Ethnography Project Reflection

My groups Ethnography project was about literacies found in objects around campus. 

I think it was difficult to find objects around campus that could be connected back to literacy without overlapping with what other groups were trying to do (at least I thought so). However, I think we did a good job finding a collection of literacies that not only represent the university but represent the ideas we discussed as a class about what literacy is. First we met up and walked around campus taking pictures of different objects we saw that could represent literacy. We then posted them to a google doc and narrowed down our objects to about 4. I think using the google doc made it a lot easier to communicate as a group and build our project without physically being together. I liked working with my group because they came up with a lot of unique ideas about what defines literacy and brought a new prospective into the project that I didn't originally have. The actual formation of how to present our project was little difficult because of how broad our topic was. What objects have literacy? What are we defining as literacy? Our final project let the viewer of our video sort of define what we found in their own way, which I loved. I think trying to translate something that would normally be an essay into an untraditional piece was interesting as well as thought provoking and pushed us to think outside the box presentation wise. I'm really proud of the work my group members put into this project and think it turned out really well. Our goal was to get our peers thinking about hidden literacies and their meaning and I think we did just that! 

Oct 25 Literacy Mapping

Since I've missed quite a few blog post's I've had to go back and make up what I've missed.
The first blog post that I missed was the one about the Literacy Mapping Mini Assignment we did around campus.
For my assignment I chose to sit outside of Woodward. I chose to listen to the different types of music people play from their cars as they drove by. This is actually something I noticed one day while I was waiting for one of my classes to begin. A lot of students like to play their music loud as they cruise around campus and so I decided to begin listening.
Music is a huge part of literacy in my opinion; in fact I think it's the most common form of literacy used by people. Everyone listens to music. What kind of music you listen to can change your mood, or tell someone something about you. You can communicate with other people through music. Music is everywhere and used for everything.
As I sat and listened to the music people chose to play, I heard a lot of different stuff. A girl in a truck playing country music, a guy in a sports car playing mainstream radio, another girl was listening to some kind of foreign music, and one guy was blasting Nirvana.
All of this just got me thinking about how much of an impact music has on our lives and how huge of a form of literacy it is.

Fieldwork Mini Assignment

Our group chose to meet by the Belk Tower and walk around campus to discover different objects that hold literacy for our fieldwork.

The first object we looked at was the Belk Tower. We talked about how the tower is used by students to post news about events happening around campus (I've noticed a lot of Greek ads and such by the tower). We also talked about how the tower isn't just a bell tower, but also a piece of art as it is supposed to represent a fountain pen and ink bottle. 

After the tower we walked around some of the art buildings and found what seemed to be a blacksmith shop. Then we wandered into the gardens and found a memorial for Bonnie E. Cone and a rock that some students chose to graffiti. Further into the gardens we found a shack that also had some interesting  graffiti markings inside it. We then went back to main campus towards the Echo Circle, which was really interesting for me because I had no idea what the 'echo circle' was. After that we wandered through SAC and looked at some bulletin boards and other more obvious forms of literacy. 

In conclusion, we found a lot of different objects around campus that could encompass the idea of 'literacy'. 

Literacy Narrative Reflection

Choosing what topic to write my literacy narrative about was pretty easy for me. I've always been drawn language and the differences between my language and other languages. So when it came time to pick a topic for this paper, the first thing I thought of was my connection to language and how that is , in return, connected to literacy and my perception of it. For the past four years I have been taking German, and I can honestly say that my love for that language has opened so many doors for me. It was completely obvious that this was the perfect topic for my literacy narrative. In fact, all of my notecard ideas had some kind of connection to language. I decided to start with a memory I had about talking to my host mother during my stay in Germany back in 2009. This was the base for my literacy narrative and I built on it by adding connections between my experiences and the reading 'Mother Tongue'. My first draft was a solid piece that covered all of the basics of an essay that I learned in high school. I had an intro, body paragraphs, and a conclusion. But that format didn't seem to completely fit my topic the way I wanted it to. In my second draft, I tried a more relaxed approach and voice. I feel like it worked well, but I'm not use to writing in that style so it was a little uncomfortable. My final draft was a good mix of both the first and second. I think I completed my editing goals by trying something different. I figured out that for me, it is easier to write in a more structured way, but that that approach doesn't always return the best product. Writing and revising this paper helped me see that it is ok to try new styles of writing and that sometimes that can be the best thing to do. In the future if I feel that a particular piece of writing is too bland I think I will refer back to this and maybe just switch it up completely just to see what would come of it. I think revising in this way also helped me stay away from writers block because I wasn't concentrating on my writing being a particular way.

Reflective Blog-Revision

Because I wasn't in class last week, this reflective blog post is just going to be about some topics I know we've been talking/thinking about a lot lately, revision and editing.

As I continue to edit my literacy narrative, I find myself re-writing more of it than I thought I would. I've deleted and un-deleted just about every paragraph I've written. So while I was working on it earlier today, I started wondering if it would be ready by the end of the week. I actually had a mini panic attack about it since I haven't been in class for a while. I feel like my paper is just a jumble of random thoughts put together in no specific order.

But after calming down, I realized how much I've actually revised my work. I think my paper is a lot better now than it was when I started. I'm not sure how it is going to look by the end of this week, but I feel like this is the most creative I've been with an essay ever so I hope it works.

Also, I read over the syllabus for last Thursday and it seems like everyone was just editing with their writing groups? I'm sorry I couldn't be there to see the progress my group has made on their papers! I can't wait to read them! 

Midterm assignment

On Tuesday our writing group met at Atkins to work on our Midterm project. At first we were a little unsure of what kind of piece of writing we should use, but after talking to some of the other groups we decided on a piece from the Charlotte Observer about how the town of Belmont has a growing bike culture. 

After deciding on our piece, we went to go make a photocopy of it, which ended up being more difficult than we thought it would be. But once we finally got our piece copied we all sat down to read over the article and write in our day books. I think we were all able to make great connections with the article and our literacy narrative's. The idea of how culture can affect us and our writing was a major topic, and it was interesting to see what the rest of my group got out of it. All of our ideas about the article were pretty different. 

Since my literacy narrative is about how different languages have affected me as a writer and thinker, I chose to talk about how different cultures could also affect us. I said that growing up in a small town like Belmont would be pretty different from how I grew up here in Charlotte. I connected this to my literacy narrative by talking about how people who live in different places around the world might have completely different ideas about literacy and experiences with writing based on how their culture perceives and handles writing.

Reflective Blog: Revision is Hope

The piece we read for writing into the day last Thursday about revision really got me thinking about the different reasons to revise things, especially now that we are working on revising our literacy narratives.

I really liked how this piece connected revising literacy to revising our lives. I thought it was an interesting way to expand the idea of literacy more. We can use the methods behind revising a paper to revise our own life. For example, if you write a sentence one day and love it, but then later decide you hate it, you can delete it. Over the summer I got a new job and ended up hating it, so I quit.

It's interesting to see how different writers can find new ways of connecting literacy to other things in our lives.

Reflective Blog: Where I'm From

I really liked George Ella Lyon's Where I'm From poem, so I decided to google it just to see what I would get(I google a lot, it's a weird obsession...).

This is the first link I clicked on:
http://www.georgeellalyon.com/where.html

I thought this was interesting, because it shows different ways of interpreting the poem and how you can use it as an outline to make your own Where I'm From poem. I also thought it was cool how some people made it into a video.  It's interesting to see the different ways people interpret the same thing and how they can borrow an idea from someone else and make it their own. It makes me think about how everyone sees the world differently based around their experiences and how they view the world, and how all of that relates to how we choose to express ourselves.

Literacy Dig Reflection

For my literacy dig assignment I chose 5 different forms of literacy to write about:
1. My yearbooks
-14 years of my life in one stack of books. It's weird to look back through them.
2. A poem on my mirror
-I got this during an art exhibit at my school. I read it almost every day as I get ready in the morning. I love it.
3. My CD's
-I have so many CD's. From Aaron Carter(my 1st grade obsession) to Smashing Pumpkins. I love music and my favorite thing use to be going to target to get new CD's haha now I just buy off itunes or illegally download(shhh don't tell anyone!)
4. My diploma
-I don't even remember graduating. It went by so fast...it's like it never happened. The only reason I know it did is because I have a diploma.
5. My Membox
-My membox is just a box where I put things I want to remember/keep. I have receipts, pamphlets, pictures, bracelets, ect. If my house were on fire and I could only grab one thing it would be my membox.

These 'things' aren't what most people would normally consider to be literacy, but I think they are because they tell a story and can be used to communicate something about myself to someone else.

My Membox

 My Yearbooks

My Writing Timeline

My writing has changed a lot over time, and I attribute most of that to the teachers I had. They helped me develop my writing skills and find my 'voice'.

This is my timeline:

I think the most notable points on my timeline would be the one's toward the end. My high school English teachers not only taught me how to write good essays, but they taught me how to enjoy writing. My Junior and Senior years I had a teacher named Ian Kutner. He is, and probably always will be, one of the best teachers I have ever had. And I'm not the only student from my school that feels this way. He made learning grammar fun. And he taught us how to express ourselves through writing. He also taught us how to write an essay in two hours and still get an A.

Reflection: Words become us/Mother tongue

I wasn't originally going to write my reflective blog on these two readings, but I had a lot of interesting thoughts while reading them so I decided to change it.

A common theme I got from both of these readings, was how words can define or influence us and how other people perceive us. In Words Become Us, the focus seems to be mainly on how words can influence our lives. Imbrie was influenced by the words of poets that Gordan introduced her to. That influence shaped her life. She speaks of how words helped her define herself as a person and grow. They also influenced Gordan and his life; in school he loved literature, but when he left school, he seemed to loose that love and the person he once was. I thought the connections Imbrie made between self discovery and literature were great and can be connected back to everyone in some way or another. While my history with literature isn't anything close to Imbrie's, I can honestly say that some of the literature I read in middle and high school, and even some of the kids books from elementary school, have had lasting impressions on me.

In Mother Tongue I saw similar examples of how words can influence our definitions of ourselves, but I was more focused on the idea that words can influence how others define us. I think this is why I found this piece so interesting. It made me think of the influence language has on perception. I guess it should have been obvious, but I never really thought about how a persons language influences how I judge or perceive them. In Mother Tongue, Amy talks about how people would degrade her mother just because she didn't speak perfect english. This really made me think about all the times when I might have done the same thing to someone. Just because Amy's mother spoke in 'broken' english that didn't mean she was any less intelligent than any else. The whole piece just really made me think about how native speakers of a language use their knowledge of that particular language to make themselves seem superior. After reading this, I started to realize all the different ways a person's knowledge of language can affect how others perceive them.