Scholarships and PC's

OH! One thing I forgot to mention....I was selected to be the recipient of this years Medical Explorer Senior Scholarship. It's a $500 award, deposited into your student account at whatever institution you are planning on attending. It's awarded based on academic achievement, community service, and evidence of leadership. I was pretty stoked about getting that one. So I've got another $1000 in my student account at MSU in addition to my scholarships...I'll probably either save it for a couple of years and buy a really nice MacBook, or use it on food when I'm practically living at school.

Oh, speaking of MacBooks and computers...I'm debating between getting a Netbook (mini-laptop) or a real Laptop (like as a replacement desktop) or a Netbook and a Desktop...or other various combinations of those 3 items...

A netbook would be very handy for school. It weighs an average of 3 lbs, and is about 10-11 inches diagonally. It's excellent for word processing, email, and internet. It's media processing ability is below-par. Hard drive size is around 120-160 GB. Average cost of a decent netbook, outfitted, is $450.

A Desktop is great for at home use. It allows for games, hi-speed internet, word processing, and a myriad of other things, such as media work. It's the fastest option in processing power, and will have the largest hard drive (600-800 GB). Average cost, $750.

A Laptop would most likely be used as a desktop replacement. It would be powerful enough to play games and work with media, but also portable enough to take to school. It would be about 9 lbs, and measure anywhere from 15-18 inches diagonally. It's not quite as fast as the desktop, but still is decent, and will have a medium sized hard drive (320gb). It runs about $1000-1200 on average.

Then of course, through all of this, is the eager waiting for the new Windows 7 OS to come out...it runs with half the processing power that Vista requires, and from talk from Beta users, runs better with the un-finished Beta then Vista does fully updated.

Finals, and WHAT is Research, Pt. 1

To Ms. Laura....I'll eventually get around to answering your question that you asked regarding "research" on my last post.

Finals are over. I got a B in Calculus 1 and an A in English Composition 2. I was rather excited about both. Going into my english final, I had only recieved 3/5 papers back from the teacher. So I only knew that I had an 82.5% average for my papers. I really wasn't sure what my grades were in the class, because he wouldn't tell us a lot about how attendance and in-class work affected our grades...but apparently I did good enough, cause I got an A. Calculus 1 I was also very excited about. I had to get a 69% on the final to get a B, which I apparently got....I wish you could see the final, and see what score you really made, etc....

My senior recital is coming up rather quickly. Very scary, actually... 6 days. I have a total of 7 solos and 2 duets...solos have to be memorized...I can ...get through all but two of the solos by memory...but only 2 fairly decently. I'll make it, I know..it's just nervewracking. My hands were swollen so bad on Tuesday. I couldn't hardly grip anything or make a fist with either hand. It wasn't too hot. lol But they are better now, and I'm back to practicing and staring at my music for a few hours a day.

Okay...now...MY view of Research....
I saw "research" as....mm...an exploring of a topic, and then writing my conclusion about that topic. So, in the case of home schooling which I wrote about (and I believe I have posted on my other blog), I wrote my conclusion, based on a question that I asked at the beginning to get me jumpstarted. My question was "Is home schooling effective?" I looked at the history of homeschooling, the legality of homeschooling, the cirriculum available to homeschoolers, the academic acheievements of homeschoolers compared to their public school counterparts, the success of graduates after high school, and the satisfaction of homeschooled graduates and their parents after homeschooling. I came to the conclusion that "Yes, home schooling is a generally effective method of schooling, and has higher average academic achievement rating then other methods of home schooling." This view I expressed in my paper, not really including other viewpoints or bringing any "other sides of the arguement" into play. This was mainly because there WASN'T a lot of good evidence against home schooling. It was mostly people calling it "child abuse" and ranting about how "homeschoolers aren't socialized, won't know how to function in the real world, etc"....actual evidence (usually done scientifically, or using psychological studies, see Dr. Brian Ray, etc) goes directly against these claims. So in my paper, which is essentially my conclusion of the research I've done, I ignored these false claims, and only used evidence which actually had something to back it up.

I'll get to the "school" version of research in my next post....