Nicks Geographic Angle

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 Qu...

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 t...

     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 t...