Dear Senior me,

Well, you have certainly come a long way and I hope that you learned a lot along this journey at Penn State. Now that you are in your senior year, hopefully you are either graduating with a degree in finance or accounting. Also I hope that you got involved with all different schools activities including: IM sports, clubs, greek life, THON and many more. I also hope that you made some friends and met some new people that you will know for the rest of your life. Also I hope most importantly that you had the best 4 years of your life and that you didn’t take any moment for granted. Everyone always says that college flys by and I hope you embraced everything and found your true self.

As part of my first year experience at Penn State, like every other student I had to adjust to living in a dorm with a roommate. All my life I have always had my own room and having your own room is really cool but at times it get lonely. When I am at home I hate sitting in my room, because I would much rather be downstairs hanging out with my family or doing something fun. At college living in a dorm is completely different, because you have someone that lives with you. Having a roommate is really cool, especially if you get a good one. My roommate and I get along very well and I only met him 6 weeks ago. Its really cool at night when everything is settled down and you just have someone to talk to. I like to think that I am a funny person and my roommate and I are always laughing and joking around about stuff. Another part of living in a dorm is that you are all on your own and I need to keep my room nice without the help of my mom. (I miss you mom)

With that being said, taking care of my room has been a bit of a challenge for me because although I hate to admit it, my mom has always been part of why my room is so clean at home. I have had to develop new habits like cleaning my room and making sure all my clothes go into my laundry bag. Also one adjustment being at college and living in a dorm is that I have to do my own laundry which I have never really done before. Also it is extremely weird having to go to a shower carrying all your shower supplies with you while wearing flip flops. I will say that the showers here at Penn State are awesome, but it is definitely something to adjust to.

Overall, I have loved every minute while living in the dorms at Penn State and I am ready for the fall.

In the picture it is messy, but shortly after it was cleaned.

Research Question: For Penn State students, controlling for streaming service usage, what is the relationship between binge watching and sleep quality.

Sample: For this, I will be studying college student at Penn State. This is a pretty direct and solid sample because there are about 98,000 students at Penn State and it is the University that I am studying at right now. Many students have different mobile devices that allow them to watch streaming services, and binge watch shows. I want to study the quality of sleep students get from the affects of that.

Control Variable: We will be controlling how often students use their streaming services (Netflix, Hulu, HBO max, etc) and at what times of the day they use them. Also we will be looking at the amount of time spent on the services and for how long at one time they are watching.

Independent Variable: Our independent variable is how long people binge watch shows for and how many hours at a time they stay on their streaming service. We can track on the mobile device how many hours were spent on the service and also through the screen time.

Dependent Variable: The dependent variable is the quality of sleep the student gets per night and how many hours they sleep. This can be done by doing a sleep study on the students and/or having students track their sleep and what time they go to bed and what time they wake up.

https://www.cjr.org/business_of_news/border-belt-reporting-center.php

Article published June 30, 2021. By Lauren Harris

The article that I chose was from Columbia Journalism Review and it was concerning an investigative center helping a local news print in rural North Carolina. The article talks about a man named Les High who is the publisher of a newspaper, and he is worried about the shape of journalism in the area he lives in. In rural North Carolina in this particular part, there is a high level of poverty and most of the people are struggling severely. To help bridge the gap for these people that do not get the right level of information and in-depth reporting, he started the Border Belt reporting center. This is supposed to help finance the companies and get them more in-depth investigative reporting.

I believe that this effort to try to help these areas where they might not be able to get the type of reporting people deserve, is a great idea. It helps out all the local companies and it is a great idea that could possibly be shared with other parts of the country that struggle with the same issues. The only concern or argument that I have against this is, how much money can the Border Belt reporting center get to really make a big impact on the area? If they do help and make better investigative reports for the rural areas and counties, will it make that big of an impact? I think the idea is very ethically good and it is a great thing that they are helping, but financially and realistically I do not think this will be a successful business. I’m all for supporting areas and cities that have lower income, but I truly believe that this is not sustainable.