Blog Post #9

Seeing how the first words my brother spoke to me while I was an infant still in the hospital was “put it back” I know all too well the struggle of having an older bother.  This article of memes regarding the pains of having an older brother growing up is accurate in many, but I feel it not so accurate in other aspects, but that just may be for me.

            The memes that I think are original and portray this subject very well are number 19, 18, and 14. Number 19 is something I know all too well, and this meme does a nice job of showing the double-sided “love” of an older sibling. Without the text to me it would just be about normal occurrence, of being picked on by an older sibling, but the addition of the sarcastic words “Can you feel the love?” adds a whole new interpretation to the meme. This sarcastic phrase implies that everyone thinks the older sibling is doing something nice and loving all the time when they are really trying to annoy or hurt the younger sibling 90 percent of the time. This specific meme relies on the words to show the meaning behind it, but the video is complimentary reinforcing the point. The hierarchy in this meme would be words then gif in order of importance.

            What I thought was inaccurate; maybe specific for me was the meme number eleven. It is a good meme conveying the creator’s intent very nicely, but it doesn’t fit for me although it does fit for the subcategory as a whole. The hierarchy of this specific meme is the picture then the words as the picture is conveying the main point and the words are a guide of interpretation after looking at the picture.  This meme made me chuckle and I thought was quite original because I have never seen it before, being an avid Reddit memer.

Blog post #8

One major change I’m making to my paper is really analyzing the underlying theme of the pancakes, or the event, as a whole is actually something more than free food. Rachael Hoy brought this to my attention during our conference. I will be making this change because it is a big part of my argument and I neglected it in my old paper.  Breaking it off to its own separate paragraph will not only increase my word count, which is at 2,000, it will also strength my overall argument of the underlying theme.

            Another major change I will be making to my paper is adding some transitions that had been left out. This was brought to my attention multiple ways, my peer, professor, and noticing it myself. I will be making this change because without good transitions even an otherwise great paper sound amateur. With good transitions the flow of the paper is greatly increased , and it is easier to see the movement from one idea to another. This change will help the flow of my paper where it is confusing because I just jump from one idea to another.

            Something that needed changing in my old paper was my thesis statement. This was brought to my attention by my professor, Rachael Hoy, my thesis statement is only one sentence. Which is not wrong if you are able to fit it in one sentence, which I thought must be done. After I learned I was able to actually draw out my thesis statement into multiple sentences, almost a paragraph, I am able to articulate my meaning in a much superior fashion. This helps the overall set up of my paper as a whole.

Blog Post #7

The source I found for my ethnographic paper is a scholarly article. This article is from the University of Kentucky's library database, which was shown to us in class. The article is a breakdown of certain themes usually found in ministries, especially in a campus environment. These themes they seemed to stumble upon were "Themes of the narrative included the value of accepting others' differences as diversity, the value of creating and building places where people feel “at home,” the importance of personal growth through asking open and honest questions, and healing past hurt” (Mankowski, Eric S. ,Thomas, Elizabeth). All the themes they expressed seemed to strength my argument as I found the same general themes in the C.S.F. Themes of acceptance and diversity, and as Clark said to me in the interview I conducted the he felt the C.S.F. was a place he could bring up the past and get through it with everyone there. The article is a great find as it matches very well with what I was originally saying, and it supports my observations of the C.S.F. as someone else came to the same conclusions as I.

Reference:

Mankowski, Eric S. ,Thomas, Elizabeth. “The relationship between personal and collective identity:A narrative analysis of a campus ministry community.” Journal of Community Psychology. Vol. 28. Issue 5, (Sept. 2000): p517-528. 12p. Academic Search Premier. Web. 3 November 2013.

Blog Post #6

            There are always secrets people don’t want you to know about, and I for one was completely oblivious to this Las Vegas secret. Such a massive thing being overlooked by so many people is astonishing. 300 plus miles of storm drains beneath a city such as Vegas is expected, but the unnoticed truth of people living so close to the dazzling lights, but at the same time far off in the distance from this reality is an ignored truth of the Vegas residence. As Adam Burch from NPR put it “Then again that may be too real. As I surveyed the tourists no one was checking out the gutters, everyone was looking up at the dazzling lights.”

            After hearing about the underbelly of Las Vegas it opens my eyes to the supposedly spectacular city that never sleeps. As our generation has been brought up we’ve always been told the famous quote “what happens in Vegas stays in Vegas.” Which is exactly what happened. I have heard so many things about Las Vegas, the parties, the night life, never sleeping, the massive bill boards of neon signs, the beautiful women, basically a place you can put all your chips on the table and it can make or break you. I’ve watched countless movies about it, but never once have I heard the reality of this city. For some reason, this crazy idea of homeless people not making it big has been completely wiped from my memory. It seems the big shot casinos don’t want you to think about this truth. They want a perfect image portrayed to tourists, riches beyond imagination, rolling in money, girls (or guys) on both sides of your arm, and then you go home forgetting about this great vacation. The marketing of Vegas has overlooked this truth reviled by Adam Burch and it has honestly shattered this idea of a perfect city.

Blog post #5

            Concerning the rubric I believe my score is adequate. I will go through the rubric section by section and comparatively critic myself. The first section of the rubric is content. In this section I believe I received 16-20 points depending on the time restraint. I stayed focused on what I wanted to deliver and my purpose, getting my peers to feel like the C.S.F. is acceptable to study.

            Following the content section is the supporting material section. I did fairly well in the section. Two orally cited sources were given which was the requirement. They we’re properly distributed throughout the power point/speech and ranged from an interview source to a journal. They were linked to my delivered points, which is all the column asks.

            The Macrostructure column may have been lacking in points unlike the other sections. I omitted some transitions in the delivery, which takes away from the overall score.  Besides the transitions I felt like it was original in the sense of everyone else’s “attention catchers”, and I felt like I came off as a creditable source of the C.S.F. with the provided information.

            The next section is the microstructure section. I would say I did decent in this section because I talked in a clear manner, no slang or jargon, and it was appropriate for the speech. However, I did include a lot of vocal pauses such as “uhh” or “uhmm” which should be omitted for a better delivery of my speech.

            The two sections, Use of Body and Use of Voice, I feel confident the score is at a minimum of 25 points. The reasoning behind my decided point value is due to my appropriate use of attire, poise, eye contact, and gestures. My voice delivery had inflection, which engaged the audience; also being fluent resulted in an intellectual persona of a creditable source.

            My presentational aids were smooth, and had a uniform layout throughout with a pleasing template color. It was properly credited with in-text citations. It was equipped with large readable text and font. The power point was gestured appropriately in context to the rubric when there were visual aids and when attention needed to be shifted to the power point.