Activities 2-4

Even though I wasn't able to attend Zack's office hours, I made the effort to go to both my Shakespeare and Sociology office hours. For Shakespeare, I essentially went to visit the professor with questions about our essays (which is a bulk of our grade) and different concepts/themes we would read from the plays. The first time I went to both of the office hours, I wanted to introduce myself as an eager first year student who was ready to get an A in the class and be passionate about the subjects - but really! I genuinely love Shakespeare and the masterpieces he created - from his plays to his sonnets. As of now, I'm a pre-Sociology major so diving into the subject really helped me see if I wanted to pursue it as a major. Regardless of how easy or hard the material was that day, I tried to go at least once a week to each of the office hours. Not only did I develop personal connections with my professors but I was able to clarify concepts and figure out different methods of going about studying or taking notes during lecture with tips from my professors and TA's.

On August 19th, I attended my first CLAS workshop called Writing Papers. Coming from a college preparatory high school, I felt I was already very prepared writing college leveled papers. However, once I was assigned my first paper, I wanted to seek out all of the possible resources I had around me in order to do the best I could on the paper. The instructor, Paul, was pretty entertaining and rather sassy. He straight up asked anyone if they just attended the workshop so they could get class credit - one girl raised her hand and he said "Well, this is insulting", signed the paper, and told her to basically beat it. But hey! It's encouraging to see how he only wants to guide students that are motivated themselves. Moving on to the actual presentation later on, he used a Prezi to go through the important steps of writing and brainstorming. Even though the advice was a bit elementary for my level of writing, I was informed about the writing lab and how we could get our essays checked out by grad students and get some really awesome input. I'm really glad I went to the workshop - the perks of being a resourceful college student.

Just about three weeks ago, I attended one of the Health & Wellness presentations about the Science of Happiness. One of the health advisors introduced himself and created an interactive Prezi that helped organize the different steps and ways of becoming happier in and about life. At first, he showed a Ted Talk hosted by a professor from Harvard who developed actual science experiments in order to measure happiness from one person to another. His theory encompassed different methods in order to become happier: writing down what you're grateful for every day to writing a hand written letter to someone you haven't kept touch with for a while that use to be somewhat of a significant other. Not only did the advisor teach about the science of happiness but he also demonstrated  how we could avoid the stress of college. Although some of the methods seem a little too tedious for my taste, I know other ways to make and keep myself content. But I have every reason to be happy anyway since I'm at UCSB :)