Election 2008

The election of 2008 is important to me because whoever is elected president, will determine whether or not he wants to follow through with his proposals and to what extent. Both McCain and Obama generally have many of the same plans with varying solutions to the problems of the economy. They both say that they want to decrease the amount of debt that we're in, but they have different ways of going about it. For instance, Obama wants to reverse the Bush tax cuts to raise money, but in the past, raising taxes has been a disincentive for buying goods. McCain, on the other hand, wants to keep these tax cuts permanent and control government spending with a one year pause. It remains to be seen how these policies may effect our economy, but given what I know about our candidates, I want to vote for McCain. Obama wants to pull our troops out from Iraq too fast. McCain better understands war since he's participated in one. In my personal opinion, from watching Obama's acceptance speech, he is too cocky to be a good president. I would rather have a humble president that spends more time looking for solutions to the problems of our economy and puts those plans into action, than putting other people down as Obama did. I look forward to voting for the first time, since I just turned eighteen in June!

Intended Test Taking Strategies and Ways to Be Successful in Other Clases

My Ideas and Culture examination is to take place on Friday of this week and is to be fifty percent of my midterm grade. The other fifty percent of my grade is to come from the midterm paper that I am writing for this class. In writing this paper, pulling details from the text to support my thesis has helped me to study for my exam. Because I must go back and skim through the stories that I have read to find these details, I usually end up rereading some of the passages. In deciphering their meanings to better explain my paper, I am educating myself in my ideas and understanding of these stories. I believe this will help me do well on my exam.
I have also learned that teachings are easier to understand if I read the text before class, because then I already have a basic understanding of what the professor is trying to teach. It also benefits me in the way that I can form questions beforehand that may need to be answered in class. I have learned that it is more helpful to study the night before a test than the morning of, because during REM sleep, memories for the day are stored and so are more likely to be put into long term memory instead of short term. If I put as much information as possible into my long term memory by using this method, then I will be less likely to worry or have an overwhelming amount of information to relearn before a final.