Work hard everyday

 “Hoping and praying are easier but do not produce as good results as hard work.” (Andy Rooney) This phrase is somehow representing my last two semesters academic situation. I have been studying for two semesters already and I have had some really interesting experiences. The first one was when I first went to my class of biology. the class very big and the infrastructure of the building was pretty new for me. When the class started I felt that it was way too easy and that it was not necessary to study every, but then I would realize that I was so wrong about it. However, it was not so long until I started to notice that my study methods were terrible and that I was not prepared for this type of education. Every exam seemed too complicated and the classes were hard to follow. So during the midterm of my first semester, I had to start to work really hard because I wanted to get good grades. In the end, I was exhausted and when I compared my lifestyle in my country and here, I noticed that the way in which I used to do everything was very effortless and when I did the same here I just got bad results. like the phrase at the beginning says, I was praying and hoping in my life and others would give me everything that I want, so I learned to work hard because I was under pressure. Nowadays, I am still trying to leave my old habits and start new ones and this college has helped me to open my eyes and see that If I want to succeed I have to work hard every day of my life until I get it. 

How to improve my English

I have been kinda learning English for 11 years but, about a year or so ago I truly started my conscious learning of this interesting and hard to pronounce language. So many friends from my hometown always tell me how do I feel when I speak in English or if it was difficult to learn. Usually, I just laugh and answer them that it is something that everybody can do if they really dedicate time to study it and practice it. Practicing the speaking is the most important and essential exercise for the development of our skills, and at the same time, it will help us to improve our grammatic and amply our vocabulary with new words.However, I recommend them to not try to translate every word or phrase that they are trying to say in Spanish because it will lead to a very bad confusion and desperation if we do not find the exact word and maybe it could generate us a lack of confidence. The second most important part of improving our English is listening to other people or watching movies in English with subtitles, we have to train our ears to hear different words and sounds in order to learn the pronunciation and understand people better. Reading could be a good source for some people but for me, it only helps me to learn new words and I only can use them when I am writing down things but not when I talk. And finally, the last but not least way to improve is being persistent and consistent, with those two qualities you will get whatever you want in life.

Mid-semester at St. Norbert college

Mid-semester is very close and also our midterm grades will be posted out, maybe this is kind of scary for a lot of students and everyone is anxious to know how well they did during this first half of the semester. Along with this, we´ve had our spring break, which I feel like one of the best part of the academic year, to relax and spend time with our families or maybe travel and visit new places, Personally, I prefer to travel instead of staying in the same places and doing nothing rather than watch the tv or spend hours and hours in front of my computer, So, I traveled to New York and Boston, very expensive cities by the way, and I had the opportunity to see some of the famous streets or places in the USA. After one week of relaxation and entertainment, I flew back to my college and the classes started. This abrupt change in my daily routine is always uncomfortable because you pass from a calm state to a busy one. Anyway, these short-time breaks are very helpful and of course, it gives us a chance to observe the seasonal transition which, for a person that has never seen these remarkable changes in our environment, seems to be one of the greatest experiences that can define the mid of the spring semester.

Avoiding plagiarism in college

We all know how serious is to do plagiarism in an assignment that we have had, we can get a zero in our homework grade and, in the worst of the cases, we can fail the course. Along with the numerous ways to do plagiarism there are also some tips that will prevent us to do plagiarism, some of those strategies include: doing paraphrase, correct citation of sources, and to do quotation when we use ideas that do not belong to us. The first strategy to avoid plagiarism seems to be one of the more adequate for people who write a lot of essays and have to get information from the web or some other authors. Paraphrasing is when you take the idea of somebody and you explain it with your own words but at the same time, you are not changing the original meaning. The citation strategy is always required when we do research papers and sometimes essays, it consists of using the APA format to show where these ideas come from and who the original author was. Paraphrasing can be a little bit easier to do because you do not need to specify all the details, and it also demonstrates that you understand the idea of this author by repeating it but in your own word. The last but not least is a quotation, as simple as put the quotes marks is to avoid plagiarism, you have to use it when you use a phrase that the author said in person or in a book. Now that you know how to avoid plagiarism, you ought to don`t do it.

Differences in Plagiarism between Peru and the United States

When we talk about plagiarism in the U.S it can be considered a serious theme for most of the people living here, the first time that I came here I received a workshop talking about how to avoid plagiarism and why the rules against it are so strict also, we studied the consequences of doing plagiarism. One of the rules gain my attention, and it was that I could be expelled if I commit plagiarism, even if it was not intentional I would have to pass several steps to prove that it was not my fault.

 Comparing the American system with the Peruvian system I could rapidly notice the huge difference between both, in America, students are more worried about learning new things or at least do an effort to understand what the professor is saying in the lecture, however, Peruvian students are more interested in parties, drinking and that kind of stuff rather than attend to classes, maybe this could be the reason why plagiarism in Peru, and all Latinoamerica, is not considered really bad or a crime. 

Peruvian students always are trying to create new ways to do plagiarism, and it is perceived as a wise way to get a good grade, one friend told me one time that why should he study if he can get a perfect score in the test just by doing plagiarism. Homework in colleges such as papers, essays and other sorts of writing tasks are often checked by the professor in order to detect plagiarism but in Peru I remember using Wikipedia as my source and just copy and pasting what was there without even read it and the professor is not going to say nothing about it, but here it will have bad consequences. 

What really makes the difference here is the ideology of being original and not steal the work of other but creating something really unique with our effort and skills, in Peru most of the time we are surrounded by the idea of the one who is the most cunny  will be the only one who will get the most benefits and avoiding the rules of the system is a way to get it, that is one of the reasons why to do plagiarism in Peru is not such a bad thing.