Final Reflective Blog

Wobble: An unsteady movement from side to side, swaying, to tremble, to be weak.  When I hear the word wobble those are the words that come to mind.  For this blog I am supposed to think back to a time throughout the semester where something has made me wobble.  So, I went back to the first week of class and processed everything we did until the last week of class. 

At the beginning of each class we would do an Improv activity.  There were multiple ones we did throughout the semester but the ones that really stuck out to me were:  zip zap zop, yes and… word pass and gestures.  I’m sure those of you reading this know exactly what these are!  To be honest I didn’t like doing these at first.  9:30 a.m was just too early for my brain to be thinking and my body to be moving.  I know you are probably thinking, “Wow you must be lazy!”  But I promise I’m not!
Improv made me feel uncomfortable.  It challenged my thinking and made me feel very awkward.  Was this what Lacy was trying to make me feel like?  You see, for me, thinking of something to say on the spot while people were staring at me, judging me and waiting for me to speak, scared the heck out of me.  What if I said something stupid?  What if people looked at me weird because of what I said?  One of the ones we did that was most challenging was Word Pass.  One person would start off with a word and point to another person who would have to come up with another word related to it.  We would have to remember our word and the person we pointed to.  Eventually we would have two words and two people that we had to remember.  What was challenging was coming up with a word to say related to what the person before had just said.  Sometimes it took me a few seconds to think of what to say.  Half the time I would say my word it would be completely random and not related to the previous word whatsoever.  Did Lacy want us to keep the words related or did it not matter?  I got butterflies in my stomach, my heart started to beat fast and my brain would blank out.  The reason I got like this was because I have always been terrible with thinking “outside the box.”  You had to have an imagination in order to think in the way Lacy wanted us to think.  Or at least that’s what I think she wanted us to do. 

I think that the Improv’s we did were a form of wobbling because they made me feel uncomfortable, they challenged my thinking and made me think in a way that I was not used to.  Looking back at my experiences with doing the activity I can honestly say that it has helped my imagination grow and helped me think outside the box.  I can definitely tell that Improv has become easier for me than it was at the beginning of the semester.  I don’t think our Improv activities would be the same without the awesome people involved.  If someone said something completely random and funny we would all laugh (in a good way).  If I couldn’t think of something to say my classmates would help me out.  Knowing that they weren’t going to judge what I said made me feel a little bit better. I still wonder if this is what Lacy intended to happen with the Improv activites?  She never really told us why we did them....

This was a really great class!  It has made me write in a more creative way and showed me a different type of literacy I had never seen before.  Thanks Lacy.  Hope everyone has a fabulous Christmas! 

Final Literacy Narrative Blog

When we first got this assignment I was actually pretty excited.  It didn't seem too hard and it sounded like it would be fun.  The hard part for me was figuring out what to write about.  I had to brainstorm a time or times when I had experienced literacy.  This is something I have never really thought about before so it took quite a while to come up with an idea.

Lacy gave us six note cards. On card one I wrote about my characteristics as a reader or writer.  Card two was a freewrite where I proposed my idea.  Cards three and four I expanded on my idea.  On card five I described my situation as a metaphor. And on the last card I wrote my final proposal for the essay.  I like doing things in steps.  These cards really helped me figure out what to write about.  I veered slightly from what I had originally proposed but I think that was for the better.

I like to change things quite often but the revision process was challenging for me.  I mostly just looked at the small gramatical errors and fixed those throughout my paper and fixed the sentences that were worded weird.  I realized that this was more editing than rivising.  I had to do something to make bigger changes in my essay.  I started to look back at the revision activities we did throughout class and found a lot of ways that I could change my essay.  I looked at my verbs to see if they were in the correct tense, looked at my opening line to make sure it was catchy enough and I looked to see if there was a point in my paper that lacked something.  I wrote in vivid, deep detail to describe what I was seeing and feeling.  I figured that this would be enough revision for now. 

For my final copy of my literacy essay I thought it would be a good idea to pull sentences at the end of my paper and put them in the opening paragraph.  Ya know switch some stuff around.  This helped me expand on a lot of stuff.  I tried to write more "in the moment" to see what that would do. 

The revision process had me very frustrated at times.  I would get to a point where I thought I had put everything I could into my essay.  I knew that there had to be more I could do... I would take a break from writing and come back with a crisp, clear head to get working on it again.  Overall this was a positive experience and one that I would (for the most part) love to do again. 

Ethnography Project Reflective Blog

Recently my group and I have completed our final Ethnography Project.  I must say that it is a relief to have it all done!  I have decided to take a look back in time to when we first began this project.  It all started with the Mini Mapping Assignment we did where I had to map out a place on campus where there was a hidden literacy. 

I chose to go with the visual category and that ended up turning into art.  The next day in class we shared what we uncovered and were placed into groups based on our similar categories.  There were three other people who did art, Nora, Cory and Taylor.  We got together and began sharing our thoughts and ideas.

We decided to take the idea of art and think about the different types, leading us to think about sculptures.  So we decided that we would each have a seperate sculpture and interview people about what they think of the piece.  We put together a few questions on what we would ask the people.  After this we conducted a Google document with everyone's interviews.  We thought this would be a good thing to uses because we can edit it at any time and also share it with everyone in the group, including Lacy. 

After we had this done we were king of stumped on what to do next.  How were we suppose to connect all of these to literacy and make it interesting?  We decided to do four acts for each one of us.  We would be doing interviews with discussion in between each interview to respond. 

It seemed like a great idea at first.  We would just have to record our voices and that was that.  In class, we did some research on the different kinds of audo players we could record our voices with, but none of them seemed to work.  Finally we realized that we were going to have to do a video because that would actually show the sculptures.  It would be much easier this way because we could just use iMovie and people could get a visual of what we were talking about. 

So, we met outiside of class on a beautiful day, and got to work.  Prior to us meeting, each of us had to record our interviews and respones so that Nora could record them on her computer.  It did not take us long to get the final copy of our video.  Yeah we had to do a lot of retakes because I would end up laughing but that was one of the fun things about it. 

Overall I really enjoyed this project!  It was a lot of work at times but I still had fun while I was doing it.  It actually wasn't very hard for our group to decided what we were going to do our project on.  Nora is an art major so of course she really wanted to do something with art!  The revision process was a lot.  We would have one good idea then realize it wasn't going to work so we would have to change it.  I couldn't have asked for a better group.  They are awesome.  Everyone put in time to the project, we all got along and we had fun while producing our Ethography.  It was definetely different for me to create a video instead of writing a boring essay about Ethnography.  It helps you see it differently.  If you would like to take another look at our final piece, here it is:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=nG3PCs4Rbjk

Thanks!

Nothing Elegant

In class last Tuesday we were to pick a Gertrude Steiner poem to analyze.  As soon as I heard the word poem I wanted to scream.  Poems.... I could go on for days and days about how I have never understood them and dislike them, but I won't.  So, I started to read Nothing Elegant:

A charm a single charm is doubtful. If the red is rose and there is a gate surrounding it, if inside is let in and there places change then certainly something is upright. It is earnest.

I must say I was pretty mind blown.  What in the world was this lady talking about!?  I started with the title which seemed pretty easy.  The word "elegant" to me means rich and proper, but the word "nothing" in front of it makes it seem like the poem is not about rich things and such.   That is why I was confused.  The poem talked about charms and red roses so why did Steiner title this Nothing Elegant?

I left my analysis at that for the class period but I decided to look further into it for this weeks blog post.  It seemed like everything in the poem was unrelated... It would jump from one thing to another and nothing seemed to flow.  I like things that are orderly and flow so I think this is why it was hard for me to grasp Steiners poem.  I decided to google Gertrude Steiner and try to figure out what it was about.  I figured out that she is really into fashion.  So I applied that to the poem and it started to make a little more sense. 

So basically my interpretation of Nothings Elegant was that no object is singular and everything is never ending, things keep being created and changing.... And maybe that is why the things in her poem seem unrelated. 

Hazel tells LaVerne

In class last week we read a poem called, "Hazel tells LaVerne" to respond for our writing into the day assignment.  I was not really in the mood to go into detail and really tell what I thought about it, so that is what I will do here. 

When I started to read this poem I figured it would be like ever other fairytale.  But as it progressed I realized that this was going to be different.  Hazel has the choice to take the frog with her and love him and kiss him but instead she replies almost rudely to him and says no she will not. 
To me, this was very interesting because in a typical fairytale there is always a happily ever after.  I also figured that since this poem had a frog in it that the girl would end up kissing the frog. 

I looked deeper into this peom because I thought to myself. "There has to be a point and meaning to this poem just like all the others right?"  So when I thought about this I figured out that Hazel was very unlike the stereotypical girl in  fairytale society.  She uses broken English that sounds very hillbillyish.  She turns away from the frog and tells him no, which is different than the typical fairytale that we all are used to. 

One thing that I found interesting was that when I got the piece of paper and looked at it I dreaded reading it.  I dreading reading it because I saw it was a poem.  But... as I was reading the poem became more like a story to me.  It was very easy to read and comprehend. 

Annotated Bibliography

In class on Thursday we were given the assignment that has to do with MLA formatting.  Yeah I have heard the word before and kind of knew what it was, but I didn't know exactly what it was or how to do it.  Our task was to research websites that did MLA formatting and to also look more into what it is.  After we did this we were to describe three sources we did with our ethnography project and describe them. 

So, after I did some research and learned more about MLA, I came up with this:


Interview 1:
Arin: Hey do you have a moment to answer a few questions about this sculpture?
Katie: Yeah sure what would you like to know?
Arin: Okay well what is your first impression of this piece?
Katie: I think it is very interesting actually.  I like how even though it is made out of sticks it still looks cool.  To me this is a very odd representation of the human form.  The way one leg is full and the other is skinnier and tapers off is different.  If you look at it from different angles it looks more interesting and you can see more differences in each side of the body.
Arin: Wow that was very detailed thank you! Okay so another question for you, what do you think the artist was trying to say with the piece of art?
Katie: Well I think this piece seems broken, unfinished and unfulfilled.  I am sure there is some sort of narrative behind it.  But maybe the author was trying to leave it open in places and "unfinished" because that's what our lives are like.  We can leave space to grow each day.
Arin: Thank you so much Katie I really appreciate it!
Katie: No problem.

Dangelo, Katie. Personal Interview. 30 October. 2012

- This person really gave me a lot of what she thought about the sculpture.  She looked at it with an open mind and in a completely different way than I did when I first saw it.  This made me think about all the different literacies and how each person might think of them differently. 

Interview 2:
Arin: Hey Micah can I ask you some questions about this sculpture right here?
Micah: Yeah sure as long as you hurry haha.
Arin: Okay I will.  What do you think of this piece?
Micah: I think it looks really weird and deformed.  It seems dull and in an awkward position.
Arin: Do you think the artist did this for a certain reason?
Micah: Well yeah obviously.  I think he probably wanted to make something out of sticks so he made a man out of it. 
Arin: Okay.. How does this piece make you feel?
Micah: It really isn't that exciting so kind of dull.  Definitely not happy though.
Arin: Thanks so much.

Johnson, Micah. Personal Interview. 30 October. 2012

- As you can see Micah gave me a different interpretation of the sculpture, proving my point that not everyone sees it the same way.  There are so many types of literacies in the world attached to different meanings as well.  There is no right or wrong.  It is open for your own judgement.

Artist unknown, Stick Man, n.d, UNC Charlotte Campus, Charlotte NC.
- Being able to take pictures is a wonderful thing.  You can go back and look at them, bringing back memories maybe.  Pictures can be with you at any time too.  Without having "proof" of something it is hard to tell what someone is talking about.   With this picture here, I hope you have a better understanding of what this sculpture looks like.

Fieldwork Assignment: Sculpture

In my group we decided to choose sculptures as our literacy fact.  In class last Thursday we talked about the different kinds of art we could do and what seemed interesting around campus.  All of us agreed that sculptures seemed the most interesting and everyone in my group had already done a sculpture, well except for me.  We thought it would be a good idea for each of us to pick a sculpture we wanted to dig deeper into and go from there.

I chose the one that is in front of  the Rowe Arts building to the left as you walk up the stairs.  I figured people see it frequently since it is right there ya know?  Our group came up with a few questions that we would ask random people passing by the sculptures. 

So since I cannot upload a picture of the sculpture I will just describe it to you.  It is made out of sticks.  Like from a tree.  It embodies a man.  One of the legs is slightly in front of the other and the same goes for the mans arm.  However he has no feet or hands and the top of the head is not inclosed.  It is almost like the ends of his body kinda flow outward in different ways.  My perception of the sculpture from the way he was standing was that he was trying to get somewhere and the limbs of his body were open and going in all different directions, just his mind should be to different places and ideas. 

I interviewed two people today (yes only two because it was freezing cold outside and no one wanted to stop.)  One of the people I talked to was actually an art major so I was anxious to see what she had to say about the object.  She said, "It looks like one leg is full and the other kind of tapers off.  From the right it looks like a long arm but it looks different depending on where you stand.  It is a very odd representation of human form but I think the author was trying to give him the title of being broken, unfulfilled and unfinished."  The other person I interviewed was a guy and his thoughts were a little different.  He said, "I think it is a very interesting piece that I have never payed close attention to.  It looks almost depressing and since it is made out of sticks it has that bare, boring look to it.  I would be interested to know what the story is behind this interesting piece." 

I think a lot of people over look the sculptures we have here at UNC Charlotte, I know I did.  But there is so much more to it then just what you see on the outside of it.  Each piece had some kind of story behind it. 

Mapping Assignment

For our homework assignment we were to find a place at UNCC we had to find a location that we saw literacy.  I thought hard about where to go... then I thought some more... and more... and then I walked into my dorm, Moore Hall, and saw people painting picture frames by the front desk. 

I didn't think anything of it at first but as I was walking by I decided to actually stop and see what they were doing.  You see, there are all sorts of activities that usually go on but I just choose not to interact with them.  I'm not sure why, I just don't.  But anyways... I thought I could connect this to literacy somehow. 

I think that visuals help people connect to text better.  It lets people open their minds and actually map out things.  When I was a kid I read a lot of childrens books.  What I liked about them was the fact that I could look at a picture to help me understand the words on the page.  If it wasn't for art I feel like my childhood experience with reading would not have been very good. 

Another thing that I noticed about Moore was that the RC's and RA's post stuff on the bulletin boards in front of the elevator.  You have no choice to read it as you wait for the elevator.  The board actually gives you a lot of things you can do to get involved as well as all the important dates you need to know academically.  They are really trying to promote ways for us to ingage and get involved at UNC Charlotte. 

For the most part Moore Hall is a pretty boring, but for some reason the past two weeks they have really spiced it up a bunch.  The walls are not as boring, they have fun, engaging activities to do and they post a lot of helpful information for us freshman. 

Like all my other blog post I am unable to put a picture up of my map because it says the file is incompatable to my computer... So sorry about that. 

GRAMMAR!!!!

This past week we had to write in our daybooks about grammar.  Lacy told us to go write anything we want about it, to either say how much you love it or how much you despise it.  I quickly opened my daybook and got out my pencil.  I could not wait to write about this! 

 I personally hate grammar.  I cannot emphasize the word "hate" enough here.  If grammar never existed I would be one happy girl when it comes to writing.  I cannot spell to save my life.  In Elementary school I would always lose the first round of spelling bees and even now I found myself turning to my neighbor asking for how to spell something.  I never know when to use commas and semi-colons.  They just really confuse me for some reason.  Another thing that I am terrible with is word tenses... I tend to talk in past and present tense while talking about the same thing.  I really hate all the red marks that were constantly covering my papers because of all my mistakes. 

 After we wrote in our daybooks about grammar we did an improv game where we just rambled on about what we thought of grammar.  One of the interesting things I learned was that a lot of people dislike and struggle with it as well, it wasn't just me!  But one of my concerns is why do so many people dislike grammar?  What really is so annoying and hard about it?  You would think that since we are in college we would have lots of practice with it and wouldn't hate it as much... Well at least that's what I think!  Unfortunately for me I feel like I will never be good at it, but that doesn't stop me from trying to get better at grammar.   

**Oh and just so you guys know, my computer doesn't have to update to recieve pictures that I send from my phone so I can't get it to work.  And I cannot figure out how to download the update!  Sorry.

Midterm Assignment

Instead of going to class on Tuesday, I met with my writing group to do our midterm assignment.  We decided to meet at the Library obviously because we had to find a mentor text of some sort to help us with our literacy narrative.  I have been in the Library many times but still didn't know which floor was which.  I was told to go to the second floor so when I thought was the second floor I was actually on the third!  Dumb me.  I finally found them on the second floor by the lounge chairs.  We sat down and discussed what our objective was and how we were going to do it.  So... The journy began.

From there we wandered to the third floor in search for a book.  Once we got there we realized we had no idea what we were looking for...  So I suggested we go to a computer to search for one.  Cory searched "mentor text" and "writing" and from there the computer directed us to the 6th floor.  There we looked for this book that we thought would be a good one, but once we found it we realized it was not what we were looking for.  Johnny had the bright idea of googling to find us a book, and sure enough he found one that looked decent.  The book was called "Owl Moon."

I had a picture of the book on my phone but my phone is currently not working and will not send the picture to my email for the life of it!!!!

"Owl Moon" was located on the fifth floor of the library, so we got back on the elevator and prayed we would find it.  Sure enough we did!  We sat in a circle and read through the book.  It was from first person perspective and very detailed.  We got out our pencils and paper and wrote for five minutes in the way the author did.  To my surprise it wasn't too hard.  I expanded on a part of my literacy narrative that I thought was weak and I hope to add it to my paper. 

Overall this experience was very interesting.  Even though it took us a while to find what we wanted, we eventually did and I think it turned out to be a fun, eventful project. 

Ira Glass on Storytelling

Last week in class we watched a video on the building blocks of a good story... I saw that the video was about five minutes long and figured it was just going to be a guy sitting in a chair the whole time telling a story.  Well, he did do all these things but to my surprise it was actually very interesting.  I found myself eager to start writing in my daybook before the video was even over!

The first thing that caught my attention was when he said, "In high school you are taught..." Immediately I started to think about my experience with writing in high school.  Basically what he was saying was that in high school you are given a topic sentence and specific things to write about in each paragraph, which is one-hundred percent true!  I remember for the tenth grade writing exam you were giving a topic to write about and they told you what the guidelines were for each paragraph.  This was the case for almost every paper I wrote and maybe it is why I dislike writing so much.  But anyways back to the video!  The guy was saying to simply tell a story.  Have a sequence of events down and tell us, "I did this, then I did this, and then..."  He emphasized the word "anecdote" and said that no matter how boring your story is the power of an anecdote will make your story more efficient. 

I think Lacy showed us this piece because this is exactly what we are trying to do with our Literacy Narratives.  Also we did another activity where we read a newspaper article and took the perspective of different characters.  I chose to write in first person perspective and then in the moment.  This helped me a lot with my Narrative and it gave me some ideas to play around with to hopefully improve.  

Fishbone!

Hello fellow writers.  I titled this piece “Fishbone” because for homework one day last week we had to read a story and complete this “fishbone” thing.  I was like whhhattt??  Fishbone?  And not to mention the title of the story we had to read was, “How to Tame a Wild Tongue.”  I thought to myself, “Well, I

So, some background information on the fishbone… The middle piece was to write what we thought the main argument the author was trying to convey, on the bones extending from the body we had to write the main points and on the last piece of bone we had to write our personal response.  I was like okay this sounds good let’s get to work on this thing!

 

The first part of the story was really funny and easy to follow, but as the girl went on it got more confusing.  There was so much Spanish in it and I do not know how to read Spanish!  I feel like she just kept dragging her story on and on, when she could’ve got her point out in a much more condensed form.  My understanding of the text was that she was describing all the different forms and difficulty of the many languages and how she has a certain accent to conform to her current location.  I can relate to this in a way because I know that I talk differently to my parents and grandparents than I do with my friends.   I have to watch what I say and how I say things with one of my best friends from New York because she says things a lot different than I do.  During the class discussion this topic came up and Lacy asked us if there is ONE right form of English.  I think that there is not just one right way and it varies with your culture.  Everyone has different accents and ways to say stuff I just think a lot of it has to do with what and how you were raised to speak. 

So, my question to you is: can you really “Tame a wild tongue?” 

Blog 3.. Literacy Dig

For this week’s blog I decided to look back at what I wrote for my literacy dig assignment.  I actually missed the class when Lacy described the assignment to us so when I looked at the syllabus and saw what we had to do I was a little frazzled.  But I proceeded on with it!

 

So.... I open my daybook and start to title the page.  I am sitting at my desk in my ten by fifteen inch dorm room as I begin to look around at some of the things that are of value to me and a big part of my life.  We have to list five things and write a "thick description" on it.  The items that I decide to choose are: my Charlotte 49er’s planner, my Brita water bottle, my overflowing trash can, my Alpha Delta Pi sunglasses and a picture of my two best friends.  All of these items show a little bit about me and I hope that as an outsider you can see why these objects are meaningful to me. 

My planner shows that I am an organized person and like I like to have my day planned out.  I love the feeling of accomplishing something and marking it off.  My water bottle is sitting in my mini fridge under my right now filled with crisp, clean filtered water.   Water is all I drink.  It is simply the best thing for a person to drink and I love the taste (even though water doesn’t really have a taste haha).  I am not really sure why I chose my trash can as an object to be honest.  Maybe it shows that I eat a lot because it is always full! My fourth item is my ADPi sunglasses.  I love sunglasses, just like I love the sun and summertime.  I wish it could be summer all year long and never winter!  My final object is my picture of me and my two best friends.  My friends mean everything to me.  We are with each other through the tick and the thin and I know for a fact I can always count on them. 

So there you have it!  My five objects that mean a lot to me in my everyday life!

 

Arin Hall

Reflective Blog 2

Looking back through my daybook, I chose to write about my writing timeline. When we were asked to think back as far as you can remember to the events that shaped and influenced you as a writer I got a little scared. I was scrambling through my head all the times I had to write something and what made me better as a writer. So.... this is what came to mind:
 

Over the past 13 years of school, I was never really a writer. I loved to read and stuff but never liked coming up with my OWN ideas and writing them on paper. The first thing that I can think of is my mom used to read me childrens books before bed all the time. It was the way she read them that I adored. Her voice flowed so nice and she would get deeply into the book. Shortly after she stopped reading books to me I got a journal for my 10th birthday! I was so excited. It was blue and white and had Dogs all over it. I started writing in my journal every day. I would write what I did that day, what was on my mind at the time, why my brother was so mean to me, and so much more! I loved getting my feelings out on paper because I didn't always have someone to share them with. I feel that this made me become and emotional writer and showed me that I love to rant about things.

In the 4th grade my teacher gave us an assignment where we had to read a book, dress up as the main character of it, and write a report and present it to the class. Mine was about a kid who lived in the city that played baseball. So.... I dressed up in a baseball cap and pants... yes I look kind of like a boy but oh well! I think that the fact that I had to dress up as the character really helped me as a writer. It put me IN the story and helped me visualize it better.

Vocabulary words and stems. Yes, I hated these words so much when I was in the 8th grade. We had to do so many of them and I honestly wanted to throw them accross the room and never have to look at them again. But of course that wasn't the case. I am glad I did all of the vocab words and stems now because it expanded my vocabulary tremendously and helped me with high school essays a ton. My senior year of high school I had one of the hardest teachers. But she turned out to help me a lot. She taught me how to critique and edit and how to write in different ways. This helped me with my college essays!

Overall through this whole experience I discovered that I am still not a awesome writer, but I try. I get better and better as the years go on and I hope that that will continue through my college years.

-Arin Hall

Blog 1. Theme for English B

Last week on August 23, 2012, my English teacher presented us with a poem called, “Theme for English B.”  As soon as I saw it was a poem I wanted to pull my hair out.  I cannot stand poems.  She told us to read through the poem and write in our daybooks what comes to mind as we read.  So, I open up my daybook, with a sigh, and get started, on what I hope will be as painless of an experience as possible.

As I look back at my writing in my daybook, I find that all I talked about was how I can relate this poem to myself.  Hughes talks about how he feels like an outcast in the world.  For me, I sometimes feel out of place at home, in school, and in public.  I feel like because I am short and do not look my age at all that people see me differently.  I constantly walk around with my head down and my confidence low because I feel that I am different from everyone else.  After reading this poem for a third time I realized that I needed to open my eyes up.  Langston Hughes refers to a colored boy born in Winston Salem who struggles with his own identity and place in society.  The line that I am not really sure of is when he says, “But I guess I’m what I feel and see and hear.”  What does he mean by this?

After looking back on my daybook writing and the poem itself, I have come to a conclusion that poetry is still very hard for me to read and write about.  I did expand a lot on lot from what I previously wrote in my daybook.  I guess that is why I picked this piece to blog about, so hopefully I can get better at my writing. 

Arin Hall