A Freshman's Guide to Humboldt State

Welcome to Humboldt State! (Or as you may have heard it also called, HSU, Hills and Stairs University, school for hippies, or that one school known for weed; but whatever the case your will be proud to call yourself a lumberjack.) You are about to enter into the first semester of your 4 year (or possibly more) journey at Humboldt. Trust me as someone who just went through my first semester I have a lot of advice that I can offer you to get through it. One big thing I can tell you is that college is not nearly the same thing as high school, and trust me that’s a good thing. The most important thing I would say is to have fun. You’re here for a long time so why not make it the best years of your life.

First off, I’m a Southern Californian girl and I will tell you I was not prepared for the culture at Humboldt. I have finally learned that there is a giant (and I mean humongous) difference between Southern and Northern California. Not only are the people and attitude completely different, the weather is the hardest adjustment I have ever made in my life. And that leads me to the rain. I’m sure you’ve heard that it rains a lot here, so did I when I accepted my admission, however you really need to understand and prepare for, tons and tons of rain! Now if you love the rain, then this school could honestly not be anymore perfect for you. But if you’re like me, and the sound of rain from inside, while you’re drinking hot chocolate, and watching a movie is way better than you actually being outside in it, you may be in for a surprise. The good thing is that it will rain enough your first semester that you will actually start to like it. But as a warning, go out and buy rain clothes, an umbrella, a waterproof case for your backpack, and most importantly do not make the mistake I did thinking that Rainbow Sandals were going to get you through the whole year at Humboldt, go invest in rain boots. That’s one investment you won’t regret.

Another thing that you will soon adjust to is that if your from anywhere south of San Francisco, the word “Hella” is thrown around more times than a girl says “like” in a sentence. Yes, in Southern California that word is like the worse thing you can say, but you will learn to just accept it. And trust me no matter how much you tell yourself that you wont ever say it, you start to see your fellow Socal friends say it and then form there it will eventually accidently slip out of you and you wont even notice. But you will realize that these people that say “hella” like crazy are some of the nicest people you will ever meet. People in this town, and well most in Northern California are extremely nice and will go out of their way to help you out. I know you must be worried about making friends and stressing if you will fit in but trust me there is no way that you can’t. That’s what’s great about your first semester you can create who you want to be and create the first impression you want to make. Don’t try to impress people with the cutest outfits everyday with your hair and make up done. Trust me sweats, a sweatshirt, and your hair in a ponytail will become your best friend. As long as you stay open minded and positive, meeting new people will be easy and fun. You’ll have friends in no time and they are the one most important thing that will get you through your entire time in college. You have to remember that everyone is in the same boat as you are, no one knows anyone and everyone is looking for friends. I would suggest finding one of the themed housing to live in, that way you’ll be with people that have the same interest as you. And no matter what anyone tells you, The Canyon dorms are the most legit and amazing dorm place to live. I must say Pepperwood may be at the top of the 8 buildings in The Canyon. I guarantee you that whether or not you live there, you will find an excuse to stop your homework and everything that may be important and crucial at the time, to go over and join in on the nerf gun wars, strobe/backlight parties, mini bike jumping, mattress wars, and so many other activities that are unspeakable due to housing regulations and rules. But besides that go out at make friends! Talk to your roommate. You are bound to have more similarities than that you both are night people and don’t mind music in the room, or any other little question that you most likely lied about on the roommate questionnaire because you thought that you parents would somehow be able to see your answers. Trust me there is a lot to get to know about each other. If you don’t try and you hate them you will have the longest semester of your life.

So I’m sure that you’ve heard that UC Santa Barbra and Arizona State are the biggest party schools ever, but I can tell you that every college is a party school! Yes, college is that time that you have finally escaped your parents and all you want to do is rebel and go to every party, but pace yourself and make a good balance between having fun and focusing on your studies and classes. However, I do believe that you learn more in college by going out and experiencing life than you do in class.

Also, if you have ever visited the campus or area you may agree with everyone in the entire world that HSU does honestly stand for Hills and Stairs University. Now this “nickname” has its pluses and minuses. On the bright side for all you that have been reading magazines and going online to find ways to avoid that dreaded “freshman 15,” well guess what you have nothing to worry about. There are enough stairs at this school that by the time you walk to class you have just burned off all the calories that you just ate. However, do NOT and mean do NOT let the stairs intimidate you. One rule pace yourself on them, do not be one of those people that stop half way on them out of breath. You will get laughed at I promise. And try your best not to make the stairs an excuse not to go to your far class that day. It’s always worth it to make it to class and exercise never hurt anyone. However, I will tell you this, take the time out and explore the campus. There are so many shortcuts from place to place that will get you places faster and you can actually avoid a lot of stairs. And that leads me to one little point. I don’t care where you are coming from, this campus is in the middle of the Redwood Forest, go out an explore it, its gorgeous! There are tons of things to find, but as I learned never go in it without someone else or least a phone. There are very slippery spots, (considering all the rain) that result in you falling down rain drains into cement sewer rooms, that trust me are the hardest things to get out of by yourself. But you’ll find the most fun thing to do is to get lost in the forest and the best memories are made in it.

Now to get to the part where I explain where all that work you did for 4 years of high school is going towards. Well, lets just say since you probably hated most of your classes cause they had no relation to anything that interested you, those 4 years were all general education classes that now will be reviewed again just to torture you. Don’t get me wrong not all of the classes will be bad but you may find all that information that you learned in high school does not apply or transfer to the classes you will be taking here. But that’s what’s great about college you make your own schedule and pick your own classes. Some are required but you have options between those required classes. One suggestion when you make you schedule is that, it is in your best interest to not have big gaps in between classes. I have learned that ending class at 9a.m. and your next one isn’t till 4p.m. gives you about 5 or 6 hours to find an excuse not to go to class at 4p.m. And trust me there are a lot of things that you can come up with. Which leads me to suggest, all teachers give you a limit to how many days you can miss before they consider that you are dropped from the class, but I would not make it a goal to get to that number. You have a lot of new freedom and responsibilities but classes are very important. They often provide value information about upcoming exams that can’t be found in the book. Every day that you miss you are responsible for the information that was missed. Make sure that you know the furlough days for class too, because you have to be prepared for the information that wasn’t covered. Not to make this more important (though it may be) than the absolute necessity of that information, I have to say that when you show up to an 8 o’clock morning class after walking through the rain to find that you forget it was a furlough day is the worse thing in the world. So make sure you know those and make a note of it.

But besides that classes are a lot more fun but at the same time more difficult than high school. The teachers here are very laid back and helpful. Get to know them they will be your friend, they don’t bite. You have opportunities to get the full experience out of the class so take it. If you absolutely hate the class take advantage of being able to drop classes within the time period. This gives you the chance to find classes that you like and enjoy. For those of you that have no idea what you want your major to be this is your chance to explore and find that. And for those of you who know what you want to be and the major, stick with it, and try your best. You may find that it really isn’t what you wanted to do with your life. But hey remember that saying everyone used to tell you that it okay that you don’t know what you want to be, you have time to figure it out? Well yeah, as annoying as that way it’s true. No one expects you to know what you want to do for the rest of your life in a split second. Get out there and explore major, take internships, visit the career center, and be open-minded.

You’ll find that without your parents, you have no curfew, no one to tell you what you can and can’t do, and no one there to be your alarm clock. The one thing you will value the most is sleep, but it’s under your control. Try and set a good sleeping schedule and taking naps are okay, they give you a break from the day. Stay up late on the weekends but don’t try and pull an all-nighter on a Tuesday playing video games and drinking energy drinks because in the morning you will hate yourself. And make sure to buy a battery-powered alarm clock. There are numerous amounts of power outages here and that will cause your alarm not to wake you up at that dreaded hour. You may think that’s a good thing but just wait until you miss your midterm because of it. Sleep will become your best friend, believe me.

So there you have it a complete guide to survive your first semester. I have a few more random suggestions that could possibly make your life a little easier. Do your best to stop procrastinating on homework (you don’t want to me king of procrastination, that’s not cool like you may think it is, you wont get a trophy for it, you’ll get an F), don’t let facebook take over your life and don’t get a Farmville, you will start to think that they both are more important that the essay you are supposed to be writing. Also, find some kind of entertainment, the gym, video games, board games, computer, anything to get your mind off of school and stress. Get to know your CA’s, they are really nice and remember they control if you stay in housing and they control the strikes against you. Bring as many quarters you can to school. You will need them for the laundry. Find at least one friend with a car and make sure you take advantage and learn the bus system. (It’s really not that hard.) And most importantly stay in contact with friends and family at home. You’ll find that you will learn a lot more if you go out and learn more valuable lessons yourself, but just remember to always have fun. College is what you make of it so try and have the best time of your life. Well I guess all that’s left to say is good luck, try your best, don’t party to hard, and have fun!

Know it All

Know it All

In the article “Know it All,” by Stacy Schiff, she talks about her views on Wikipedia and she questions the reliability and trustworthiness of the site. At first she talks about the articles that Wikipedia holds versus a normal encyclopedia. Fair enough you can find ridiculous pages on curing hiccups to building a stove from a soda can but there is also articles relating to world history and more important things. From there she continues to talk about how Wikipedia was made and got started. At first Wikipedia was a site that anyone could go on to and edit the information. This started wars and people would enter in ridiculous information. Once administrators came into place a lot of the false reports were stopped by the rules and regulations.

She started to talk about the truth in the site and that’s when you could see the questions of her argument, is Wikipedia a reliable site? She talked a lot about the comparison the Britannica and found that it was for every 3 errors on Britannica there were 4 on Wikipedia. This shows that Wikipedia is not far off of Britannica. However Britannica is written more for educational purposes and includes more information on history and logic. For instance on the site of Wikipedia, “The (generally good) entry on St. Augustine is shorter than the one on Britney Spears” (Schiff). But it makes sense, because if Wikipedia is a site where anyone can edit, people have more to say on Britney Spears. I think with what she is saying you can assume that knowledge and activity is more successful and reliable than something that you read of the Internet. By going out and learning it first hand on by doing it yourself it will be a lot more trustworthy than something you can read off the internet. There are so many sites out there that are not reliable and have false information on them. Wikipedia is just one of them and is highly known for that because of it popularity and the pure fact that a lot of it is written by an everyday person for an everyday person.

He says She says Readings

Her Point Is

Throughout every paper that I’ve written in my academic career, most papers have to include summarizing of some kind in order to help prove my point and provide information. However, just as these chapters say summarizing is hard because you have to include the author’s opinions and words while always incorporating your own words and focus. Summarizing someone else’s works takes a lot of work because you have to go back and analysis other’s works and that often times makes you lazy and your whole paper could be a large summary. This chapter gives ideas on how you can write a good summary. One tip that they give is to put you in their shoes. You have to try and see where they are coming from, what they believe, and what the argument is that is being presented. But also make sure that your ideas are always incorporated so it does not appear bias. Also, make sure that the summary is in relation to the topic that you are talking about in your paper. Therefore writing a good summary would entail you to include the author’s words in a way that it follows your own beliefs and follows your topic.

As He Himself Puts It

In addition to summarizing, quoting other sources in an excellent way to provide evidence to the claim that you are making. This tells the reader that the information is accurate and that you are not making it up. One of my biggest problems that I usually have is after I insert the quotation is backing it up and explaining the meaning of it, in relevance to my topic and claim. This chapter helps discuss that importance of making sure that you surround the quotes with information to back it up. They give two ways to make sure that that the quote will fit in your writing. They first say that you have to make sure that the quotation is relevant to your writing and your topic and then make a frame around the quotation. This means that you have to first properly introduce the quotation and then and the end of it make sure to explain the meaning of it and how it connects to your claim, your topic, and the world. Making sure that quotation is properly placed in your essay is huge factor in providing accurate evidence to back up your claim.

Using Sources and Avoiding Plagiarism

This last chapter is about plagiarism and how to avoid it. Throughout my high school career our school took plagiarism very seriously and we had a program called turnitin.com, which would trace our paper for any worked that could be plagiarized. The best ways to avoid plagiarism would be to learn how to correctly paraphrase and summarize the information that you gather. Also by using the bibliographies form the last chapters you can avoid plagiarism and keep track of your sources.

I also learned a lot about how to use brackets and ellipsis to add words and delete words when you are quoting from a source, in order to make in fit into your sentences better. I used these a lot in high school. I was always really good at making my quotations blend but paraphrasing has always been a little bit more difficult. Paraphrasing is I way to write the authors or sources information in to your own words. Some of the things that they emphasize on is never say more than the source does, always use your own words, and never paraphrase to present your thesis topic or sentence. Another thing that it talks is about is how to summarize. This is different from paraphrasing because summarizing expresses on the main point on the source and not the entire material. After reading this chapter I think I just need to focus on always citing my sources and make sure that none of it is entirely someone else words.

Researching the Web Wisely

For every project that I have ever done in school and paper written I have always used the Internet for information and sources to prove my claim and gather evidence. However, this chapter talks about how the web can be a good source of information but at the same time anything can be put on the Internet, which makes some information false or bias. It talked a lot about the search engines Google and Yahoo. Personally I prefer Google because I am more familiar with it and have always used it. When it mentioned keywords when searching for your topic I think that this was kind of broad because in the past you sometimes have to be very specific with what you are looking for. Google will bring up what they think you want but a lot of times it is not exactly what you are looking for unless you use specific keywords. When it was talking about search directories I thought it was very interesting because I have never heard of them or used them for anything before. It is a cool way to start off with a broad topic and then move on to one that is more specific just by clicking on certain categories. It suggested a search engine called Dogpile which I looked at and found it to be very helpful. Once you find a website that relates to your topic it is very important that you can evaluate it and make sure it has reliable information. If the website it .edu, .org, .gov, or .ca you know that most of the time if there are sources cited that information can me trustworthy. Also, if they are from a print source or expert authors, the website is usually reliable. It also gives you a list of how to tell if a website might not be trustworthy. After reading this chapter I feel more confident in search for website and making sure they are a site I can get true information from.

Developing a Search Strategy

Reading the chapter on search strategies was very helpful to help write and think of ideas for my research paper. I learned a lot learned a lot about search strategies, which is different ways in which you gather information to answer your research question. A source is the first thing that you should look at when researching because it gives you evidence and proof of the claim your are trying to proof and a secondary source is not as reliable because it is someone’s opinion or ideas. When the chapter talked about surveying a group of people to back up a source or evidence that you have, I thought it was really cool and interesting because for our final in math last year it was all about surveys and bias. We got to see that you can’t just rely on surveys to proof your point or get a clear answer. One thing that I don’t really have any experience in that I learned about was interviewing. The book gave a lot of good information about how to take notes during an interview and what to look for in order to establish if it is trustworthy information. One thing that is really important is too have a working bibliography in order to keep all your sources that you looked at for your research. It is easy just to keep them on note cards and rearrange them later into the final draft. Going off the bibliography there is something called an annotated bibliography, which also includes a brief summary of the source. I’ve never done this style before but I can see how it would help a lot on looking back to the website for another information. The last part of this chapter talked about how to take content notes. It suggested that you keep the notes on index cards so you can easily relate them to the bibliography items, which I thought was a really good idea. This chapter defiantly helped clear up question and I learned a lot about my search strategy.

Assessment Portfolio

After reading about the Assessment Portfolio I am more aware what is going to be expected from me and I feel more prepared going into it. However, I have never been that confident in my writing skills so this portfolio is intimidating to me. I usually have a hard time putting my thoughts out on paper, expressing what I am really trying to say, and connecting it to a deeper meaning. Reading the intro paragraph it summarizes everything that we have been doing in class, such as drafts and revisions, working with our peers to better our essays, and meeting with our teacher. I have found all of this to be really helpful in making my writing better.

I kind of feel better knowing that in order to even submit your portfolio you have to have a C- or better and I know that I can pull that off. There needs to be 2-4 essays in there and 2 of those will then be graded. I think I will have a hard time choosing which 2 because I have to determine which ones will get me a combined score of 8 or better.

One thing that I am worried about a lot is the cover letter. The length of two to three pages is a little scary to me because that a lot of reflecting that you have to do as a writer. I know that there’s a lot to include such as, demonstrating my self-awareness, strengths and weaknesses, knowledge of writing, and improvements as a writer, however, I think that I will have trouble coming up with that much information on each. I need to write it to the committee and be able to prove to them I have developed as a writer and have learned a lot of my style of writing.

After reading about all the information to submit my assessment portfolio successfully I have mix feelings of confidence and intimidation. I know that I can turn in a good portfolio but I understand that I am going to have to put in a lot of time and dedication.