Academic Leadership - Time Management Goals (Diego Blank) «Blog Post #3»

Assignment 2: Before the due date, write a blog post in which you reflect
on the time management goals you set on 19/20 Sept. In your paragraph, include whether or not you met your goals,any problems you had, any successes you had, and anything you learned. Also include an updated version of your goals based on your experience. (250 word min.)

     My time management goals for that day was to write down everything i had to down the Apple iPad Calendars, so I would know whenever I had an assignment due for a specified date. Up to now, I did meet my goals, and what I did was very helpful.
     I did not need to remember everything I had to do and it did help manage the time I took to do my homework. What I meant by that was that I did one homework at a time, which actually saved up a lot of time. It also made my schedule seem much less confusing, since the Edmodo schedule is simply a rainbow of colors and boxes of random assignments for each period.
     Now that I got that out of the way, I did indeed find some problems with managing my assignments using the calendar, which are the fact that you cannot organize the work of each class by color, sometimes making my schedule look very messy and complicated to understand.
     Also, the icons for each assignment looks very small and making it hard to read, so I have to click on each icon so I could know what it is about. I learned that organizing my school work would improve my time management dramatically. Thank to this I can make my homework more efficient, freeing up time for other assignments. Next time, I will use a better App, which is specialized for these kinds of things, like a planner for example.

Diego Blank

Academic Leadership - Diego Blank (Blog Post #2)

You briefly met with a college recruiter last week, and you reviewed a number of questions to ask about colleges. This must have gotten you thinking about your future, so tell us about it: Without any strict requirements, write about your expectations, goals, fears, concerns, questions that you have concerning your future in college. Additionally, now that you know that recruiters want to hear about you and your intellectual interests and pursuits, how do you think being an aware Academic Leader will give you an advantage when applying to the college of your choice? 

     Personally, I do not have a lot of concerns about getting into college since the message that they give you on how to be a successful student is pretty clear. That is to be dedicated and know what you are doing, so for me, if I really put some effort into my work, I will have a chance to be accepted in specific colleges.
     If we were to talk about my goals, I wouldn't have a lot except for the fact that I would want to be accepted in a good college because I did not decide on what I would do with my future yet, so the idea still lays warm in my head.
     One of the many expectations that I have into getting into college and what happens inside of college is if the college recruiters will listen to your voice, that is, to what you have to say and if they will take it into consideration or not. This would also be the main fear that I have into getting into college, because there is always the thought that you will not get accepted due to whatever reason. Away from that, I also expect good and consistent education that will furnish me a good future. Obvious but necessary, I would say...
     I do have a lot of questions, but listing them here would take too much space, so it's better off without them. Most of them was what the schedule worked and what were the main majors that they offered anyways. Being an aware Academic Leader makes you able to take leadership of whatever task you have to you can learn from your mistakes and move on in life, gradually getting better so you can make better impression on the college recruiters, and even on other people.
     If you are a good leader, then you are well admired by thousands of people, and I guess this is the point. So basically, they will see that you are eligible at handling responsibility and start admiring you at the very second.

- Diego Blank

Academic Leadership - Diego Blank (Blog Post #1)

Diego Blank



"In our first two weeks, you have read two articles, seen several videos and been engaged in several discussions related to the concept of academic leadership. At this point, and in your own words, what does the concept mean to you? What subjects or interests do you have a sophisticated, intellectual understanding of that you may want to turn into a major academic project in this class? How do people sometimes abuse academic knowledge to manipulate others? How would you feel if someone used your work to manipulate others (as Jared Diamond claims Mitt Romney has)? How can creating academically sophisticated, intellectual leaders help prevent such people from taking advantage of others the way they do? How can this create a stronger democratic society?" 

     The principal purpose of this class, named after Academic Leadership, is to teach individuals how to
take talents to an advantage and how to take leadership over it. For example, if you are good in
technology, this course will help you eventually get better at it and make you assume leadership and
use your knowledge to manipulate or teach other people. It also means how to take leadership over a
weak spot and turn it into something that you will use later on in the future flawlessly. What I am good at and what I wish to flourish and turn it into an academic project is any kind of technology, either related to computers or other sorts of technology. I am pretty good at computer science, video making and maybe some very basic server (or what you call what is related to the Internet) knowledge.
     I would expect from this academic class for me to flourish this strong spot of mine into good use where I could make my life easier by using it to help me with different points or simply by the sake of it. Sometimes, people use academic knowledge to manipulate others by simply using his or their knowledge to make other people understand better that knowledge, or simply using their knowledge to their advantage for whatever reason. For example, I could use my technology knowledge to make people visit my blog and read my post by simply sending them messages or hacking into their devices and forcing them to look at it, which would be something I would probably would never learn how to. Also, people could just be fascinated by my knowledge and simply decided to visit my blog because I made a good impression on them, which might not really be the case right now.
     If someone would ever use my work or knowledge to manipulate others, I would be pretty angry at that someone because I was supposed to be the one demonstrating all my knowledge rather than somebody else which simply decided to steal my hard work. I would also feel utterly tired for working so hard to get to a point until a certain someone stole my work.
     Academically sophisticated and able leaders could help prevent people using other people's knowledge as an advantage by assuming responsibility over their own work. Such leaders would have the mind to know that what they have worked for is theirs, and not somebody else, so that would really reduce the amount of people using your work as an advantage because you will be able to show that the knowledge truly comes from you and not others, since you assumed leadership and you know its yours. This can create a stronger democratic society because you will be able to assume leadership and know what you will be doing, so you will be able to moderately manipulate or teach people about your knowledge as your own work. This will fortify democracy, since the idea of strong academic leadership is applied.