REPORT #2
MY ADAPTING TO THE INTERNET
bnakada@uhunix.uhcc.hawai.edu
In my report #2, I decided to break up the paper into different sections. If you wish, you can access each section separately by simply clicking on the anchored words.
The Beginning
The First Weeks
Going Crazy
Procrastination
Time to Get Serious
The Conclusion
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The Beginning
Prior to this class, the most experience I have had on the internet was looking up basketball statistics through net search. I had never used Lycos, Webcrawler or any of those other search engines. Sure I had toyed around on the University of Hawai'i homepage, looking up different subjects concerning the university--primarily the sports section, but my experience was definitely limited. In the Fall 95 semester, I had taken the Information and Computer Sciences 101 class, in which we spent about a week on learning the basics of netscape. During that week, all we did was search for addresses of various organizations, and learn a little about the different search engines. That was about as far as my ICS class took me.
Upon signing up for Psychology 459, I had no idea that all of my work would be published on netscape. When I learned of this on the first day of class, I was very excited. "Finally, I can get in touch with all of this modern technology," I thought to myself. "I no longer have to feel "out of place" among my friends when they talk about cyberspace." My instructor for this class is a man named Dr. Leon James. For the first few weeks, the class had to get accustomed to the different language we would be using in class. I sure was glad I was not the only one that did not know much about netscape. We were told to start searching on netscape and to generally get a feel for techniques we would be utilizing in class.
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Return to my homepage
My topical index: An in-depth guide into my world.
My Report One": My Travels Through G1 and G2
Visit my database: I like to encourage the driver to take risks.
Instructor's Homepage
Questions? Comments?
The First Weeks
As the first week passed by, I was really "in to" doing the classwork and learning all about netscape. I would find myself spending just about every free moment "surfing the net" and I began to genuinely enjoy it. Up until last semester, I was as computer illiterate as a person could be. I used to laugh at people when they talked about e-mail and the internet. "What geeks," I thought. Then, when I finally got a chance to enter this foreign world, I found it kind of pleasurable. Information was now at my fingertips. Not just worthless information either, but things that were very relevent to me. I began thinking that this internet stuff is pretty easy. That is, until we got our assignments to CREATE our own little section on the web.
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Return to my homepage
My topical index: An in-depth guide into my world.
My Report One: My Travels Through G1 and G2
Visit my database: I like to encourage the driver to take risks.
Instructor's Homepage
Questions? Comments?
Going Crazy
At about week three or four, when the real work began, I quickly found out that I was not as prepared for this class as I previously thought. Now, we had to enter Netscape, but this time, we had to search for different links pertaining to traffic psychology. Talk about time consuming. The time allowed in class was definitely not enough, and with me not even owning a computer, it made it doubly tough. I would spend hours on end trying to find sights, but there is just so much out there in cyberspace. I began to dread logging on and going into netscape. What began as fun was really turning into a chore. I still have not mentioned the different pages we had to create for our own sight on netscape. We had to create five different files and link them all together. Creating them was not the hard part, though. The difficulty began when I wanted to get the "look" just right and getting all of my anchors to anchor properly. With the amount of time I spent on the computer, it seemed like this class was the only one I had enrolled in this semester.
Back to the top
Return to my homepage
My topical index: An in-depth guide into my world.
My Report One: My Travels Through G1 and G2
Visit my database: I like to encourage the driver to take risks.
Instructor's Homepage
Questions? Comments?
Time to Cruise?
Soon, I began to slack off. Was I burn-out? Or was I just being lazy? Before I knew it, I slowly started to go to the lab less and less. I think what really got me on the procrastination bandwagon was the fact that nothing was going to be graded until March 7. This announcement was made sometime in mid January if I am not mistaken. I breathed a huge sigh of relief. I finally had some time to come up for air. I thought I could take a week off and try and catch up with my other classes. I kept reminding myself that I would not fall behind in this class. However, no matter how much I reminded myself, I soon found myself way behind. I got caught up in my other classes, but now I was lost again in this class. It turned out that outside of class, I had not visited the lab for nearly two weeks. When I went to class on the seventh week, Dr. James explained to the class what should have bee completed by then. Needless to say, I did not even have half of what should have been done.
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Return to my homepage
My topical index: An in-depth guide into my world.
My Report One: My Travels Through G1 and G2
Visit my database
Instructor's Homepage
Questions? Comments?
Realization
I think it was the next week in class that Dr. James decided to reveal to us what grade we would have had, had he been grading each week. The division of the class went something like this: There were one A, two B's, about six or seven C's, and eleven F's. I was one of the lucky ones. I recieved a C-minus. However, I could not be satisfied with such a pathetic grade, eventhough there were many who still were below me.
I think the fact that Dr. James decided to give us our grades in front of the whole class acted as a motivating factor for all of us. At the time, it seemed cruel and unprofessional to do such a thing. But upon reflecting back, I see he did that to get us a little embarassed, while still trying and spark a fire under our butts to get us going. He even gave us a little "pep" talk--I guess that was what you could call it. He called us underachievers and that we should be doing much better. To tell you the truth,when I first heard that, I was really upset. How dare he reprimand us like that. But I soon realized I could not take his comments so personal. I should use what he said to motivate myself...make myself want to prove him wrong. When I looked at his comments in that light, I began to thank him for saying those things. I really needed that extra push to get me going. I know I am an adult now, and shouldn't need that type of motivation. I realize this and I am now sure that this will not happen again.
Back to the top
Return to my homepage
My topical index: An in-depth guide into my world.
My Report One: My Travels Through G1 and G2
Visit my database: I like to encourage the driver to take risks.
Instructor's Homepage
Questions? Comments?
Time to Get Serious
Okay, I have my motivation, but how was I going to finish everything by March 7? I had approximately two and a half weeks to complete my assignments. I began spending lots of time in the lab once again, but my computer knowledge was not up to par. I had trouble getting my anchors to work, not to mention my links with all my pages. As it turned out, all I was missing was a quotation mark here, an end bracket there, just little things. These little things sure took up an awful lot of time, though. Earlier in the semester, where I would have probably blown it off, I stuck with it. I approached my problems with a different perspective. Instead of seeing the problems as a hinderance, I began looking at them with the mind of a master troubleshooter. I actually enjoyed looking through my links, trying to figure out what was wrong. I saw my pages as a puzzle, and it was only a matter of time before I would have my puzzle figured out.
I think I enlisted the aide of every teaching assistant available. I must commend them on their help. They helped me make my links work, they taught me how to do my anchors correctly, everything I needed help with. My fellow Psy459 classmates also gave me a big boost. I looked at the other student's reports and homepages--the ones that were "A" and "B" work, and tried to get my work to look like that. Soon, I got into a "groove." It is hard to explain. Everything seemed to be flowing now. Where a couple of weeks ago I was as lost as I could be, things were clicking for me now. The keys on the keyboard seemed to be an extension of my hand. I could now switch between the college of social sciences server to netscape and back over very easily. In the prior weeks, this was one of the most time consuming aspects for me. The reason for this was because I like to see my paper as I do it. Every little change I make, I like to check and see that it is done correctly. When the keys were not familiar to me, I had to "hunt and peck" for the correct keys. This in itself was very frustrating.
Return to my homepage
My topical index: An in-depth guide into my world.
My Report One: My Travels Through G1 and G2
Visit my database: I like to encourage the driver to take risks.
Instructor's Homepage
Questions? Comments?
The Conclusion
All in all, I feel my first "real" journey into cyberspace went pretty well. Aside from being a bit lazy and having to cram at the end, I really enjoyed it. The Internet is a very interesting place, with an infinite amount of information. I'm sure as the semester moves on, I will become even more familiar with the commands used and will be able to use it even better. It is such a fascinating world in cyberspace, I can not believe I am hooked!