I Came In Unsure Of Everything

To improve low rates of credential attainment in community colleges, individual schools as well as a number of national organizations have developed a range of initiatives focused on increasing rates of college completion and student success. Although the importance of non-academic factors in college completion and student success has been well established, questions remain about the best ways to structure the community college environment to foster students' sense of belonging and promote behaviors that are associated with success. This paper addresses this gap in the literature by focusing on the academic confidence of students at the outset of their community college careers, the ways in which their confidence may impact student behaviors and persistence, and how student confidence is affected by students' experiences in college. Using data from nearly 100 community college student interviews, this paper examines students' descriptions of their confidence upon entering college and of the shifts in confidence they experienced early in their college careers. Our findings suggest that student confidence is shaped in part by past academic experiences and expectations of college upon entry. Using student descriptions of their perceptions of college and of themselves, we describe the characteristics of students who describe themselves as self-assured and those who identify as apprehensive. The interview data reveal that student confidence is continually shifting as a result of interactions with peers, faculty, and others. Our analysis also indicates that academic confidence can impact student motivation and academic behaviors that are associated with success. Importantly, this paper identifies the nature of those experiences that positively reinforce student confidence, events that we term "experiences of earned success." Finally, we describe ways to structure classroom and other on-campus environments to create opportunities for students to experience earned success and ultimately enhance their commitment to academic pursuits. (Contains 1 footnote.).

One father-son duo make a pizza so delicious, and so over-the-top with toppings, that it destroys the universe—and will surely melt readers' minds and hearts, like warm mozzarella. It's a tale as old as time: a kid wants to make a pizza with his dad, but not just any pizza . . . he wants a pizza with everything on it. That's right, everything. But as the toppings pile on, this father-son duo accidentally create a pizza so delicious, so extravagant, so over-the-top, that it destroys the universe—and the cosmos go as dark as burnt crust. Will anyone enjoy pizza ever again? At turns heartwarming, hilarious, and completely out of this world, Kyle Scheele and Andy J. Pizza deliver a riotous adventure that will melt readers minds and hearts and leave them calling for a second helping. • FATHER'S DAY GIFTING: This heartwarming and hilarious portrait of a memorable father-son bonding experience is the perfect way to show appreciation to the tough-to-buy-for dad all year round, and especially on Father's Day! • FOOD-THEMED HILARITY: A mouthwatering and laugh-out-loud funny story of culinary catastrophe! This book is for fans of food-themed classics like Green Eggs and Ham, If You Give a Mouse a Cookie, and Cloudy With a Chance of Meatballs. • ELEMENT OF CHAOS: Starting with something as relatable as pizza toppings, and culminating in the destruction of the universe, the escalating silliness is literally out of this world. For anyone who loves books that celebrate the absurd and chaotic, like Dragons Love Tacos or Llama Destroys the World. • TIMELESS QUALITY: A classic family-bonding moment—making pizza—leads to memorable father-son adventure, with a heartwarming and satisfying ending ensuring countless rereads. • PIZZA: Universal and delicious. Perfect for: • Anyone who likes pizza • Fathers looking for a lighthearted book to share with their kids • Fans of the absurd, chaotic, and hilarious • Foodies and their children • Anyone looking for wholesome family stories about family bonding • Fans of Dragons Love Tacos and Llama Destroys the World

Leo's Misadventures is about Leo McGregor, a twenty-year-old surfer dude from Kitty Hawk, North Carolina, who won a $156 million lottery. He decided to get out of town for a while to get away from the locals who badgered him for a handout. He hitchhiked across America to Santa Monica, California, via Route 66. After a thirty-nine-day journey across the country, Leo ended up at the Santa Monica Pier with a journal full of stories and a girlfriend named Abby Walker. When he left Kitty Hawk, he had no idea what he would do when he arrived at his destination. Would he turn around and head back east or stick around on the West Coast for a while? Leo and Abby rented a beach house on the Pacific Ocean near the famous pier to give them time to figure things out. On his journey, Leo had given a lot of thought about the best way to use the money he had won. After much thought and discussion with Abby, he decided to start a charitable foundation. He and Abby found a nice office space near the pier and leased it for one year. Leo needed an attorney and found one in Santa Monica named Jess who helped him set up the foundation. With his charitable foundation up and running, Leo needed someone to run the day-to-day operations. He found Freddy, who lived in Malibu with his adopted parents, to fill this critical position. Leo, Abby, Jess, and Freddy became good friends and enjoyed themselves on the coast when they weren't working. Eventually, Leo bought an apartment building on the beach and converted it into a surf shop. He hired Brody, a local surf builder, to run the shop and use locals to help create the boards. Any profits would be donated to charity. With everything running smoothly, Leo began to ponder the need for similar charities in other parts of the country--or internationally.

"Burning down Black Snake trailer was easy. The hard thing was walking away, when what I wanted most was to watch it die... " When Angel sets fire to her childhood home, it isn't the end -- it's the beginning. Left with nothing but a few memories in her pocket, Angel escapes into the fields of tobacco, the only place she has ever felt safe. Hidden by those green-gold leaves, she sets her eyes on the mountains and believes someone waits for her there. Angel will do whatever she has to until she finds her. She longs to empty her pockets, hand over the answers to what became of her, and whisper, This is my story. As Angel journeys toward the mountains, Hannah is struggling to tell her own story. The daughter of missionaries who follow the rules of a small and strict religious sect, modesty is prized above all else. Wearing floor length polyester skirts, and never cutting her hair, Hannah is forced to live a separate life from her peers. Until the summer her family moves to James Island, South Carolina. Slowly, Hannah begins to escape the confines of her strict upbringing, and soon makes a choice that will forever change the course of her life. As these two women's paths connect, Hannah's past will prove to mean everything to Angel's future.

Little changes can make a big, big difference! In The Little Book of Big Change, psychologist Amy Johnson shows you how to rewire your brain and overcome your bad habits—once and for all. No matter what your bad habit is, you have the power to change it. Drawing on a powerful combination of neuroscience and spirituality, this book will show you that you are not your habits. Rather, your habits and addictions are the result of simple brain wiring that is easily reversed. By learning to stop bad habits at the source, you will take charge of your habits and addictions for good. Anything done repeatedly has the potential to form neural circuitry in the brain. In this light, habits and addictions are impersonal brain wiring problems that result from taking your habitual thinking as truth, and acting on that thinking in the form of doing your habit—over and over. This book offers a number of small changes you can make in your everyday life that will help you stop your bad habit in its tracks. If you want to understand the science behind your habit, make the decision to end it, and commit to real, lasting change, this book will help you to finally take charge of your life—once and for all.

Deathworlds are places on planet earth that can no longer sustain life. These are increasing rapidly. We experience remnants of Deathworlds within our Lifeworlds (for example traumatic echoes of war, genocide, oppression). Many practices and policies, directly or indirectly, are "Deathworld-Making." They undermine Lifeworlds contributing to community decline, illnesses, climate change, and species extinction. This book highlights the ways in which writing about and sharing meaningful experiences may lead to social and environmental justice practices, decreasing Deathworld-Making. Phenomenology is a method which reveals the connection between personal suffering and the suffering of the planet earth and all its creatures. Sharing can lead to collaborative relationships among strangers for social and environmental justice across barriers of culture, politics, and language. "Deathworlds into Lifeworlds wakes people up to how current economic and social forces are destroying life and communities on our planet, as I have mapped in my work. The chapters by scholars around the world in this powerful book testify to the pervasive consequences of the proliferation of Deathworld-making and ways that collaboration across cultures can help move us forward." —Saskia Sassen is the Robert S. Lynd Professor of Sociology at Columbia University and a Member of its Committee on Global Thought. "Recognizing the inseparability of experience, consciousness, environment and problematics in rebalancing life systems, this book offers solutions from around the world." —Four Arrows, aka Don Trent Jacobs, author of Sitting Bull's Words for A World in Crises, et al. "This unique book brings together 78 participants from 11 countries to reveal the ways in which phenomenology – the study of consciousness and phenomena — can lead to profound personal and social transformation. Such transformation is especially powerful when "Deathworlds" – physical or cultural places that no longer sustain life – are transformed into "lifeworlds" through collaborative sharing, even when (or, perhaps, especially when) the sharing is among strangers across different cultures. The contributors share a truly wide range of human experiences, from the death of a child to ecological destruction, in offering ways to affirm life in the face of what may seem to be hopeless death-affirming challenges." —Richard P. Appelbaum, Ph.D., is Distinguished Research Professor Emeritus and former MacArthur Foundation Chair in Global and International Studies and Sociology at the University of California, Santa Barbara. He is also a founding Professor at Fielding Graduate University, where he heads the doctoral concentration in Sustainability Leadership. "Deathworlds is a love letter for the planet—our home. By documenting places that no longer sustain life, the authors collectively pull back the curtain on these places, rendering them meaningful by connecting what ails us with what ails the world." —Katrina S. Rogers, Ph.D., conservation activist and author "Deathworlds to Lifeworlds represents collaboration among Fielding Graduate University, the University of Łodź (Poland), and the University of the Virgin Islands. Students and faculty from these universities participated in seminars on transformative phenomenology and developed rich phenomenologically based narratives of their experiences or others’. These phenomenological protocol narratives creatively modify and integrate with everyday experience the conceptual frameworks of Husserl, Schutz, Heidegger, Habermas, and others. The diverse protocol authors demonstrate how phenomenological reflection is transformative first by revealing how Deathworlds, which lead to physical, mental, social, or ecological decline, imperil invaluable lifeworlds. Deathworlds appear on lifeworld fringes, such as extra-urban trash landfills, where unnoticed impoverished workers labor to the destruction of their own health. Poignant protocol-narratives highlight the plight and noble struggle of homeless people, the mother of a dying 19-year-old son, persons inclined to suicide, overwhelmed first responders, alcoholics who through inspiration achieve sobriety, unravelled We-Relationships, those suffering from and overcoming addiction or misogynist stereotypes or excessive pressures, veterans distraught after combat, a military mother, those in liminal situations, and oppressed indigenous peoples who still make available their liberating spirituality. Transformative phenomenology exemplifies that generous responsiveness to the ethical summons to solidarity to which Levinas’s Other invites us." —Michael Barber, Ph.D., Professor of Philosophy, St. Louis University. He has authored seven books and more than 80 articles in the general area of phenomenology and the social world. He is editor of Schützian Research, an annual interdisciplinary journal. "This book helps us notice the Deathworlds that surround us and advocates for their de-naturalization. Its central claim is that the ten virtues of the transformative phenomenologist allow us to do so by changing ourselves and the worlds we live in. In this light, the book is an outstanding presentation of the international movement known as "transformative phenomenology." It makes groundbreaking contributions to a tradition in which some of the authors are considered the main referents. Also, it offers an innovative understanding of Alfred Schutz’s philosophy of the Lifeworld and a fruitful application of Van Manen’s method of written protocols." —Carlos Belvedere, Ph.D., Professor, Faculty of Social Sciences, University of Buenos Aires" "Moving beyond the social phenomenology carved out by Alfred Schütz, this impressive volume of action-based experiential research displays the efficacy of applying phenomenological protocols to explore Deathworlds, the tacit side of the foundational conception of Lifeworlds. Over twenty-one chapters, plus an epilogue, readers are transported by the train of Transformative Phenomenology, created during what’s been called the Silver Age of Phenomenology (1996 – present) at the Fielding Graduate University. An international amalgam of students and faculty from universities in Poland, the United States, the Virigin Islands, Canada, and socio-cultural locations throughout the world harnessed their collective energy to advance the practical call of phenomenology as a pathway to meaning-making through rich descriptions of lived experience. Topics include dwelling with strangers, dealing with trash, walking with the homeless, death of a young person, overcoming colonialism, precognition, environmental destruction, and so much more. The research collection enhances what counts as phenomenological inquiry, while remaining respectful of Edmund Husserl’s philosophical roots." —David Rehorick, PhD, Professor Emeritus of Sociology, University of New Brunswick (Canada) & Professor Emeritus, Fielding Graduate University (U.S.A.), Vancouver, British Columbia.

"With its gentle affirmations, inspirational quotes, fill-in-the-blank lists and tasks — write yourself a thank-you letter, describe yourself at 80, for example — The Artist’s Way proposes an egalitarian view of creativity: Everyone’s got it."—The New York Times "Morning Pages have become a household name, a shorthand for unlocking your creative potential"—Vogue Over four million copies sold! Since its first publication, The Artist's Way phenomena has inspired the genius of Elizabeth Gilbert and millions of readers to embark on a creative journey and find a deeper connection to process and purpose. Julia Cameron's novel approach guides readers in uncovering problems areas and pressure points that may be restricting their creative flow and offers techniques to free up any areas where they might be stuck, opening up opportunities for self-growth and self-discovery. The program begins with Cameron’s most vital tools for creative recovery – The Morning Pages, a daily writing ritual of three pages of stream-of-conscious, and The Artist Date, a dedicated block of time to nurture your inner artist. From there, she shares hundreds of exercises, activities, and prompts to help readers thoroughly explore each chapter. She also offers guidance on starting a “Creative Cluster” of fellow artists who will support you in your creative endeavors. A revolutionary program for personal renewal, The Artist's Way will help get you back on track, rediscover your passions, and take the steps you need to change your life.

My name is Amber Reynolds. There are three things you should know about me: 1. I’m in a coma. 2. My husband doesn’t love me anymore. 3. Sometimes I lie. Amber wakes up in a hospital. She can’t move. She can’t speak. She can’t open her eyes. She can hear everyone around her, but they have no idea. Amber doesn’t remember what happened, but she has a suspicion her husband had something to do with it. Alternating between her paralyzed present, the week before her accident, and a series of childhood diaries from twenty years ago, this brilliant psychological thriller asks: Is something really a lie if you believe it's the truth?

When a small town girl Nora is on her way to her hometown "Lost Creek" to spend the summer with her Grandmother, fate intervenes with her plans. Her summer starts off roughly, and her plans change. Nora who is a firm believer of true love is tested in different ways but never gives up hope that one day she will find her soul mate. When she meets Colin, Nora wonders whether he could be the one but does he feel the same way? With all the fuzzy thoughts and insecurities going through her mind, will she find what she's looking for? Keywords: Love, Soul mate, Chicklit, Fuzzy, Fate, Friendship, Romantic, Family, Insecurities, Small Town, Girl