Catcthing up on work

 Stressed Out

   

 Last week I was super stressed out as every big assignment and test decided to be due during this week. My main stressor was my business law class as our first big presentation was due on Friday and I had to present to the class about my business. Writing my notes and getting all the details ready for this presentation was very stressful. We had the week off from class to prepare and since it was my 8am class I spent every day in the library. Even though I had prepared my notes and my script I still felt unprepared but I gave the presentation regardless. Recently, I got the results of the presentation and found out that I did fairly well so that definitely was a relief.

    For this class, I worked on getting a lot done for my summary and continued to work on it later during the week. During the weekend, I took some time to try and work on my summary for my film as well but I will need more time on Monday to finish it up. My weekend was busy and I had to take some time to rewatch the film to remind myself of the key scenes in the documentary. I think that I made good progress but there is still a lot to be written.

    My main stressor came at the very beginning of the week on Monday. What was it? My music class. As someone who doesn't really study music this class has been going surprisingly well. But now, we had to take a midterm covering almost all that we had learned. It was an open-book test but I won't lie it was still difficult. The hardest part was listening to my professor play the piano and having to identify if the tone was in the major, minor, or chromatic scale. Some were obvious but some sounded exactly the same. But, the rest of the test wasn't too bad so I'm hoping for a good grade.

Guided Reflection

 My Thoughts:

   

     For this documentary project, I decided to view the film Cartel Land by Matthew Heineman and I will say that this film provides so much to think about. The film itself was well shot and a specific scene really got to me at one point. It was specifically a scene near the end when the autodefensas leadership had decided to merge into the government's plans and become the rural self-defense group. They had now turned their back on Mireles and the group started to break apart here. They held interviews with the former autodefensa leadership where Beltrãn Torres talked about how the government has supplied them with new equipment and new weapons. 
    

But, within this segment, they go on to talk to another (former) leader of the group who was seen earlier in the film Nicolas Sierra Santana nicknamed El Gordo. In his interview after joining the rural defense group he straight up admits that he is a member of Los Viagras which is a cartel the enemy that they had been fighting. 

    This scene filled me with a combination of anger, disappointment, and sadness. To see the journey that the self-defense group had gone through during the film and seeing it all be thrown away was extremely disheartening. The people that they were fighting against had now infected and invaded a group whose cause had seemed just. It seemed as if they had just planned to use this cause as a front the entire time for them to grow their own personal greed and gain a platform for it. It's a reoccurring theme that disheartened me at the end and seeing the cycle of violence truly has no end.

My Weekend at Notre Dame

Flying Irish Basketball Tournament

    Over the weekend I spent my time at the University of Notre Dame in Indiana. There was an event for the ROTC programs around the country. It was a basketball tournament and my teammates and I were able to go and represent our program. I was tasked with picking up some of my teammates from Wheaton College where our ROTC program is based and driving two hours to Indiana. It was a fun drive out there and we were provided with a pretty nice hotel to stay at. Getting there was a long trip but definitely worth the drive out there.

    This has been the subject of my free writing for the past week and also I had to leave on Friday which was the reason for me missing that class. Our team was able to gel pretty quickly even though we had not had much time to practice leading up to the event. Many schools were there including Syracuse, Purdue, Iowa State, and Texas A&M. It was really cool to see all these different schools come together to participate in this huge event. The Flying Irish basketball tournament takes place every year so I am definitely coming back next year if I can.

    Our team didn't do as well as we wanted to. We didn't get out of the group stages of the tournament but it was due to the fact that we played the three hardest teams in the tournament Iowa State, Notre Dame, and Purdue. But, the games we played were very good as we only lost by a very small margin. The team played super hard and I had a good time supporting them when I wasn't on the floor. I was able to experience college basketball and play competitive basketball again for the first time in a long time.                                                 

Current Interests

 

Hello everyone! Welcome back to the blog this week! I just wanted to take time this week to update you all on some of my current interests this week. The video I have linked above is highlights from a soccer game that I somewhat enjoyed watching this week. This match was between my favorite team Chelsea FC and Fulham FC. Chelsea debuted their new signing Enzo Fernandez and he played well in my opinion. The match itself was a disappointment for me though as the game ended 0-0 and some players were a little frustrating to watch as they made many mistakes. Overall, it was good to watch a game again because it had been two weeks since they last played and hopefully they get a better result next week. 

    I have been interested in reading articles recently that have been documenting the growth of new open ai generators. This one specifically ChatGPT has been growing at a fast rate. To basically break it down these AIs are able to produce text and essays regarding prompts that you write down. I have personally tried it out because the technology is so interesting and I have to say it is amazing to see how quickly it is able to produce something based on just a couple of key terms and phrases. This new technology has been the subject of many plagiarism discussions even here at this college too. In the future, it will be intriguing to see how this technology develops and how colleges will respond to it. 

   

    When looking back at this week, I have found that there is still so much to explore and enjoy. It has been a good mix of entertainment and information this week. Hopefully, I can enjoy the soccer game a lot more next time because I need my team to win next week so that they have a better position in the league. I will continue to keep track of what's going on with ChatGPT because this technology is going to be the future. In short, these two topics have been making my week interesting and have given me a lot to think about as well.