Get Easy A’s In Your College Classes

Many of you may or may not know that instructors and professors frequently suffer from something I would like to call, ‘The ‘A’ Student Syndrome’. Let me explain it to you. When a teacher gets the first set of assignments for the semester, they are usually very objective in their grading. However, during this grading process there are students who standout in their minds. These are students which either does very good or very bad; the student who do very well usually infect the instructor with the ‘A’ student syndrome. From now one this teacher will view that student as an ‘A’ student and will be more likely to mark there future assignments better because of the level of work they expect from them. This really comes to play at the end of semesters when teachers are also in a hurry to get grades in. If they see a paper which they expect to be an A paper they will normally just glance over it and give it a good grade if there is nothing seriously wrong with it. However, during this time the person who has performed poorly in the beginning of the semester gets no breaks as the instructor is expecting to find errors, and so they actually look for errors.
So with all that said, will notice a change in your grades if you just make sure that the first assignment you turn in is a good one.

Advice On Buying Laptops

Having been on Andrews University's campus for some years, I have often been asked questions on advice in buying computers. 'What do you look for when buying a laptop?' One of the biggest mistakes I have found that college students make in purchasing a laptop is that they spend far too much money. It is rare today to find a student purchasing a laptop for under $1,000. Yet for the vast majority of students this is far too much to pay for a laptop. Why do I say this? There are two misconceptions which face buyers, which lead them to make such purchases. 1. They think that expensive = quality performance and 2. Inexpensive computers don't last as long as expensive ones.
Concerning the first misconception. First of all let me hasten to say -for all the computer geeks breathing down my neck that, yes, the more expensive the computer/laptop the high quality performance it will have. Then why did I make that statement. I made this statement because for the vast majority of college and university students you will be doing nothing more with your computer than, using Microsoft Word, the Internet, playing Music/Video and the occasional low graphics game. Wake up people! You don't need a $1000 dollar computer to do this. This is the misconception. Your Microsoft word will not run faster on the expensive computer, the internet will not load faster and your music will load faster. Performance difference will only be seen if you play games which require high graphics, or you are doing some other complex computing function that require processing power. The cheapest computer that you can buy from any retail store like Best Buy, Dell or Mac, will EASILY perform this operations without any noticeable performance difference.
The second misconception is that a new expensive computer will last longer than a new inexpensive computer. This absolutely makes no sense. If you take care of your computer it will last. If you want to be certain just purchase the warranty.
There is only one reason why students are willing to pay these high prices for laptops/computers. So that they can say that theirs is better that yours. That's it! So unless you are a die hard gamer, have really complex computing to do, or just have money to waist, get wise and buy a less expensive computer.

Virginia Tech Tragedy and Andrews University Irony

As we grieve with the nation over the senseless killings at Virginia Tech, one question always comes to mind, ‘What could have been done to prevent this?’ The fact remains, that hind sight is always 20/20. Regardless of what we say there is no way that a large university campus can be totally secured from such incidents occurring. That is unless we build a high wall all around the campus and only have one entry gate similar to the security check points in airport terminals. This is impossible. This could have happened at any school. In fact we at Andrews University have had our own scare, ironically on the same day, at about the same time, a professor in the Adventist Theological Seminary was assaulted by a student how was attempting to take his life! Fortunately, help arrived in time and the professor did not suffer any major physical injuries. Who is to blame? Where do we point the finger? The fact is it starts with you and me. We are to look out for our friends and find out how they are doing, if they need help. This is not something that can be solved with tougher laws or restrictions. The healing starts with community building.

The Andrews University Passon Play 2007

This year Andrews University hosted its annual passion play. However, due to the cold weather the organizers decided to have it inside instead of the regular campus-wide play. Bummer! There were some scenes which really suffered because of this ... 'the market place.' Due to the fact that no animals were able to be outside in the cold they constructed a mini-mart ... or micro, in the front of the Howard Performing arts center. This was a far cry from the previous years. In my opinion there are only two scenes that people really come to see; that is the Market Place and the Resurrection scene. Initially I thought that having the scenes all inside would really hurt the impact of the play. However, I found that some scenes actually came across better inside. I think that Crusifixion Scene benefited from the lighting effects available in the Johnson Gym and so did the scene with Pilot. These last three scenes in the gym really turned everything around for me. The Andrews University Passion Play was saved here.
This brings up the question whether or not they should always plan to have the play inside and have better effects on the scenes or they can plan to have the play outside and then end up being at the mercy of the Michigan weather. It is such a hard decision because there is much to gain from the actually experience of going back in time, walking through the campus and actually become apart of the show. Yet there special effects which are afforded by having it inside are also very cool!