Presentation Day

I feel that the presentation went fairly well. Putting up a poster was a good idea because people were able to spend time looking at it rather than me walking them through my presentation. It'll also be easy to incorporate my project into the portfolio, because I can use pages from the website.

Thoughts on the Portfolio

I like how we're able to give our papers one last look through before we make our portfolio. When I write papers, I tend to start accepting what I write as correct, and miss out on mistakes that I could correct or on portions that I could elaborate on. With this gap, I can look at the earlier assignments with a "fresh" perspective -- something that is sure to help the quality of my writing.

Rough Draft?

Does a rough draft of a poster need to consist of the actual poster, or can it be a sample layout with some of the text that's going to go on it?

What are people doing for their rough drafts?

Initiating Action Presentation

I also realized that I'll be able to write down transcripts of what I plan to say to people to ask for help in fundraising, as well as some comparisons between possible products and a persuasive argument for why my project is a good idea.

I also decided to make a stand up poster, and I can put pictures of the area that needs change, along with potential replacements. I can also put up the e-mails that I've drafted, etc. I feel that if planned out properly, I might actually be able to complete this and get a ping-pong table for my residence hall.

Initiating Action Literature

The documents that I'm going to create are e-mails that will be sent out to everyone who lives in my dorm, Hillcrest. We have an e-mail listserv, so this is easy to get to all the students. It's hard to give this project a genre, but I would call it a community fundraising project. I could also create flyers and posters advertising the fundraising events, but they would need approval to be posted.

Detailed Project Description

I decided to pick the more realistic option of raising money for a ping-pong table. This project could involve everyone, via the community listserv (basically a giant email list). After we have fundraisers, we could all vote with an online survey on which table to use and then we could use the money from our fundraisers, which could include donations, bake sales, and other means, to finally purchase a table.

Initiating Action Idea

For my Initiating Action project, I think I need to focus on the divide between the two honors halls. To fix this problem, I think some kind of meet and greet would be a good idea. The Nerdfest competition is still going on, so the two halls are already interacting a little bit, but I think it's a good idea to ensure some degree of sportsmanship. To do this, I think it would be a good idea to get the teams to meet each other before the final game of Jeopardy, so that win or lose, people will feel good about the competition. I think that this is possible, though it would likely start as a one time only thing.

The other thing that would be great to change about Hillcrest would be putting in a ping-pong table instead of a pool table. This has tons of popular support, and with a fundraiser or two we could get a nice table to put in our dorm. This idea feels a bit less legitmate, but would be appreciated by tons of people.

Rough Outline of Rough Draft

Well, this is a rough outline for what I have for my essay so far. I need to make sure to finish adding to my essay as well as relating it to my community.

Introduction

Intro continued... somewhat

Example 1

Example 2

(Conclusion)

Essay Feedback

I found the concept of exchanging essays for a weekend to be a good idea because it allowed all of us to have someone take an extended look at our essay. I found my feedback helpful, and the points made fit in with what I already knew I had to improve in my essay, along with providing some new places to improve. Hopefully I can use this new perspective to improve the quality of my paper for my final draft.

Project Proposal

As I work on polishing my project proposal, sitting at a table in the Hillcrest study lounge, I realize that anyone who lives here could tell you what my research is attempting to discover. There are currently 5 laptops open, and right now 3 students are helping each other with chemistry while another two are doing physics, and the other 5 students are discussing political science professors. This is the perfect place to get work done, as long as you don't mind a tiny bit of noise. Back to English, but I just wanted to comment on how I viewed my topic in a personal sense.

Library and Course Goals

I realized that I still haven't posted my course goals, so this post is going to be about two things: the results of day one of research in the library, and my course goals.

In the library, I found two different works that could potentially help my research. The first one, which I've already checked out of the library, is a thesis about the how seniors felt about the Honors Program back in 1994. This could be interesting because I can compare the old thesis from what I can see today. The other thesis is currently being brought over from a remote storage area, and is about The Landscaping of Hillcrest Hall as compared to the University's mission. While most of this thesis will likely prove irrelevant, the part about how Hillcrest relates to the university mission could be helpful. Hopefully I can find more resources tomorrow when I use different keywords.

My course goals are as follows:
To improve on my overall writing ability through extended research prior to drafting.
Master the use of citation in text and to create a bibliography.
To be able to express my ideas in a shorter amount of text by being concise.

Things to Know

What I Know/Want to Know about my community (Hillcrest)

What I know:
consists of honors students
need to keep at least a 3.5 GPA
hold events involving the whole dorm
smallest dorm at VT
the only residence hall with a wikipedia page on it... probably made by someone who lived there.
people who live there are required to take an honors class every semester

Want to know:
is there a stronger sense of community?
do people in the community become elitist?

Keywords to describe Hillcrest:
honors
scholarship
staff
invitation
distant
suite
busy
secure
small

Scary...

This may not be related to my community, but strange things are afoot at the Math Emporium. As I was working on my Engineering homework, I was listening to "Paralyzer" by Finger Eleven. At roughly the same time the song begins, I receive an e-mail from Apple (the makers of the iPod I'm listening to) saying:

Because you've downloaded tracks from Finger Eleven's album Them vs. You vs. Me from iTunes, we thought you'd like to know that, for a limited time, the album is available at the lowered price of $5.99. And you'll save even more when you buy the remainder of the album with the Complete My Album feature.

I wonder if Apple knows what song I'm going to listen to next...

Interview Questions

Here are some interview questions that I've come up with so far. My plan is to interview an RA in my residence hall, so I don't think I have to be extra formal about the questions I ask.


Factual Questions
Roughly how many students live in Hillcrest?

How often do students choose to go off campus?

How often are JR’s given? (No names requested, of course…)

Tell Me About Questions
What made you decide to become an RA?

Feeling Questions
How would you describe the general mood around Hillcrest?

Magic Wand Questions
If you could change any one thing about Hillcrest, what would it be?

Community Choice

For my community, I've picked my residence hall, which I mentioned in a previous post. I think that my dorm will be a good community to observe because the students who live there do so because they accept an invitation to live there. While it's not the only community where people are brought together by more than chance, I feel like it would be a good place to observe any possible patterns. The current plan is to work with Andrew, who is also from our 10:10 class, on this community observation. Since we don't both live there, I feel like we can better represent our recordings without worrying about any bias I might have because I live there. My current plan is to interview the RA's in the building, and later I hope to arrange a meeting with an officer from the Residence Hall Federation to ask about some aspects of dorm life in Hillcrest as compared to other halls.

Community Ideas

Hopefully it's not too early to start thinking about ideas for our community projects, because I had a couple ideas about what I wanted to do. I'm really interested in observing people in my residence hall, Hillcrest, to see what sort of things they have in common, such as habits or behaviors. I'll go more in depth later, but I felt like posting because I'm at the Math Emporium to take a test... and I've arrived 4 hours before the proctors will. I'll see everyone in class on Monday.