Group project

This week was a short week in class. We had one class day which was Monday, and during that day we got in groups and discussed our group plan as well as when and who was going to the destination of our fan page. My group’s fan page is about the Student Center here on campus. It was my idea to do the Student center, mainly because it houses one of my favorite eateries which is Taco Bell. Other than that, I thought it would be a good place to do a fan page about because of all the things that happen there as well as what the Student Center has to offer. Tuesday was the day that my group members and I were supposed to go individually to the Student Center. I went late at night and went to each and every level taking pictures, and exploring. I found quite a few interesting places that I didn’t know existed and also investigated places I had only heard of and never seen. It was a fun experience, but to be honest any opportunity I get to explore (and I’m not in any real danger) is fun to me. Wednesday during normal class time my group and I were supposed to meet up and eat breakfast and discuss who was going to specific parts of the group project. Unfortunately no one showed up, but I spent the rest of the week e-mailing them when I had something to communicate. Other than that I’m still a bit cloudy on who is doing what for the group project, but since we have a class tomorrow hopefully seeing my group members in person will clear things up.

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.

Personality Type

During this week in class we had to start our first project were we tied Multiculturism into the Community. I choose to talk about what its like being in a multicultural family and how we fit in where we live. Another thing that we were asked to do specifically for this week’s blog, was our teacher asked us to take a personality type quiz. The Quiz is called “The Insight Game,” and basically it asks you a long line of different questions pertaining to how you see yourself. The game was played with electronic cards in which you would read both sides of the card and decide from the two options given, what would be the answer to best describe yourself. Personally during the game/quiz I was frustrated with not having the option to choose both or none of the choices given. Making it to where you only have two options is good but there are times were you truly resemble both answers so by forcing you to choose one or the other to me was a false representation of my personality for those questions. Nevertheless my personality type was ENFP which are considered to be open minded and caring. For the most part I felt like this personality type was me in a nut shell, but just not exactly. Then again I don’t think anything can be exact when it comes to people.

The Martin Luther King Jr. Concert

For class we were required to participate in a multicultural activity, all in honor of Unity week. The activity that I chose to participate in was The Martin Luther King Jr. Concert. This concert was held in Sursa hall, which is newly completed music hall on campus. As I sat through the performances, I began to realize how much different cultures were incorporated in the ensemble. There were Asian performers singing in their own language, and even though I couldn’t understand what they were saying I really liked how their music spoke for them. Whether it was sad, happy, or silly, for the most part you could understand. Aside from the Asian performers, there were a couple of instrumental pieces and choir contributions. Also in between the performances there were excerpts from an interview on the retractable screen.
These interviews were mainly with people who lived during the Civil Rights Era in Muncie. It was interesting to see how things have and haven’t changed when it comes to segregation. To go a little more in depth about, a few of the people interviewed spoke of how they had to move to a certain part of town just because of their ethnicity, and also how going to school during that time was. A lady (whose name escapes me) was an honor student who was never recognized for her academic achievements, even though people who were ranked in front of and behind her in class rankings were acknowledged. Even now I still see segregation of sorts even on Ball State campus. Being that I am part African American, I am still counted as a African American. So those interviews were intriguing in the sense that now I know that Muncie (being such a tiny city so to speak) is a bit behind in becoming culturally diverse.
Some of things that shocked me when I was at the concert were how many people of different cultures seemed to be there. Even more shocking was how many people got into the spirit of the evening. People got up and clapped their hands if the performances moved them to and many people bobbed their heads to the music. My favorite performance of the night besides the instrumentals (which I really liked) was the Voices of Triumph Choir, because a few of my friends were performing and I had no idea. It was a nice surprise and they were really good. All the music by the various performers, gave me goose bumps and I normally only get goose bumps when the music is really good and sort of speaks to me. The whole was really great in the sense that there was good music, a good audience and it was all in celebration of a great man.