College Blog #8

The Good, The Bad, & The Ugly

By Terrence Cain

This week has been one wild ride after another for me. First I find out from my roommate that the course we were on has changed and that I will not have to move, which I am very very happy about. Then on Tuesday I ended up missing classes because my dog got bit by a spider that decided to make its way into my home the night before. The spider ended up making her very sick and I even had to take her to the vet to get her meds to reduce the swelling on her nose. I sat with her throughout the entire day keeping a watch over her to make sure she was ok. I am happy to report she is doing fine now and the swelling has gone away.

Another thing that came up this week was that we had exams. First was in my Business Computer class, second was my Mass Media class and third was my Algebra class with Prof. Buske. Anyone who knows me knows I hate taking tests.

Ever since I was a little boy I have loathed tests, and I have always had a hard time trying to retain a great share of knowledge, so as I have gotten older my memory retaining abilities have gotten worse. It doesn’t help either that I haven’t been in any educational system in ten years.

Thankfully in my Mass Media class it was an open book test. I think I did ok in the Mass Media and Business Computers tests, Algebra…well that’s another thing. It is one subject I’ve never been very good at and I don’t ever see myself getting better at it. I consider it to be my “kryptonite” in all the subjects they make you take to get your education.

Anyway, this week was just one hectic day after another for me. On a good note I was able to take pictures of the project we had for Mass Media. Basically we had to create an ad for a specific group of people that the product was targeted towards. We had to make shampoo ads and my group’s specific target was “Elementary Boys”, so my group chose to do Spider-Man. I did all the printing and coloring and laid out the idea on paper. I’ll share the pictures at the bottom of this week’s blog. Also, pay no attention to the date in the bottom corner. I just didn’t set the date when I turned the camera on.

Today the baseball team for Howard College will be playing Odessa College at 1 p.m. here in Big Spring and again tomorrow in Odessa. Hopefully Howard will win both games. Enjoy your weekend everyone! This is the Howard College Blogging Machine over & out!

Peace – Terrence

College Blog #7

SPRING IS HERE!

By Terrence Cain

The groundhog has kept its promise and given us an early spring, and I personally say thank you for that! This week has been a pretty good one for me. Again, my US History class with Prof. Tune was just great! The class became so lively on Tuesday that Prof. Tune had to ask us to stop asking questions about the time period he was teaching us so that he could get back to his lesson plan.

Prof. Tune wasn’t offended by our disruption; he just wanted to make sure we learned all he had to teach us for this semester. There was just so much we all wanted to know about America in the first fifty years of the twentieth century. We also wanted to know about all the happenings in Europe during World War I & II, so it got pretty deep in Prof. Tune’s class this week.

My Creative Writing class went pretty well this week. Thursday was so nice that we had our class outside where we basked in the beautiful weather as we shared ideas about our short stories we’re coming up with for our next assignment.

Well there’s not much else to say here this week. I don’t have pictures for my Mass Media project yet, but I will next week for sure. Till next week, this is your Howard College blogging machine, over & out!

Peace - Terrence

College Blog #6

Changes…

By Terrence Cain

This week has been very hectic for me. I found out this week that my roommate for the last two and a half years may be moving to San Angelo to take care of his ailing grandmother, so now I have to make the hard choice of possibly moving as well. I’m in the process right now of looking into getting a dorm room at Howard College and working on getting all the financial things taken care of so that the transition is smooth and stress free, if that is what the final decision is to be when it comes to that ultimate decision.

I will also have to find a place to live in-between semesters, if he decides to make the move. This means I am going to have to go back to my hometown of Odessa (most likely) to stay with my parents. It’s not a choice I am happy with having to make (going back to Odessa that is) but it is what it is. It’s not that I don’t love my parents, I do, I just don’t want to leave Big Spring this way. I love this town and I consider this place my true home. OK, enough with the personal issues going on in my life.

This week at school was really cool for me. In my Mass Media class this week we were given the task of creating a commercial for television, and one for radio as well. We have to make two advertisements for a fake shampoo company. We were all divided up into teams of four, but since several students didn’t attend class on Wednesday it has become a team of three for many of the groups, mine was one of them. I think our ads are going to be pretty cool and next week I will tell you more about them and how they went. If I can, I will even try to take and share pictures of the story board we have to create for the television commercial.

Another cool class this week was my US History class with Prof. Tommy Tune. We watched videos this week about the turn of the century and the invention of motion pictures. We discussed the early days of silent films and World War I. The only thing that bothered me was seeing film of soldiers who came back from the war with missing body parts being replaced with a prosthetic and shell shock victims who couldn’t control their own nervous systems and were shaking out of control. That was hard to watch, but the rest of the class was really cool to be a part of. I really do enjoy my US History class with Prof. Tune, and I know that there are people who don’t like his class for one reason or another, but I do.

And for those who don’t like Prof. Tune’s class; or history in general, I feel sorry for because they are missing out on an opportunity to learn and grow as people and to see where we came from and may be going. As the old saying goes, if we don’t learn from our past we’re doomed to repeat it. Another reason I like Prof. Tune’s class is because he has a great deal of knowledge about our nation’s history and makes the class feel like it’s OK to engage in a conversation while he is teaching us. He doesn’t get all weirded out or accuses you of disrupting his class. He enjoys deep thinking as I do.

And this is the craziest part of it all. Prof. Tune is a very conservative type of person, everyone probably knows that about him, what people may not know about me is that I am quite liberal, and with those differences we still manage to get along and have a great deal of respect for one another. Now if only the rest of the world could do that we’d be much better for it. I think I engage in his class the most because I am a person who is very intrigued by history and I feel I learn more by being able to talk and ask questions about the things he is teaching us in his class.

There are a few things I want to bring to everyone’s attention today. If you love sports, you will want to know that Howard College’s softball team will not be playing in Lubbock tonight. That game was canceled. However, Saturday’s game here in Big Spring will take place against the Lubbock Christian JV team. Our softball team has only lost one game this year, their first against Temple College, so it looks like Howard should win this Saturday, well I hope so anyway.

Another thing I think people should know is that the American Sign Language Flex Course begins on February 15th in the SWCID building. If you wish to attend you need to go sign up for the course. Kathy Weldon will be the instructor. There is a limit of 20 students for this course that is almost two hours long on Tuesdays and Thursdays at 9:30 a.m. Well that is all from yours truly for the week. I hope you all have a great weekend! This is the Howard College Blogging Machine, over and out!

Peace – Terrence

College Blog #5

The Winter Of Discontent

By Terrence Cain

 This week has been one of the weirdest weeks I have ever seen in weather patterns. Monday was a nice and breezy 72 degrees outside, my kind of weather. Tuesday started this nasty freezing cold weather trend that has been hitting the rest of the nation since December of last year. It was 11 degrees outside and the roads were slick, which caused Howard College to shut down for safety reasons. So I missed one day’s classes, “No big deal. We’ll make it up,” I say to myself.

Day two of continued freezing cold temperatures and icy icy roads. This is not good, but school is open so I guess I better go. Nope! Car won’t start. Great! How am I going to get to school? I couldn’t. Not only that, but the pipes were frozen so no water either. Even better! Wednesday was a bad day. I wound up contacting my professors and letting them know I couldn’t make it to their classes. I hate when I miss classes I am supposed to be attending. Soon after, my glasses broke. What the…? Can Wednesday get any worse?! Oh yes, indeed, I got a nasty headache to boot and had a math test to do online that I had to get done before midnight.

So I repaired my glasses the best I could, I took a couple of Aleve and took a nap on the couch. I woke up around seven or so. I went ahead and took my math test, made an 84 (yippee!), and finished up my short story for my creative writing class as and turned that in as well. Thankfully on Thursday I was able to find my battery charger and got my car started and made it to Thursday’s classes. This week has just been strange, somewhat stressful, and put a lot of things out of whack for me and a lot of others as well. Hopefully this is the last of the crazy freezing cold temperatures for this winter season.

Apparently the groundhog was working in our favor this year because according to the news we’re going to have an early spring. I sure hope so because otherwise that groundhog is going to be getting a letter of discontent from yours truly, lol! This is Howard College’s blogging machine, over and out!

Peace - Terrence