Samuel Connery

Life of the Mind

Professor Lenard

30 September 2015

Blog Post #2

Over the summer we had to read “Whistling Vivaldi” which is a book that discusses stereotypes felt throughout society.  One of the contributors to the book was Valerie Purdie-Vaughns, who was also a student of the author Claude Steele.  The speaker was Valerie Purdie-Vaughns and I heard from a majority of professors that she was going to be a very entertaining speaker and provide  interesting topics to cover.

Valerie Purdie-Vaughns had started off the convocation in a very exciting way.  She told the audience to participate in an activity where you would turn to the person sitting next to you and discuss what you wanted to do for a living after you got out of college.  I enjoyed this activity because I got to meet two new people and since this was at the beginning of the year it had helped me introduce myself to some new friends.  After the opener Valerie Purdie-Vaughns began to go over statistics.  One of these was the difference between math scores of men and women and how the stereotype affects women in a learning setting.  Although this information was pertinent to the discussion it was very similar to examples that we had read throughout “Whistling Vivaldi”.    It seemed like a general overview of tests throughout the book which in some ways could be helpful since the majority of students had to do an assignment concerning the book.  I was hoping that we would hear about different tests or different findings not mentioned in the book that she could provide for us .  Although I didn’t find the information she presented very interesting Valerie Purdie-Vaughns was a very good speaker and knew how to keep her audience interested   throughout the whole presentation.  I definitely recommend the convocation to any incoming freshmen in the future.

Samuel Connery

Life of the Mind

Professor Lenard

13 October 2015

As high school came to an end I was upset over the possibility that my sports career was coming to a close.  I was only average when it came to the single sport I played which was track and field and knew it would be extremely difficult for me to make the team.  In order to make up for the lack of physical activity I got while playing sports in high school, I knew that I had to find an activity to keep me active.  After discussing club possibilities with my one friend Klaudia, she had suggested that I sign up for Jiu-Jitsu club.  I was reluctant at first due to the problem that I had no prior fighting experience; however, I knew that I should learn some form of self-defense in case I was ever to put in a situation where I needed to protect myself.

As I arrived in the racquetball court room where jiu-jitsu meets, I was nervous to encounter what the club had in store for me.  As I got down and began to stretch, I scoped out the competition.  They all appeared very strong and each one looked as if they had prior training in jiu-jitsu.  Luckily for me the first hour of jiu-jitsu practice involved no one v. one situations.  It was just practicing moves for different positions that someone may find himself in when rolling with an opponent.  The practicing was helpful since it gave me some basic moves to practice.  The sensei was also walking around observing the groups and giving tips on how to properly perform the moves.  The hour passed quickly, and it was then time for the sensei to leave us.  This was not the end of practice for the club.  After the hour of learning the techniques, most members stay behind to learn to roll with another opponent and apply the techniques previously learned.  Particularly on my first day of rolling, I was destroyed by my opponents.  They were able to have me tap out in a matter of seconds.  Luckily for me, all the experience fighters recognized my lack of ability for the sport and began to teach me techniques as we were rolling.  They would stop as we were in the middle of rolling and give me tips such as how to break a hold or how to perform offensive moves like an arm bar.  I found this teach method a lot easier since it was a real fighting situation.  I feel that I’m improving more and more each lesson.  The club meetings have become the highlights of my Tuesdays and Thursdays and although I’m still in the early stages of training, I believe that I’m going to stick with this club throughout the rest of my years at Stockton.

Samuel Connery                                                                                                                                               Blog Post #1

Professor Lenard                                                                                                                                             9/14/15

The day of service was quite the interesting experience.  When I had first signed up for it back in the summer I had assumed that the day was going to be filled with working on small projects throughout the day to give to the people who are less fortunate.  Rather the day was mostly filled with sitting through presentations on different services that are offered as clubs at the school or the surrounding area.  This provided an interesting opportunity to find a service club that was best suited for me.

Out of all the presentations that I saw, I believe Green Dot was the most intriguing to me.  Green Dot in an organization that encourages people to stop potentially dangerous situations, known as red dots, by having someone intervene in some form either through words or actions.  The people who were intervening and trying to help the situation were known as the green dots.  The speaker had helped me realize that there were situations that I’ve encountered in my own life that I could have helped make better through stepping in.  In order to help in these situations, the organization needs more people to become aware of how to become a green dot so that there’s a better chance that they will be there to stop a red dot.  This group teaches people the proper way to intervene in dangerous situations so they can help defuse the situations.

Although the day was mainly filled with presentations, there was one activity during the day that actually made me feel like I was actively helping others.  The name of the group was Books without Borders, which is an organization that collects books to give to people in other areas that have a hard time accessing books.  The organization had us actively work by unloading boxes of books from their vans and then categorize them into subjects and from there repackage the books in other boxes.  The process made me feel that I was putting my time to good use at the day of service, and it was also the kind of thing that I was expecting the day of service to be.  Since there was a large amount of people that had signed up for the Day of Service the club was able to get many hours of hard work which they wouldn’t have if they had just worked with the members of their club.  I felt this Day of Service was extremely valuable to this club just because of the amount of work that we were able to help them finish in such a short amount of time.

Above all, I believe that the Day of Service was a valuable source of information to learn about different community service groups around the school.  Next year I hope that the Day of Service has more active projects, such as making care packages.  I do now feel that I have a better understanding of the community service opportunities here at Stockton and hope to get involved with at least on sometime soon.