Friday, June 27, 2008

hey this is Jared checking in.
Today I had my first test in Psychology, and in my opinion it was relatively easy, even though some of my classmates thought that it was very hard. After the test I went to trillium where I met a PSP student, and got to know a little about the experiences that they have. I later went to dinner with a few friends that I have met here. We went to Miyuki Sushi Bar in college town, after which we went bowling at Helen Newman bowling arena across from Rawlings Green.
Thats all for now. More to come.
Jared

2 comments:

Charles Ramsey said...

I enjoyed reading your post. It was nice hearing from you Jared. Wendy and Ana gave me a run down on the test and they felt it was challenging and Yoline said she felt that it was moderately challenging. I am glad that you felt it was relatively easy and straight forward. I am sure the results will speak for themselves.

From reading your post it appears that you have struck out on your own and become connected to the many stduents who are in the program. This is wonderful news. I want you to have fun with students outside of our own cohort. Any comments about your friends and their background would be nice. Too often we see students only congregate with those they know rather then reach out to strangers.

I am glad that you have cultivated relationships with other students. Maybe you can invite them to come to our district and see how our school system works or even visit their school district and get a first hand look at life in their world. Please keep us posted on current events at the school. Also be a leader and ask some of our other students to contribute to the blog by posting more often their thoughts and impressions on the program.

Enough for right now and I am glad that the Cornell experience is going well. I want you to show the Cornell administration that you can handle the course work and compete with the best in the world.

Take care.

Charles T. Ramsey
School Board Member
West Contra Costa
Unified School District

Don Gosney said...

Great hearing from you, Jarad.

I have to mirror a lot of what Charles wrote about branching off to expand your horizons. That's a big part of what this whole experience is supposed to be about. If we wanted you to just get the book learning we would have just bought the textbooks and a few instructional DVDs and saved our selves a bundle.

Socializing with others who come from different cultures is a part of what it's all about. People from different parts of the country see things differently than what we might.

Even in our own backyards, take a trip into Berkeley and start talking about the Marine Officer Recruiting Center or talk about the tree sitters and you're going to see a completely different approach to life than what those out in Walnut Creek might see.

Quite often, people tend to congregate amongst other people with similar viewpoints and then they start believing that the rest of the world probably thinks the same way. Then they're shocked when they learn that they, and their group of compadres, may be the only people on the planet that share that viewpoint.

It's only through our interactions with differing cultures that we can embrace the totality of events and viewpoints.

You've taken the right first steps, Jared. Congrats to you on that.

And like Charles wrote, keep those postings coming, expand on what you're seeing and doing and brow beat your pals into posting their own thoughts. YOU are our community's emissaries and YOU are our eyes and ears for what's going on back there. Without your commentaries, we know nothing.