Joining A Community

Joining a community that is already established, can be scary. However, if you’re willing to jump into the experience with an open mind, you can gain insight or answer some of your questions. If you don’t like the community you can always leave. So I encourage you to open your horizons and try something new. Honestly, what’s the worst that could happen? 

My friend Taylor, and I have a running joke that I’m an old lady at heart. It’s the truth. I play Bingo, knit, and often get called “mom” by my friends because I worry so much about them. The perfect example of my “grandma-ness” is when I joined a Bunco group a few years ago. For those of you that don’t know, Bunco is a dice game. Bunco Night is for women only, occurs once a month and is always a fun time. My cousin and I are hands down the youngest ladies in attendance. However, the night is never boring. The evening is always full of laughs and some nights I have even gone home with over forty dollars.

When I first joined Bunco, I was unsure about the whole ordeal. I didn’t yet know the rules and the women all had their inside jokes. However, our host Lue, quickly put an end to all my doubt. Lue is easily the most welcoming person that I have ever met. The Bunco ladies have become a second family to me and we have formed solid friendships with each other. Last year, at the end of our Bunco season the ladies, generously gave me a graduation gift. I was moved to tears and felt very loved that evening.

I rolled the dice (pun intended) and found a community that I truly love. I look forward to seeing the ladies every month and it gives us an opportunity to reflect on the month we’ve had and to catch up with each other. I enjoy the sense of community I feel when I’m in the presence of the Bunco ladies. We all care about how each other is doing, and that’s what I cherish the most about our group. 

 

Blog 4- Maker's Manifesto

So I don’t really know what a manifesto is. I have tried to look up the definition but I don’t really understand it. Though everyone I’ve asked can’t really explain to me what it is. What I have heard from most people is that a manifesto is like a mission statement. This prompt asks “What is your short maker manifesto?” I do not know if this is referring to like the maker’s project that we had to do for Cisco or if it is asking just in general. With the Cisco project my maker’s mission statement would have to be for me and my group to make a good project that they can use on Cisco and that it will actually be helpful for him. He seems like a really good and happy dog to be getting hurt like that.

But if this is asking what our makers mission statement in general, like a goal we have to make for life at this moment then it would have to be that I would like to make good projects and finals for my classes, as well as good essays. I don’t know if this counts but this is something I will try to do. Or even if I don’t do that great, I hope to improve in all these things. One of my biggest fears would be to disappoint my family. Which the way that I would do that is by failing in school. If I make good projects and take good tests and turn in good essays, I hope to pass. I know this may seem a bit weird or maybe not, maybe that’s what’s pushing us all to do better in life.

I come from a family of 5 other siblings, my mother and father have had struggles to give us everything and try their best to give us things that we want. So far my parents slowly keep getting better kid. My oldest brother, Jessie, didn’t get through high school because he had a son when he was 16 and left to get money whichever way he can. My oldest sister, Nora, dropped out of high school for the same exact reason. My older brother, Alex had to go to summer school in order to graduate, which he graduated late. My older sister, Mariela, had to redo some classes in order to graduate on time and she struggled with it. I so far am the one who has done the best, academically. I graduated on time in the top 3% of my class. I have a little brother which I hope he continues the pattern and strives to do better than me.

I look at my parents and try my best to make them happy and proud of me. They have done so much for me and I want to be able to do well in college to be able to pay them back for everything. If I do things right I hope that instead of them taking care of me financially it’ll be the other way around.

#Regis #manifesto :)

Making connections with my manifesto and Regis? Well, before I begin class here at Regis especially, Writing Analytically,  I honestly didn't think of how or whether I am a maker or not. I guess subconsciously, I knew I was but I never actually put it into words and say them out loud like I've been doing a lot of lately.
My manifesto focused a lot on how making is an art, a way to imagine, and prosper from whatever it is that is being made. And so far I feel I have applied a lot of that way of thinking into my learning experience at Regis.

I started out the school year with great determination that in four years I will be able to make something of myself that would set a strong foundation for me to continue to fulfill my dream of becoming a Doctor of Psychiatry. It is a different way of making perhaps, since I am speaking of "making" a future for myself but it is, in my view, a form of making. To me it is truly is an art to go out of your way to learn what you want to learn, it is a way to inhance my imagination through all that I learn, and it is also what helps me and my intelligent to prosper even more. That is how I personally am connecting Regis to my manifesto.

B5: Starting at Regis

Starting out at regis has been a very different, but very rewarding experience. School in the past was never a very good experience for me. It was not very challenging, and I never really productive. The problem for me was never social stuff, or sports, or stiff like that, it was that I wasn't learning anything. I think that it was 4th grade that I realized that we were not learning anything, and I started doing stuff outside of school. This for me started with academic stuff like starting algebra early, but quickly moved to making whether it was a wooden sword, or a computer program. 

Starting out college has already been very different from my previous school experience. We actually have to think about things. It is no longer heres and equation now use it, or heres a book now write a 5 paragraph essay about it. It is more why is this the case, and what causes that. The reason I like this so much is this is how I teach myself things and make things. I don't go read a text book about, I experiment until I have learned something, or until I have broken something. College so far has been a lot of doing, and lot less of learning for the sake of learning. There are things in college that I am going to have to get used to, but I think that college is going to be the learning experience that I have always wanted previously in school. If college continues to be this way than I think for the first time I will actually learn something in academics, and I will enjoy the learning in the process.

What's it Like to Join a Commuity?

Joining a community can be a mix of emotions and feelings. Personally if I am joining a community in which I do not know much of the community’s rules and customs then I would be really nervous. If I have a little more background knowledge about the community I’m joining and the way the system works within a community I would be excited and anxious to join but I would still feel nervous for the new experiences. A community that I joined was a community that transitioned from middle school into high school. I have known my friends in middle school for a long time and I was scared to go off into a place where I would know no one and have to start all over again. I took many steps to get into high school. First, it was the shadowing process. I had to go to the schools that interested me and shadow a person for the entire day, which meant that I would follow them from class to class learning their material and see how it would be if I were to go to that school. I shadowed three different school. The one that I liked most was Arrupe Jesuit High School. Then came the application process. Here I applied to all the high schools that I would like to attend. I got accepted into all of them. After deciding, I chose one. Transitioning from a small community where I had twelve people in my class to one hundred was very nerve wracking. The good thing was that I made friends quick. A coupled friends stayed and most left towards the end of my senior year. This type of community was one where you had to be accepted in but not all of them are like that. I think that these types of communities are better organized and have a lot of control over their population.

Regis/Manifesto

In the eyes of my manifesto- which is to make for the good- my coming to Regis is greatly connected. For starters my philosophy class at Regis is the one that taught me about the philosophical good. Regis University's motto is more of a holistic approach- to teach the whole body and not just specific skill sets. We also believe in improvement of the self, but also improvement of the community. Its not just okay to learn, you also must have to teach. Which is also the philosophical way of the good. Plato and Aristotle believe in bettering the community with arts and culture and sciences, and viewing the world for the truth. Plato's allegory of the cave says that we are all people in a cave looking at shadows on the wall, and the one brave enough to step outside and see the light, is the one who can grasp natures truth and wisdom. Therefore making for the good, could be making to help the community whether that's for health, or homelessness, or even ignorance. Socrates says hes is the midwife of wisdom, meaning its his job to spark life and interest in wisdom in humanity. Its his life goal to make his community want to learn and want to ask questions. He is a gadfly who bites the butt of the large racehorse that is Athens. Which I believe is also what Regis is talking about. The good is making changes in our world for the better, and I think Regis has enlightened me in that prospect. Not only in my way of life but in my making too.

Regis Experience and Maker Manifesto Connection

I first start out in my maker manifesto with believing in ones self, this is key to success in life. Before I came to Regis I did not know what to expect. I was leaving my home town of eighteen years, where all my friends and whole life was. On my drive from St.Louis to Denver I started to feel the pressure of school, I started to doubt myself. What if I do not like my roommate?  What if classes are to hard and I fall behind? All these different situations started going threw my mind. But then once I got to regis and figured out my roommate was just like me I started to feel better about myself. Then going to all the orientation stuff, learning more about the school and how they want to do everything they can to help you succeed; I started believing in myself again and most of my worries went away.
Next is putting your self out there and trying. For me it was about putting myself out there and making new friendships. When I first got to regis I only new one person, who was a friend of a friends from middle school. I was lucky enough though to be paired with a great roommate as I said earlier, who is now my best friend on campus. Here you do not even really have to put your self out there like in high school to make new friends, everyone is looking to meet new people. So everyone is just extremely nice. My experience at regis so far has not been perfect but thats one of the last things I talk about in my manifesto, don't be a perfectionist nothing will ever be perfect.