Journal #13

This past week we finished up presentations over our research papers. Some of the powerpoints that stood out to me were the powerpoints covering autism and how to find an internship after the summer of our Sophomore year. The internship powerpoint one interested me the most because getting an internship is very important in college. Internships are the way a lot of us will receive jobs once we graduate. Q's presentation was over being an army brat. He has grown all across the country so hearing some of his experiences was pretty cool to see. I did my presentation over college sports and explained to the class what my thesis was for my paper. I think that it went pretty well. Professor Evans announced that our final draft for our paper was due that coming Tuesday at the end of class.

Journal #12

We started out class today with Professor Evans talking more about our papers. She mentioned things that will help us with our research papers like whether or not to use "I" in our papers. Today was the beginning of the power point presentations for our class. Six of the students in class went today. Topics ranged from becoming a firefighter, cell phone use, as well as adoption. While the people were presenting we each wrote questions that we wanted to ask each presenter about their topic. For me the most interesting topic was the fire fighter topic, and from what i could see it was everyone else's because so many had questions on it. Next class more of the class will present. I will be presenting mine a week from now over my topic of problems in collegiate sports.

Journal #11

This past week in English class Professor Evans really focused on answering any questions we may of had over our research paper. We spent a lot of the time asking questions about our interviews for our paper etc. We discussed how we were going to do our presentations for the final research paper. Professor Evans decided that an option for us to present what we learned from our papers would be to do it through power point, this is probably what i'm going to do. She showed a comical video about what not do to with our power points. Thursday we peer edited each others papers within our groups in class. I read over Pat's rough draft and was interested with his topic. I was interested in it because it pertains almost every college student on this campus, college drinking. Also, on Thursday we took time at the beginning of class to schedule times for meetings this week. The professor made the announcement that class would be canceled this week so we could have time to meet with her one on one.

Presentation & Observation

This post be a couple days past our last class meeting, which would have been Thursday. I've had strep ever since then and this is my first time getting on. For Tuesday, our group and only one other went. I thought that the other group that went did quite well and the other had problems with their power point not coming up. For the number of times we were able to meet, or not being able to practice together all the way through at all, i felt we did pretty good. Some of us didn't know what the others slides were going to look like which could have ended up badly, but we were fine. We didn't realize you could set a 20 second timer on the power points so we did that before we presented. A weak spot for our presentation would have to be not getting very many responses back from our survey, i thought that it was kinda funny to see everyone sending out emails expecting people to do their surveys when they wouldn't even do others. On Thursday I sat and wrote reviews over each presentation.

Journal #9

During our last class together before spring break we looked over our annotated bibliographies and turned them into Professor Evans. Part of the class time was spent in our groups talking about how we were going to go about doing each of our interviews with individuals from our designated food courts. We figured out who was doing what then we sent it in an email to the teacher. We ended our class time by going around the room in our groups and sharing with the rest of the class what our exact plans were for doing our individual interviews.

Journal #8

At the beginning of class today we took time to discuss the article called "Gorgias' Encomium of Helen." We talked about how people will always interpret facts differently than others. We also learned from the article how strong words really are. After that we went over as a class how we are supposed to go about our field work group project. We went through how to do our observations and Professor Evans gave us examples of places to observe such as: library, food courts, and shuttles. We looked over our release form for the interview we have to make after our observation paper as well as our surveys and our final powerpoint.

Journal #7

Today in class each student in our group took on their own website either saying that the moon landing was fake or that it was real. We were given a paper that we each had to go through and examine each website seeing if they were reliable and why they were. Our annotated bibliography is due next class period on Thursday, i have began going though several of my source describing what each one presents and my opinions on how they will be used in my paper.

I met with Mrs. Evans last Thursday and we spoke in detail about my topic. She explained to me how to go about my proposal and I'm now applying what she said into my paper. The three books i got from the library have helped me understand how Collegiate sports have changed over the years. I did not realize until the meeting that the paper we have to write is describing our topic and why we chose what we did. I'm finishing up my thoughts on my proposal in the next few days.

Journal #5

I'm continuing to do my research for my paper. I've been looking through my sources of all three books i checked out from the library last week and seeing what information i could use in my paper. I've talked to two people that i plan on interviewing for my paper, I'm setting up times with them now so we can sit down and discuss what i need to know about Division 1 sports to make my papers stronger. I have not yet had my meeting with Mrs. Evans, my meeting is this Thursday where i think being able to sit down and speak with her will help me better understand what exactly she's looking for in this paper.

Journal #4

Today in class we got in our group and went over each of our topics and what we thought of each others papers. We split into pairs so each of us could grade the others paper. I looked over Pat's research paper which is over alcoholism and how college students abuse it. He spoke about how college students drink due to the stress that college brings. I have the 3 book sources that i need for my paper and I'm about halfway done. Once i interview my friend that is on the football team to find out what really goes on at practice, i think my paper will become a lot more interesting.

Journal #3

I've decided to do my research paper over collegiate sports. I'm not quite sure what kind of angle I'm going to take on this topic. I'm either going to go into the controversies that have gone on inside the college sports nation, such as a playoff system in NCAA College Football, or I may go into how college sports are different than high school sports. I have several friends that i can interview who played a sport in high school, but when they came here to Ball State they stopped doing what they loved. I also have one friend who is actually on the football team, he is not on scholarship, he's someone who worked very hard to make the team here and knows what really goes on during practices. I'm looking for several good sources to base my paper off of and am starting my rough draft. Who knows, i may try to tie both of those topics into one research paper.

Journal #2

I've narrowed down my search for the research paper to two topics. I'm not sure if either of these are good things to try to research but I'm thinking of giving it a shot. My first one i thought of was the differences between high school sports and Division 1 sports. I want to know how much of a jump, if any, it is for athletes here at Ball State, or at any Division 1 school for that matter. One of my good friends is on the football team here and i think I'd be interesting to interview him about what practices are really like. I wonder how different they are from high school. My second i was thinking of doing is the differences in students here at Ball State that came from a large high school, and ones you came from small ones. Whether the adjustment for students already in a large school made it easier to adjust to such a big campus. At least for me, coming from a smaller school it was a big adjustment, I'd interview other students who went to a school like mine and see if it was the same for them. I have other questions i plan on asking in my interviews along with the ones i expressed here.

Journal #1

The syllabus presented to us in class i thought was pretty easy to understand. The rules and expectation are presented clearly. I like the grading policy because it is simple. The attendance policy is harsh, but i feel that it will benefit me because it will hold me accountable for my grade, by not missing any class time. I like how our course schedule is laid out all for us so we know what to expect as the class goes throughout the next semester. Having everything laid out each day ahead of time will help me keep up on preparing myself for each of the four projects that are expected from us. Overall the syllabus will definitely benefit me.