Reading+Responses+2

This section of __My Freshman Year__ mostly revolved around the theme, community. The author talked about her observations about how a community works at university. One of her observations was that people who all live on the same floors don't really hang out. She talked about how the RAs on her floor tried to get everyone to meet up and do things together, but in the end no one showed up. Another observation that she made was that students use the floor lounges to keep from being social. I live on the seventh floor of Elwell and I found these observations surprising. On my floor we all get together and watch movies in the lounge and hang out in the lounge. Whenever I am on my floor I feel a sense of belonging. I think it's because we formed a sense of community and got rid of the awkward feeling of not knowing who we are living with. I think another contributing factor to having a comfortable community was that we all hung out on our own free will. We weren’t forced to talk to each other. I personally liked that we weren’t forced into socializing with each other because I think being forced to play icebreaker games creates a greater sense of awkwardness. I believe that’s why students don’t really participate in icebreaker games during orientations for school. No one wants to be forced into something that they don’t want to do. They want to be able to be free to make their own conversations with people on their own time however they see fit. I enjoyed reading this section because I could use this section and compare and contrast what the author was saying with my own experiences.
 * __My Freshman Year Section 2 Response__**

__**The Mind at Work Introduction Response**__ I found the beginning of the book to be really fascinating. I enjoy reading books about people and the way we portray others and how they think. I made a lot of connections with the introduction of __The Mind at Work__ and with the book __Nickel and Dimed__, which I read last year for school. One of the biggest connections that these two books have is that they both focus on the people with physical jobs and talk about how or why they continue to keep doing exhausting jobs. One of the biggest reasons why people continue to do these hard jobs, which both books touched on, was because they wanted a better life for their children, the next generation. They want their kids to be able to grow up and get a good education in order to get a better job and overall live a better life. This made me think about why a majority of us decided to go to college. For me, I wanted to go to college in order to help broaden my mind with culture, but I also went to college because I knew I would have a better chance of getting a good job and make more money. I believe that a lot of students go to college for that better life that we hear that education gives us. I sometimes wonder how many people would actually go to college if they were told that they had the same chance get to a good job with good pay as to someone who went to college. This introduction also makes me think about what it means to be educated. For me, the author makes an educated person sound like a person that is skillful at his or her job. I agree with this thought. For example, I think a teacher is well educated if he/she gets his/her students to think and learn. I do not think you need to know everything there is to know in this world in order to be called educated. Overall I think this book sounds interesting and I wouldn't mind reading or of what the author has to say.