Done!

With much help from a dear friend the paper is done and in! I feel really good about it, got some great feedback. If I could have made it 20 to 25 pages it would be much better, but for a 12 page paper I think it covered the basics.

If I had the room I would have brought in the comparison with gambling problems, but not in a 12 page paper. Hopefully somewhere down the line if I have to write a term paper for an upper division class I'll take the subject and run with it. A month really isn't a long time to write a paper, it's teaching me to budget my time even better however.

Java next week, I'm going to start reading etc now so it's not a crunch. Hopefully it should be a relatively easy class, it's an intro 200 level again.

Final Paper Candidate

Final Paper Candidate for the Video Game Addiction paper. I'm going to let it percolate for a bit and then come back to it, but if anyone wants to comment please do.

Assuming I pass the Background Check

I have the job at Sun!! I'm a W2 employee employed by Sun as an intern, which is awesome on my resume. I am limited to five hours a week, which is great as I want to concentrate on school, and the job pays well. It will be around 400 a month, depending on taxes etc, take home. It doesn't negate the need for student loans but it does allow me to stretch out the ones I have longer.

I'm taking Java in October so that is even better, I'll be getting training from Sun along with the class, should help me excel!!

Revisions and Real Life

I have a phone interview for that Sun possible part time job thing today! I need to go over the paper six million times, I've sent it to two cousins for input. I may send it to mr phd in training also but he's a bit busy =)

Grocery shopping and back into 'real life'. Laundry too, though everything is clean I just need to put everything away.

I'm going to have to get rid of more clothes. I'm going to have a sparse wardrobe but at least it will fit!

Down almost 6 lbs, 20 more to go but things are 'on track'. Once I"m done, and sure I won't go back up again, I'm going to need a whole new set of clothing, again. It's worth it though!

Home Strech.... again

I have to do one short assignment, read and respond to two people's rough drafts and then get my paper into shape. Mine is going to take more time than I originally thought, it's kind of all over the place.

I need more sources that support my position, though I think there is one I didn't utilize enough. The peer feedback was actually more helpful than I thought it would be. I did cancel all appointments this week so I can concentrate on making this an 'A' paper so hopefully I can pull a B or so in this class.

Still in AZ

Didn't actually make it home today like I had planned, I'll get some sleep and go early(ish) tomorrow. If nothing else I won't be driving into the sun, which is a good thing(tm).

Rough draft is in, going to spend a majority of next week polishing it and getting it all ready to turn in. I've got some more ideas, I need to put something in about personal responsibility but I need sources also. More research needed!

Looks like I need to clean all of my stuff out of my mom's RV (yes I live in a trailer when I come to visit... yes it's funny... stop laughing) as the AC broke and she's going to have to get someone to come out and look at it. Chances are good they'll have to tow it away so my clothes etc need to come inside. It's not a big deal, if it's gone I'll just kick my nephew out of his room when I come to visit =)

I"m just really not looking forward to the drive home, so not in the mood. I need to go home though, if nothing else I miss my cat =( and I have stuff to do there. I do like taking kids to school etc, it's nice to hang out with them. I'd have less than nothing to do if I came out here permanently as I know absolutely no one, but it is nice to see the kids.

Paper Topics

I was originally going to write my paper discussing weather or not game companies were responsible for video game addiction.

I think that is going to change after doing research. It seems that there isn't a consensus about the existence of video game addiction in a clinical sense. The AMA has asked the APA to study this issue but their new book doesn't come out until 2012, so no new diagnosis can be confirmed until then.

My personal stance is that video game addiction does not exist, people are not addicted to the video game, they are addicted to the alternate reality and escape. If their game of choice was taken away they would find either another escape either with another game or something else. These people do have issues, serious issues, but the video game isn't the problem, it's an excuse.

I've found journal articles that agree and disagree with me, so it looks like I have enough to write the paper. Should be rather simple now, I have lots of sources and information, and the final paper is only supposed to be 8 to 12 pages.

HATE

Hate hate hate hate hate objective grading. It's like they search and find something wrong, that wasn't listed as something required, just so they can take off points. I did everything in the assignment, answered all of the questions and I got a 4/5 because my topic is too broad.

Well that wasn't part of the assignment, the assignment was to basically answer a bunch of questions about the topic seeing where they lead to help identify problems such as that.

I responded to his grading pointing out that the thing he took points off for wasn't in the assignment description.

Yes it's one point, but these 'little' things add up and I really want to make it clear very early that this isn't ok. Taking points off just to take them off pisses me off to no end. We'll see what he has to say.

Grading

You see me complaining about grades quite often on this board, they just don't come fast enough for me, I like feedback.

Well if a professor insists on different things being due at different times during the week I don't think it's asking too much for them to grade things at least once a week, if not more often.

This week I have things due on Tuesday, Wednesday, Friday and Sunday. Last week was pretty much the same yet I don't have any grades yet. I HATE not knowing where I stand in a class.

Still nothing from last month's class either. If you're not going to grade things give us multiple choice or something. I'm putting in a lot of time and effort, I expect the same from my professors.

I wish I had taken this class before the other writing one

Because it's much easier. It's really kind of written out for me, step by step. The only issue is that I have to do peer review type things, and while they can be useful all I want to do is correct their grammar while I'm reading their stuff! I just have a feeling their feedback isn't going to be very helpful, but they could surprise me. Maybe =)

Still no grade on last month's class, this frustrates me quite a bit honestly. I want to know how I did!

I'm out of town atm so I"ll be spotty in my posting. This month is kind of laid back either way.

Wow they're young

The class this month is Advanced English Composition. Sounds challenging until reading the syllabus I get

"ENG 240 students are assumed to have prerequisite college-level skills in spelling, grammar, punctuation, paragraphing, and essay writing. This course will not address remedial writing issues at the sentence, paragraph, or essay level"

If they have to point that out that means it's been a problem in the past.

Amusingly enough it's a lower level version of the one I took last March, it's just how the schedules worked out. Needless to say I'm not that stressed. The busy work is annoying but at least it's quick and easy.

In place of a class discussion NU uses discussion boards. I have to post for each topic and then make at least two responses to other people. Fair enough, class participation etc. The point of this class is to write a persuasive essay, so one of the assignments was to take a stand and tell us why.

Wow they're young. I read these and all I want to do is bring up studies that flatly contradict what they're saying. Someone touched on abortion needed to be illegal because 'studies say people use it for birth control'. Another one was saying that 'there is no correlation between seat belt wearing and injuries in accidents', according to studies of course. The point of this was not to prove your point but to make sure you could articulate reasons that may support your point. All I wanted to do was smack them down, but it's not the time or the place.

I did respond to the abortion one talking about how it is a shame that such a controversial procedure is mixed up in the fundamental question, can the government tell me what I can and can't do medically. I would be ecstatic if someone in that class read that and maybe looked at the whole pro-choice vs pro-life thing a little differently.

For the record, I pray that I am never in a situation where I have to choose weather or not to have an abortion, but I will NOT sit back and let the government tell me what I can and can not do with my body.

Oh and I always wear my seatbelt =)

Topic Possibilities

It's best to pick a topic relating to my major and the areas I want to go into, and it has to argue a point.

I'm thinking, Are game companies ethically liable when people claim to be addicted to their games? That can be cleaned up a bit but basically when the anti-social miscreant that is living in someone's basement kills himself can the video game company be blamed? Or can a spouse blame the game company for the failure of their marriage? Can parents hold the company responsible when their kid fails out of school for playing video games? I'm not talking about violence, that has been talked about, but the claim of addiction to video games.

I need to work on it but I think that will be my thesis, they are absolutely not responsible because, amoung other things, they charge for the game, if you want to 'quit' either cancel your subscription or sell the game back. That doesn't work for all games but it is a huge factor.

I've still got all of the sources from the last paper, some of them will most likely apply this time.

I'm going to go narrow that down a bit.

too damn hot

99 yesterday around 95 or so today, the air conditioning bill alone is going to kill me. This is not conductive to productivity, at all, in any way.

The heat from the computer isn't helping either. Kill me now... really

Got my first assignment done for the new class, I think I can get most of this done this week. I just need a topic.

Changed my schdule all around

I completely redid my schedule. In a nutshell I have to find a way to take Freshman Physics, and it's lab, the second half of Calculus and Stats. If I can shoehorn those in somehow I graduate at the end of March 09. I have signed up for AI as an elective, which I wanted, and wireless technologies, though those may change.

The biggest change is that, beginning Dec 1, every Tuesday and Thursday from 5:30pm to 10pm I will be in class. Also two Saturdays a month, four next April, will be half day classes. However my last class that did this had the exams on those Saturdays instead of actual class, so that may be the case. That would be awesome as 8am on Saturday isn't my favorite time.

I was initially against set class times as that is what I was trying to avoid, but this last month we did it that way and it worked for me. I wasn't riveted to my computer the whole time but I found it helpful, or at least not detrimental. Being able to be anywhere with an internet connection allows me to have the flexibility I was looking for.

I'm pretty happy about this. I don't know how I'm going to find these classes, I may double up a bit or take some classes transfered over from the community college, or something. I could double up in Dec, Jan and Feb and just be missing stats. A lot of this depends on what NU will accept as transfer classes, and what I can take locally that won't interfere with that Tues/Thurs schedule.

It's nice to have a definite finish date. At that point I either get a job or go on for my masters, which would take 12 more months. I am guessing I'm going to want to get a job, money is good. Two years almost exactly from when I began this at NU so I am pretty happy with the schedule. It's going to be nuts, I get two weeks at Christmas, one week in March and one in July. I currently don't have a class December 08, but we all know that can change. It's not any less than I would get at a 'real job' and the beauty of the way this works is that when I have those weeks I really have the time off, I will be in between classes so I won't have anything to work on. There is something to be said for that.

New English Class

Got my syllabus for my new English class today. Looks like some busy work, I have to write a paper but there is a bunch of stuff before then. Pads the grade I guess. Unfortunately some of it is responding to others so I can't just do it all at once. I'll get as much of it as I can get done this week before I take off.

I have to write a "Write a persuasive, thoroughly researched argumentative essay" of 8 to 12 pages. I don't know what I"m going to do yet, it's tempting to just recycle the term paper I wrote last March, but I think that may be against the rules, and most certainly unethical.

So I have to argue a position. Normally, I've been told, it's good to pick a topic that relates to my chosen profession. I should really pick a chosen profession, it would make the decision on the paper easier ;)

I had a long talk with someone in the game industry the other night and it doesn't sound as bad as I remember it. I also learned some more in depth and complicated stuff about threads, which just reinforced that I have a long way to go, but it was interesting.

So a persuasive essay about something in the game industry. I'm going to have to think about it. It's going to be 97+ today so I may not get much done, but I can at least try to think =)

Final today

Got a bit more studying to do and then it's time for the final. That gives me the whole weekend (well till Tuesday) before my next class. A few days off will be nice.

Got a birthday party tonight too so I don't want anything hanging over my head, that and taking a final with a hang over is bad news =)