Week 2: Personal Reflection

I've never been the best at organizing my time and sometimes I end up forgetting to do somethings. Recently, I began writing down everything on post-it notes and stick them on my desk. I can then throw them away when I finish all the tasks I wrote on them. Since I began doing this, I have done a lot better job at completing everything that I'm suppose to do.

Week 2: Class Reflection

Our second class was extremely fun. I specifically liked the second activity where we had to rank items that would help us survive on the moon. I liked doing activities like this when I was younger also. It's fun to see the different possible ways we can think of to use the different items. In the last activity, it was fun to see all the different ideas we thought of even though most groups resorted to throwing something as hard as they can to get the distance. Also, I think our group will be known for the messiest and most destructive group after that activity.

Week 2 Personal Reflection

My creative idea of the week happened while I was tutoring this week. I tutor phy 11 and there was a specific concept that as much as I tried explaining, two of my tutees just couldn't understand it. They are both architecture majors and this is important because of what I did. I am a science&math loving person so that was the way I was solving the problem but they just could grasp what I was saying. And finally I tried drawing out a figure that explained the concept and they both understood it within 5 minutes. This experience I thought was really important because I saw that people see things differently and approach the same thing differently. Everybody's perspective is a bit different and when we have to work together everyone has to be able to compromise and be flexible. 

Week 2: Personal Reflection

This week, I haven't done anything terribly creative or fun, however this morning I did solve a particularly nasty homework problem that made me rather happy with myself.  I won't delve into the specifics of the problem, as that doesn't matter.  What does matter is the way I solved the problem.  I sat for an hour just trowing numbers back and forth until I finally got something right.  It took me about 5 sheets of paper, but shows that sometimes big problems can be solved with a little persistence.

Week 2: Class Reflection

This week was an interesting week.  We started with an activity that required us to break free of our earthly thinking to survive on the moon.  It was a new perspective to see what we forgot to think about when it came to differences between Earth and the moon.  We also had to build a flying machine from various scarps of things.  This activity showed that even honors students - supposedly some of the brightest students on campus - will devolve into using brute force over a creative solution if the brute force option is effective enough.

Week 2 Class Reflection

This is probably the most fun class I've had all semester! I thought all the activities had good meaning behind it. I think the meaning of the assignments were to see there are different perspectives to solving a problem. Everyone has a different way of seeing things. For example, when we played with the Tangram puzzles some were better than others. And that was because some had the more compatible perspective to solve them. And same thing with the NASA assignment. Individually, we all had our perspectives on how to solve the task of surviving on the moon. And then we took it one step further and worked on the same task with others with different perspectives and depending on how naturally adept to living on the moon you already were, you increased or decreased your chances of survival on the moon. So I thought overall, these activities were really fun but also thought-provoking about using different perspectives when you're working on something. 

Week 2 Personal Reflection

Every day, I'm faced with the same problem: How am I supposed to accomplish everything I need to get done in 24 hours while also trying to fit in some sleep?  At times, it seems to be impossible.  I used to freak out and stress all of the time, and that got me no where.  How on earth was I going to manage my time better?  Well, for me, the only way I'm pretty sure I function is by writing everything down...and I mean EVERYTHING. Between homework assignments, meetings, softball practice, basketball games, shopping lists....well, you get the point. Writing all of my thoughts and worries down helps clear my head, keeping me organized and (almost) stress-free. 

Week 2 Class Reflection

Today's class brought back fun memories from middle school.  In my middle school, tangrams were a popular thing at one point. I always enjoyed them because they were slightly challenging and worked my brain. Another part of class that reminded me of a middle school memory was when we had to make something to "fly" through the air, and then had a competition to see which team's design could travel the farthest. At first, my team was throwing out lots of ideas and were each working on a different design.  However, in the end, it was a simpler, last minute design that worked the best.

Week 1 Class Reflection

The first day of class got me really excited for this semester. I've always loved to do logic puzzles and problem solving scenarios and I like to believe that I'm good at them. The first problem we did was kind of fun. I thought it was funny that we figured out the first clue before we could even open it. The only problem was that only one person in the class had twitter, but we were still able to figure it out. Everybody in the class seems really cool and easy to get along with. I'm really excited to work with our group for this semester and have some fun figuring out puzzles together.

Week 1: Personal Reflection.

The most creative thing I did this week was my lesson plan assignment. As an FHP Leader, we have to come up with fun but informative activities that will be beneficial for first year honors students. The assignment for this week was planning a "cool" tour of an important place on campus. It was due today and of course, I started doing it at like 10 last night. So the problem I had to overcome was plan a tour of a certain place with all the details planned out, which I couldn't call people at 10pm so what I came up with was... a scavenger hunt!! I decided to write up fun and informative descriptions of various buildings and they would have to go and take a picture of the building they thought was described. This way they would learn about the different buildings and the resources in that building and at the same time it required little preparation that I could get done in one night. 

Week 1 Class Reflection

This week started as a problem solving class should have, with a puzzle.  I was a little disappointed by the fact that it was only one layer, but with all of the work that we needed to do, I understand the need to keep it brief.  I can't wait to start diving into some real work with my team.  The rest of the semester is looking good.

Week 1 Personal Reflection

Recently, I decided to write a Sudoku solver program.  It's relatively easy to determine if a puzzle is solved correctly, but it is very hard to try and generate a solution.  I decided to just generate every possible combination until a solution was found.  What I didn't account for was the length of time required to generate and test 9^81 puzzles.  Next step is to figure out how to build a solver that will stop generating a solution when the solution becomes impossible.

Week 1 Personal Reflection

Last week was my sister's 21st birthday.  Since I wasn't going to be able to spend it with her since she lives in Omaha, I wanted to send her something really special.  However, between having no free time to go shopping and not having any extra money to spend in the first place, I had no idea what I was going to do for her.  The night before her birthday, I still hadn't sent her anything.  As I was searching my brain for creative ideas, that's when I remembered the cheesy coloring book my mom had sent me in a care package for "stress relief".  So, I did what all 18-year-olds in college do and I started coloring a picture.  It was a Hello Kitty coloring book, (yes, I know, very mature), and the picture I was coloring was a picture of a cat and a lamb dressed in adorable dresses and holding hands because they were best friends.  My sister and I are close, so my goal was for it to represent us.  After I was done, I wrote a message on it, attached a hand written letter, and sent it in the mail.  My last minute birthday card turned out to be a success, because my sister absolutely loved it.

Class Reflection 3/10

Hey guys! After the first day in class, I'm really excited to be in this seminar! I was already a fan of puzzles and mysterious but this seminar looks like it is going to be great in personal development while having fun. The first puzzle was fun because it: a) it was a puzzle b) it incorporated social media allowing it to be more relatable to us and c) it bonded a class of 17 kids that I personal didn't know. This was a really short activity that showed how important team work is and hopefully through similarly exciting activities we'll learn more about personal development.

Week 1 Class Reflection

The moment I walked into the classroom where I was to have an honors seminar involving creativity and problem solving, our class had to immediately put our brains to work in order to solve our first problem.  Without fail, my brain started finding connections and meaning in the given clue.  One thing I learned about myself is that I actually don't need a lot of mental preparation in order to effectively solve a problem.  My brain enjoys challenges and critical thinking, so I knew the class was going to be perfect for me.  Additionally, I liked the fact that us students were able to have some say in the way class was going to be run, possible assignments, and how things were to be graded.

Team Expectations

1. Show up every week
2. Be respectful and open to others
3. Contribute as much as possible
4. Work hard, but have fun!