Cam Sanford

Students 
I had a mental image of what I thought the students at Southern would be like. I had imagined big parties and a lot of campus life during the weekends. I was surprised when for the first few weeks here I hadn't heard much about anything like that. It was a few days ago when I was hanging out with my friend and one of their friends. I had heard a bit about this friend and that something had happened to them over the weekend. They decided to share what had happened. They drank too much and got alcohol poisoning; they were taken out of our dorm building by ambulance. He started talking about this alcohol poisoning and the whole story had me honestly shocked. I hadn't realized people were doing these things and taking those risks. I understood that people here drank and partied just less publicly than I had originally thought it would be like. However, I didn't think someone would be pushing themselves so much that they'd have to have an ambulance called for them. Clarity had came when people were running around my friend's dorm talking about "Wine Wednesday" and a guy who had to ask his friend to go check him in as an overnight "just in case". Later he had to be walked to the elevator and held up. I knew people would be drinking here but I imagined they would have bit more self control and not being so irresponsible. 

Adjusting
I think that so far I have adapted to college pretty well. I was nervous that I would've been the same I was in high school; always in my room, not many friends, etc. I keep waiting for the other shoe to drop, for everything to turn. In high school when I started I thought the same, that it was so much better and that something was turning around. I had a friend group, I was doing good in my classes, I was in a relationship; but there was the point where it all pretty much faulted out. My closest friend of that group started becoming very close with someone  had asked them not to, as that person was very mean to me. Regardless, they became close and I had tried my best to not let it affect me but then this friend, C.F., tried to bring that person, M.M. into our group. M.M. made instagram posts about me like in the "Photo Dump" put a clip of a vide of C.F. and I's chats. By the end of freshman year my circle had shrunk significantly. I felt very down about that situation for a really long time, it took me a while to get used to trusting friends again or being ready to get that close with someone. I didn't start making friends or attempting to make friends about until the second half of my junior year. The 2 most significant relationships I made out of that year is with S.S. and with D.N.. Those girls are still people I talk to daily. In November I'm going to a concert with S.S., we're going to New York to see Edgar Alejandro. I hope that the friendships, both from home and here, are ones that will last, and that I am secure enough that a loss will not have such a great effect on me.

For this reading I read Generative AI without guardrails can harm learning: Evidence from high school mathematics. One point the author made, from the beginning, that I found very reasonable is how A.I. should be use as a teaching/learning tool, not just an information source; i.e. asking for teacher made suggestions or types of hints not the full answer. The points made about A.I. delivering wrong answers is very important. I myself have seen the top result, AKA Google’s A.I., be wrong or provide bias answers. They did look very realist as well and like the answer was the truth. Their focus is on how A.I. can be adjusted to raise the benefits for students is a very good idea; to safeguard the ability to learn. I found the motion of students not understanding their learning is deteriorating very interesting as well, however, it was understandable. In my junior year I used A.I. for my Pre-Calculus course, I had believe for every single quiz/test that I knew what I was doing, most of the times I ended up getting 75 or lower on them. I had gone into the assessments feeling very confident. I, too, wonder if the long-term use of unrestricted/unguided A.I. could lead to a decrease in ability; and what the other effects might be.

Book Hangover 
My favorite books are from a series I haven't read in probably 8 years now, they were from the Pegasus series by Kate O'Hearn. Those books were some of the first ones that I myself had truly felt a passion to read and to have. I can't remember how I found the first book, maybe a school book fair or a trip to Barnes and Noble with my mother. Regardless, those book are ones that I wish to read again. They were, in my mind, so creative and well written that I couldn't put them down; I finished the 4th one, a 500 page book, in 3 days when I was around 10. I think, I remember being so upset about finishing the series that I stopped reading for a long, long time. I still haven't gotten back into reading as much as I had been when I read those books. This is a phenomenon called a Book Hangover; I find that to be so funny that it is something so publicly recognized. Those books were so good to me, I can remember so vividly the beginning of the series and how infatuated I was. I remember how the main character was home alone, how she was eating ice cream, how she heard the thud on the roof to find Pegasus up there, injured. Those books are sitting on my shelf at home.
Maybe what I will do over winter break is read those books again, in hopes that is will spark the interest in reading again.

The post I read today, Generative AI enhances individual creativity but reduces the collective diversity of novel content, is about how AI is effecting creativity. The post goes over a study where writers were tested with AI and no AI usage. They found that the AI ones were statistically better than the ones without. In my personal opinion, even if AI can make a story better, add more details, create instantaneously, it will never be the same. Human creativity and writing is a form of art; AI is not art. Writing takes skill and this post says that Low DAT writers can be equal with High DAT writers. I am very against this, writing is something that takes skill, using AI to become a “good” writer means you are not good at it. If AI is used to create your idea, it is not your idea. However, I do believe their experiment was useful, it gives insight as to how the general public views AI works. They used an example about how AI can have usefulness but not be useful in every aspect, I believe this sums up pretty good how AI can help but it cannot give talent. AI can tell you how to draw but it cannot make you an artist. The articles take on how AI impacts writing is that AI writing for you can make the piece less boring, more useful, increase the novelty; but the moral of the story is when you use AI the piece is not your own.

Weekend shifts  
I work at a smoothie shop, this weekend I went home Thursday for my shift, 4:00 till 9:30. My ride was late and I ended up being late because of that. That shift itself was fine. However, the next day my shift was from 6:30 till 6. Mostly it was pretty good, opening was easy. I started my shift with one of my coworkers that I haven't seen in a pretty long time, K.C.. At 10 a new hire, E.R. came in; it was my first time meeting him. At 11 K.C. left and then A.B. came, she's nice but of course I have my pet peeves with her; like the messes she leaves, the dishes that stack, stuff like that. E.R. left at 1 so it was just A.B. and I. Then at 3:50 one of my home friends, A.S., came in to see me; that was very good because I miss her. At 4 M.S. and A.R came in so A.B. left, A.R. is new too. I took a mini break to hang out with my friend for a bit. Around 5:20 the water faucet in the back broke. I stayed until D.Q. got there, around 6:10 to train A.R.; M.S. is not a good worker and should not be training anyone which is something that my manager was too lazy to care about. I brought home smoothies for my family. I came back to my dorm that night, we left my house at 8:50, dropped my sister off at her friends house. On the way to the friends house a truck nearly hit us. The truck was speeding and was coming up the hill, they decided to pass a work van in an illegal passing zone. I looked up and saw two sets of headlights coming on the road infant of us, he had those super bright LED lights. My mother had to slam on her brakes. I made it back to the dorms around 10:15. I felt sick for a while because of the truck. When I got back to the dorm I was so very tired that I didn't put anything away and got ready for bed right away. That is how my weekend went. I think that weekend is, maybe, not the right term but to me that is my weekend, the start of the week Saturday and Sunday are the days I study and prepare myself for the week.

Today I read From Pencils to Pixels: The Stages of Literacy Technology, by Denis Baron, for the class EDU 106-02. I found this article to be fun; I think it was interesting how Baron described writing as a technology and not just a form of communication. I had never thought to think of it as a technology since my personal definition of technology was simply devices or “Information Technology”. However, the real definition of technology is “the practical application of knowledge, tools, and methods to solve problems, achieve human goals, and adapt to the environment”. I found the bits about the pencil especially interesting as I had never thought that there would’ve been such discourse, in terms of economics, over something that we can now get for so much less. Baron wrote about how people have opposed things like writing, spell check, etc. Which is something I find also interesting; we use those so frequently. Spell check is automatic on every device I’ve seen; or at least highlighted automatically. Writing is something that is so popular in society now that thinking people used to oppose it is something I had never thought of. I believe this article gave me insight into how society has always been adapting through the technology of writing; will AI be something that becomes natural too?