Final Blog (Wobble)

When I look back over this course there were many times when at first I was confused but then I just took a moment and tried to figure it out and I usually could. However I think there were a couple places this year where I really did Wobble.

The first place that I wobbled was during the process of writing my literacy narrative. I had my idea and I knew what I was going to write about. But after my first draft and having my group read over the draft I realized that no where in my paper where I talked about how this experience had affected my literacy. So that was a moment of wobble, actually a period of wobble because it took me till about the time I wrote my final draft to figure out how to incorporate literacy into the narrative. The real issue or wobble that I had after I figured out a way to incorporate it was "Am I doing this in the most effective way?, Does it make sense when I put it like this?, Does this sound good?, Will it keep people interested in my story?"

The only other place that I can think about when I might have "wobbled" was when I was trying to figure out how to go about the Ethnography Project. This moment of wobble was not that bad becasue when I was stuck on what questions to ask during the interview, or who to ask, or even how to ask the questions, there were people in my group who had the answers to all of these questions. They were the ones who kept me from wobbling too much on this project.

Literacy Narrative Reflective Blog Post

When Lacy first gave us the assignment to write a Literacy Narrative that was telling a story it took me all of 5 seconds to decide that I wanted to talk about my week at Blue Ridge Leaders School in Black Mountain, North Carolina.

The intial writing of the Literacy Narrative was when it became a little more difficult for me to talk about Blue Ridge. I had many ideas of what I wanted to do with the paper. Whether it be writing it from my brothers perspective of when I came home or talking about it as a metaphor of a ship but nothing really connected to how Blue Ridge affected my Literacy. I could talk about how it changed me as a person and how it affected my attitudes toward life and other people but I still couldn't make the connection with how this  had anything to do with my literacy. So when it came time to write my first draft I just ignored the concept of Literacy and just wrote down all the things I wanted to say about Blue Ridge and my experience. The one major editing technique that I used was going through the intro to the story and making sure that it grabbed the readers attention. https://docs.google.com/document/d/16XXUVGOj8cUWij0XytDqNW82-8IFezDJx7cbDtWUaro/edit










After going through my original draft and reading all the comments that my group members left as well as doing the revision strategy of re-reading my intro to make sure it grabbed people I realized that I had a lot of work to do on this paper if I wanted to get a good grade. Nowhere in the paper was how the trip had affected my Literacy so I knew I needed to start there in order to make this paper better. So for starters I completely added a whole new beginning paragraph which focused more on the concept of literacy and what it meant to me, which I think really gave the reader a new perspective on literacy. So that was one way that the revision strategies helped me. Then during one class period Lacy had us write a couple editing goals our paper and the final draft. My editing goals were to come up with something for the conclusion and to watch out for incomplete thoughts. After I went through my paper again looking for these things I completed a conclusion that I think is good and tried to tie up thoughts that I thought might be somewhat incomplete.
https://docs.google.com/document/d/1By4jxyff-vA3NdkVNDzVha7gJ3bQmD0KU7-K0pHGOtk/edit


I think when I look back at the whole process it is really interesting to see how when I started there was so much missing from the paper to when I finished and I think that this paper completely conveys everything that I was trying to say. It was really hard to figure out how to incorporate the change in my literacy through this experience but with the help of the editing tools that we did in class, the comments my writing group left, and the comments that Lacy gave me everthing just fell into place. I wrote my Literacy Narrative about Blue Ridge because it is definitely one of those times in life that puts things into perspective for you, it really makes you realize what is important in life, and I just wanted to share my experience with everyone.

So heres my final draft if anyone wants to read it.......
https://docs.google.com/document/d/1XLouN2wR8tU78PDrpGbNvO67WX2LNg-R14oA3WY9x0c/edit

Final Ethnography Post

When we were first given the Ethnography assignment I wasn't really sure that I understood what it was we were doing. But when I walked around and noticed all the different graffiti around campus I started thinking about how much can be taken from the various forms of art. I have always enjoyed looking at art and thinking about the many symbols/themes/feelings that can be taken from each piece. I also really respect art as a form of expresson. So when it came time to pick a topic I knew that I wanted to do something focused on art, so picking Sculptures as the focus of my Ethnography Project was probably the easiest thing about this project.

The thing that I really liked about this project was how easy it was to revise our work. When it came down to it we never really revised the work. We simply revised our ideas. We went from just discussng sculptures to interviewing people, to a video discussing sculptures, to finally having what we have. I also really enjoyed doing this project with a group of people because 1) it really helped with the revision process because we could really feed off each others ideas, so if we were stuck on an idea/thought, there were 3 other people in the group to offer input. 2) we all worked really well together. All our ideas flowed together so this project went by relatively smoothly. 3) it was just nice to be able to collaborate rather than have the entire project to do by yourself.

When it comes down to it, I would much rather do a project like this rather than write an essay. I think the collaboration between 4 people really enhanced the quality of the project. You can see this collaboration in our google document. https://docs.google.com/document/d/1wib3IBwH0WabP-I_lY946EP4ovXVsnF7pzYTWroscNA/edit I think it was a quality that couldnt be captured in an essay, especially with a topic like sculptures because sculptures are in turn visual so the power that these pieces convey couldnt be captured simply in words, there has to be that visual aspect.  

 The only other thing I have to say about this project is that I wish we had done more like it. I really enjoyed doing this project.

A Post about Ethnography

The other day in class Lacy was talking to us about our Ethnography projects and making sure we were keeping up with things. So in order to do that she had us do an activity where we wrote down how we were feeling about the project and how we were feeling about gathering information about our project.
So here is what I wrote about my feelings when it came to doing my interviews.......
"When I was getting ready to do my interview I was excited to see what people had to say. Whenever I would ask a question I was excited to hear the person's answer and see if their opinion was similar to mine."

I think being excited about doing interviews, or being excited about gathering information in any form is one of the keys to having a good project. You have to want to put in the work and be happy with what you are doing otherwise that negative attitude will show through when presenting.

The Things They Carried Response

This past week we had to read "The Things They Carried" and to be completely honest I only read the words at face value. I didn't really read deeper into the text to really figure out what the story was about. I mean, I got the fact that they listed the weight of all the gear the men carried to show just how much physical weight a soldier carries everyday. I also understood the idea of an emotional weight on each soldier as well.
^^^
That was the face value reading that I did but just last night the idea of an emotional weight really struck home with me when I was talking to a friend and they broke down because of the various stressful things that were going on in his life. While talking to him I realized that every single person on this planet has one or more things going on in their life which they have to "carry" with them everyday. Whether it be something happy or sad, a memory, a longing, everyone has something that no one else may know about. And I realized that wahtever the situation may be there needs to be people in each persons life that will be there to help share the weight of whatever their friend is having to "carry" just to make it a little bit easier on them.

I'm not really sure whether or not this would be considered a "good" blog post but it was just a thought that I could not get out of my mind since it happened so I figured "eh it kinda coincides with something we read, maybe I'll just talk it out". So there it is.

Annotated Bibliography

Here are the citations for the two interviews and a picture that I need to use for my Ethnography project.

LaFuria, Nathan. Personal Interview. 30. Oct. 2012

My interview with Nathan is integral to the success of my project because my group as a whole decided to use interviews as our form of research. This interview also allowed me to understand what a person thinks of the sculpture that I have chosen to do. This will help when it comes time to discuss our interviews with the group.

Frommer, Elise. Personal Interview. 30. Oct. 2012

This interview was important because I got to get a girls point of view on the emerging man. This allowed me to get a more well rounded dynamic in the interviews I did so that I could look at both the male and female response to my sculpture. Although her answers were similar to Nathan's answers this provided me with a great deal of information about the underlife of my sculpture.

artist unknown, The Emerging Man, n.d, UNCC Campus, Charlotte,NC.

This is a picture of the sculpture that I chose to do this project on. The reason it is so important is because I used this picture during my interviews. It was cold and kinda rainy at the time I went out looking for interviews so I used this picture as  a reference for the interviewees so that we didnt have to venture out into the rain just for a 5 minute interview.

Hidden Literacy: The Emerging Man

For the Ethnography Project my group chose to investigate the hidden literacy behind some of the sculptures that can be found around campus. The sculpture I chose to investigate was "The Emerging Man" which is located between Cato, Fretwell, and Denny.

What I wanted to do was interview people about this piece so I chose to interview both a boy and a girl to see if their responses would be similar or different.

Here is my interview with a guy named Nathan.

Cory: What statement do you think the sculpture makes?

Nathan: Work hard.

Cory: What do you think the theme behind this piece is?

Nathan: Power and Knowledge
Cory: How does this piece make you feel?

Nathan: It makes me feel like as long as I work hard I will be able to achieve something.

Cory: What message do you think the artist was trying to get across with this piece?

Nathan: To persevere through struggle.

After my interview with Nathan I interviewed a girl named Elise.

Cory: What statement do you think the sculpture makes?

Elise: Strength and Power

Cory: What do you think the theme behind this piece is?

Elise: Hercules

Cory: What do you think the theme behind this piece is?

Elise: Empowered, like I could go lift weights.

Cory: What message do you think the artist was trying to get across with this piece?

Elise: Great things come from little things.

I actually really enjoyed doing these interviews because it allowed me to see what other people think about the sculpture. I think with a piece as powerful as this one I think that the responses will be the same between both men and women. I think that it really speaks to the literacy of a piece that the themes of power and strength are so prevalent that you get similar answers when asking questions from various people. I perosnally think the theme of the piece is the struggle to find freedom, but I can see how others can see the theme as strength and power.

Mapping UNCC

The assingment was to go to various places around campus and document any instance of Literacy Underlife that we saw. Whether it be a conversation someone is having, artwork, or even various movements a person makes.
I chose to go to three different locations: The library, Belk Tower, and lastly I just walked around Oak (where I live) to look for various instances of Underlife.

This is what I wrote down in my daybook....

If you look closely you can see that I noticed the most instances of Underlife while I was sitting at Belk tower, however while I was walking around Oak looking for instances of Underlife I stumbled upon some graffiti painted on the wall around one of the walk ways.

This is the picture of the graffiti. Even though I found so many instances of Underlife at the Belk Tower I chose to mark the place I found the graffiti on the map because I think art is one of the easiest ways to express yourself and art is almost always beautiful. Plus I really like the message of this art because I think it serves as a friendly reminder that we arent the only people on this planet so we need to remember to share this planet we live on.

 

 Sorry about how unorganized this post is, once I inserted the pictures organization just went out the window.

Revision...

These past few weeks in class we have been writing our Literacy Narratives and since we turned in our first draft we have been doing different editing workshops in order to help us revise our papers and make them better and more interesting. On October 4th, Lacy had us do a drawing of the breakdown of our paper in order to figure out what our paper was lacking and what we could do in order to make it better.

This is my first drawing....

 

Then after we drew the first drawing Lacy told us to do another drawing and break down the original drawing even further.

Drawing number 2

 

I had never revised a paper like this before so I was interested to see what this form of revision would do in order to help make my paper better and I was amazed to realize how much information was actually in my paper. This form of revision also helped me to realize what my paper was lacking, whether it be descriptions of things, or even if I was spending too much time on a topic in the paper.
Having to do these drawings made the revision process of this paper much more fun and interacive, rather than having someone just go over your paper with a red pen and make marks where they thought you needed to change things. I can honestly say that I would enjoy doing revision activities like this in the future.

Mid-Term Assignment

For the Mid-Term assingment our writing group was sent on a "mission" to the Atkins Library to find a mentor text which would help us to write our Literacy Narrative. So.... My group decided to meet at 9:30 on Tuesday morning (because we knew we would all be free) on the second floor of the library. When we first met we took a couple minutes to discuss the objective of the day and what we needed to accomplish. We decided that it would be best to find some sort of short story to use as our mentor text so that we did not have to read through a novel trying to "write beside the text". Then we kind of wandered aimlessly to the third floor just browsing the shelves looking for anything that could be used as a mentor text but all we could find were books on Philosophy. Next we figured the best thing to do to find a mentor text would be to go to the computer and search for key words that would narrow our search. Once we got to the computer we typed the words "mentor text" and "writing" into the search bar. There was a book that seemed like something we could use so I wrote down the Call Number. Then our group moved to the 6th floor looking for the book. After searching for the book for about 10 minutes I realized that I wrote down the call number wrong and no one could remember the name of the book so we gave up on trying to find that specific book. After the whole not being able to find the book debackle happened my group wandered around on the 6th floor for a little while looking for other books that we could possibly use.

After this wandering went on for some time, Johnny went to the computer and googled mentor texts and found the title of a book he thought we could use. The title of the book was "Owl Moon" and so we searched the Library Catalog for it and found out that the book was on the 5th floor. This time I wrote down the Call Number in its entirety so that we could find the book when we got to the 5th floor. So as a group we wandered to the 5th floor in search of "Owl Moon". Once we got to the 5th floor it was relatievely easy to find the book because I had written down the call number correctly. Then once we found the book we created a circle of chairs in the back corner of the 5th floor so that we could discuss how this would be a good mentor text and also so that we could "write beside the text" and discuss our writing as a group.

                                                                                                   

This is what I wrote alongside the text!

The Charles Sequence

It was definitely much more difficult to pick something to blog about this week, considering I was sick on Thursday so I missed a whole class.... So based on that what we did Tuesday that was most interesting to me was the activity we did when writing from certain point of views.

On Tuesday, Lacy gave the class a piece of paper with a short article on it about a 6 year old boy that wanted to see his dad at work so he got in the car and decided to drive to go see him. After we were given some time to read the short article we were instructed to pick a character and write from that person's point of view.
I chose to write from the point of view of the man who was driving behind the 6 year old boy.
This is what I wrote first....... I chose to write from the point of view of the mans mind
"What is this guy doing? I'm going to be late. BEEEEEPPPPPP!!!!! He has got to be drunk.

After we wrote for about 5 minutes Lacy told us to write as if the person were telling a story.
So this is what I wrote next...
"As I was driving behind this car I knew something wasnt right. The way the car would speed up then slowly decelerate was so unusual the only thought I had was that this guy must be drunk."

While I was doing this activity I only took it at face value, but then as I sat down to write my personal narrative I realized that the activity helped me more than I thought it would. I helped me figure out the way that I wanted to write my paper.. I chose to write it from my point of view.. As if the reader was in my mind, seeing what I was seeing...
I hope I did that efficiently.


Peace

P.S. Can someone let me know what the plan is with the Mid-term assignment.. That would be awesome!

Foucault and a Pencil Response

In our last class, Lacy gave the class a copy of "Foucault and a Pencil" by Lydia Davis in order show us alternative ways of writing in the hope that it would make writing our Personal Narrative stories easier. I really enjoyed reading "Foucault and a Pencil" because it was cool to listen to a story strictly from the authors thoughts. No background info, just plain, unaltered thoughts.

So for the sake of inspiration, Lacy had the class write in the same style that Lydia Davis did in "Foucault and a Pencil". This is what I wrote.........

Going to Vespers. Walked up mountain. Look for Finley group. Find Finley group. Sit down. Get comfortable. Relax. Look out over mountains. Music begins. New song never heard before. Listen. Think. Listen to chorus. Fall in love. Take words to heart. Think. Close eyes. Reflect. Open Eyes. Song ends. Listen to quote. Reflect. Wait for next song. Repeat

 I really enjoyed doing this activity because I feel like it put me back into the moment that I am going to try to be writing about. It allowed me to re-see all that I saw and re-feel all that I felt. I also think that this form of writing really allows the reader to be in the mindset of the author. This from of writing really brings the reader and author closer. It allows the reader to feel what the author is feeling.

WDYDWYD

On September 13 for our Writing into the Day assignment we were shown the website "why do you do what you do" or http://wdydwyd.com/ . At first look I wasn't really all that intrigued by it but then after class when I went back to it I realized just how cool the website actually is. The website gives you the option to look at digital pictures of people answering the question of why they do what they do, or you can read blog posts about it, or you can watch videos.....

I just find it really interesting that there is a website solely dedicated to finding out why people do what they do. I was also really intrigued when we were asked the question of Why You Do What You Do? At first I was confused and didn't really have an answer..... I'd never really thought about what it is that makes me do the things I do, whether it be influences from people around me, environmental influences, or just me doing whatever the heck I wanted for no reason..... But when I actually took the time to think about an answer, this is what I came up with.

Why Do You Do What You Do?
-because its who I am.
-because I react

So after thinking about my answers a little deeper I realized that sometimes I do the things I do because I am simply reacting to my surroundings and also because what I do as a person defines who I am......
I really enjoyed this Writing into the Day discussion because I got to learn a little bit more about myself. I find that I'm doing that more and more as I spend more time at college.. I cant wait to find out more about the complex person that is... Cory Stewart!

Peace

Timeline Reflection

Woah! Looking back on it I've written a lot of stuff. Whether it was papers, vocab words, spelling words, or short stories, all the things I've written have, in some way or another, helped to shape who I am today as a writer. Now I didn't realize this until the other night when i was creating my Writing Timeline and found it hard to pick specific assignments in which I became more developed as a writer.

This is what my Timeline looks like.......
One thing I found interesting while doing my timeline was that 3 of the 5 assignments I chose were when I had to write a research paper. Freshman year of High School my paper was on "Night" by Elie Wiesel and how children were treated during the Holocaust. Junior year my paper was on "Macbeth" and the theme of Appearance vs. Reality, lastly Senior year my research paper was on "Othello" and the relationship between Desdemona and Othello.

The reason I chose these 3 papers I'd written was because I was given a topic and then I was allowed to choose how I wanted to go about developing the topic as well as picking an angle to research, specific to that topic I had chosen.... This opportunity really allowed me to develop my writing skills as well as gave me a chance to have an opinion on an issue, stand by that opinion, and find research and studies that supported my viewpoint.


Being allowed to stand by my viewpoint in a way coincides with what Taylor Mali says when he states that this generation lacks conviction..... I was allowed, in the form of a paper, to stand by my opinion and argue it! I was given a chance to have that conviction, which Mali states in his poem no longer exists in this generation,  through my writing. Writing these papers helped me realize that my opinion on certain issues matters and that everyone deserves a chance to provide evidence to argue their opinion.....

It probably sounds like I just said the same thing over and over again. But I feel that repetition really drives the point home. Keep your conviction!

Peace

Writing Into the Day Reflection (8/30/12)

Today we began class with the usual Writing Into the Day assignment. We viewed a video that animated the words to the poem, "Totally like whatever, you know?" by Taylor Mali. The poem is about how our generation no longer has any conviction in our opinions and ideas. The poem states that,
"it has somehow become uncool
to sound like you know what you're talking about?"

http://www.npr.org/templates/story/story.php?storyId=4608329

The poem really resonated with me because once I heard the words I realized that everything being said was true. That even though I know what I'm talking about that I do add those "ya knows" and "I guess" to most of my sentences. It really bothers me that I am guilty of all the things the poem touched upon because I think I should value my opinions more so than I do. I think everyone should value their opinion because in turn it is thiers to value.
After listening to the poem and realizing that I am guilty of all the things the poem says, in my head I wanted to promise myself that I will start valuing my own opinion and making sure that when I am talking to someone that they know that I know what I am talking about. I am also going to try to modify the way i form sentences to make it more apparent that I know what I am talking about.