Others vs. Me

“People are our sunshine, our soil, our rain. When are we going to stop surviving off of people and start living for ourselves?”

– Nadia A

I wrote this quote in the middle of my notes during my Psych class this evening. We were learning about personality and I wondered when will I ever start living for myself? As long as I can remember I’ve always put someone else before me. I can’t say that is necessarily a negative trait but I don’t see much positive in it either. I allow others to “change” me for the time being. I am so wrapped up in being who they want me to be that I forget to be me. Whoever that person may be is an amazing person… before the change. That is who I need to become all the time. I do not want to be that wife and mother (one day) who starts living her life once her kids are ready for college. I am sure I wrote this in a blog post before but for some reason it sticks this time. I am a habitual thinker who is extremely observant and a genius in my own right. Who isn’t? I won’t say that my mind and the way it works is a negative trait because it is something God gave me yet how I use it… well that’s another story. I am learning and unlearning at the same time. Change can only happen if I want it to. One cannot allow another to change them if they are not ready to be changed. I want to change me and someone else may not agree with that change but the people who are supposed to be in my life will embrace the change and accept me for who I am.

This is a new season! I have a new outlook on life and what it means to truly be me and I am looking forward to tomorrow… you should too.

Nadie

One Day At A Time

“The way to predict God’s future is to look back at His past performance! He is faithful! You can trust Him! All is well in the end; so if all is not well, it’s not THE END!”

– Bishop Dale Bronner

I love it when little quotes speak volumes. The first half of the year has been interesting. However, the second half will be greater than the first! I am looking forward to August, September, October, November, and December. I do not know what is in store for me but, I do know that I have so many ideas, visions, and tasks ahead of me. I can only see one thing flashing in my mind…. “TAKE ONE DAY AT A TIME” …. so that is what I plan to do. Take it one day at a time. I know I serve a God of more than enough and I am going to do exactly what He tells me to do in the coming months so that I can tell others that HE IS REAL. (John Gray)

Many Blessings,

Nadie La

Living On a Plane

First and foremost, I thank God that I am home safe.

However, I can’t make this stuff up, you just can’t make this stuff up and it only happens to the best of us. LOL. Yes this has everything to do with my flight home. Tia you were right on-time with your comment! You had no idea that I was stuck in the Matrix at that time.

I received a call as I pull up to the airport stating that my flight was delayed an hour. I was not a happy camper. It was around 11:30am at the time and the flight was scheduled to leave at 1:55pm. There were about 3 flights headed to Dallas from Phoenix that day and I was on the first one out at 12:55pm. Well not anymore. This was the beginning of a very long day. I asked my cousin to stop at the store so I could pick up some snacks. I didn’t think that I would actually need them, but I did. One o’clock rolls around and I was becoming hungry. We were supposed to board the plane at 1:25pm however, there was no plane present. I decided to get something to eat and thank God I did because who knew that would be my last meal until about 12:30 this afternoon the next day. I grab this expensive chicken ranch sandwich because I only had a bowl of cereal and I didn’t know how long it would be before I would get to Dallas.

To my surprise I boarded the plane about twenty minutes after the allotted time and I was supposed to land in Dallas around 4:45pm. Perfect. My flight back to Jersey would have been at 7 and I would have been home sweet home. Well not quite. I am dead asleep on the plane and the good ol’ Captain comes on the loud speaker and announces that there seems to be an issue at the Dallas airport. They have massive amounts of storms, they are so bad the airport is not taking arrivals and we are headed to Oklahoma City! Wow!!! Here we go again. I was a little nervous because there was a toddler one row in front of me and I said she has been very good so far and she may not like the fact that we will be idle for another hour. However, she was the most well behaved little baby ever, HANDS DOWN!

 Now that we are in OKC we are refueling and they are debating if we will get to a gate because we may get word any moment that it is safe to fly out. An hour goes by and what do you know…We are scheduled to get to a gate in twenty minutes. All lies. We literally stayed on the airplane for an hour and a half and now it is 7 pm. Oh wow guess what my flight leaves at 7 remember! So now I am praying to God that all flights are cancelled and I will be able to get home sometime today. Then, I decided to turn my phone on and check American Air’s website and it says my flight is scheduled to leave at 8 and it was 745. I am still in Oklahoma. Why is this happening right now? I am so hungry and I just want to lie in my bed. Captain comes on the loud speaker again and tells us that our flight has been cancelled and we are not going to Dallas tonight. Mental note to self: This has got to be some type of joke. I will be staying in OKC for the night. By the time my mental note was finished the flight attendant says that we are no longer cancelled and we will make it to Dallas in a few HOURS.  The guy sitting next to me, an ex baseball player, asks the flight attendant if we will be able to get off the plane and grab some food, relax, etc. She says, in a half hour or so. Lies. He missed his flight completely, his flight was scheduled to leave at 5 from Dallas to Florida and it didn’t look good for him. By this time, everyone is upset and the mom of the toddler asked Siri on her iPHONE, “How long can the pilot keep his passengers on the plane if we are just sitting at the gate?” Hilarious I think I actually laughed out loud because Steve Jobs has made such a huge impact on the world. (I mean I walked to the gate and all you see is white cords and apple logo’s its crazy.) Anyway, somehow someway we never made it to the gate and we are finally taking this half hour flight to Dallas. It is now 9 pm.

This supposed half hour flight turns into a forty minute flight and I was waiting for the seat belt sign to go off and it never did so I turned around and saw a few people waiting to use the bathroom. That was my queue because that was what I was waiting for. Well as soon as I get up the flight attendant tells everyone to sit down and clear the aisles because of the “unexpected turbulence” that can occur. Well Miss Lady unfortunately I have to take the risk because we all know turbulence is always unexpected and you made everyone sit down with their seatbelts on while we were sitting at the gate for almost two hours and now I need to use the restroom so I decide to keep waiting along with everyone else who was waiting. Well what do you know, she makes another announcement and to my surprise no one moved. So, it is almost my turn and I get to the back of the plane and the flight attendant who was sitting down says, “I know you heard the announcement”. I said, “You’re right I did but I have also been on this plane for almost four hours with that seat belt sign on so I think it is okay to use the restroom now so I will take my chances.” She looked at me smiled and opened the bathroom door for me but there was someone in there using the bathroom and I couldn’t help but make a face because who uses the bathroom on a plane and doesn’t lock the door? LOL

Finally, we reach Dallas around 10 or so and I immediately run to the agent to find out what was the next step. Was I staying in Dallas for the night or am I able to catch the next flight out or what? There were three others in front of me. One guy was placed in a hotel for the night and had the first flight out to Chicago the next morning. The guy in front of me and I were able to catch our original flights because they were delayed and were going to leave at 10:30! Thank God!

So I notice a McDonald’s and a T.G.I. Friday’s right next to my gate. I decided to talk with the agent first and ask her what time the flight was leaving. She said soon, they were getting a head count because many of the passengers decided to leave and take the hotel instead of the red eye. I asked if I had time to get food and she said yeah you can go get it but I can’t guarantee we will be here when you get back. No lie the place was directly across and I didn’t want to risk it. Talk about hungry.com!! I remembered I had the snacks from the store and ate the chips and boarded the plane. They decided to take a longer route so they refueled the plane once more so that we would actually make it to New Jersey this delayed us about a half hour. I could have gotten my food!!!!!!! I landed around 3:30am and was home in bed by 4:10am. Noticed I said in bed because now I couldn’t sleep!!! I went to sleep about an hour later.

I can say that I will never travel American ever again. I don’t care what the cost of the ticket is and I will never choose a connecting flight ever. That was the first time I did and that will be the last time. NEVER AGAIN. American didn’t have television, or any decent snacks.  You had to pay $4 for a bag of mixed nuts and that wasn’t an option. Oh I forgot that they actually gave us a “light meal” in OKC, good ol’ granola bar not bars, there was only one baby one. I was almost grateful for my first experience on the plane going to Phoenix because at least I watched Happy Feet 2 and Contagion! If I was able to swipe my card for TV I would do it in a heartbeat.

So there you have it folks, the most amazing flight experience of my life. I failed to mention the only reason why I made it to Dallas from OKC that night was because there were two flight attendants on the plane and one of them had to work a flight at 10pm to London. If she wasn’t on there I would be writing a different blog!!!

Happy first day of Spring!! BTW my trip was awesome!!!!!!! LOL Here is a pic of me on a night we went to the Jazz Club.

Nadie

The Liebster Blog Award

The Liebster Blog Award

I received The Liebster Blog Award from Aisha at Aisha’s Scrapyard and I am completely grateful! There are a few rules for this lovely award so here they are.

1. Thank the fellow blogger who nominated you.
2. List five blogs that has impacted your writing in a positive manner, by virtue of comments, posts, inspirations etc.
3. Leave comments on those blogs letting them know of the nominations
4. Post the award in your blog.
5. Bask in the love of fellow bloggers and spread joy and inculcate good karma.

http://l0ve0utl0ud.wordpress.com/ I still love this site as a helpless romantic!

http://iamsimplytia.com/ again the food!!!!!

http://poeticjourney251.com/

Congrats to the three bloggers above! Everyone I wanted to nominate…well let’s just say they have already received the award. It’s the thought that counts! 🙂

The Must-Have’s of Life

Over the last few years I have grown to love Suze Orman. She is truly America’s Financial Advisor. She recently started a show on OWN (Oprah Winfrey’s Network) called America’s Money Class which I must say is a must see! After watching the third episode I decided to share some info that I took away from this class session. Now the information that I will share is nothing foreign to anyone. At least once in your life you have heard of them so here they are!

1. A will
2. Life Insurance
3. SAVINGS

A will is probably the most important document you will ever sign ever besides a mortgage, which is the most important investment you will ever make. A will is so critical to have that without it so many issues, court fees, lawyer fees, time and money wasted can come to pass without it. If any of the following pertain to you then you NEED a will yesterday if you do not have one.

If you,

1. Own a home
2. Are married
3. Have children
4. Are sick with disease
5. Own anything

You need a will. People tend to think that if they do not have a million and ten dollars in the bank they do not need a will. This is not true, if you fall into any of the above categories then guess what you need a will. There are many different types of wills: living trust and a will. But let’s say you own a home and you’re married and you die. You don’t have a will or a living trust saying that your wife should get the house. The state now has to decide who will receive your assets and that can take many months. Same scenario but this time you have children and both of you and your hubby or wife die in a car accident now what? Who is going to take care of your children? What will happen to your home? A will can decide all of this. Get a will. Go to legalzoom.com they are cheap and it takes 15 minutes tops!

Life insurance!!!!!! I can’t emphasize how important it is to have a whole life policy and not a term policy. A whole life policy is for your entire life where a term policy is over a certain amount of time. The younger you get it the better. You are less likely to have illnesses and the insurance will be cheap whereas if you were 45 and this will be your first policy ever you will absolutely pay a few hundred dollars more for insurance. Everyone says I have life insurance with my job. Oh that’s nice but your job isn’t guaranteed we know that for sure with today’s world and oh just in case you didn’t realize it, IT IS NOT ENOUGH!!! Especially if you have a family, wife, husband, children, and a home. If you pass and your husband or wife doesn’t work, or they aren’t the bread winner of the household and you have a $200,000 mortgage left, they can be looking at foreclosure. Then what? Please protect your families! It is so vital to do this. Anything can happen at any time. Social security isn’t going to help you, your family isn’t going to help you forever, your job isn’t going to help you. I know I am talking a lot about death but the one thing you’re completely passionate about is your family. They need to be protected after death. That goes for both husband and wife.  Get on it!! So many insurance companies offer this.  A lot of times you can bundle your car insurance with this to get a cheaper policy. DO IT, AND DO IT NOW! Money doesn’t grow on trees and the ones who do not have 8 months stashed away for an emergency fund can and will be in trouble.

Go back and read my 70-10-10-10 post. You can definitely do this and it is very easy to do so. Just live within your means, cut the unnecessary out of your life and make it happen.

Here are 4 must have documents recommended by Suze Orman from her new show on OWN:

http://www.oprah.com/own-americas-money-class-with-suze-orman/4-Must-Have-Documents

Here is an amazing book by Suze Orman that I will always adore and thank her for because without this book you can be completely in the dark about money.

http://www.amazon.com/Money-Young-Fabulous-Broke-FABULOU/dp/B001TMEBEY/ref=sr_1_2?ie=UTF8&qid=1327340173&sr=8-2

Here is the link for legalzoom to make a will:

https://www.legalzoom.com/legal-wills/wills-overview.html

When it comes to saving absolutely open an account at a bank that you do not bank at if you are not disciplined enough to have it at your own bank. If you are working, make sure you have 10% of it deposited into this account each and every check so that you are building a fund and keeping it out of site. Just remember to pay attention to service fees and account requirements.

Thanks dolls!

Nadia

Daniel Fast Day 10

I’m half way there guys!!! Today I woke up feeling a lot better and wanted to hit the gym to get back into the swing of things. I am so afraid of losing so much weight while fasting, so I had cut down my gym routine tremendously. I miss it though. I find myself eating less and less and I think that I will only eat salads and a few stir-fry’s here and there for the rest of the fast. I have really enjoyed making all the different meals and it really opened my mind to what the vegan lifestyle is really like. I have come to enjoy my veggie sausages and didn’t think that I would actually finish the 4-pack during the fast. I bought so much food initially that it was actually enough for the entire fast. I have to buy some more bananas for my oats but that’s it. Like I mentioned this morning, I love the person that I am becoming, I am just thinking things through a little bit more and I am blessed! How could one ever say they aren’t blessed?

Today’s reading is from Luke 7 and I will continue to read the next 3 chapters of Revelation for my bible study.

Be blessed!

Don’t forget to check out creativelysaving.blogspot.com

Spiritual Vitamins

Spiritual Vitamins

Are you anxious?

Take Vitamin A: And we know that in all things God works for the good of those who love him, who have been called according to his purpose.      Romans 8:28

Are you brokenhearted?

Take Vitamin B: Blessed are those who mourn, for they will be comforted.      Matthew 5:4

Are you confused?

Take Vitamin C: Cast all your anxiety on him because he cares for you.

1 Peter 5:7

Are you depressed?

Take Vitamin D: Delight yourself in the LORD and he will give you the desires of your heart.      Psalm 37:4

Are you empty?

Take Vitamin E: Enter his gates with thanksgiving and his courts with praise      Psalm 100:4

Are you facing failure?

Take Vitamin F: The one who calls you is faithful and he will do it.

1 Thessalonians 5:24

Are you grieving?

Take Vitamin G:  I pray that out of his glorious riches he may strengthen you with power.     Ephesians 3:16

Are you hurting?

Take Vitamin H: happy are ye; for the spirit of glory and of God resteth upon you      1 Peter 4:11 KJV

Are you insulted?

Take Vitamin I: increase and abound in love one toward another      Thessalonians 3:12 KJV

 

Are you jealous?

Take Vitamin J: Judge not, that ye be not judged.     Matthew 7:1 KJV

Are you kicked around?

Take Vitamin K:  Keep yourselves in God’s love      Jude 21

Are you lonely?

Take Vitamin L: lo, I am with you always, even unto the end of the world        Matt. 28:19 ASV

Are you in need of money?

Take Vitamin M: my God will meet all your needs according to his glorious riches in Christ Jesus.      Phil. 4:19

Are you neglected?

Take Vitamin N: “Never will I leave you; never will I forsake you.”      Hebrews 13:5

Are you oppressed?

Take Vitamin O: the one who is in you is greater than the one who is in the world.      1 John 4:4

Are you persecuted?

Take Vitamin P:  persecuted, but not abandoned; struck down, but not destroyed.      2 Cor. 4:9

Are you about to quit?

Take vitamin Q: he leads me beside quiet waters      Psalm 23:2

Are you rejected?

Take vitamin R: Rejoice in the Lord always. I will say it again: Rejoice!       Philippians 4:4

Are you sad?

Take Vitamin S: set your hearts on things above, where Christ is seated at the right hand of God.      Colossians 3:1

Are you troubled?

Take Vitamin T:  Trust in the LORD with all your heart and lean not on your own understanding; 6 in all your ways acknowledge him, and he will make your paths straight.      Proverbs 3:5-6

Are you upset?

Take Vitamin U: understand what the Lord’s will is.      Ephesians 5:17

Are you victimized?

Take Vitamin V: verily thou shalt be fed       Psalm 37:3 KJV

Are you weary?

Take Vitamin W: Let us not become weary in doing good,      Galatians 6:9

Are you exasperated?

Take vitamin X: if anything is excellent or praiseworthy—think about such things.      Philippians 4:8

Are you yearning?

Take Vitamin Y: yield yourselves unto God, as those that are alive from the dead      Romans 6:13 KJV

Are you zapped?

Take Vitamin Z: Never be lacking in zeal, but keep your spiritual fervor, serving the Lord.      Romans 12:11

 

Don’t forget to take your spiritual vitamins each and every day!

All scriptures were taken from the NIV unless noted.

 

Thought this was something great to share from Jack Redmond at jackredmond.wordpress.com

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Daniel Fast Day 2

This morning I woke up a little hungry so I did what I said I was going to do and ate some Old Fashioned Oats with a banana on the side. It wasn’t bad at all. I heated it in the microwave for about 2 minutes and that was it. Then I went to the gym. I was a little hungry after the gym but I decided that I will only eat when I am hungry so I decided to shower and make something to eat. I decided on making a stir-fry for lunch and it was very good! I make stir-fry’s all the time but this time it would be different because there would be no chicken or shrimp. I used broccoli, squash, zucchini, snow peas, spinach, garlic, raw sunflower seeds, olive oil, stir fry oil, cooked brown rice, and lemon. It was amazing!! Probably one of the best stir-fry’s I’ve ever made and I will definitely make it again.

I also finally decided to make the hummus which came out very good. I used a recipe from http://www.halleethehomemaker.com/tag/daniel-fast/ she has tons of recipes on here. So I used the bread from Daniel-fast.com and the hummus together. I also made tomato sauce from scratch using a recipe that I found on another tomato can while shopping in the stores yesterday. It came out amazing and I also added my veggie sausages instead of meatballs to it so I will have that with my wheat penne this evening for dinner! I also prepared some freshly popped popcorn with a little bit of garlic powder for a snack later.

 Here is what I ate spelled out in black and white one more time:

Breakfast: Old fashioned Oats with a Banana

Lunch: Vegetable Stir-Fry with Brown Rice

Dinner: Homemade Italian Sauce with wheat penne pasta with some of my flat bread

Tonight I will continue my daily bible reading for bible study: Revelation 7-9 and Luke 1 for the Daniel Fast.

Please check out my sister’s blog site she is an amazing artist and all of her work is special and has her own personal touch to it. She is also participating in the fast and has encouraged me to join her. I pray that you are blessed by her work. www.creativelysaving.blogspot.com

Be blessed!

Daniel Fast Day 1 Pt. 2

Yesterday was Day 1 at Sundown for The Daniel Fast. I realized that I didn’t explain what the Daniel Fast was to my followers. Here is what the Daniel Fast is:

Daniel Fast is a Biblically based partial fast based on two instances of Daniel’s fasting experiences

“Please test your servants for ten days, and let them give us vegetables to eat and water to drink.” Daniel 1:12

“In those days I, Daniel, was mourning three full weeks. I ate no pleasant food, no meat or wine came into my mouth, nor did I anoint myself at all, till three whole weeks were fulfilled.” [Daniel 10:1-2]

Based on the information that we glean from these references we understand that the Daniel Fast eating plan is vegan in nature, with additional restrictions.

In the first Scripture we see that Daniel ate only:

1. Only Fruits and Vegetables

2. And drank ONLY water

Which would also mean that he ate no processed, artificial, or chemically altered foods.

From the second Scripture we learn that Daniel’s diet did not allow:

3. Animal products

4. Pleasant/precious food, which would include all sweeteners, including honey, agave syrup, maples syrup, etc.

5. Alcohol

From studying Jewish history you will also learn that all fasts excluded

6. Any kind of leavened bread [anything made with yeast, baking powder, baking soda, etc.]

http://www.vega-licious.com/health-nutrition/daniel-fast-recipes-and-things-you-need-to-know/

 

Now that you know what the Daniel Fast is I will continue. Yesterday I had a hard time making the hummus so I decided to refrigerate what I have started and went upstairs. But, I actually was able to make some flat bread from www.Daniel-fast.com  with a hint of garlic added to it for my hummus. It is pretty tasty. I definitely suggest everyone to make their own bread all you need is wheat flour, olive oil, and water.

I also made lots of fruit snack bags with cherries, grapes, cantaloupes, watermelon, honey dew, and pineapples. I took a tip from the Disney Channel and made fruit kabobs with some grapes and cantaloupe. I hear that it makes you feel full because it is frozen, I will let you know how it is when I eat them! That was pretty much the rest of what I had to write. I will post some of the pics if I can figure out how to put more than one in a most lol.

Be blessed!

Investment Planning – Fall 2011

It has been a crazy week with finals and last minute projects! Sorry about the pause in posts, I have been enjoying my fellow bloggers post during my mini break though. Hello and welcome to all my new followers and subbies! Thanks for the support. I promise I will respond to all the comments ASAP!

 Now that the semester is finally over and my grades have been officially submitted I would like to share a story that is worth sharing about the Fall 2011 semester.

Usually I will not question a teacher’s grade on an exam, quiz, homework assignment, term paper, whatever. I just never do it. If there is an obvious error while we are going over a quiz and the professor made a mistake then I will say hey I got this right, fix it. But, this time I had to question because the grade was extremely low. I was forced to take this investment course online because my school decided to make any major courses available online only. Okay fine. My finance professor was probably the most careless professor I’ve seen in a long time. There were so many grammatical errors on homework assignments, so many misspelled words, information was missing on assignments, and last but not least exams weren’t available on time for deadlines. Like who does this? Did you ever hear of spell check? Like Microsoft products are available worldwide. Anyways, I want to pay closely attention to the issue that became an issue for me, which is in bold above, information missing on assignments. My school has twelve week quarters so I decided to take a look at the syllabus like most students during the first week of classes and noticed there was a research project that had to be completed by the 10^th week of classes. So I decided to complete my paper by the 8^th week because it was right around Thanksgiving and I wanted to be able to relax around the holiday. The research paper had the following guidelines:

PART #1

DESCRIBE YOUR TOPIC

CHARACTERISTICS, SCOPE,

ADVANTAGES/DISADVANTAGES, AND

HOW AND WHY YOUR TOPIC IS UTILIZED

IN FINANCIAL MANAGEMENT

PART # 2

SUMMARY (IN YOUR OWN WORDS)

SUMMARIZE YOUR TOPIC.  DESCRIBE

WHAT YOU HAVE LEARNED FROM YOUR TOPIC

 

Now I am a smart kid and I read and read and reread the requirements numerous times and checked all over Blackboard to see if there was a page requirement and there was none. I decided to create my own page requirement and came up with the idea that 7 pages was good enough to submit. Well apparently not. I submitted the research paper early and I had to wait until the deadline which was no problem. So two weeks later I found out that I received a 50% as a grade on the paper. Now everyone knows the research paper is usually a good portion of your grade and I wasn’t happy with that. So I emailed the professor with emails that I sent to myself about the requirements and what the topics could have been for this assignment. The only thing that I made sure to point out were the dates of when the emails were sent and his exact text, again noted above. The email of the information above was sent Nov 14^th. However, on Nov 25^th the professor decided to add a few requirements one week before the paper was officially due.

Posted on: Friday, November 25, 2011

 

RESEARCH PROJECT GUIDELINES

PART #1

THE RESEARCH PAPER SHOULD BE BETWEEN 8-10 PAGES,

DOUBLE SPACED, INCLUDE A TABLE OF CONTENTS,

AND HAVE THE FOLLOWING:

DESCRIBE YOUR TOPIC

CHARACTERISTICS, SCOPE,

ADVANTAGES/DISADVANTAGES, AND

HOW AND WHY YOUR TOPIC IS UTILIZED

IN FINANCIAL MANAGEMENT

PART # 2

SUMMARY (IN YOUR OWN WORDS)

SUMMARIZE YOUR TOPIC.  DESCRIBE

WHAT YOU HAVE LEARNED FROM YOUR TOPIC.

 

Now what do you kindly notice as the first requirement listed for this research paper: a page requirement. Mind you I have already submitted this assignment. Again I am a smart girl I do not do homework at the very last minute and I am pretty sure I can follow rules especially if they are spelled out clearly in front of me. So I asked the professor why would an A student purposely fail an assignment because of a page requirement that you failed to add to the guidelines. He sent me another email with these requirements. So now I am mad because CLEARLY again, I can read guy. So I sent him a nice email stating that we needed to be on the same page because he clearly wasn’t getting what I was trying to say. HUGE RISK. Yes I did say we need to be on the same page because I was upset. Needless to say I ended up getting a B+ on that paper because “there was a misunderstanding”.

The moral of the story is… do not allow a degree or a higher authority to stand in your way. If you know you are right and you have evidence to prove you are right, speak your peace. I ended up maintaining my A for my final grade and that grade for the research paper was my lowest. Sigh. I am happy that that class is over!!!