Finals As Told By GIFs

Your teacher reminds you that your class does have a final.

And you had completely forgotten.

You haven’t really being doing the assigned reading.

Actually, you haven’t been doing much school work, at all.

After all,

You have plenty of time before test day.

Then it’s Sunday.

And you haven’t studied.

At all.

Now you sit down to start, but everything is so distracting.

You’re just procrastinating.

And the worst part is, you can’t help it.

Now it’s 11 p.m. You have a final in 12 hours.

And you stop fooling around.

And kick it into gear.

And you’re in the zone.

It’s 4 a.m.

 Finals day.

 And you didn’t sleep all that much.

 You walk into class.

 And magically, you retain some of that cramming.

And it pays off. You’re all done. 

 And you haven’t learned your lesson.

By Christian Zerbel

Faculty Feature: Steven Tobias

Steven Tobias, an English instructor at EvCC for two years now, has always passionate to teach EvCC students to improve their writing skills.

Steven Tobias, an English instructor, has a passion to help students
improve their writing skills by creating a reading habit everyday.

He recieved his Ph.D in English from the University of Washington in 2007 and now Tobias teaches English 101, 102, and 103. Soon, on fall quarter, he will teach American Literature class.

“What I like teaching here is I choose the textbook for my class. I feel like having students read a complicated textbook is one of the best ways of teach on writing effectively,” Tobias said.

Tobias believes that the more you read, the better a writer you will be. Though he knows that practically, you can't teach someone to write effectively in just ten weks, but he works hard to see an improvement in his student's English skills.

"My simple advice will be just read every single

 day, read every day! It doesn't matter if you read 

Shakespeare, romace novels, science fictions, 

graphic novels, or newspapers."

"You have to make reading to be part of your life. It’s a single best thing you can do to improve your writing skills. I just told my students to read every day, it’s an exercise for your brain,"said Tobias.

Besides writing, Tobias has enjoyed cooking since he was a little. 

“I cook whenever I can because of my job and I like to make any kinds of cooking such as Italian, Mexican and Asian food. I like everything, I love trying new things," he said. "One reason I love Seattle is because there are a lot of country restaurants, and I often ask my students who came from other place about what they like to eat after that I will find the places somewhere in Seattle. I learned cook from my mom, she taught me that I should be independent, and should know how to cook and clean."

Q&A: 

Q: What are your hobbies?

A: Running, cooking, gardening and writing

Q: What’s your favorite season?

A: Summer is my favorite season since I live in Seattle. I've lived in Washington since 1999. I was born in New Jersey and all my whole family is in New York. Also, I, my wife, and our son go camping together; it’s a nice time to enjoy the beauty of nature and relax.

Q: What’s your favorite book?

A: Umm…That’s a hard question, I like a lot of different books, I think if I had to choose one. It will be “A Passage to India." I love the way the characters are drawn, it’s very complete, and complicated. This book tells a story about how human beings so often have conflicts or problems because of misunderstandings. Reading this book, taught you understanding and openness to the world. It’s a really good book and I like it a lot. Maybe someday I will go in India.

Q: What’s your favorite music?

A: I like rock and hip-hop, alternative. Recently, I listen to dance music.

Q: What’s your favorite color?

A: Green. I think because it really reminds me of home. Washington is home, to me; it’s a green place.

Q: What’s your favorite activity with family?

A: Spending time with my son. He loves to go to the zoo and we have a pass, that’s why we go to zoo a lot.

A day in the life of Steven Tobias:

"Well, I get up in the morning and take my son to school. Then I go to work. My activity on campus, I teach until the evening and then I go home to have dinner with my family, after that I put my son to bed and do my work and sleep. Also, I do some reading and writing in the meantime."

Story by Ratna Wahyuningsih

Fitness Center Heritage Wall Commemorates Influential People

EvCC's Heritage Wall memorializes people who have had great influence on the college and its growth.

Located outside the Fitness Center Building, this ‘wall of fame’ has bricks left from the old gym, which has been used to build this heritage wall on the outside of the building.

EvCC heritage wall has the bricks from the 1958 gym building.

“I just found out about the ‘Heritage Wall’ last week and I think EvCC could work more to promote this. It’s fascinating! I had never seen such college heritage wall before,” said Aline Godoi Sertori, an international student at EvCC from Brazil.

Anyone can have his or her name on the wall by donating money to the EvCC Foundation; a brick with a two-line message for $150 and three-line message for $200, a keepsake brick is $25.

Story by Sumit Karn

Liberty Hall Open House Emphasizes Community Benefits

Administrators, faculty, and students gathered on the second floor of Liberty Hall today at 1 p.m. for a ribbon cutting ceremony and open house to showcase the new building and its partnership with Providence Medical Center.

Representatives from college administration, EvCC students,
and Providence Medical Center cut the ribbon together. 

The event included speeches from College President David Beyer, Chair of the Board of Trustees Betty Cobbs and Everett Mayor Ray Stephanson as well as from Providence Medical Center representatives, faculty member Elliot Stern, and nursing student James Harrigan.
Many of the speakers highlighted how the new building will influence the community because of the health resources it will provide, as well as how it will help improve the North Broadway neighborhood.

"This community college has fine memories for me," said Stephanson. "It's so wonderful to see this fine addition to Everett Community College."

Stephanson emphasized the role the new building will play in education for health care and criminal justice. Both the nursing program and the criminal justice program are held in Liberty Hall.

"Education of new first responders is so vitally important," he added, mentioning how the new building provides incredible resources and groundbreaking technology for students.

Everett Mayor Ray Stephanson spoke about how EvCC has
been such a positive influence to the city of Everett. 

The ribbon cutting ceremony also included a performance from drummers of the Tulalip tribe, who sang a blessing song while playing drums. The drum beats represented the paddling of a canoe, which was to show how we are all on spiritual canoes on a journey.

"We put a lot of emphasis on being healthy: body, mind, and spirit," said one of the performers.

After the ribbon cutting, guests were invited to take tours of Liberty Hall to explore some of the new technology and take a look at the clinical simulation lab.



Story by Lily Haight

EvCC Poised To Move to Canvas On July 1st

The first day of Summer Quarter, July 1, will mark the transition to the advanced and more user-friendly e-Learning system called Canvas that is slated to fill in the shoes of outgoing ANGEL at Everett Community College.

The new Canvas login looks has a more clean and professional look.

Canvas is more customizable for both the instructors and the students. Many instructors will set up their class pages a bit differently from ANGEL while the students would not have to log in to their Canvas accounts every now and then to check grades, announcements and notifications.

According to campus Interim Director of eLearning, Marie Rustemeyer, most of the Canvas features would be the same except the interface is more up-to-date. It would be more like what users are accustomed to on Facebook and more integration with social media services.

She said that now the students can set up a mail and notification-forwarding feature to receive messages on their email addresses or to their Facebook accounts from Canvas.

“They will receive mails and notifications when the instructors will make new announcements, set deadlines for assignments, open quizzes and online tests, grade them and things like that,” she said. “The intent is to get to users wherever they are.”

Newcomer will also support mobile apps integrated to Ipad, Iphone and Androids.
Calendar on Canvas will also be an interesting feature for students to work on. Rustemeyer said that now students don’t have to check calendars of each course separately for the due dates of assignments and tests because all the important dates of each course will be marked with different colors on the same calendar.

A look at the Canvas dashboard that students
 will be using starting summer quarter.

Lois Haight, an EvCC graduate from the Associate Arts & Science Department in 2010 and presently Library Student Worker at University of Washington School of Law, thinks that the overall layout of Canvas is more appealing as it seems less busy-looking than ANGEL.

“Instead of having several boxes or widgets of information on your home page, Canvas has a separate page for announcements, assignments, calendar, etc. All in all, Newcomer is not completely different from Angel; instead it is a cleaner, more efficient, and newer online learning system,” she said.

Students who are used to working on ANGEL may think dealing with Canvas is altogether unanticipated. Haight, who experienced both e-learning systems, thinks otherwise.

She said that transitioning to Canvas was not very challenging for her. Although it took her some time to learn all the little quirks and shortcuts, the learning process was not very demanding.

According to Haight, this online learning system is very notification friendly and alerts students as to whenever an announcement is made, when assignments are due, when assignments have been graded, and when new discussion post has been made.

“Also, the layout is cleaner and more customizable, allowing students to create their own Canvas experience. It offers students a nifty group function as well,” she said.

Students who are looking forward to working on Canvas from summer quarter can attend a three-day Canvas orientation session.

The dates and times for three sessions are following:

· Wednesday June 26, 2103 from 10:00 a.m. to 10:45 a.m. in GWH 162

· Tuesday July 2, 2013 from 2:00 to 2:45 p.m. in GWH 162

· Wednesday July 3, 2013 from 12:00 to 12:45 p.m. in GWH 162

Story by Adnan Ali

You Might Be A Trojan If...

You might be a Trojan if...

You eat alone...

And you're okay with that. 

You only go to the Fitness Center for the rock wall.

You're reluctant to rep school gear. 

Wouldn't even consider joining a club.

You think the school mascot is a condom.

You're relieved every time your car isn't stolen in the car parking lot. 

 You have early morning classes and ALL of the spots are still full. 

You remember to register for classes on time... 

Then forget to pay, and get dropped from all your classes. 

But you then re-register and get into whatever classes are left, and you're okay with that. 

By Christian Zerbel

Photography Class Changes Student Perspective

To some, the world can start to look more appealing, more mesmerizing and more eventful overnight.

This happened to EvCC international student Aline Sertori after she took Photo 110 with Ellen Felsenthal this quarter.

Though she had already taken a short-term photography workshop in her home country, she feels this class has made her love of photography have many folds.

 This picture of Aline Sertori was taken with slow shutter speed 

of 30 sec. in a completely dark room with hands changing positions 

to show the Blur Motion technique.  

“Now I see why there are some pictures which people would normally think of just a trash or shoes. It is what the photographer’s perception of how he or she sees the world and wants the world to see,” she said.

In this class, students walk away with various aspects of shooting pictures without flash. They are made to operate professional cameras such as SLR or DSLR’s T3 and T3i models.

Through the quarter, students practise camera settings while functioning in manual mode including ISO and White Balance settings, Shutter Speed, Histogram, Aperture: normally known as f-stop among photographers, distance from the subjects, foreground and background, auto and manual focus and many others.

This photo, taken by Aline Sertorim shows the Point of View
and Frozen Motion techniques in photography.

Sertori is not the only student who is excited about the photography class.

“As long as I have my camera in my hand, I hold all the joy in the world,”wrote Xinxin Zhang on her Facebook status.

Zhang is an international student, majoring in English literature and at the same time finding unique ways to shoot the world with camera and is taking Photo 110 with Lauren Greathouse.

“Before taking this class, I had always wondered, when watching professional pictures, how those could possibly be taken with camera only,” she inquired.

She believes that learning photography changed her way of perceiving the world. 

Taken by Xinxin Zhang, this photo shows the Point of View
technique in which the photographer aims in a unique
way to capture a scene or object in a different way.

“Previously, I was more into writing to express my feelings for anything," she explained. "Now I have developed a love to shoot to express my feelings in a photographic way.”

“I have 80 percent more control over professional camera settings now than ever before,” said Sertori, adding that she has worked on five projects so far, such as Camera Control, Depth of Field: Shallow and Total, Capturing Motion, Design with Adobe Bridge, and Digital Experimentation on Adobe Photoshop.

Apart from this, students learn basic tools on a program application called Adobe Photoshop in order to change the effectiveness of their photos. This includes global and tonality corrections, retouching, sharpening, burning and dodging, compositing, blending and filters.

An international student from Indonesia, Ali Salmande Harahap considers taking Photo 110 as "good experience."

This photo, taken by Ali Salmande, shows the Shallow or
Depth of Field technique in which one object stands out
from others in the whole scene. 

“I learned how to take photo with shallow depth of field, greater depth of field, motion, and panning style,” he said.

He said that the class changed the way he would take photos.

“Before, I just took the picture with 'auto mode' with my camera, now I always try to take a photo with 'manual mode'.”

Another aspect of the class is printing pictures and dry mounting those for presentation. Dry mounting is a process by which photographers permanently secure a print to a flat surface such as mat board. This not only protects the print from rough handling, but also works to frame the image.



Story by Adnan Ali