Final Reflection

One of the biggest moments of wobble that I have experienced this semester is my first blog post, but first a little bit of explanation of wobble. Wobble in the manner that I will be using is a moment of weakness or a moment that was difficult. My first blog post scared the living day lights out of me for no reason other than the fact that I was scared of the world seeing what I was saying. Actually I take that back I was not scared of what the world sees, I care more about what people from high school was say if they saw what I posting. I honestly don't know what I feared this because it is foolish. I should not be scared of expressing my ideas and what is going on through my head, should I? Why should I be scared of others, when they don't even remember what I say or do they? Who is has the right to put me down for expressing me? Why should I conform to social norms? Why can't I create my own style? Can I create my own style? What happens when I do break the norm? Would there be consequences for it? What would it take to break the norm? Would the people I was worried about even care if they did see it? Would they even remember my words on this page? Or ever remember this blog at all?

Literacy Narrative Reflective Blog

Documentation of Revision:

• 1st Draft
• 2nd Draft
• 3rd Draft/Final Draft
• Attempt at something that turned into nothing:(sorry for the size had to make it big enough to see) 
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It was hard at first for me to figure out what to write about because I had this image stuck in my head of a story that had to directly relate with writing and our lives. Needless to say I do not have many concrete interesting stories about writing that could even take up a paragraph. Once I figured out that it just had to literacy in general terms. I then thought of the trip I took to Australia summer before Sophomore year in High School. I knew it would make it easier for me because so much had happen on this trip that I could talk about. It was different and it was risky. I revised my first draft into a stream of consciousness story that was was quick and fast moving. I ended up in telling more of the story in the second draft also. I am not saying that my second draft was perfect because by all means it was no where near that. After that one day in class we watched a whiteboard video that was really cool, so I thought it would be cool to do something like that. I knew that there was no way for me to do the whiteboard so I just drew out all my pictures and was planning on making a video. After I made the video I would go back over it with a voice over and tell the story in a stream of consciousness way. I ended up in drawing it out, but I never ended up in making the video. Instead I went through my second draft and read it out loud, and the parts I did not like how they sounded I would change to whatever suited my mood at that time. It was good although probably my grammar in the paper was not the best, and also it was defiantly not 100% stream of consciousness. There were a few sentences  where it did not fit into the overall style. That is okay though because I needed to have those parts in there and without the story would just not make sense. Editing my work is not as much fun as revising though because editing is more of the boring stuff while revising is changing up the way you are telling the story or some other way that is cool interesting. This assignment was really cool. I liked how the story could pretty much be about whatever we wanted, and we as students were not constricted to a certain style or anything it was all us. We could do it however we wanted and whatever we wanted it to be about. 

Ethnography Reflective Post

It was not that difficult to figure out what to write and what to put in the photo montage. I sat down and just thought about how and why people write what they write on the whiteboards. I think it was easy for me because I always find myself thinking about why others do what they do. When I was writing out what to say I originally wrote what I was going to say, and then I went back through and read it. When I was reading it I would edit certain sections that did not sound just right. One thing I think our group struggled with was communicating with each other, but when it came down to it we got it done and I think we did a pretty good job. Next time I would exchange numbers because that is a more direct way to get in contact with someone rather than email or other methods. It was not hard to create a non essay because in previous blog posts I have experimented with presenting ideas in different forms. Which is good because when I first tried doing videos it was hard, and took a long time. When I was working on the ethnography project though it came together pretty quickly and was not hard at all. I think this was good project because it forced us to experiment with expressing ideas in a different way, and also it forced us to collaborate with others.

Here are links to our project:
My Youtube Video: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=g4C_G8e2K0s
Our Prezi: http://prezi.com/25tfhjv-yfg7/ethnography-project-public-writing/?kw=view-25tfhjv-yfg7&rc=ref-10587848
My editing notebook: https://docs.google.com/file/d/0B1lN72Wx9W97SWxHRHdjaWw5SkE/edit

No Message Poems

The other day in class we read a poem that literally had no overall purpose to it or message. This was a change of pace compared to high school. In high school every piece that we read we always had to interpret it and figure out the meaning of it. This piece you could take whatever meaning you wanted from the poem. No line truly connected with other, so you could just one line that you really related to and just say that was the overall message of the poem. Maybe that is wrong, but it is what I did for the poems I read. We were challenged to try and create a no message poem ourselves. I picked a glue stick and tried thinking of the most random things about the glue stick. What really threw the person off was the last line. Maybe the point of these poems is to build up an idea in the first part, and then just blow that idea up either in the last line or in the last section. Or maybe the purpose is to drive people mad and make them ponder the meaning of the poem when there is no meaning. Hmmmm. Oh well.

Hazel Tells Laverne

For writing into the day on Thursday November 8th,2012 we were given a piece about a frog prince and a souther women. Why would I say southern women well it was quite obvious to me that she was southern by the way she said and how she said it. Anyways in the original story the girl kisses the frog and the frog turns into a big ol' nice prince. In the real world though who would kiss a frog! Really though who in their right mind would say yes to kissing a frog. That has always perplexed me from the first time I heard the story, with that being said. In this story she hits the frog with a broom and flushes him down the toilet. Really interesting and different the way that she spoke and also the outcome of the story. I've heard of variations of it, so that the frog doesn't do anything and just stays a frog. I really did like this piece and it was refreshing to see such a piece like this.

What We Carry

The other day in class we were encouraged to write what we had on our persons and what we had in our bags. This was building on what we read the night before class about a group of soldiers that all carried something to help remind them of home. Each one had something different, and each item held a different meaning to them. For writing into the day I wrote everything that I had on my person and my bag. I wrote out each thing, and then went back through and wrote next to each one why I believe that I had it with me. I had a wide variety of things some had some purpose while others served no purpose what so ever. I can't help but to think what would I carry with me if I went to war. What would be light but still remind me of where I'm from or something about my life. Would a photograph be sufficient enough for me, or is it not enough. I honestly do not know. I also don't think the amount of time I think about it would make a difference. The only way for me to know is if I actually left home for a while and then came back. The reason I say that is because then I would have been away from home and when I came back I could see what really resonates with me as home.

Annotated Bibliography Mini Assignment

1.)Whiteboard, UNCC Witherspoon Dorm. Personal photograph by author. 2012.

2.)Whiteboard with smudge, Witherspoon Dorm UNCC. Personal photograph by author. 2012.

3.)"With Girl That Has Whiteboard." Personal interview. 1 Nov. 2012.

1.) The significance of the first resource was it was used to compile the data for our project. 

2.) The significance of the second one was showing us that not all the whiteboards were nice and clean. 

3.) The significance is that she told us about different random stuff that people would write and different things of that nature. 

Ethnography Project

For our Ethnography we choose to do Public Writing. This extended from posters to bulletin boards to graffiti  to white boards. My portion of the project was to observe white boards across the dorm. I am having trouble uploading a picture of my daybook observations, but here is the breakdown.
Public Writing

• 5 Boards
• 3 Blank
• 1 with a :D
• 1 with a blue ink smudge
• 5 were girls dorms
• 1 had a picture of everybody that lived there

Analysis 

 Most people must clean their boards off or people had simply not written on their boards. Also that only girls had white boards on their door. I do not know the significance of that, but there has to be some connection. There is correlation but there is no causation behind it. 

Link to Our Groups Google Map

https://maps.google.com/maps?hl=en

Mapping Mini Assignment

This shows where the start of the trail is

This is the next sign after it 

1/4 mile marker and bench 

Found this kind of amusing 

there is no 1/2 marker so here's the 3/4 marker

1 mile marker

1 1/4 mile marker and garbage can 

1 mile and 1/2 marker 

trail that leads back to the campus

This is a map of where I did my mapping. It is the greenway. I took pictures of different points of the trail that had literacy involved with it. Those were the pictures from my run that had to do with literacy. I did not draw a map in my daybook because it is hard to bring my daybook on a run. So I used pictures instead and a map from google maps to show where it was. Also the pictures are all in order of where they are on the map going from right to left, except for the last one. The last one is right after the first picture. These signs have are significant literacy signage because they let runners, walkers, and bikers know where they are on the trail. They let them know how far they have ran and also how much longer they have(if they have been on the trail). 

The Charles Sequence Reflective Blog

A couple weeks ago we read a story about a little boy that wanted to see his dad at work. The little boy then took his mom's car and started driving it to try and see his dad. The car rolled off the side of the road right before the interstate. There was a driver behind him and a cop, so we could choose one of the perspectives of somebody in the story. After we choose somebodies perspective we then had to right about the events solely from their eyes. I decided to write from the perspective of the man driving the car behind him. When we were done with the first try Lacy then asked us to read some of ours. We all did it the same way, we all did it in a past tense looking back at it. So she challenged us to try and write it in the moment of all the events. This was different and interesting, now thinking back on it I don't think that I have really tried writing in the moment. It was a different kind of challenge, and you can tell by my writing that it was choppy and not flowing like it could have been. It is good that we challenge ourselves in our writing in order to grow as writers. Although everybody dreads challenges in the end a challenge is what helps you grow and become a stronger writer. I really like these different exercises that Lacy has us do that make us write in a different manner than what we are accustomed to. Thank you Lacy, for helping me grow as a writer.

Midterm Blog

For our midterm for English we had two parts the first part was to comment on others blogs and then the second part was with your group and to find a mentor text. We had to find a mentor text and write beside at the library. Here is the documentation of our adventure. 

These are the screenshots of recording how we found the mentor texts we choose. Everywhere we looked for mentor texts, they always came up as children's books. I think this is because in a children's book you can experiment more with how you write and also how you present the writing more than if it was a novel of some sorts published for an older reading crowd. 

We ended up in choosing I Stink to write beside. 

Here is the video of us actually looking for the books that we did find online. I am sorry I had to edit out the part of us writing because it just shows my knee and the table the whole time. Sorry:/. 

Youtube Midterm Library Walkthrough . It did not take us long to find the mentor texts in the library because we had already looked up what we were going to get and where that would be. I thought overall the whole process was interesting and fun. I imagined finding a different mentor texts, but I think the one we did find and write beside was as effective if not more than any other we could have chosen from. It used a different way of writing and that was cool and interesting. 

Lollapalooza

So for WID on Thursday I choose to ignore the inspiration, and did what was on my mind. I wrote about Lollapalooza, for those who don't know what this is I will explain. It is a massive music festival held every summer in Chicago's Grant Park.

 Here is the list of artist, just to give you an idea. The Red Hot Chili Peppers / Jack White / Black Sabbath / The Black Keys / Florence + The Machine / At the Drive-In / Bassnectar / Avicii / The Shins / Justice / Passion Pit / Kaskade / The Weeknd / Sigur Ros / Bloc Party / Calvin Harris / Miike Snow / The Afghan Whigs / M83 / Franz Ferdinand / Frank Ocean / Nero / J. Cole / Knife Party / Childish Gambino / Delta Spirit / Santigold / Metric / Zeds Dead / The Temper Trap / Wale / Big Gigantic / Die AntwoordDawes / Tune-Yards / Skream & Benga / The Head & the Heart / The Big Pink / Twin Shadow / The Tallest Man on Earth / Toro Y Moi / Little Dragon / Dr. Dog / Of Monsters And Men / Gary Clark Jr / Alabama Shakes / The Gaslight Anthem / SBTRKT / Amadou & Mariam / Porter Robinson / The Walkmen / Tame Impala / Sub Focus / Band of Skulls / JJ Grey & Mofro / Madeon / Neon Indian / Zedd / Dum Dum Girls / Paper Diamond / Washed Out / Aloe Blacc / Trampled by Turtles / Bear in Heaven / Blind Pilot / Chairlift / The Black Angels / Yellow Ostrich / GIVERS / Polica / Bombay Bicycle Club / Sharon Van Etten / White Rabbits / Doomtree / Totally Enormous Extinct Dinosaurs / Macklemore & Ryan Lewis / The Devil Makes Three / Oberhofer / Star Slinger / The War on Drugs / Michael Kiwanuka / O RAPPA / Bowerbirds / Orchard Lounge / MonaThe Growlers / Hey Rosetta! / Jeff the Brotherhood / Anamanaguchi / First Aid Kit / Wax / Fidlar / JC Brooks & The Uptown Sound / Milo Greene / Los Jaivas / Kopecky Family Band / The Jezabels / Nadastrom / LP / DJ Nihal / Yuna / The White Panda / Walk Off The Earth / Animal Kingdom / DEV / SALVA / The Sheepdogs / The Dunwells / DJ Mel / Empires / Kevin Devine / Dry the River / Helena / Haley Reinhart / Imaginary Cities / Overdoz / Ambassadors / DJ Zebo / thenewno2 / Moon Taxi / Chancellor Warhol / Laura Warshauer / Red Oblivion / Kid Color. 
So that gives you an idea of the artist there, and there was a total of 270,000 attendees over three days. So now done explaining the festival with words, I would like to expand on my ideas using pictures and videos of my own experiences. 

Videos

Beware this is some bad language in the video please do not let children hear it. Thank You. 

 Pictures

People in the Streets of Chicago

Childish Gambino

Childish Gambino

Trampled by Turtles Stage

Frank Ocean

and Childish Gambino

J Cole

Santigold stage from far away

I hope you enjoyed seeing everything. Please comment and tell me what you thought of everything

Image of Writing

Image of Writing Reflective Blog 

So I got really bored and decided to play with the video that I took for an assignment called Image of Writing. The project was take snapshots or record yourself of you writing for a certain amount of time. I was at the library working on calculus, so I decided to take a break and work on the Image of Writing assignment. I think recording myself writing helped me focus on the assignment at hand, and I really never got distracted for a long time. Another thing that could have helped me focus was that I already knew what I wanted to write. I knew what I had to do and the story is a long one, so I am not as worried about filling up the pages with little details and stuff like that. I honestly don't know how else I was so focused maybe I will try this again, and see what happens. Anyways heres the video of my image of writing. Hopefully it works. Enjoy.

I do what I do because...

I do what I do because I hate the word average. 

This weeks blog post is about one of our writing into the days this week. Lacy showed us a website with a bunch of different people holding a piece of paper saying why they do what they do. So of course I had to give it a shot. When I was writing in my day book I was just thinking of certain things I do and why I do them. There is never only one reason you do what you do. This I figured out very soon into my writing. Everything has some purpose behind it. Why do you go to college? Why do you work out? Why do what you do in your day to day life. Why do you dress the way you do? I think it is interesting why we do what we do.  It's just something that really fascinates me. I'm very curious why do you do what you do?

Reflective Blog Post Writing Timeline

Reflective Blog Post Writing Timeline

After creating my writing timeline I realized something. I realized that most of the timeline is not about me writing except for one. Most of the events are about reading which I think there's a hard connection between the two. I believe how much you read can almost directly translate to how good of a writer. Now that I think about it neither are the same, yes they have to do with words and English. Each are two different arts though. Writing requires creativity and focus, yet reading requires focus and dedication. They are two completely different mind sets. I think of myself as a good reader, but  a terrible writer. I can never seem to find the inspiration for writing long interesting stories or papers. The video if it works shows you my own personal timeline dealing with writing, but if it does not work just use this My Prezi Writing Timeline. Thank you for reading my blog until next time. 

1st Reflective Blog Post English 1101

Reflective Blog Post

Last week in class we read a poem by Langton Hughes for inspiration for Writing Into the Day. Which is how we start everyday in English 1101, but you can write whatever you want and however you want. The teacher Miss Manship provides the class with inspiration for Writing Into the Day. As interesting as the poem was and as much as I loved what it stood for, I decided to let my mind wander off on another direction. When I did let my mind wander I ended up in actually getting a more freer flow of writing than normal. I started writing about what I was truly thinking in the moment, instead of writing about what the teacher told me I had to write. Instead of wasting five minutes thinking about what will I write or hmm I better make a really good story up, so that I have something interesting to read. Instead of that wasted time it only took a couple of second for the pencil to reach the paper and begin to let my thoughts out on paper. To give a little context of where I was at, the day that I did actually write the WITD I was trying to do a bunch of things, so that I could just chill and relax for the weekend. I felt like sometimes there are not enough hours in the day to do everything, but if you can find a way to get stuff done that feeling is very rewarding. I'm the type of person that once I know what I have to do I will go out and get it done, so that I do not have to bother with it later  and just let things pile up into one huge mess.  My mind was overwhelmed with to do lists and other stuff to do that day, so much that I could really only think of that to write about for that day.