I believe that I have a strong connection with the university. I have come to see this place as a second home to me. I do believe I belong here and that I fit in nicely and have many friends. I do believe that I have integrated myself into the social aspects of the campus as well. I feel that regardless I would have been involved in this campus in some shape or form but I was able to join a fraternity and this has helped me greatly. I have made a lot of friends due to this and have plenty of people to help me as my college career continues. I do not live on campus but I do live within walking distance and I live close enough to be able to walk there and experience campus life during the day as well. I live in the village and I do believe that even here there is a sense of community. I could pretty much call upon any neighbor to help me out in case something breaks or any other problems. I have made plenty of social connections in my two years at the campus. Being a part of a fraternity really helped me out socially but I also have been able to make connections with people not in my fraternity as well. I live with three people who are each part of a different social aspect in the university. One roommate is a part of my fraternity, one is a part of another fraternity, and one isnt part of a fraternity at all and I believe that all this social diversity really helps me keep a vast amount of friends on campus. I am very satisfied with the connections I have made on campus and wouldn't change a thing. I really don't know if I am connecting with the actual campus as much as I am with my friends. I probably could get more involved in the campus as it has given me so much already and I haven’t really given back to it at all. I don't really try to connect my in class experiences with my out of class experiences. I believe that its not good for me to mix work with pleasure. I do apply some of the things I learn but I also have learned that I don't get nearly enough done. I have thought about taking a class that interests me. It would be interesting to take a class that has to do with something that would affect my life and pick my interest. The only thing that is stopping me is the fact that it means I would have to spend more time on campus than I would like to. I get sick of it during my regular schedule. I do think that this is something I should get over because it is something that could potentially help me in the future. I really don't know what class I would take though. I would have to look at the class catalogue I guess and look for something that suits me correctly. I am not against taking an outside class at all but I just got to take the initiative and look for them and put myself out there.

I have many reasons for attending college. The most important one has to do with my future of course, that's a given. But I like to think I have more reasons than that. One important reason is simply that I’ve never done it before. I know it sounds funny but I like to experience new things and college seemed like a new frontier and I am always game for a change of pace. It is a new way to be independent and you have nothing to fall back on but yourself. I had a pretty good idea what I wanted to do with my future but I didn't want to limit myself to new ideas that I could come across. My parents were a big influence on my college career but I like to think that I got myself to actually commit to it. I wasn't forced to do this and it would have been treated the same had I not chosen to go but like I said before I wanted to try something new. What I want to gain from my experience is I want a new outlook on life. Despite the fact that I am almost 20 years old I still have a lot to learn in life and I feel going to a new state and a new environment will help me with this. My personal goals from this are to get more friends with people I never would have thought I would be friends with and to gain a better understanding of my future. My academic goals are simply not to fail out. If I don't fail out then I get to stay here and even though I have only spent a year here I have come to love it here. My academic goals greatly effect the way I study. I study hard for my tests. If I didn't care then I wouldn't study very hard but my desire to do well keeps me afloat. I have a few traits to offer this school. I love meeting new people and I love interacting in new environments. If there are new friends to be made I am there in a minute. I love to listen and love to debate on issues. I need to do a few things for research in order to be successful this year. I need to be able to locate all the outside help I can receive for classes. I also need to find out all my teachers office hours and emails to further help my participation in the class. What could potentially prevent me from doing well is the fact that I am in a fraternity I suppose. Being in a fraternity takes up a lot of time and not to mention the constant partying that takes place. Also I tend to over worry about little things and over analyze situations. This factor could also impair my ability to study and take tests. I also tend to get distracted and procrastinate easily. While the I just listed a lot of factors they are small and easy to overcome. I am hoping to have a lot of the experiences that I had the first year I attended here. I had so much fun and learned so much last year and I hope these experiences only continue. My major is creative writing so I am hoping to get more classes that help me in my writing career at school. I enjoy writing very much and the fact that all my classes have to do with writing in some shape or form only adds to my enjoyment.

I would have to say that my expectations about college were a little different than how I am actually living my college life right now. The first thing I had expected had to do with how fast I would make friends. I had expected it to be a little like high school. You have a group of people that you are thrown into and you make friends with some and with others you don't. This was NOTHING how it really was in college life. You have to make much more of an effort making friends. I am not very outgoing in meeting new people, luckily I joined a fraternity that really helped me through the friend making process. I can honestly say I would not have made nearly as many friends I do have now without the help of my fraternity. Another expectation I had about college had to do with professors in class. I really didn't have a great idea of how they would interact with the students. I didn't think they would be as close to me as my high school teachers were but I did think that they would be at least a little interested in their students. I was partly right with this. Yes the teachers do you want you to succeed (most of them) but you have to make that extra effort to go find the teachers and ask for their help personally. I have learned many important things since coming to the university. First off, you are always responsible for your actions, if you fail you have no one to blame but yourself. Another thing I learned is that you can not have too many friends. The more friends you have the more resources you have not only during the year but beyond your stay at the university as well. I also learned the valuable lesson of being independent. I had to do everything for myself and you learn new things that make your life a lot easier.
I believe I am a very different person than before I came to the university. I am definitely a lot more independent and I have discovered a new sense of confidence in myself due to the fact that everything that has come to me I has happened due to my own actions. That is a very liberating feeling. I don't think there are many thingsi would change if I were to do the school year over again. I am very happy with how things have been going and I don't want many things to change, but if they do I hope they change for the better. If I were to return to my high school and talk to the seniors there I would tell them a few things. First off that they should enjoy the fact that they don't have to live completely independently just yet and that they have parents to cook them meals. Second I would tell them that college is an awesome experience where you also experience many new things that you could never experience in high school. I would tell them to look forward to this with much enthusiasm. This has been a great experience for me and I am barely in my second year of it! I feel that it will only get better with time as I move toward my final years at the university.

There is one other story that is apparently very true unlike the other stories mentioned but like it was mentioned before, the point of the stories within this text isn’t whether or not they are true but rather they serve as an eye into the happenings of people in wartime. It explains the story of a man who’s friend was killed in the war and he wrote his friend’s girlfriend to explain why her boyfriend wont be coming home. He pours his heart into the letter, crying on numerous occasions. Months pass after the letter had been sent and still there has been no response. The soldier took it as hard as if he were the dead. He couldn’t believe that this girl wouldn’t write back to this kind of letter. She finds out her boyfriend is dead and sends no reply whatsoever. The soldier could not believe the audacity she had. Dead friend aside, he poured his heart and soul into that letter, but to get no sort of emotional feedback infuriated him. The effect that this story is supposed to have on the reader/listener is that after spending months on end in wartime, after a soldier asks for something simple such as a reply letter from someone who meant a whole lot to his fallen friend, he is denied it. After living in the horror that is war, people start to appreciate the little things that normal people take for granted every day like affection, the emotional attachment that forms when men form a brotherhood during wartime, or simply letters from a place where there isn’t gunfire or good friends getting torn apart by explosives.

People who weren’t there or didn’t experience any of these events that these soldiers told can not judge the validity of said stories. Regardless of whether or not these stories are true or not does not matter. What matters is the message that gets across. Without exaggerations in the story or emphasizing things in the story that may have not happened, the stories would not have as much of an impact as it would have if a boring story where nothing happened and no one died. The stories strike the listeners where it counts, in the heart. What matters the most is the message and the effect it has on one’s life after hearing it. “In other cases you cant even tell a true war story. Sometimes it’s just beyond telling.”

A person might find this hard to believe because the person who the story is being told to probably was not there during the war and thus is naïve. If the person does not know what actually happened a lot of the cruelness and savageness of the war may seem too extreme to be true. The narrator’s friend was in a state of happiness the second before he died. As he stepped on the trap, he was facing the narrator. When the trap exploded his face was illuminated, then torn apart. Without the added exaggerations the impact of the story would not have been as predominant. Then there is the question of if the story is not 100 percent true then does it matter is the impact is great? There is a mistake that people could make that the storyteller was deliberately misguiding the person who they were telling the story to. That may be so but in most cases, the story does not have to be true to the world but rather true to the people who it happened to and whoever is telling the story. What’s more important the truth or the impact it has on the people it affected.
There is another story that is told of a squad doing a listen in on enemy territory. This story also pertains to the idea that it doesn't matter how the story is told but rather that it is told and that the person listening gets the desired effect. They were supposed to be completely quiet and lay low for days and just listen. After a few days the soldiers started to hear noises, but they weren’t normal jungle noises. The soldiers heard concerts from rock shows, noises from cocktail parties. They got on their radios and called in a strike team against the area. After the area was torn up the officers asked the team that had stayed there what they had seen and heard. They knew that no one would believe they had heard noises from a rock concert so they said absolutely nothing. If the soldiers had told what had really happened, it would be easy to tell that they just experienced an episode of hysteria brought on by them staying in the jungle for days without moving. This is not what the storyteller wanted to get a across though. He didn’t want to make the soldiers look crazy, he made sure to explain that they knew that what they heard couldn’t have possibly have been heard in the jungle and that they didn’t tell anyone what really happened. The point of the story isn’t to portray these people as nuts soldiers but rather as victims of what type of effect the war can have on one’s psyche. The storytellers are trying to get this point across and on the way of accomplishing this, it is not wrong of them to change a detail here or there if the same point gets across.

There is truth to the saying that you never know till you have walked a mile in a man’s shoes. To be more specific, I am referring to stories told by soldiers from the Vietnam War. Most of these stories are powerful and have a great impact even on today’s generation. The following story called, “How To Tell A True War Story”, by Tim O’Brien compiles a few war stories from soldiers during the Vietnam War that to some may seem a little too extreme to believe. Since these stories are filled with so much violence, so much emotion, one must wonder: were all the parts of the story true? So what really matters, the validity of each story or the impact it has on the person or persons it is being told to? The narrator states that, “You can tell a war story if…you don’t care for truth.” If you are to tell a war story the narrator thinks that you must be able to carelessly toss the truth aside and tell a story that carries an “allegiance to obscenity and evil” if that’s what it takes to get the point of the story across. What needs to be understood is that it doesn't matter if little details here or there are being changed to tell a story consciously or unconsciously, as long as the desired affect is reached. The people who the story is being told to usually weren’t involved in the war so these stories are there for these people who were lucky enough to not experience war’s horrors. These stories make it so they are able to if not fully then at least partially understand what these brave people went through.
The following story revolves around a soldier currently involved in the Vietnam War and the emphases isn’t on the war at hand but rather with the stories told by fellow soldiers, fabricated or not. It starts out with the narrator retelling the story of how his friend and fellow soldier was killed. When he finishes the story he reflects on the extremes of the story such as his friend stepping on a booby trap and being blown apart. As he examines the different parts of the story he admits how ridiculous it sounds that his friend could be spread across the trees with his own body but then he realizes that’s what war stories are all about.
After he tells them he focuses on the fact that the validity of the story could be questioned. When the narrator first tells the stories that he has either experienced or heard from a second source he tells them as if they are all 100 percent true. The way he described his friend’s death was the sun came down and threw him into the trees. He described it as, “His face was suddenly brown and shining…the sunlight came around him and lifted him up and sucked him high into a tree.” Now any reasonable person would think that the thought of the sun coming down and ripping a person apart sounds ridiculous. But He was there and all he is doing is recounting what he saw. He knows it sounds ridiculous and yes he knows that it didn’t actually happen that way but the way he described it added a certain amount of emotion that was able to emphasize the great light that was caused by the explosion.

The session that I sat in on was lucky enough to have been quite interesting and it happened to include an acquaintance that is now a friend. I decided to peak in on someone who was helping a young freshman rapper that wanted to make a mixtape of various songs with the rapper on them to put out to get his name out. I was lucky enough to be able to watch and learn things that I didn’t know before. It started out with the rapper telling the engineer in the small room which beats he wanted to use. The engineer decided first that he wanted to hear the beats first to see if the levels were correct and thus able to be recorded over easy since the protool sessions were not intact. Most of the tracks were usable but two for them were not able to be used much to the chagrin of the rapper. The engineer plugged in the microphone into the docks and placed a pop filter over the microphone. The rapper and the engineer tested the microphone and we were ready to go underway. The rapper had lyrics set aside for most of the songs but he wanted to freestyle first to see how it works out first try. I was amazed at the simplicity that the rapper was able to spit out such things at such a speed. It was like he was able to think of stories in three seconds flat, stories that rhymed.
Despite the fact that he was able to come out with rhymes so fast not all of them were gems. They sounded good but had very little to do with the song subject matter. I didn’t understand why this would effect the outcome of just a mixtape but I suppose I wasn’t one to question a project that was not my own. So some of the freestyling was saved while most of it was scrapped as the engineer, who now took on the job of a producer, explained to the rapper that he does his best work when he thinks his lyrics out beforehand. I happened to agree with this and was happy with this decision. They started to record the first song and the rapper put headphones on and the engineer placed the track in record and muted the speaker so that the only person who could hear the track was the rapper himself. I assumed that this was the case as his head was nodding heavily. I remember how strange the whole recording aspect sounded when you could not hear the music and the rapper would almost perform for a room of three people. The room itself was interesting as well. The room was fairly small and not like the studios I have seen in the past. The fact that it was only one room was the main difference as there was only a keyboard a computer and a monitor. The walls were properly muffled for a good sense of acoustics. They had foam on the walls witch muffled the echoes nicely. It wasn’t completely muffled but it was good enough for the room with the consol and the recording room were one in the same. This was an enjoyable experience for me and I was glad I was able to sit in on such a different type of recording session.