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.