James Walmer

The weather on Thursday was absolutely wonderful here in Florida and I got to have my FIRST outside class experience. I was shocked that I made it to my second year without having any outside lessons last year but this certainly made up for it. A girl in my class came in expecting that we would be having class outside because it was so nice and the professor informed her that wasn't part of the plan and began unpacking his things. A moment later when another classmate realized this could be the only opportunity to sway him, while the idea was fresh on the table, she chimed in that it was too good of an idea to pass up. After a little less than two minutes of debate, the professor declares that we will be having class outside by the trees today =) It was awesome to have everyone lined up against a cement wall in a semi-circle around the professor and he sat and instructed us. It took a bit of outside the box thinking because a lot of his tools (IE: the blackboard) were missing but he made it through unscathed and was smiling almost the whole period. I think he enjoyed it as much as we did although he wouldn't admit it. I tried to get a picture of the class as a whole before they dispersed but that failed but I did snag a picture of the professor mid-instruction. Granted it's not great because it was on my Blackberry but it's all i've got!

I can't wait to do that again

This weekend was "Free Museum Day" for all of Pinellas county's residents so I called up some of my friends and took advantage of that opportunity to go to the Holocaust museum downtown. It was well done, informative and with so many images, bits of clothing, utensils, and even one of the train cars used as a transport to the concentration camps it really hit home. I remember looking down at the car from the second floor after having already undertaken a closeup examination of it and thinking about that saying: If walls could talk.

Then we, meaning my friends and I, returned to Eckerd to hang out for awhile and have dinner at the Cafeteria before heading down to Miller Auditorium for an AMAZING showing of the improv group on campus known as Another Mans Trash. It was an great way to wrap up the day and now that I've seen what they have to offer, I'm disappointed that I didn't go sooner; there were many shows last year that I never made the time to go and see. Expect to see me at all of them from here on out haha

Do not become anti anything, but rather be pro its inverse. If you'd like to be anti-war then be pro-peace. Feeding your energy for change into a bad thing only stands to propagate the bad; redirect yourself towards something good that will oppose that which you dislike. Recognize the bad only to the extent that you may use it as a basis for comparison, something you certainly don't want. If your energy is directed in a way that is positive, you will be an asset to the world as well as to yourself. Set a goal and realize that goal.

In the words of one of my favorite individuals, whom I've quoted countless times, "Whether you think you can or you can't, you are right"-Henry Ford.

I've become so indebted to my school work and intrigued with the concepts I'm learning that I've had a borrowed movie for over three weeks now and still haven't watched it! Now is the time. Tonight I will see this film, no excuses!

Anyway, in my ethics course we've been studying the works of Plato as you may expect and all along I'm hassling my professor about similarities that could be drawn between the ancient views and Christianity or how Socrates would look at wasteful status symbols like sports cars. These questions interest me the most because they're directly applicable to my day-to-day life. I don't want to spoil these mysteries because they're worth delving into on your own if they strike the same chord with you that they do with me, but WOW.

Today I stayed after class and my professor knew that I had a complicated question, probably just by my nature in class. My thought was, how would Socrates look at personal finance? What does he think of wealth? How, if at all, should it be acquired? Although this had nothing to do with what we were talking about directly, indirectly the connections were clear and Prof didn't miss a beat. In fact, rather than blowing me off as getting ahead of myself or running away on a tangent, he sat there one-on-one for over twenty minutes and we explored these questions. Although twenty minutes isn't a lot of time to open up a new topic, when it is both personal and direct a great deal of understanding can occur in those twenty minutes. Another one of those situations where I left deep in thought and only ipon reflection now do I realize how lucky I am to have faculty like this around me. He even recommended a book in the field of management pertaining to Aristotle and the world of contemporary business ethics and another course in the political science discipline that covers some of the other dialogues that we won't get to this semester.

So I've gotten another week done, and I'm not behind on any of my classes yet. There have been so many events going on here that the possibility of getting behind is always lingering; discipline and time management will see you through =). Specifically our International Cinema program has gotten off to a strong start with Tokyo Sonata yesterday and our improv group, entitled Another Man's Trash, has been hosting auditions for the last few days. I hear tell from my theater major buddies that we will be putting on a great tragedy this semester, needless to say I'll be there too. Thursday we have meetings for all of the students that will be running clubs on campus this year, Friday I start giving tours of campus again, AND all weekend I'm on call as an R.A. Tell me that isn't a schedule! I love being busy and this year has exceeded my expectations so far, I hope it only continues to improve.

Sorry for my brevity  but I don't have much to report on except all that stuff you just read. I'll be back when I have more to share. OH! While I have your attention, if anyone can answer this that would be awesome. I have a laptop with dual headphone jacks, i'm using one output to send signal to my mids and highs and the other to signal my lows. The problem is that since I don't have an equalizer to control my frequencies with, my lows are putting out a lot of sounds that are technically out of their freq range and it causes a mild bit of distortion. Any suggestions on how I can cut out those higher frequencies? Is there a program that will allow me to independently control each of my headphone jacks?

Thanks again for reading

-James

Today I finally finished going to each of my four new classes and, I must say, this year is even more promising than all those that preceded it. My courses will show me so much about the world around me, that I interact with each and every day but simply don't think about. Political Science is really the major for me, I am enthralled by the notion of reigning in a transnational corporation or understanding the effects of NAFTA on global markets or even the implications of the IMF's contradictory, at least historically speaking, development loan policies.

Although each of my courses will cover so much more than just these few things, I am having difficulty hiding my fervor for these particular areas; through those selections a clear pattern has emerged, I am interested in the economic implications of political action, generally speaking. On that note, I still have a long way to go on my path of personal development. I recently watched the stock market before jumping in and thought, "I may want to wait for this trend to turn bearish before making an entrance." I promptly ignored my own advice and jumped into many stocks at the peak of their price in the last two weeks, only to see the market take a strong bear trend in the last two days of trading. Lost $600 very quickly; the lesson here is trust your instincts.

Anyway, my classes are up and running and I am so stoked to get deep into the world of higher education. It feels great to be overloaded with work again =) As promised, another film to go and see is "The Corporation." Learn more about it by visiting the site at http://www.thecorporation.com/

Cheers!

Eckerd's Autumn Term program is full swing right now, with hundreds of students on campus and lots of events to try and get them to know each other. One such event was held last weekend, a late night cookout under the cabana on south beach. We had free food, loud music and good friends to make things right. Some pictures of the dancing that took place on the picnic tables can be seen here:

I know they're not great, but it was all I could do with just my camera phone!

I also went on Friday night to go and see Food Inc (If you're unfamiliar, check their site here http://www.foodincmovie.com/). Surprisingly enlightening, Food Inc is an excellently executed film about the woes of Americas food production industry and how it has become less like farming and more like manufacturing a product.  The statistic presented early on in the film is that food has changed more in the last 50 years than in the last 10,000. That should be something that isn't taken lightly but so many of my fellow college students show little interest in this kind of story. PLEASE go see it, you really need to.

On that note, I've recently found myself thinking about something. If college students are supposed to be the educated citizens in any given society, yet we don't care about important issues like health care, food, fresh water supply, or the mounting debt...then who will?

Too many students are complacent about issues that should be inspirational and it infuriates me. I've realized that my biggest hobby, as ridiculous as this may sound, is learning. It is both my largest pastime and my greatest strength. I undertook a pretty intense self-directed course of study this summer based on documentaries I could rent and learned a little bit about a lot of things. However, I try not to sit on my knowledge; whenever possible I alter my actions to reflect the lessons I've learned and (as many who are close to me can vouch for) I regularly try to depart my wisdom onto others in hopes of inspiring another. Often my words fall on deaf ears so to further spread the word I will be attaching the name of one film off of my list to each of my blogs from here on out with a link to information about it. I strongly encourage anyone who is interested to follow along. If you do, I'm certain you will glean something from the experience.

As for "Making money", I've yet again reentered the stock market. My brokerage account is loaded up and ready to roll, I'm just waiting for something to catch my eye. If any of my readers are experienced investors and would like to share/discuss different strategies I'm certainly open to that. Right now i'm thinking about changing to either a dividend centered or aggressive growth (penny stock) strategy. There are essentially opposite and I'm torn between the two for the time being.

It's good to be back y'all. I hope you enjoy these insights into my life!

-James

Well it has come to that time again =) I'm back at school working as an R.A. this year (which I plan on explaining in more depth in a later post) along with my other jobs that I had last year. Things look like they're going to be exceptionally busy.

Anywho, enough about all that! Let me tell you what I was doing this weekend. The freshman class of 2013 rolled into town on Friday and got all moved in, which in turn comes with lots of awesome events for Autumn Term. Autumn Term is Eckerd's version of an orientation, its biggest difference being that it lasts three weeks long. Believe me, those three weeks will be the greatest time of your life and it has already started off strong for the newcomers.

On Sunday the Waterfront program had an open-house to get everyone down and inform them about all of the services they offer. The best way to get college students to turnout in force for an event is...you guessed it, feed them. Lots of free snacks and dinner options available, as well as trips out into the bay on EC-SAR Rescue 5 (I'll get a blog up about EC-SAR soon too, have no fear!), one of our Colgates (28 foot sailboat), and the beachcat (a larger and slower vessel than the other two, pictured in the center photo below. It has the blue top on it). Everything was awesome, students showed up and went out on the boats, got sail certified, got their swim tests done, and met one another. The experience was unforgettable for me because I spent a little over two hours out on the water trying out some of the stuff that I was unfamiliar with. I snagged a few pictures from the event, which you can see below.

Also, this is a picture that I snapped at one of our first group meetings. This is the bunch that lives in the complex's near me, roughly 120 people in attendance at this get together (some, obviously, not pictured).

This is what Eckerd is all about

So this year has come to close for me as of today, my exams ended and my full time summer employment is just around the corner. I had a blast this year, met a lot of people, opened my mind up to so many new things, and hopefully established a few interested readers out there =)

Enjoy your summer everyone!

-James

PS-This isn't necessarily the end, but I no longer have school related things to discuss as school has ended. I may occasionally update you on my summer whereabouts/happenings.

So I spent last week fixing my car over at my grandfathers house in Sarasota with a good friend of mine (Lucas). We had to put on two upper control arms and ball joints to keep that thing running sound, but we got it done pretty quickly once we figured out what exactly it was that we needed to do!

Saturday was my grandfathers birthday, so I went back to his place, just myself this time, to stay the day with him and celebrate his birthday, although he is like me and found it to be rather unnecessary to celebrate something as silly as a birthday lol.

Sunday was the Mr. Triton man pageant here at school, where I went to cheer on Lucas in his efforts to  raise money for the Make a Wish Foundation. It was...interesting to see the acts that people created, although many of them involved as little clothing as possible and some crazy antics (Needless to say, I'm waiting for Mrs. Triton to hit the scene next year).

As for my life in the near future, it will consist of lots of writing of papers because finals are next week and many of my classes are requiring a "final paper" that is due this Friday. I have yet to actually start writing them, but I have some good ideas in mind. Hopefully they pan out okay, wish me luck!