Ninja Witches - MacBeth

First off, I would like to start off my Macbeth review by saying that those witches looked very similar to ninjas. This was mainly due to them fighting with staffs and moving around the stage so much. This just goes to show how creative the actors and directors of the play are. They only used the staffs and a drum as props, resulting in the need to use all of their resources effectively. This involved using many of the minor characters, such as the extra witches, to make a human throne. And speaking of witches, the decision to increase the number from three to thirty was very interesting, as it made the scenes in which they were featured more active. The transition from witches to secondary characters, and vice-versa, was also very inventive. This had a big drawback though. It made it much tougher to identify who was who. I am no stranger to studying the works of Shakespeare, and I have read MacBeth many times. Despite this, I still found it difficult to figure out which character was speaking; only my familiarity with the play allowed me to figure it out. However, even with this difficulty, this method of transitioning was something I had never seen in a play before. Yet another point of interest was the witches "interacting" with the main character when they normally would not. This mainly involved swarming around the character and making hissing noises. This leads one to question just how much the witches were involved in making their own prophecy self-fulfilling. All of these new twists made the play very enjoyable and something worth seeing.

Finding Your Way in Life and Finding Your Way Around the World

I thought that Dr. Appel's presentation very interesting. What struck me the most was how his interests changed over the course of his life. First he wanted to be a high-profile actor. He took many opportunities to flush out his interests in this area, such as attending Julliard to learn acting, and working for The Acting Company. But then his interests changed. He began to settle down and think that, maybe, acting was not for him. This led him to apply for a position at UCSB for teaching students how to act and directing plays. He has remained here ever since.

As for his other announcements, I am also very interested in the stage crew. In high school, I participated in Stage Tech, a class/extracurricular activity that was responsible for handling all of the logistics for the school plays. I was part of the construction crew, the team responsible for designing and building the sets for the plays. I hope that I can continue to participate in this in college, however, I have already planned out so many things to do that I am not sure I will have the time...

Speaking of other plans, I have thought about much about study abroad. My interest in study abroad started about one year ago, when my sister went to Costa Rica  out of UCSD. She was interested not so much in the exotic wildlife that can be found there, but in cows. She wanted to explore what agriculture was like in a tropical climate. There are different problems that must be tackled, and there are different environmental interactions. She officially studied the social interactions that cows have, and whether or not they have friends(They do).

I do not know the specific program that I want to study, but I currently have a few options in front of me. First, I am interested in studying physics out of the University of Glascow in Scotland. This is the first year that the program is offered, and I am interested in placing out of physics that I have to take in Sophomore year. I am also interested in studying for my full junior year in the University of Lund in Sweden. I am not sure if this will work out because of the demands of an engineering major. Next there is a program in Australia that cycles through a few universities and offers a unique program in renewable energy and business administration. I intend to use my advanced standing(I will be able to fulfill the requirement of being a junior by the end of the academic year) to attend this program as early as possible, as I am very interested in this. Then there is a program out of the University of Munich, Germany, and, even though it is very out of character for me, I am going BONKERS over this one. It is a program for students that are nearing the end of their college careers, and starts off with a class in the German language. It continues into a selection of smart vehicle design, lightweight design, renewable energy, and entrepreneurship. CHOOSE TWO!!!! Obviously, I intent to pursue this once I have progressed in my studies.

Activities

Over the course of FSSP, I have attended a myriad of events.

1. International Dessert Night.
          This was one of the first events that I attended. It was okay. I got a chance to meet some people as I was new to the college, but aside from that, it was not very eventful.

2. Fireside Chat #1
          This event was very interesting. It was about a professor in the anthropology department that specialized in pottery from Crete. He talked a little about some of his work and about how on one of his expeditions, one of the locals tried to marry him to his daughter with a dowry of 400 sheep. After that, we just talked about ordinary things, like finding out more about him and his hobbies. The most important thing I got from this event was how to talk to professors during office hours. The professor told me that it was okay to just drop by; I did not need any specific questions or anything like that. He also gave some good advice in that I should drop by after week two. Before this, professors are very busy dealing with crashers.

3. Fireside Chat #2
          The professor speaking at this event was in charge of Asian-American studies. It was very interesting finding out about how his career choice developed. He first attended law school as a form of rebellion against his parents (Hah!) because many people from his town went off to be engineers. However, once he got started in the practice, he found that it was not very interesting. His interests then turned towards history and the Asian-American role in United States History. I will have this professor in fall quarter, so it will help that I know a bit about him now.

4. Karaoke Night
          I did not actually intend to go to this event. However, some of my friends dragged me there, and I stayed to support them. I am not much of a music person, but I still found the event to be worthwhile. It just goes to show that you may be interested in things that you never even considered before.

Libraries and Lectures

I found Dr. Lubach’s presentation very interesting. I had heard a lot about critical thinking before (the schools that I attended previously always told me to think critically every single day), but I did not have a good understanding of what it actually was. This provided me with more awareness of the “black and white” thinking that Dr. Lubach mentioned. It made me realize that I often thought this way, and I will now take steps to correct this. I also thought the paradoxes were interesting, especially the play it safe vs. take risks dichotomy (the bell tower hack was especially enjoyable). In addition to all of this, I took away more information about events around campus. I was very interested in the Kavili institute of Theoretical Physics. I will definitely make time to attend one of its lectures in the future. Lubach’s manner of presentation was also very appealing. He inserted humor and made references to how UCSB’s beach was used to attract professors. He also seemed very in-touch with the audience he was trying to reach.

Unfortunately, I was unable to attend the INT section in which the class visited the library. I had left campus to sell at an art fair (a picture of my work is posted below).

Despite this absence, I am still being resourceful and am looking up the library’s resources on my own. I explored the mechanical engineering (my major) section of the library’s website. This proved to be very helpful because I can find information on patents, book locations, and useful websites easily. I intend to use these resources, as well as everything else that the library has to offer, in the near future.

  

Plagiarism

I learned most of these citing practices in high school. In my school, great care was taken to ensure that credit was given where credit was due, and there were serious repercussions for any misconduct on the matter. We always had to use footnotes for research papers, and we always had to cite any books or websites that we used.

What was new, however, was the need to cite class notes in a paper. I had never seen this before and had never even considered it because I never used my notes to write papers. In general I just used sources that provided facts without analysis and drew my own conclusions.

Another surprising facet of plagiarism was the need to know whether or not one is plagiarizing. If the material that can be used to write a paper is fairly limited, this does not present a problem. However, if the database of knowledge is larger, the probability that one is plagiarizing someone, somewhere goes up rapidly. Because of this, I am glad to know that there are ways for me to argue that my work is actually my work. This can take the form of presenting drafts (so those ugly, illegible, scribbled-out first drafts have more than one use. Yay!) and possessing thorough knowledge about writing the paper.

My personal opinion on plagiarism and the citation systems is mixed. On the one hand, I believe that acknowledging the work of others is a critical part of the progression of ideas and academic knowledge. On the other hand, I feel that the current regulations surrounding citations unjustly prey upon simple mistakes. I think that there should be a difference between accidentally hitting the quotation mark button twice and blatantly copying the work of another. There is a difference between taking something seriously and taking something too far.  

Library and Career Councilling

The librarian’s presentation was very enlightening. Previously, I thought that librarians only existed to keep people from stealing books and to help one find some obscure piece of information. I realize now that I did all librarians everywhere a horrible disservice. I had no idea about the amount of logistic knowledge it takes to amass the millions of volumes found in just one library. This requires not only the ability to build a substantial collection of knowledge, but also the ability to facilitate access to the knowledge.

The information on looking up material online was also very helpful. Using the library database is very helpful when looking up material that is not readily available to the public such as subscriptions. I remember that my high school had a very similar service. The main difference though is that the high school database was merely a collection of articles that a Google search would normally uncover except without the irrelevant chaff while the UCSB library provides access to paid resources. Given my experiences with my high school’s database, I know that the UCSB equivalent will play an essential role in my academic career.

Career advising will also be a great asset to me. Currently I know the direction that I want my career to take, so it is easier to direct my searches and inquiries. Career services will allow me to find internships and other opportunities to make the most of the opportunities that appear in college.

Majors and Minors

Today I attended the Majors and Minors Fair to learn more about the academic options offered at UCSB. This provided me a great opportunity to be resourceful. Originally, the fair overlapped with my classes, meaning that I would have to miss one of my classes for certain. However, I learned that my art history class had given its students a free day to work on a paper for the class. This allowed me to attend the fair earlier than I had anticipated. In the end, I was able to attend all my scheduled classes for the day in full.

While I was at the fair, I used my time effectively to explore some of the departments. This did not change anything however. From well before the start of my college career, I knew that I wanted to be an engineer; my interests would have to change significantly if I wanted to switch majors. However, I was able to explore options for my non-major requirements. Of greatest interest to me was the environmental science department. Using my free elective slots, I intend to enroll in environmental and sustainable design classes that will supplement my classes in mechanical engineering.

I will also use the Student Resource Building to help move my education forward. I intend to use the drop-in math tutoring service found on the third floor to assist me later in the year. When the math starts to get difficult, I know where to go now. Unfortunately, many of the resources in in the SRB seem closed to me, mostly due to biology. Despite this, I intent to use the resources available to me to the fullest extent.

FSSP Week #2

So far, my experience in FSSP has been going quite well. I am enrolled in two classes outside of INT95, Math 4A and Art History 6C. Both classes are progressing well, and I am confident that I will be able to succeed academically in the next few weeks.

Socially, I have not done anything worthy of note - I have only hung out with various people. Other than that, I have used my remaining free time to do homework and explore the campus.

I found Mr. Smith’s lecture to be quite interesting, and that was a surprise. As an engineer, I am more interested in building and creating as opposed to learning about past cultures and digging stuff out of the dirt. However, Mr. Smith did an exceptional job of providing context and showing how relevant the field of archaeology is. That moment when he was talking about how archaeology was about saving lives because it brought people who had faded out of memory back into memory was when everything clicked. Previously I thought that the field was just about digging up some relic and maybe having the findings published someday in some history textbook somewhere, but now everything started to make a little more sense. I’m not saying that archaeology is my new calling in life or anything like that, but I gained a new perspective on something that I had previously paid little attention to.

As I continue onward through FSSP, I can only guess at how many of these experiences I will have, but one thing is certain. Life is far more interesting than I give it credit for.