I realized throughout my academic life, I learned the best in classes where the teacher allowed more freedom to the students. Classes where my seating was assigned i tend to be less engaged in. However, when I was allowed to choose my seat, it gave me more emotion to my learning, Combine that with a teacher who allowed multiple ways to do things from handouts to group assignments to videos in the course and no day is going to be dull. That creativity helps keep students anticipated since they do not know what they are in for on any given day. I speak from experience as it reflected in my test scores from individual courses.

As the population continues to increase, open space is becoming more and more scarce. Many find it hard to believe that open space would be considered in the same sentence with the likes of water or fossil fuels but it is true, the earth is running out of open space. We as human beings need three main things to survive: food, shelter, and water. We also like to have plenty of shelter, so that requires the construction of more housing. With more students enrolling to colleges, campuses are going to need more student housing on campus, and that takes away from the holistic learning students could have. But think about it, which one will eventually pay for itself, updating the landscape to provide more green space or housing that students will immediately fill within a year?

Is it really challenge? Colleges may look at this "potential challenge" as pure speculation. College presidents will take a look at all the statistics and if they think those statistics are A-okay then they will not consider this a real challenge. They will more likely look at it as bad attempt to get them to spend money. College presidents have an abundance of other problems they have to solve in the long run and I think this holistic learning challenge is one that is only on a few,if any, of their minds

The bulk of my major learning breakthroughs almost always come outside of class. It usually occurs when i look at the material from a different viewpoint of my peers. Regardless of where I am, I doubt the scenery made a big difference in me finding that breakthrough. The argument to say I could not find that breakthrough in a noisy urban city can be made. My response to that is most of the time when I am doing work outside of class, outside noise is nonexistent to my ears therefore it can not be a distraction. I deem the scenery around me as an irrelevant factor since it has no real affect on my learning.

As of late, more and more people are wanting their own individual automobile. It makes transportation less of a hassle and allows the owner a freedom that one may deem necessary. To accommodate for this rise in automobile owners, colleges had to build parking lots and garages for there future students being that a good amount of them will have car keys. This takes away from possible landscapes that could be used for holistic learning but allows more students to easily attend the college. The lack of parking would mean that students would have to resort to public transport to get around or there two feet. Based on what i hear, people are really lazy and do not want to walk or they hate the bus or they hate the subway. Either way, they like the option of having a car on campus. Some colleges try to limit who can drive on campus like university of albany has a ban for freshman. I find it that there is no coincidence that university of albany has more green space than that of georgia state university who allows freshman to drive cars to there campus. http://www.natcom.org/uploadedImages/More_Scholarly_Resources/Doctoral_Program_Resource_Guide/Albany%20Campus.jpg

I can not completely agree with this statement. While natural scenery may have that effect on some, it certainly does not do that for me. If I am outside and I am just observing its beauty and whatnot, I will fall asleep. I am not saying nature is boring, it just has that effect on me. Natural scenery also naturally makes me drowsy and I am sure I can not be the only one this happens too. Maybe adding natural scenery might do more harm than good to mental fatigue of college students.

Even if colleges were to recognize this article and agree with its contents, I do not think that it would be enough to make universities update there landscape. Most of the colleges have been around for decades now and have not really seen any significant drop in there attendance. This is due to students knowing that they need the education and willing to put in the extra effort regardless of the landscape they are in whether it is desirable or not. Colleges know this and it is a major cause for them to keep things the same. Another major reason would be that it would cost a decent amount of money in order to update the campus to meet these holistic learning needs for the students. Colleges are trying to give a secondary education as their main priority, however they are also trying to make as much money as possible or else college would not be so expensive right. Maybe colleges might see this as a bad investment as their attendance may or may not increase after they spend the money to update there campus. This reasonable doubt is enough of a risk for them to not challenge the status quo.

Based on the features within this category, I think this would be an ideal learning environment for myself. While studies may show that green space help with mental fatigue, I may be an anomaly in the sense that i do not need the green space to keep my mental fatigue in check. Just being outside is enough for me. If I get a chance to sit back and relax and look at the sky for 15 minutes, that is all the "green space" my mind needs. Now I grew up within a city, so it ultimately comes down to the psyche of the individual. Someone who grew up in Statesboro is more than likely going to be a polar opposite to someone who was raised in Atlanta. It is up to the university to find a balance to accommodate each students learning experience.

Early american colleges were self-sufficient in many ways. Some good and others not so good. One of the not so good ways were that some colleges were tied to slavery in there early beginnings.While reading an NPR article about Ivy league universities, I noticed one of the colleges in this article,Princeton, happened to be mentioned. The NPR article was talking about how slavery helped shape america's oldest universities. Since Princeton was connected to slavery, this means that the campus was historically catered to only one type of demographic. Being an Ivy league school, only a select few can even attend the prestigious university. It is common that we are all unique and what works for some may not work for others. To this day, Princeton is more diverse than ever before but at the same time the campus landscape has not really changed. Since wealthy families were part of the slave trade and helped contribute to the school, it only makes sense for the university to maintain that relationship in order to fund the school. If that ever changes, then maybe the school landscape may go through a change of its own as well. http://www.npr.org/sections/codeswitch/2013/09/17/223420533/how-slavery-shaped-americas-oldest-and-most-elite-colleges

Summary: This article is about how the landscape of a college campus has a positive effect on the students who attend the college. The landscape can effect students focus, concentration, problem solving, and memory for the better when utilized in the proper manner. Scholl and Gulwadi focus on two topics within their article to further explain how the landscape can benefit the students. The first topic is that well-designed campus that combines natural landscapes with man made architecture will help improve students cognition skills. The second topic is that students should want to learn in a holistic place in order to improve their studies. When given the opportunity to combine the entire landscape, students will then be able to restore their attention and avoid mental fatigue.

This confirms my earlier question of whether or not they are descendants from the Caribbean. This confirmation may offer new branches of history about these men that have yet been discovered.

I would not be surprised if the gift of ceramics was given to them by the wealthier community of Plymouth. After all the north has always been more progressive than that of the south. Maybe the ceramics were a gift due to there participation in the revolutionary war. I know about southern hospitality and all that and how people from the north get a bad rep about being rude but while i was up in New York, i encountered more nice people than jerks. Its safe to say the north kept some of these polite values.

This is still done today all throughout the Caribbean. Being of jamaican heritage, I have never had cow foot simply because it is not my cup of tea but my grandmother says it is good for my bones or healthy in some way. This makes me wonder if any of Cato or the others ancestors were from the Caribbean as the triangular trade did run through there for a good while.

How?! I find that hard to believe due to the fact that both of those countries were colonized by different countries with completely different languages. I have heard both of these languages while i was up in New York. They do not sound similar or look similar when written down.

The fact that they stumbled into this piece of history is cool. The person could have kept quiet and leave these researchers in the dark about who was on the property at the time. They could have passed away a day too soon. If it was not for this informant, a good chunk of this article is gone with the wind. One can never be too lucky.

How come he was still a slave? His grandfather gained freedom so his lineage after him should gain those same rights from birth. He was not born a slave after all. How did he become a slave again?

It is possible that he was one of the few slaves that were treated relatively alright in comparison to what we know was the norm back in the day. I can understand if that was his reason for deserting. However, serving in the military is a daunting task and maybe it proved to be too much and risking his life for freedom was not worth the trade off of what he had going for him as a slave.

I find it interesting that the city did the excavation for this small site. I guess they were left asking more questions about how Cato,Quamany, Prince, and Plato lived there lives. Curiosity is always a good motivator to digging up history. Maybe there is more left to be found at the site.

Buying real estate was never easy being a minority. I would think that today everybody has the same success at buying a house. However according to the NY Times, minorities are still hit the hardest during a weak economy. Can equal opportunity housing ever be reached? What else can we possibly change?

Summary: Parting ways is a piece of literature that speaks about how four African american men setup their community following gained freedom from serving in the revolutionary war. There is very little written history about the four individuals due to their lack of social status at the time. In order to make up for this lack of written history, Deetz combines what little oral history he had with archaeology to form a respectable understanding of how these men lived there lives after gaining their independence. Deetz then compares his findings to today's architecture to show how these men had an impact on african american history. (Deetz, 1996, p. 187)