Nicks Geographic Angle

I figured that as I wrapped up my studying for the day, I would recap through a blog in which I have no clue whether we're supposed to do or not. I did a fair amount of Math though I feel as if I could've done more. I'm very interested to see the format of that test anyways. In addition to studying for math, I also took a look at my Spanish quizlets, but let's not forget that I made Human Geo quizlets on that same platform to allow easy studying (all in one). So after a little studying in all of these departments, I hopped over to Veracross and found that I only got 90% on my most recent Human Geo quiz. A mild disappointment. But now I'm eager to see what I missed when I took that, because I was pretty confident when I took it, I mean really confident . That was very upsetting, though I figured so long as I do well on my exam, I ought to be fine, that is why I am worrying on my future grades much more than my previous grades in hopes that by doing so, I can lift the

Today, instead of going to Human Geography for Mod 1, I was in a local Urgent Care for my lip which had swollen so great due to my braces. In addition to seeing a doctor, I took my time while waiting to look over a few quizlets, attempting to slowly ease myself into this next week where Exams begin. To be honest, these quizlets are very interactive and usually help. With that said, they only help when they are done right and honestly, that’s definitely the hardest part in studying. I feel as if that’s the case for both making quizlets and also studying period. Or else I would be much more prone to studying endlessly! While that might be an overstatement, you get the point. Lastly, since I was absent today from Human Geo, I don’t believe I have to have all the words that I normally usually do.  With that said, I conclude my December 13, 2019 Blog Post, See you later!  

Like yesterday, we looked into the Exam and mainly focused on the essay in which will be done this coming Friday. In addition to looking into the Essays, I confirmed my stances on the essay in which is required for the exam. Luckily, even after watching a brief argument between David and Mr. Schick it was made definitive that we would be able to use note cards to assist in writing our essays this Friday.  As the class wrapped up, I asked Mr. Schick what advice he would give me so that I can do well in my exams, he told me that since I had done quite well in his class, he would advise me to focus on these other exams since I would likely not struggle with his exam. I'm still a bit skeptical though I am going to take his advice and focus more on the other exams. Now, just because I'm studying more for the other exams, it does NOT mean that I will never study for Human Geo, in fact, I'm going to begin studying some Human Geo then math following the conclusion of this Blog

So today, even though we had gone over it for multiple classes, we really took time to focus on our exam essays. Unlike what was popular among my class mates, I chose to approach Exam prompt 1, which has me compare three nations and their unique population and migration regulations etc. This seemed hard from the start actually and is why I took up the challenge to answer the question. For my nations, which I need three of, I hesitantly chose the United States, Japan, and Syria as my nations. I did this in caution because I knew the exam itself was challenging, I did not want to make it impossible for myself. When I ran this idea by Mr. Schick, he liked the uniqueness that will likely come along with researching 3 different nations. Unlike these other nations, I have heard very few stories regarding the immigration of Syria and Japan.  Without being too political, I am eager to find what causes these changes in immigration and population throughout these nations. The most startling

I just finished a 20 Question-ish Quiz in which I feel very confident! It was on the same content in which we studied and I didn't do as much studying as I had done in the past. I think a large reason for my less successful quizzes in this class (And even Algebra 2) is because I overstudy, which sounds funny. Though I believe this strategy of overstudying includes psyching myself out, which obviously isn't contributing in a positive way to my grade on the assignment. I may not be proud to say though I only studied for this Quiz for only about 45 minutes, which don't get me wrong, is still quite a lot of time. So long as I focused in class, and give the notes I took a once over, I seem to be doing well. Luckily, in Mr. Schick's class, I tend to be able to take good notes down, not because we go off in tangents, but because we tend to dive deep when the content we will be assessed on doesn't go that deep.  Besides today's Quiz, we took a glance at our Exam sc

After two classes (sort of) focusing solely on Demographic Transition and its 5 stages, I believe I'm starting to fully understand why these stages occur. For the most part, we can attribute these different stages to the medical field though other factors such as family culture and even religion. I asked several questions throughout the class regarding the reasoning behind why these stages haven't occurred much faster throughout history. It was then explained to me by Mr. Schick that it mostly medical advances which altered the speed in how these stages work. After his response, I was pretty surprised that it hadn't just come naturally after we had discussed that subject plenty of times throughout the previous classes.  To help us better understand the principles behind the Demographic Transition stages, we were required to copy down the chart that was projected on the whiteboard which showed the rates of certain population indicators throughout the stages. These rates w

Demographic Transition Videos Khan Academy Video: 1. I learned that the Religion can have a large impact on population within family sizes because these Religions usually promote larger families to produce more adherents. 2.  I was able to make more sense of how our growing population can be threatened by the limited resources contained on our Earth, which makes me wonder about how future generations will conserve their limited supply of these resources. 3. Lastly, I was startled to find that there may be a push for smaller families across the world because it is now more of a economical burden then support for your lifestyle; such as farming where having more kids would be of more use. PCC Videos, The Demographic Transition Theory: 1. I was baffled to say the least when I found out that our world population (Throughout the past few thousand years) at grown at a pace of 67,000 people per year and our world now produces that much off spring in about 6-7 hours. 2. I started

Today we did something a bit different in Human Geography class, that being we read over a packet and highlighted content which we felt was important to add on to our Population Unit. I was a bit surprised that we decided to visit Population again after going to Religion, which I feel is quite far off from Religion in some ways. The packet we reviewed (independently) had plenty of  great content, to a point where I was wondering whether I should stop highlighting, which I did.  Now for a deeper dive into the packets information. Firstly, It went over things we had already discussed: Crude Birth Rate, Crude Death Rate, and Natural Rate of Increase but it put it into a better perspective, combing them all to create the four stages of The Demographic Transition. Simply put, these stages are: Very little growth/very little decline, Massive Population Boom, Massive Fall in Population, and then they all pretty much meet to settle the NIR but having a much higher population then the one

Yes, that right, today is the day in which I was assessed on my knowledge of the five religions we discussed in class. Those being: Christianity, Islam, Hinduism, Buddhism, and Judaism. I felt Okay once I finished, I cite this mostly to being tested on small things I thought wouldn't be put on the quiz. But as I now know, STUDY THE SMALL THINGS. I especially learned that I shouldn't worry about the little things until I have learned the main parts, which are the most vital. Instead of looking at this Quiz as a failure I will instead look at it as an opportunity to improve my poor test taking skills. Even though I don't wanna blame my performance on this test, I am going to because I feel as if I couldn't keep focus for twenty seconds in the quiz.  After I got my Quiz back after seeing it brought my grade down by a few points (still an A), I instantly started making improvements for my Studying Strategies such as putting the answer of the side of the paper. I hope t

I stayed home today, likely with whooping cough, I did actually do some homework though I was resting for the majority of the day. Now I have an abundant amount of energy which probably isn't going to help me get situated for school if I go. Today I looked through the Human Geography Quizlet I made and I'm pretty familiar with the content now and I'm ready to ace the assessment.  Not too sure if this is also supposed to be 150 words but I don't really have much to discuss other than my struggles with the religion subject; which were very minuscule. The only part I struggled with within the Quizlet was some of the few denominations we are (probably) to need to know for the quiz. Lastly, I am going to hope (though I am quite confident) that this quiz was not too hard and that I can continue to strive in Human Geo.  With that said, I am coughing and concluding my November 25 Blog Post, Till next time! 

We continued with the Religion content today and I was able to confirm that we have a quiz this upcoming Monday. Class today was filled with good questions from everyone yet I feel that since we are in a subject such as religion, the facts that Mr. Schick can teach us are most commonly statistics  that we know now. This is mostly because this subject has lots of gaps since most of these religions are pre-historic or at least when everything was written. I still very much enjoy the religion subject within Human Geo because the students (including me) can make connections between current events and how they can be traced back in history. A statistic we found today was that since during World War II included a lot of execution of Jews, the number following Judaism has declined. Though we didn't look at a chart with the number of adherents.  I was delighted to find that information regarding all these religions were on Mr. Schicks blog website, which makes my job to make a Quizlet

A big step away from what we had done previously regarding data on population; we now study religion. We took plenty of notes today, though we only covered three religions (there is 5 major ones we will study). Those religions looked at today were: Christianity, Islam, Hinduism. Each one of these religions has over one billion practicing patrons though Christianity has the most at over 2 Billion! Or about 1/3 of the entire worlds population. Needless to say, Christianity is a big deal around the world. Islam and Hinduism are both unique as well though they tend to be more populous in terms of the eastern hemisphere (like Asia). At the end of class I asked Mr. Schick how violent certain religions are and put simply (if there even is one) it is mostly radicals that are violent when it comes to their religion. After a short (and peaceful) back and forth I was able to get a better grip on how these religions work. I hope to get a better understanding of all these religions by the end

Today, as expected, we went over our tests from yesterday which I ended up receiving a 95% on! I'm quite happy with the results though I believe the questions I messed up on were a bit unfair. But as I've learned, some questions have two answers (Hypothetically) though one is always better. Which was exactly the case in my Human Geo Test, but i'm likely not gonna argue its fairness because I understand how the right answer came to be. According to Mr. Schick, the average grade for the the test was around a 92% which is very high, especially on a test with so much content our class did very well. While reviewing our test, Mr. Schick told us on almost every question the amount of people who got it incorrect, let me just say I was startled on what people messed up on. These questions were quite simple and I thought they were second nature by now, things as our worlds population. My assumption for things like this are that people misread the question by running quickly throu

Today, like everyone else, I took the Human Geography Test. It ended up being plenty easy, with a few exceptions; all of which I'm still still confident I got the correct answer on. Those include questions such as the population growth between nations, mostly the Population Pyramids. I was able to get both the United States one and the Chad one though I may have messed up on the Japan one, meaning that there was a chance it was actually Mexico.  After some further research, I found that I was likely correct in choosing Japan, because from what I remember, Mexico's Population Pyramid did not look like this:  what I see here, Japans population is set to grow quite rapidly within the next 50 years.  Probably a good thing I held off on choosing it. Besides that, there's no other questions that really stumbled me with the exception of the questions where I took a very educated guess because something didn't make sense either in the statistic or the phrasing. Allowing

The anticipation was high, the idea was ambitious, and we pulled it off! Even though our two solutions were very different in presentation, they both would've solved the problem occurring in both Japan and in Somalia. That being piracy in Somalia and the diminishing population in Japan. Its really hard to determine whether or not our solutions would have worked; mostly because without going through the steps it would be nearly impossible to determine the flaws in our plan. And to those (including myself at first) who said our plan was flawless, it sadly is.  You may be surprised that i'm admitting it but unless we were able to get insider information on the entire Somali government, we would not be able to work around these issues. As for Japan I think to a degree we have a valid solution though it would struggle because it is a such a complicated subject. Being a complicated subject because its not very moral to go around and enforce laws about having more children, that

Today, like other groups we wrapped up our Presentation on our two countries we had to solve a problem in. As stated before, we chose Somalia as an under-developed nation and Japan as a developed nation. I admit looking back both sides had struggles though I believe that Somalia was a bit harder due to its difficult government system. Starting with a violent civil war starting sometime in the 1980's (The start date is disputed between several rebellious events). Working on a nation with so many issues was a struggle because as its imaginary leaders we had to decide what was worth persevering and what would be better just to start fresh in.  Take our economy for example, we decided that it was best to almost start fresh since we had about no capital because its either been spent trying to preserve our infrastructure or trying to secure our government from any further attacks. We also invested our small amount of capital into security to ensure that no more rebels are produced a

After about 3 full classes of working on the Somalia/Japan Google Slide presentation, we concluded our project without the help of two of our group members. It was obvious that we wanted to include everyone's input on this project but since we were in a way pressed for time, we had to make split minute decisions. These include our strategies and most importantly our presentation which should be a group decision. I say that the presentation is the most important part of our project mostly because without a understandable, simple, and easy verbal presentation, the solution is yielded useless.  Today instead of working on our presentation's content, I ensured that all the content already present in the slide is accurate and not misleading. This is especially important when taken into account that without a factually correct statement we can't ensure the method we are using will be valid. As an example, if we use a false statistic regarding the amount of money that is spen

Today, me and David worked relentlessly on designing a step by step plan on establishing a better Somalia. We decided after countless minutes (really) that we would decide that a plan that create a better economy would solve one of the biggest problems in Somalia, piracy along their coastline. More specifically the piracy occurring in the Gulf of Aden, a massive passageway in which over 11% of the Oil in the world passes through. We figured a better economy would lead to more job opportunities for the population that feels that they must resort to piracy to make ends meet. This in return would help make Somalia an affluent nation that may not need to rely on malicious attacks. But as we diminish these acts of hostility along the coastline (piracy), nations may feel as if we are assisting them by lowering the prices they must pay for security going along that route. This may lead to financial aid from these super powers (The United States, India, and Saudi Arabia) who are benefitin

Starting today, me, two partners, and a group leader (or as we called them a "delegate") worked to solve world issues in both a under-developed nation and a developed nation. We decided it was only fair to choose Japan as a country that is difficult and undergoing a crisis in which not many are aware of, their populations age! Secondly, as our under-developed nation, I brought up the topic of piracy along the Somalian coast (so Somalia) and what made it worked out even better is that David (in my group) had a great knowledge regarding this civil-war infested country. We decided that we would segregate our group based on the country in which they would work to make a better place; so me and David for Somalia, Christo and Lily for Japan. To Lily and Christo's credit, they were now proud emperors, while me and David were trying to decide which side of the civil-war we were going to side with. One thing is for sure though, we had to be on the same side, though finding th

Today, like any Human Geo class with Mr. Schick, we were asked plenty of questions. These questions were different though, that is because they were straight from our upcoming exam! And when I say upcoming, I mean within 5-6 weeks, which still means I should start reviewing my notes, which are mostly on Quizlet. The questions were really easy and I raised my hand on every question while overs complained about their sleeping habits. Luckily for me I had plenty of caffeine this morning which allowed me to be on my game.  I answered questions like what is the TFR (Total Fertility Rate), which is 2.1. If your country's TFR is above 2.1 your country's population will rise and vice versa. Though this doesn't include Migration statistics which in the case of Germany, has a large impact on their population. Many more people are immigrating to Germany then immigrating there. Along with TFR questions, we answered questions about Crude Death Rate and Crude Birth Rate questions, a

The Ten Point In-Class Assignment on The CIA World Factbook Here are five facts each of which belongs to a different country that I found interesting regarding Population and Migration: Fact 1:  One fact regarding the country of Chile that I found interesting was that they have a 100% Electrification Rate, meaning that every citizen of the country of Chile has energy. This is especially surprising due to the fact that their neighboring country of Bolivia has a 93% Electrification Rate which is almost as surprising. The reason that I am startled by the ability to distribute electricity to each of their citizens is that their GDP (PPP) is substantially lower than ours (The United States) and we have a 100% Electrification Rate. We have gone over a few times how our GDP (PPP) is quite high though there are some nations (at a smaller scale) that have much larger GDP per capita.  Fact 2: Although it was no surprise that North Korea has such a closed economy according to the CIA

     So after reviewing the Hans Rosling video in which he examines the GDP (PPP) vs Life Expectancy, we had a quiz on the material. Much of the information we had to remember was easy to visualize in my mind because of the visual effects in the video. That was also assisted by his ecstatic reactions to certain world events such as "What a catastrophe!" when he showed the life expectancy for the World War 1 Era. I felt pretty confident going into the quiz though I didn't do as great as I believe I could have. For instance, I put World War 1 and World War 2 as having large impacts on the life expectancy axis during the early twentieth century, which in my defense is in a way true. World War 2 occurred throughout the late 30's and 40's, which is early enough in the century.       All in all, I did all that I could, that's the way I have to look at a quiz where I believe some questions have two answers. In a way this quiz did. Even though I studied the video

Today we enjoyed a video, that was not without constant pause, regarding life span (or life expectancy) vs income (GDP). Now i'm not complaining that there was constant pausing, because it was necessary! The amount of information we viewed was astonishing and we had to make the decision of whether the data was important enough to write down. The amount of data we saw was likely partly how the video got its name, "200 Countries, 200 Years, 4 Minutes". As you can imagine, viewing such a large quantity of data at once would be hard to do, unless it was stretched over time and each time a shift in data occurred, there was an explanation. This is exactly what happened in the video presented by now late Hans Rosling. He showed on a graph the comparison between GDP and Life Expectancy (Independent and Dependent Variable) over 200 years, there were also 200 nations on the graph, size based on population which we would see alter though the years. And every few years he would

For days, I had wondered what the odd tree shaped graph in which we call a "population pyramid" is. Today I found out that it was a statistic that can be used as a value (population) or as a percentage in which represents the different amounts of population in different age groups. They traditionally go in increments of 5 years, ex. 0-4 and 10-14. We also discussed how much information can be conveyed from a simple population pyramid such as the one below:   Japan Population Pyramid: As you can probably notice, there is a surprising amount of population around the older percentile, in which can't reproduce. Which likely means (unless Japans migration laws ease up) that Japans population will begin to fall, as they are now. But when these older citizens grow older and older, disabling them from reproducing, this will become a huge problem for their economy. According to Mr. Schick, it is possible for men to take part in

After a brief discussion on the languages commonly spoke around the world, we began to look over our tests we had just been given back. Personally,  i'm happy with a 96, since I know others had lower. This is not to say that there wasn't anyone with a better grade than me.  Just like I stated in other blogs, I feel as if I struggled with the GDP questions although I knew them. I stumbled on them mostly because I was unaware some would be used more than once. This still had little impact on my overall score, which even improved my grade by three points, still an A! I continued to ask questions throughout the duration of class regarding languages. These questions were mostly me asking why there are so many languages, to which I received no definitive answer, with the exception of a questioning of my caffeine intake. Which was okay. I seriously wonder this question because It would make everyone's life much easier, apparently it wouldn't because we would have to n

Today we had what I presume to be the last test of this quarter. Meaning that in order to keep my 90% an A, I had to do good. I felt confident going into the test, as well as when I was going over the World Facebook content. I got a little less optimistic when I got confused over the GDP and the Unemployment rate. Both of which I looked up at home and still couldn’t figure it out, those two questions were worded very awkwardly. Hopefully I didn’t get those wrong, which is a 50%, 50% chance now.  I felt the extensive practice I did on my own time really helped me with being able to locate the needed info for the test faster. This then enabled me to take my time while working on the remainder of the test.  I also felt very confident with the Push and Pull factors since I believe I have extensive knowledge regarding current world climate, this definitely helped in giving some basic examples of why someone may want to immigrate or emigrate to a different country/region.  Last but su

NOTE: THIS IS NOT A BLOG POST, THIS IS PRACTICE FOR TEST This will be my attempt at completing 10 Questions from Mr. Schicks blog in under ten minutes. Here goes nothing:  1. India has a population of 1,296, 834,042  China has a population of 1,384,688,986 2. 1.42  3. 5.8 Deaths/ 1000 4. 23-28% of French's population affiliate with no religion. This reading though, is not accurate because France doesn't affiliate its government at all with religion. 5. 82.7% 6. 59, 800$ 7. 5,980$ 8. 105, 100$ 9. 76.2%  10.  Russia: 1,218 Airports United States: 13,513 Airports Not bad... not bad. 10 Questions in about 9 Minutes

Today, instead of having class, I am to get on a bus with a ton sweaty teens like myself. This is a little disappointing as i'm more interested in this class as compared to others. I feel as if the information we are told to study and assessed on are subjects that are in the interest of learning for future generations. This especially includes the subject at hand in class, Population and Settlement. This topic is especially vital to our lives (not really as American citizens) but to those in more dense countries such as India. In nations like them, population is out of control since mothers tend to give birth to many children. In class we learned that this was done plenty of times in cases where the mother bore no males, who would presumably carry on as a patriarch. Since Mr. Schick said I only needed to do a brief Blog Post, I just reviewed our last classes. I also just got done talking with Ramona regarding anything I missed in class. Today class consisted of reviewing for the t

Instead of moving onto the next subject today, we went into several tangents that may have just contributed to our class session today. First off we discussed our answers on our CIA World Factbook answers he did for homework last night. This can be found in my previous blog post. We spent most of the class reviewing these responses. Since the CIA World Factbook has such a great UI (User Interface) it was almost impossible to get an answer wrong if you've done the minimal practice.  I was ecstatic to find that we would have this as a part of our upcoming test. I found the CIA World Factbook to be accurate for finding facts about Geography's ranging topics. Having about half of this be our test likely means a good grade is in my favor.  Towards the end of class, I began asking heated questions. Which may or may have been all that good. I questioned what the taxes were for such countries as Luxembourg and we didn't really dig for an answer.  I took the liberty of find

Today we had to answer these questions regarding the world's climate in a number of subjects. We used The CIA World Fact Book ( https://www.cia.gov/index.html )  1. What is the population of China, and of India?  China's Population: 1,384,688,986 (July 2018 Est.) India's Population: 1,296,834,042 (July 2018 Est.) 2. What is the Total Fertility Rate in Japan?  1.42 Children born/women (2018 Est.) 3.  What is the death rate in El Salvador? 5.8 deaths/1,000 population 4. What percentage of the French identify “none” as their religion? Is this statistic verifiable, and why? 23-25% of Frances' population does not affiliate with any religion. Though this may not be too accurate because the French government hasn't taken count (or census) since 1872 because the government attempts to not affiliate with its citizens personal beliefs. 5. What percentage of Mexicans identify themselves as Roman Catholic? Roman Catholic Citizens

Today, just like many other classes, we discussed population. We also took plenty of notes regarding a method of recording the rate in which an areas population grows. This method is called RNI, or Rate of Natural Increase. I go in depth on RNI below: RNI is produced by subtracting the death rate from the birth rate.  We get those two rates by calculating the number of deaths or births from a sample size of 1000 people.  What we didn't touch up on initially is the Net Migration Rate (NMR), which has a significant impact on the total population of a region. NMR is calculated similarly to how Death and Birth rates are found. This means that for the amount of people leaving a region within a sample size of 1000 are to be used to create a figure.  Ex. In class we learn that Canada's NMR is surprisingly higher than the United States, meaning that more people are immigrating (going to Canada), then are to the United States.  United States NMR: 2.45 Canada NMR:

Today we went deep into the differences in men and women's day to day lives. This may sound political, but we were able to state facts with reasonable evidence and also make correlations between those lifestyles and how long we tend to live. Diving deeper, we connected how men tend to take more risks and take jobs that tend to include dangers which of course can lead to shorter life span. For example, men who join the military are risking their life in hopes they will be able to bring peace to, or an income to their family. If a large sum of men in a given district join the military and go to war, then in return we may see a decrease in the average life span of men given that many may be killed or badly injured in their occupation. With that said, more men join the military which may be a part of why a certain area has women living longer on average.  We also analyzed our country's spot on a list of average lifespans between genders along with a total average between t

Today, we reviewed our recent test. Put simply,  it could've gone better. That goes for everyone though, according to Mr. Schick, the worst graded area was the Relative vs. Absolute location area. We were instructed to specify whether a given location explanation was on of those choices, e.g. 12 N, 50 S. Though I wasn't there to learn about classifying these locations in class, Mr. Schick said that I should've looked on the website; fair enough.  We made a diplomatic decision in class that results in everyone receiving an extra two points because that section apparently wasn't all that known by students, including me to a degree. Now that i have been in Mr. Schick's class for an extended duration, I feel that anymore assessments given I should be able to ace!  Last but surely not least comes a great studying strategy! It will become more and more known that I always look for better ways to study, including Quizlets, Flashcards, and writing things on my wh

We had a fun day in Human Geography today, I also found out that Mr. Schick doesn't tend to hand out extra credit. Other than taking time during our class to go over other work since another student was taking the test we took yesterday; we discussed Population.  Although we weren't able to go too far into the wide spectrum of population, I took charge in researching whether the world population (of humans of course) would ever slow down substantially or even halt completely. I looked to The Pew Research Center for my answer. I found a substantial amount of evidence on their web page (linked in works cited) and that they have predictions that world population growth is set to nearly stop by the 22nd Century. This is mostly due to the fact that the average fertility rate in women is projected to go down to about 1.9 Births per woman.  Finally, near the end of class, we took notes on how there are over 7.6 Billion people on earth and that rate is growing insanely fast! A

Though I may not have gotten every answer right, I feel pretty confident with the soon to come results of our Human Geography Test. I noticed that a lot of things I didn't study for made up the test, I didn't study them mostly because I was not here for half of the classes. It's a huge relief to have finished the test in what I believe is the first one I have taken so far at John Carroll, the others have mostly been quizzes. I like the format in which we took the test, it leaves less room for error, which is great of course! The only issue I have with the Scantron  is that they sometimes seem a little out of sync with the questions and I sometimes mark the wrong bubble though I know which one I wanted to select, I assume its the location of each bubble. I feel that for the amount of classes in which I've attended in this Honors class, I have excelled on studying and applying my notes to studying. Like many of my other classes, I tend to make a Quizlet and I study th