 3^rd party, that you are either taking a vote away from a “real” candidate or throwing away your vote all together. This assumption is of course ridiculous; isn’t it more of a waste of a vote to compromise your morals to support a skewed and false system? Aren’t you suppose to vote for the most qualified, honest person who shares your ideals? If people would stop qualifying this false left/right paradigm by voting strictly by party and start voting their conscious instead we could see some real change. So, for this election who are your options besides Obama or McCain?

President/VP Candidates	Party	Strongly Favors	Favors	Opposes	Strongly Opposes
Cynthia McKinney/ Rosa Clemente	Green	Abortion rights, maintaining affirmative action policies, gay rights, universal health care, withdraw from Iraq, legalization of marijuana, alternative energy, repeal the PATRIOT Act	Progressive tax reform, allowing illegal immigrants to earn citizenship	Privatized social security, allowing churches to provide welfare services	Prayer in school, the death penalty, three strike sentencing laws, absolute right to gun ownership, school vouchers, staying with the UN, NATO, NAFTA
Bob Barr/ Wayne Allan Root	Libertarian	Prayer in school, death penalty, gun ownership rights, privatized social security, restoring habeas corpus	The war on drugs, expanding the armed forces, withdraw from Iraq	Increased federal funding for health care, same-sex domestic partnerships	Abortion rights, alternative energy, allowing illegal immigrants to earn citizenship, staying with the UN, NATO, NAFTA
Chuck Baldwin/ Darrel Castle	Constitution	Privatize social security, school vouchers, repealing the PATRIOT act, withdraw from Iraq, right to gun ownership,	Drug enforcement be in the hands of state and local authorities	Expanding the armed forces, the “nanny” state	Restricting offshore drilling, universal health care, allowing illegal immigrants to earn citizenship, staying with the UN, NATO, NAFTA
Brian Moore/ Stewart Alexander	Socialist	Abortion rights, gay rights, universal health care, alternative energy, allowing illegal immigrants to earn citizenship, with draw from Iraq	Affirmative action policies, strengthen gun law enforcement	School vouchers, repealing the PATRIOT act	Death penalty, three strike sentencing, privatized social security, regressive taxes like the payroll tax and the sales tax
Ralph Nader/	Independent	Gay rights, universal health care, alternative energy, repealing the PATRIOT act	Affirmative action policies, abortion rights, with draw from Iraq	Prayer in school, expanding the armed forces	Criminalization of Marijuana, absolute right to gun ownership, death penalty, privatized social security, school vouchers

When Class gets Boring

I’ve spoken with several students that say they want to withdraw from a class because the teacher is bonkers or because the class is boring.  I don’t understand the logic behind that decision.  One of the main points of a college education is to become exposed to different thoughts, ideas and people. 

I once had a professor that had as much energy as the guy they use for Visine commercial ads, but instead of skipping class or taking a nap in class, I decided to  have a double shot of espresso before class and write down every word he said during his lecture.  This of course forced me to have an A when I completed his class.

Unfortunately, we are not going to like every professor’s teaching style or every subject, but lets not train our selves to give up when the going gets tough.  Let’s find other means to be a success without being quitters.

The Time of My Life?

18 lives, 18 opinions, 18 experiences, and 18 dreams. Welcome to college from the historic campus of a private institution located on the beach-laden west coast of Florida. We invite you to share our thoughts as we wade or way through one of life’s pivotal turning points and perhaps add a few of your own.

Plant Hall and Henry B. Plant Museum, University of Tampa