Mr. Kopell

The information that I read about pertaining to Ted Koppel, had to do with California prison. This was the information under the link named Discovery Channel, and the article was called “Breaking Point”. Upon watching the video I did read the article “The Breaking Point,” which I suppose was kind of like a written out version of the video. In the article I was surprised to find out just how much the prison are overflowing and what they are willing to do in order to solve the problem. According to the article they are willing to just release inmates, which is fairly unnerving. The video that I watched (I’m actually not sure if it was the right one) didn’t go into as much depth about the issues as I was expecting though I did get to Ted Koppel in action for the first time. Even still I felt as though the article did a better job o0f explaining what Mr. Koppel was doing there at the California prison and what he found out. It was interesting to also see the inside of the prison, but the conditions that they live in and what everyone has to go through to keep the prison going doesn’t seem worth it. Though I am unsure what they can do and have no different ideas from what they are already doing. It’s all very concerning and I know that California’s prison isn’t the only place having these problems, but still I have no idea how to fix it.

Interesting on Different Levels

So the title of this blog is interesting on different levels, and the reason being because of my one on one visit with Ms. Neubauer on Tuesday because I was unable to make it to class the preceding Monday. On Tuesday she helped me go through my Project 2 “rough draft” and she gave me some good on ideas on how to better improve and build from what I had. Though I have already started my revision for my paper I feel as though I’m not grasping the concept of visual analysis, she helped me organize the ideas. Ms. Neubauer asked questions and through the questions I began to see the many different avenues I could write about. This session with her caused me to look at my memories in a different way, and seeing things from a different perspective than my child’s perception of what was going on. When trying to incorporate the ideas that Ms. Neubauer and I came up with, I discovered that my writing style tends to lean towards story telling. So just taking a picture and then completely analyzing it was fairly difficult, because I found myself wanting to write a story rather than what I saw.

Conference for Project 1

This week in class we had one day of regular class and the rest of the week was reserved for individual conferences. During the individual conference we were going to be going over our Project 1 paper after it had been revised for the instructor. My paper was on the how my interethnic family and I fit into our community as well as how being an interethnic person is on campus. My conference was scheduled for Friday. Once at the conference, Ms.Neubauer and I went over my paper, basically I was confused as to what she meant when she had said my paper sort of reminded her of the short story “Mother Tongue.” Before I had talked to her I had been struggling to see the correlation between the two, but Ms. Neubauer cleared up my confusion. Overall I felt my conference was very productive, she helped me get a better idea for project 2. She also talked about a creative writing activity which I found to be very interesting; the writing assignment entailed walking into a room then writing about everything that we see but in depth. Personally I like activities like that, it seems the more I write the more I begin to see that I really enjoy it and that I always have. I don’t really want to change my major but I wonder how I can incorporate my desire to write (whether just plain writing or writing poetry) and something I want to do for the rest of my life. That is if I could even get good enough to really write professionally, who knows, only time will tell as the old saying goes.

Finally in the Groove

During this week I feel as though I’m getting back into the groove of things. Even though in class I know I still have a few assignments that I haven’t turned in on time, I’m beginning to get back into the swing of things. During this week, we have been working a lot on gearing up to revise our project 1 papers. We have also been doing these readings, in which we respond to one of two prompts given to us by our fellow classmates. One of the prompts that we did was based off of Rhonda J. Stanton’s “Multicultural Communications: Back to the Basics.” Personally I responded to Andrew’s prompt, I actually thought the question was truly interesting. I thought it was interesting because it was something I had never really thought about, I never think about the fact that if a product isn’t advertised well enough that I may not buy it. It wasn’t just that the question was different, because sitting here and writing this down I realize it wasn’t so different, but it was what it made think of. As I wrote in response to the prompt, I have not bought a product due to poor advertising, but rather the lack of advertising. On another note on Friday in class we read the equivalent of a student handbook for Ball State Students. We did not read the whole thing but only an excerpt, and from that excerpt we answered another prompt. I found it hard to add or take away anything from the guidelines already laid out. Other than that this week feels like the first week I’m back on track, I intend to get caught up in this class and stay that way.