Mini Project 1

This is what people expect from you before college.

You start preparing for the future as soon as you're born. some parents even start planning before.

Throughout your school years you learn about college and your teachers prepare you for it.

Once you get to the highschool it's crunch time. You start taking your SAT and start applying to colleges.

Although your school years probably influence you the most about college readiness; friends, family, and the media definitely play a big role too.

Forest View Class

                Last week in English we met with the classes at Forest View High school. I sat in a group of two college kids, including myself, and four of the highschoolers. We started off the class with a picture made by the four highschoolers and it had what the thought and expected from college. The described everyone’s point of view. We then made another picture and we included our college perspective. Our picture had a collage of all the things that we thought influenced us as students. My favorite part of the class was the very end when we did the interviews. It was really interesting hearing all of their questions and remembering when I was in their shoes last year. I remember being so curious about what to expect and that’s exactly what they were asking. I’m really glad that now I get to put a name to my letter that I will be sending to their class.

Phrases

                So in class the other day, Lacy had us go outside of the classroom and find two sayings or groupings of words that were posted somewhere around the building. At first I was having a really difficult time trying to figure out what exactly she wanted. I ended up finding the two that I wanted, “Get connected and stay connected” and “You’re cordially invited to”. Once we got back into the classroom we were to write the two phrases on the board. She then told us to make up a poem out of all the different phrases on the board. She gave us her example, but that didn’t seem to help much. I’m not much of a poem writer.

Images

                A few days ago in class, Lacy gave us this assignment where we paired up on groups of two and each group received one of these pictures. The pictures were of TV shows and movies. We were told to look at the pictures and analyze them as if we had never seen them before. This task was fun to do because most of the pictures, I hadn’t seen. This allowed me to be completely honest and take in whatever stood out to me. Lacy had us write in the margins key words or thoughts of what we saw. Once we had written what we wanted to we had to pass them on to the next group. We rotated all of the pictures around the whole room until everyone had seen every picture. At the end we received our original pictures. This was really cool because we got to see what other people thought about the picture and we got to see what other people thought of our own ideas.

Hero Narratives

                Last Wednesday Lacy had us split up into our writing groups. Earlier we had created a list of narratives in the form of movies, TV shows, and music. She told us to make a list of ten random narratives from the bigger list and describe if how or even if there was a hero. The assignment was pretty much opinion based which made it more interesting because we got to converse with our group members on whether or not the narrative had a hero in it. Once we figured this out, we were to post a comment for all ten of our choices on the Google doc that Lacy had made. At the very end of the assignment we had to go back and look through alllll of the comments that everyone had posted and write in our daybook what we saw and what questions we might have. As I looked though the comments I noticed that most of the narratives people had listed had some type of hero in it. I think this goes to show that we need heroes in our everyday life and anybody can be one.

UNCC Homecoming 2013

                I go to school at UNC Charlotte and this past weekend was our homecoming basketball game. I am involved with greek life here also. This whole week has been packed with fun activites leading up to the big game. There was a competition between all of the sororities and fraternities and whoever got the most points at the end of the week won. There were events where if you went, you got points for your sorority or fraternity. We also had penny wars where we tried to raise money.

                Saturday was the tailgate. All of the greeks on campus set up in the parking lot and we grilled out until the big game. It was so much fun. We were up at 7 am setting everything up but it was so worth it. Every sorority was paired up with a frat and they had a tailgate to themselves but everyone wandered around the parking lot anyways. There were about 5 different cars playing 5 different songs and everything was so loud. It got everyone pumped for football next year. This was by far my favorite memory here so far.

Networked Publics

                Last week, Lacy told us to pick one of the three subheadings “Genres of Participation,” “Networked Publics,” or “Peer Based Learning” and to read it carefully. I chose to read “Networked Publics”, because it seemed most interesting. As I read it I got the gist of it and realized that it was talking about how social networks and social interactions helped with people skills. It also talked about some other things, but I got the most from this. Ito mentioned in her writing that social media helps people with social norms. I would say that I agree with this to an extent. Sometimes what people post online are not what kids, or anybody really, should be reading or acting like. Social media’s do help us interact with people, so that could be a reason for helping with social norms.

                The writing also talked about social media’s in the workplace. Ito described how it helps with productivity because it allows workers to connect with others from all over. Ito described it as “circulation of culture and knowledge” and as “always-on” communications. Another group of people that social media’s affect are kids and teens. Parents aren’t particularly fond of this because it is “unmediated”. All-in-all, this reading helped me better understand Ito’s point of view on social media’s. Ito believes that they better our society.