Extra Credit Blog- Penscape Reading

The piece of writing that stuck with me the most was one of the creative nonfiction writings. It was called "The Man in High Heels". It was basically a younger guy talking about embracing himself as a cowboy and his experience with his cowboy boots. I really liked how descriptive his writing was. The narrator gave me someone I could relate to because of personality and some of his problems. For example, him talking about being over-weight and needing to lose weight. I also enjoyed it because it was really funny. Especially the part when he was talking about the "how to break-in your cowboy boots" video he watched on YouTube, which was just a man wearing nothing but cowboy boots and underwear. I liked how he brought the end of the story back to the beginning. The narrative gave us, the audience, a good idea of who the narrator is as a person. His writing gave me some insight on how to write a good personal narrative and how to make it interesting. Overall I enjoyed almost all of the writings at the Penscape Reading.

Week 15- Posting 15

I feel like I've improved on a lot of things throughout the semester. The thing that sticks out the most though is my improvement on adding detail. I used to just touch on a subject and only go very little in depth, if any at all, on the subject. I feel like me focusing more on detail has forced me to actually think about what I'm writing instead of just bullshitting my way through it. I also think my organizational skills have improved. I feel like I can make things flow better in papers now, instead of the paper being choppy.

An assignment that I feel could be reworked is the annotated bibliography assignment. I felt like a lot of the research I found during this assignment didn't really help me all that much for the mini-ethnography. My mini-ethnography focused a lot on my personal experiences, my own interviews and observations, and my own research from my subcultures website. So, I didn't really feel like doing research about clubs that are relative to my subculture helped me with my final project. Although, it did give me some different perspectives about group similar to my subculture. I think having less sources to cite would have been better, maybe 6-8 instead of 8-10, so we could focus more on our own personal research, for instance, interviews and observations. I think there was a good amount of conferences. They both feel right after the first drafts of our second and third papers were due. Although, one more conference after the first draft of our mini-ethnography was due would have been nice, considering it is 25% of our final grade. Other than that, I didn't have any problems with the course.

Week 14- Posting 14

For the mini-ethnography, my favorite piece of data is the interview I conducted. I think that it was definitely one of the most useful sources. I got the questions I had directly answered by a Something Else club member. I interviewed the executive producer. He was very thorough and informative with his answers. He seemed deeply passionate about Something Else in his answers. He also gave me some different perspectives on things that I didn't even think of. For example, when I asked him, “What do you feel is the main goal of Something Else?” which is a simplified version of my research question, he responded with, “The main goal of Something Else is to provide an organization that allows students to get involved in an important capacity, regardless of experience. We want to teach our members how to use the equipment, or how to write scripts, or how to edit sketches; that all takes precedence over anything else. I don't think any other group provides as much work to as much people, who come from all sorts of majors and backgrounds, as we do.” I thought this answer was really deep and showed just how important Something Else is to him. It shows that he is looking more to help people get involved in something they’re interested in, instead of just gaining popularity for himself and I like that.

Week 13- Posting 13

At 9:55 p.m. I walked down the long, straight hallway of the Robert Bell Building. My shoes were squeaking with every step I took because of the rain outside. The hallway was dimly lit and random classrooms on each side of the hall had lights left on. As I came closer to the general area of room 104 of the Ball Communications building, I saw a large group of students talking in the Letterman Building lobby. I kept my distance, being unsure of whom the group of people was. As I paid closer attention to some of them, I recognized a couple of them from “Current Club Members” page from the group’s website. I stood off to the side, away from the group, and checked the time on my phone. It was almost 10 and I wondered if this was where Something Else or not. I looked around anxiously to ask someone what exactly this group of students was doing. A few seconds later I asked a student standing nearby who gave off a friendly vibe, “Excuse me, is this Something Else?” The student answered back, “Yeah, we’re just waiting for the producers and writers to get out of their meeting.” I thanked the student and took a few steps away from the group and just watched everyone.

A few minutes later four or five people came from around the corner and one of them with shaggy black hair, who appeared be a white/Asian mix, told everyone to follow him. As everyone followed him, I nervously trailed behind. He took everyone to room 104. There were about 50 desks all lined up against each wall, leaving the center of the room open. As everyone took their seats and got settled in, I made my way to the front of the room where, I assumed them to be the producers, were standing. Two male students stood behind a large desk discussing something I was unfamiliar with. One was the student with black hair from earlier and the other was one that I recognized, again from the website. He had short light brown and a mustache that almost looked fake. I stood in front of the desk waiting for them to acknowledge me. They both turned and looked at me and the black-haired student said, “Hey, what’s up?” And I answered with a speedy, “Are either one of you Nick? The uh… executive producer?” The student with the mustache answered “Why yes, that’s me, I’m Nick!” A split second later I replied, “Ok I sent you an e-mail a couple of…” I was soon interrupted by the black-haired student, “He’s just kidding, Nick has been sick the past couple of days. Are you new?” The student with the mustache smirked at me and then I answered, “No, I’m doing research paper for my English 104 class and I was wondering if I could sit in on your meeting?” The black-haired student replied with a friendly “Yeah sure, that’s fine, feel welcome to sit wherever. And try to have some fun.” I think he could tell that I felt a little intimidated by the situation, for a reason I’m not quite sure of. I replied with a “Thanks” and turned around getting my foot stuck on the leg of a desk and nearly tripping. The two students shared a laugh at my embarrassing, near accident. As I walked to a desk near the back of the room I heard the student with the mustache make a joke about me, but I didn’t exactly know what he said but I knew it was about me. I took a sit next to the friendly student from earlier. “Are you new?” he asked. “No, I’m doing a research project for English.” I answered back. He gave me an interested look and replied, “Oh cool.” Throughout the meeting I took notes about everyone and about everything the club talked about. The meeting got over within about 40 minutes. After the black-haired student who was in charge the meeting released everyone, I felt a wave of release to be out of there and made my way back to my dorm.

Six Word Stories

Life: Changing into what I want to become. (As good as I could come up with)

Subculture: Becoming something more than Something Else

Week 12- Posting 12

My understanding of the word "rhetoric" is that it's some one's point of view and our opinions. I think that rhetoric constitutes more than just the things we say. The way a person acts and dresses also constitutes our personal views even if we don't realize it. Although, I don't think a person's views should solely taken from the way a person looks or talks, we sometimes sub-consciously make assumptions about people. In American society, I most commonly hear rhetoric being used on the street. Just walking down the street you can over hear conversations and it's easy to pick on their point of view about certain things. For instance, someone talking politics and how they feel about them. I think rhetoric is used equally in a positive and a negative way, it just depends on the subject and how strongly the person feels about that subject. I think the rhetoric that coincides with my subculture would be other peoples views on the subculture. For example, how an outsider feels about the group. I plan on using rhetoric in my mini-ethnography by taking the readers through my research process and how telling them my thoughts and feelings about the steps that I took. I'll also include some the subculture's member's feelings and thoughts about their subculture.

The Writing Process- In Class Activity

"My best writing comes when I wait til the last minute and I am under pressure." I'm not sure what it is but when I wait til the last minute everything just comes to me and it forces me to "do or die". It's easier for me to stay focused when I know that if I don't finish at that point in time then I don't finish at all and I'll get a bad grade.

Week 11- Posting 11

My writing has changed quite a bit. Before this class I didn't go into very much detail about anything. I would just touch on a subject and then move on. Now I spend more time on answering questions and going more into depth about subjects. The most trouble I've had was writing the annotated bibliography. I absolutely hate doing research so that paper was a tough one to get through. I really had trouble finding good sources that I could actually use. It didn't really effect my writing process at all. I went through the same process I've been going through since I started writing papers, which usually just consists of me sitting down and just writing and then going back editing and adding more detail. I would have to say that the first paper was easier than I expected. I thought it was easy because it was just putting my personal thought into an essay. Aside from school, I just write to get my thoughts out. It relaxes me and relieves stress. I'm not really what role writing will play in the future. It depends what career I decide on. No matter what I think by the time I leave college I will be prepared for the professional world and feel confident with my writing.