Kd's Blog

How to have a quiet time or devotion with God?

        It’s not new to us if we encounter different struggles, failures, problems, hindrances, temptations and discouragements in life. Although we really knew that in everything we can always experience those things. There are also times when we can’t feel the presence and guidance of God in our lives that’s why we keep on blaming Him for all the misfortunes that we’ve been through. We didn’t think that it’s really us who has a problem. It’s us who keep on moving away to God. Good thing that I prepared here tips on how to have a quiet time or devotion with God but before that let me tell you the definition of quiet time. Quiet time is all about making appointment to God. During our quiet time, we may sing praise songs, pray, read Scripture or daily devotions, meditate on God's Word, or simply be still and listen. Here are the tips on how to have it:

         1.Prepare yourself

-            While having this kind of commitment with God, we must first focus ourselves to Him. We must remove all the things we thought that are really nonsense while reading a word of God. We must avoid distractions and think of the things that we really wanted to reach while having this thing. We must also prepare a pen, notebook and of course bible for God’s revelation.

       2. Pray

- Of course this is really important. In all the things we do we usually have prayer first for it may lead us. In here, we can really search for God’s presence. It may help us to have steady and open mind. We can have clear understanding in all we are reading especially in reading the words of God.

 3. Read the bible

- Reading bible may help us to strengthen our faith in God. We can be inspired in   all the things we are doing. It may lead us to greatness and satisfaction. We can also have our life verse in this part. We just need to read the scripture and if there is a verse where we can feel that God is truly with us together with His promise to us then it is the verse for us.

    Those things are easy to do. You just need to lend and set some time to do it. It’s hard to do at first but then if we really search and seek for God’s guidance there is no impossible. So what are we waiting for? Are we going to start now or stop ourselves and wait for His return?

Billante, MaryJoy M.
BSE-English II-1

How To Take Good Pictures Using Your Android Phone

How to Take Good Pictures Using Your Android Phone

1… 2… 3…. Smile! 😃 *click* Oops! Did I captured your heart or you captured mine? ☺❤ (Hay! Same old lines, same old lies 😂) Hahahaha! Kidding! ✌🏻

Well anyway, we all know that a lot of us like taking a picture of those people around them, the nature and many more. We often think that what hinders to have a good picture is not having an expensive camera. Maybe a digital single-lens reflex camera or also called a digital SLR or DSLR which in photographers use. 📷 But you know what? 💡 There can be a substitute to that expensive camera which is your android phones! 📱

Here are five tips you need to consider when taking a picture using your android phone:

💫Tip #1: Focus on Your Subject. 

It is a way of emphasizing what you wanted to take a picture of. 📷 In most cases, this kinds of pictures are the one who are zoomed in and are the ones who your phone detects which is the person's face. 👦🏻 I can relate this kind of photo in real life wherein you saw your crush and it seems like everything around you turns into blur that all you can see is just him or her (Yay!). 😍

💫Tip #2: Always Consider Three Things: The Angle, Composition, and Lighting. 
There are a lot of things that one should consider in taking a picture and the angle, composition and lighting is one of the most important. ✨ For one must find an interesting perspective in taking a picture to make your photo lively as if it dances! 💃Joke!😅 and creative (Creative writing? No! Oh! Stop! 🚫) as it can be. 😌

💫Tip #3: Use Empty Space

"I got an empty space baby, and I'll write your name!"  🎶  (Sigh 😪) Seriously, as you can see in the picture, I used an empty space (which is the grass 🌿)  in the left side 👈🏻 of the picture to focus and make my subject stands out even more. 👸🏼 

💫 Tip #4: Avoid Setting Your Camera into Different Types of Modes or Filters

Setting your camera 📷 into different types of modes or filter like Sepia, Black and White, Negative and etc. 🌈 It loses the quality of your photo. 😓 It ruins the beauty of a person, a place, an animal or even a thing. 😶 Remember, the best pictures come naturally!  😊😊 #FilterNoMore 💁🏻 #GandangHindiMoInakala 💖

(I do not own this .gif)

💫 Tip #5 Think Before You Capture

It’s very important to think first before you capture because you're phone memory or your memory card will lose space or storage.📲 Friendly reminder: Remember that you're not using iPhone so you should make ipon. 😅 Seriously, why should you think before capturing? 😁 Well, it is because you first need to visualize what you want your photo to look like so that there will be no regrets and less stress! 😌

💟

I hope those 5 tips above can help! 🌟 With all honesty, those photos attached from tip #1 to tip #4 are not edited and like what I said, I captured those photos using an android phone. 👊 And in addition, you should be extra-careful with your phone! 😱 Someone might capture it in just 1… 2… 3… and those people are the ones who would rather capture your phone rather than your heart. 😝 I hope you'll keep this in mind and enjoy the wonders of the world! 💯

🍓 Submitted By: Jemalyn Aceveda

De Guzman, Christian D.

BSE-English 2-1

How to play a guitar...

Do you know how to play a guitar? Are you amazed by your classmates who know how to play it? And does it ever come to mind that you would want to be one of them? Well, now is the time for you to learn how to be like them, or at least, a little bit like them.

We all have that side of us whom we know, is eager to learn how to play a guitar, and how it feels like to amaze his\her classmates with the use of it. Just a small tip before we truly begin, you should have someone who would teach you, this is based from my own experience and it truly helped me in learning how to play a guitar. Having someone to teach you can help you learn how to play a guitar a lot more easier, and they share their experiences to you, how they learned it, how they began, and other things which could inspire you to be more eager. That will be that, now back to the topic.

The first things you should learn when trying to play a guitar are the basic chords, how each of them look like and how they could be formed. It is easy to know how the chords look, the hard part is to apply them on a guitar, this is because you would need to move from one chord to another, which can be quite confusing. Doing this requires you to remember how each chord is formed, and how you would be moving from one to another. This was something I hard a hard time learning at first, but after a long time of practicing, I did it.

The second thing you should learn is how to strum the strings. Strumming can be both easy and difficult, this is because following the specific strumming pattern of a song is not really needed. You can strum it how ever way you like, as long as it is at beat and following the rhythm of the song. Since you are just starting to learn how to play a guitar, a simple strumming pattern would do. The complex strumming patterns can wait, just take your time in learning the simple ones first. Learning this was very fun for me, because it allowed me to be creative in the way I would be strumming throughout a song.

Those two thing are pretty much all I could share to help you. The rest is up to you, if you really are eager to learn,the difficulty wouldn't matter. Just one small request before I go, really do try to learn how to play a guitar. Because it is something you would really enjoy playing while bonding with your friends and family. For me, I consider it as something better than just being in a room with your friends who are having their own world's even though they are just a few inches away. And if you're in the middle of nowhere and without a source of electricity, a guitar would really be useful.

How to Study for an Exam

Maria Katrina Dominique "TJ" S. Tuazon
BSE -English II-1

Exams are the hardest part for students, especially college students who refer to their pre-lims, midterms, and final exams as their grade savers. I, as a college student, is very much worried of the outcome of my exams, so here are a few pointers to remember: 

- Listen attentively in class. You came to school to study, not to sleep, so listen to the lectures your professor/teacher are discussing. 

- Start reading notes a few days before the exam. This is to avoid cramming the night before the actual exam itself. And also, cramming tends to make you forget things, so it is not an advisable technique for studying. 

- Get some sleep. Don't use the 'stay up and read' technique, it will only mess up the things you reviewed when you find yourself sleepy during the exams. It is better to study after waking up, when the brain is freshly recharged. 

- Eat your comfort food before going to school. Eat your favorite snack before the exam. It will give your brain a signal that you are not under pressure and this will help you be more confident in answering your test.

- Keep an extra ballpen. Some students have been accused of cheating because of borrowing pens during an exam. Remember to keep an extra ballpen in your pocket, just in case of emergencies. 

- Pray. Ask for guidance. It helps knowing that someone up there is watching over you and won't let you down. Trust him. 

That's all the techniques I could give you. But this is the most important thing that you have to remember: Trust your instincts. Your instincts would never fail you. So chin up, hold your pen tight and answer that exam. You'll pass that, no doubt! 

HOW TO MEMORIZE DANCE STEPS EASILY?

"Dance is a performance art form consisting of purposefully selected sequences of human movement."

Dancing mainly focuses on the movement that we are executing or doing in order to deliver a good performance and right message to the audiences. It consists of different steps and make it as a one whole routine that fits through the song. As a dancer, it is very impossible for me to not encounter a lot of various dance routines and memorize it at the same time.  When I say, at the same time, it is an on-the-spot memorization and needs to be performed afterwards. This will only prove that dancing can be hard sometimes if you are not passionate and dedicated enough to do it.

One of the things I have already experienced is being allotted a time by our own instructor to do my own steps regarding the song given or do a self study according on different covers of that song and perform it in an hour or the day after. Dancing is also like singing but they only differ on how a person executes it. On those days, I admit I always make mistakes and I easily forgot what I have learned and it really sucks big time. It is very frustrating because my instructor has a big trust on my skill to do that work, but sometimes I ended up such a failure. With a messy presentation, several "can I start again?", pressure and stress, I learned the technique on how to memorize dance steps easily and that's the reason why I am here and sharing these tips for you. I will help you to not experience having a very hard time learning a dance routine and to not get mistakes in an actual performance, because getting embarrassed in front of your audience is really a bad feeling.

How to memorize dance steps easily?

1. Know the concept of the song you are about to dance to.

This is simply knowing the song you will be using in your performance. Dancers need to know what they will about to dance in order for them to understand and get the vibe of it. As they learn to understand the song, they will also learn how to own it as if that is made for them and they will now know how to act on it through movements or steps. For example, you are given a sexy kind of song, then you will need to dance it in a sexy way according on what the song wants to show on its listeners.

2. Learn the steps one-by-one, detail-by-detail and part-by-part.

When I say one-by-one,  you need to learn the steps in a step-by-step way. You don't need to rush things in order to finish a routine very quickly. It is still important to be careful in memorizing so that you won't be able to get back from the start if you accidentally made mistakes because of having that mindset.

When I say detail-by-detail, you need to learn how to memorize steps in a very specific way. From the small movement of the fingers to the big movement of the body, because every step or movement represents symbolism and it is important in delivering a right message.

When I say part-by-part, you need to learn every part of the song. From the first verse, bridge, chorus, last verse and so on so forth. In that way, you will be able to identify which step you are now working on. It will simply help you with your progress on your practices.

3. Repetition is the key.

As you learn and memorize the steps, you also need to repeat it every time you learn a new one. So that you will not forget it but instead it will add more into your mind. You need to develop your muscle memory in dancing, that's why I recommend you to take repetitions in between memorizations.

4. Polish the steps one more time.

After repeating, you may now try to check again the steps if you did it in a right way. By means of polishing, you will be able to clean your steps, especially in timing, leveling of arms, legs, and body, facial expressions, directions and many more. In this way, you will be able to save time and effort that you need on your upcoming performance.

5. Conduct a rehearsal with someone to critique your movements.

Practice makes it all perfect. Just like repetition, practicing your performance from the start to the end will help your body get used to it. Also, if you want to know what others are thinking about it, you can seek for a constructive criticism from your instructors or fellow dancers, because they know what you need to do or not, since they are experienced like you.

So that's all for my tips about memorizing a certain dance step easily. I hope you learned something important that you will really use while you are practicing and rehearsing on your performance. Remember that these tips are open for all kinds of dances, it will only just differ on your approach to these tips. Also, you can have a great performance if you have the element of patience, determination and passion in dancing. These tips will turn out useless if you don't love dancing and keep on taking it for granted. If you want to be successful, earn for it because dancers are not born, they are being taught. Stay fit and healthy everyone! Dance more and have fun! Thank you very much!

Galan, Jullia B.

BSE-English 2-1