Untold Stories: Immokalee

After watching the video on Immokalee and the Seminole Indians, I have discovered that they are living the Old American Dream. They use the land around them as their main source of living. For example, they use natural resources to build houses, to find and cook food, and for their jobs. Many Indians job title is hunters or gatherers. Even though they are living the Old American Dream now, I believe soon enough they will be living the New American Dream. Just seeing how diverse they are now shows how much more diverse they will be in the future. Also, seeing how the casino is starting to grow at a fast rate, in ten years it should be more successful than ever. The Indians should have a larger community and maybe even start living the type of life that us Americans live now.
I do believe that Immokalee differs from Fort Myers and Estero because most people do not live on farmland and use nature as their main resource, but in a way I believe they are similar. We have property even on Florida Gulf Coast University's campus that builders are not allowed to touch because we are preserving it. We are protecting that land just like the Seminole Indians try and protect their own land.

The 1980's

My alarm clocks goes off at exactly 6:00 am every single morning for school. Even if I tried to sleep in just a few minutes later, I would not be able to because of my five other roommates that live in the same room as I do. There are three sets of bunk beds all squeezed into one room with only one shower for us all to use. This is one of the main reasons why I wake up for school so early. One by one each girls jumps in the shower for about ten minutes each and usually by the fourth and fifth girl, there is no hot water left so I always try to be the first one. I brush my hair and teeth like I do every morning and I let my hair air dry, considering we do not own any fancy devices to make my hair dry instantly. I put on my uniform, white collared shirt, plaid skirt, white knee high socks, and black shoes just like every other girl on this campus and pack up my satchel for class. It is never very heavy because all that was in it was just a notebook and a pencil. Walking to campus was always such a pain since we did not have buses transporting us there. On the days it was really hot, i would always end up sweating before I even got into the classroom and even when I got there, there was no air conditioning! Classrooms were very small stuffed with a lot of students so it was hard to find a chair and a desk to sit in. If you got there late, people would have to stand or sit on the floor, so I was always on time. As a freshman I decided to take English, Math, Social Studies, and Science because these were the only courses that were given to us. English was my first class, and it was not so bad. Our teacher would lecture us for an hour and we would take notes in our notebooks. Our papers were always hand written and so were the rest of our assignments. There was no email or anything so if a student needed to talk to the teacher there was only before or after class. Math came next, easily my worst subject. We had to work out problems on our own. Long division was the worst and took up the most paper. We did not have textbooks to study from, but only our notes that we took in class. After math, I had a lunch break and a chance to purchase turkey, ham, or peanut butter and jelly sandwiches for a dollar. I always get turkey since it is my favorite. Next comes Science which is not that cool of a class since we do not have any high tech experiments. The only experiments we do just deals with the nature around us. We do not use any type of chemicals. The formulas are always hard to calculate in my head, but I am starting to get used to it. Social Studies comes last. In this class, we usually learn about history, and how much the world has improved since back then and just stuff that bores me! Luckily it usually goes by fast though. I am done my classes by 4:45 and it is time to walk back to my dorm to make dinner. The only groceries we usually have is chicken and pasta. Eating that every night can definitely get old. By six o clock, I usually try and sit down to do my homework but it is impossible with all the noise in my dorm room. I have to make the best of it though and get it done since there isn't anything else to do besides talk to my roommates. We do not have television or the radio or anything. All of our bedtimes are usually around ten o clock. Some nights it hard for me to go to sleep but I try and close my eyes dreaming about the weekend to come. Finally I go to sleep and I do it all over again!

The Search for the Skunk Ape

When reading through the four different Modules for the Information Literacy Tutorial, I realized that I already knew some of the information that was explained, but I also discovered new tips that could be very helpful for years to come. The skills that I use a lot now are the library catalogs, databases, search engines, and the librarians who help me figure out what type of database to use. As a student here at FGCU, I already knew what research is mostly used for, which consists of oral presentations, term papers, classroom discussions, and teaching others. The skill I knew most about was plagiarism. Every one of my professors stress the fact that students should never plagiarize in a paper. Instead, students need to use quotations and cite the source right after or summarize the source in a persons own words.
On the other hand, some of the skills I just learned would have definitely been helpful to learn before taking composition one and two. I learned to make sure ones research topic was not to broad, but also not to narrow. A good balanced topic will make a person's research easier. Another thing that would have been very helpful is learning how to get a full text article in a database. I have always had trouble with that and sometimes I just have to settle with just the information that is provided. The one skill that really taught me a lot was that different formats of information offer different types of information. For example, recent news can be found in newspapers or on the web and history can be found in books and encyclopedias. This is something that teachers should look into showing their composition one students to improve their research papers. One thing that was not talked about was personal interviews. Is using a personal interview okay to have in a research paper? Everything else and all of my questions were answered by watching this tutorial!