Shattered Glass

When preparing to write an article many steps are needed. In the movie Shattered Glass they describe journalism as an art of capturing behavior. With that said it is safe to say that most righting starts with an idea or a story. From there a person would go to the scene or source and take/ gather data. In gathering data a person can conduct interviews, make phone calls, and just do general observation. The data is then organized in some fashion and then the 1st draft is formed. The first draft gets read, checked for credibility, and re-written several times before it gets published. Most important when writing a published piece is that you never assume everything must be fact. To insure this usually a journalist gets his or her collages or their editor to read their article several times. After all of this checks out an article can finally get published, but even then it still faces critics. The critics can consist of people who the article is about or other journalist companies trying to put your company under. This is another reason why it is important that your field notes are accurate and facts are correct. This is why it is also important to have a good editor in "your corner", so that he can defend your writing. Like most jobs being a journalist can cause you to at some time or another to face ethical issues. In the movie this happened when the boss went to fire the editor, but before doing so he asked another worker if he would step up and take his job. So the pressure was on this worker to keep his mouth shut for 4 days knowing that he would be putting his loyal editor out of a job. In addition ethical issues in a journalist writing can present themselves because lets face it everyone has a view point on certain issues and so it is expected that certain topics will cause strife. These are the issues I gathered from the movie Shattered Glass.

Shitty First Draft

When reading through Anne Lamott's article on shitty first draft I could she that she has felt the same way as I have many times when I sit down to write a paper. A "shitty" first draft is basically anything that comes to your mind and writing it out on your topic. Anne says, "just typing, just making my fingers move" this I feel is often times what I do or sometimes find myself doing. Shitty first drafts are like writing without thought. For this class and my research paper I plan on improving my paper be simply going back through it once fixing the mistakes or adding the changes. After that I plan to reread back through it and make futher changes; this process will be done over and over until I feel confident with my paper. I will also take into concederation all of the feedback that I have recieved on my first draft(s). I feel that these actions will help me get closer to a finshed paper.

Covering

I feel as a female that is going into the health and physical education field that I have to sometimes hide my knowledge from my male peers as I don't want to seem guy like. Also, when we do certine activities like "basketball", which I am pretty good at I feel the need to cover my skills from my peers as girls shouldn't out do the men. Another form over covering that some people experience that has less fear/presures is when you do good or bad on a test as compaired to the rest of the class you feel the need to cover it, so you don't look nerdy or dumb. I feel that there is a part in everyone that we cover.

Activity 34 Writing from a personal prespective

One memory of my childhood that holds importance to me was when I got the MVP at a basketball camp that I went to. It all started when I was about 12 years old and had gotten involved in a basketball camp at Penn State New Kensington. I remember I was so nervous cause I was around a whole group of kids that I have never met before. I was also nervous because we got placed in teams and I was placed with an all guys team; I remember feeling really intimidated. For the whole week they keep saying that one lucky player would get MVP and be allowed back at the camp the next year free of charge. Therefore, all week I tried my hardest on every from shooting to dribbling to playing on my all boys team. I remember thinking to myself there was no way that the coaches would ever pick me because their was so many amazing players that had much better skills than me. Finally, it was the last day of camp and my parents insisted on coming to reward day. I felt so embarrassed as I thought I would be the one person not to get an award infront of everyone. Then finally the coaches anounced that the MVP was Karissa; I remember just siting there for a minute or two cause I was so shocked. When I walked up and got the reard the coach anounced to the group that I was a real team player and a trooper for behaving well while being on an all boys team all week. He also explained to all of the players that it doesn't always matter if you can shoot and score the best what matters is playing as a good team member and having a team spirit. I remember being so happy that I recieved the biggest award that was given at camp.


I counted that "I" = 21 times. I feel that you can tell the the "I" seems to be shy and nervous. They seem to be focusing on getting through the camp in hopes to recieve an award. I feel that I did identify with the charcter in my childhood and how I felt back then. I also feel that you can tell that the piece is personal.

Research Process

My resarch experience started with me brainstorming and basically me listing ideas for my research that related to my major, health & physical education. When looking at what I had came up with one of the topics was anorexia. I finally decided that this was one of those topics that often times get pushed aside or somewhat overlooked. So I decided to look futher into it and see what other pieces of literecy said on the topic. What I found was that it was a disorder that mainly affect women and this brought about my research question out. I wanted to find why women were affect more then men. From there knowning that most anorexic sufferers keep their disorder hidden and a private matter I decided not to go with an interview. So I went with a 12 questionaire that I will had out to college students on the IUP campus; this will help me gain their insight and possible allow me to see anorexia in a different light. Overall my research has been fairly easy, but I have been having trouble coming up with good questions to ask in my questionaire.

Paraphrase Exercise

It is common for students to use a large amount of direct quotations when preparing to write their research paper. This can lead to problems as only 10% of a research paper should consist of direct quotations. To reduce this common problem students should condense the amount of direct quotation when taking notes for their research paper (Lester, 1976).

In class Blogging ending Points of Tipping Point

Overall I would like to bring awareness to how much effuses we put on acidemics on school age children and not so much of physical activity and health. Physical education classes are often being cut out of school cirriculumes to make time for more acidemics and so that students will be sure to pass standardized test. We can already see this having an effect on children ad obesity rates increase. I feel that to change this we need to lesson the effuses on standardized test and put more effuses on health and well being. Lets fact it if your body fails you in your childhood then what good will having extreme knowledge get you. I feel that we not only need to be more aware of the obesity problem, but also how much pressure is being placed on acidemic areas. I feel we are cutting children short of their capabilities (abstract thinking) when we cut out physical education time.

The chapter that I found most interesting was chapter four, which talked about the "broken window theroy". I found it interesting in that I could relate to the concept that when walking in a town and seeing a broken window or graffiti I do get the idea that this town has no control or no one cares about it. In addition to that I found it interesting in Gunn's study/ subway project that a simple consistent change can make a large difference. This shows me that all it takes is simple consistant changes to make a large change.

I will take alot from the Tipping Point manly that a single person cause a tipping point and therefore can cause change in today's society. I can apply this to my life as a up and coming teacher and a person in today's society in that I can create awarness to issues like health and as I said how physical eduction classes are somewhat getting cheated out. I can also cause a a ripply effect from steaching the students for then when they teach their children and so on.

Tipping Point Questions

Question 1) What is the story of Bernie Goetz? Is Bernie Goetz a cold-blooded murderer or a heroic vigilante? The story of Bernie Goetz is that on day he walked onto the back of a subway and shot 4 African Americans youths. His defense was that he thought they were going to hurt and mug him. The odd part about this was that it appeared that Goretz was a fairly normal guy who just one day snapped. This is were the question or power of context comes into play; questioning weather the subway setting had anything to do with his rampage. In addition people at the time were giving Goetz praise, saying that he was just cleaning up the subway by taking down the muggers. This praise and overall recognition is what people made him a hero, but I tend to disagree and see him as a cold-blooded murderer. In my mind there is no reason to kill an individual just based on appearance or assumptions. If this were true and we could justify are reason for killing someone on the assumption that they scared you; then we all would kill someone to feel safer. Basically, in my eyes he knew what he was doing because he had to plan it out to a point to have a gun on him. Therefore, I believe that Bernie has no other reason than to be classified as a cold- blooded murderer.

Question 3) The Broken Window Theory argues that crime is the inevitable result of disorder. It suggest that crime is contagious. Do you agree or do you think this risks excusing a criminal's culpability? I believe that the broken window theory is only true for minor crimes and even then it still depends on the individual. Another words I feel that when a person sees a broken window or graffiti, yes it does affect their feel for the overall safeness and cleanliness of that environment. However, I feel that this does not suddenly make a "normal" individual want to kill or commit a larger crime that could get them the death sentence. It may spark their interest in possible less sever crimes such as graffiti, but even then I feel it still depends on the individual and his/her decision to due such an act. I believe that the individual is in control of their actions and the environment can not simply make them commit crime. If this were true the story of Bernie Goetz would be justified, which I believe is not a true justification for his outrage. Therefore, although the broken window may hold some truth I feel that a criminal is dependent on the individual, not the environment.

English Undergraduate Conference

Session 2- Panel 6 "Putting your Best Face Forward: The Identity Matrix of Social Networking"

The first session I attended was panel 6 were Caroline Lehman and Michaela O' Toole presented on the who idea of identity and social networking. They mainly looked at the social network facebook as it is the most popular among college and high-school students. First, they talked about how there is many different types of statures. A few they gave were the emo (depressed), TMI (to much information), and serial statuser (post every 15 minutes). What made the presentation more interesting was that they gave actually examples off of people's facebook of the different types of statuers. In addition, they had us do a quick activity of our own were we got a sheet of paper and had to describe something about ourselves, list some interest, and draw a picture of ourselves. This was meant to mimic what we might actually put on our facebook. When then traded with a partner and seen if he/she gave a lot or very little information about themselves. Basically, to see if we were conscious of what we actually place on are facebooks and how it can give others an impression of us. They had also pointed out what we as college students should and should not post on our facebooks and the different settings that we should have on or off. One key point they said was that once the information (pictures or post) has been released we are no longer in control of what can happen to them. Towards the end of the session they had a very helpful question and answer time. The big question that most of my peers asked was do you think is is appropriate to keep your facebook once you get a job, mainly looking at a teaching job? Their answer to that was that it is ok to keep it if you are cautious on what people post and how you have it set up. They said it is a good idea when even starting student teaching to change your name to a nickname, take off or un-tag yourself in any questionable photos, and as always be aware of your settings. They concluded that you would not want your facebook to hold you back from your career. All in all I really enjoyed this session because it relates directly to me as I have a facebook and hope to teach once I finish college.

Session 3- Keynote Panel

The second session I had attend was the keynote panel were Dr. Alvine, Dr. Park, and Dr. Watson had all presented. Dr. Alvine was our first presenter and she had talked on how telling our stories helps us to make sense of our lives. In addition she gave us a 5 quote handout that all related to identity and the stories that help shape it. The next speaker was Dr. Park who mainly talked on how she sets up her research writing course. Surprisingly, she to lets her students pick their own research topics. She says not only does it allow the student to have an interest in their paper, but she can see their personalities emerge in their writing. The last speaker was Dr. Watson and to be honest she posed a lot of good points and was able to truly make me look at how my writing and reading helps shape my identity. One point she was that in literature is a safe place were you can get a feel for other cultures and countries. A key thought she pointed out was that literature allows us to walk in other peoples shoes. She then gave examples in her life how reading and trying different restaurants that took her out of her comfort zone and made her understand her friends on a deeper level. She concluded by saying that to her living is a process and that she reads to become. Over all I have to say that I had enjoyed the conference more then I had expected.

Chapter 2 "The Tipping Point"

In chapter two Gladwell is trying to get at how connectors, mavens, and salesman play a role in how ideas travel. I feel that the most interesting part that he talked on was the connectors particularly on Roger Horchow. Rodger was someone who had scored really high on the 250 name test, which proved that he knew a lot of people. Gladwell stated, "Roger Horchow has an instinctive and natural gift for making social connections." However, what was even more interesting was that he stated that people like Rodger don't really fully know all the people, but are rather just acquaintances. Gladwell says the reason of just keeping people as acquaintances is so that their is no obligation there (pg 45). This is probably the reason why people like Rodger make such good connectors; meaning they know just enough about people. Overall Gladwell used surveys such as the 250 name test and one on one interviews to gather his information. This is what I found most important and interesting in chapter two of "The Tipping Point".

Types of Reading

Most of the time I read health magazines or facebook pages compared to Gladwell's book. Some of the main differences are that with facebook pages they tend to use slang or abbreviations, were as Gladwell's writing is structured. In addition facebook page tend to focus on the individual on that page. Gladwell on the other had looked at many different people as groups and individuals. Health magazines tend to have small write ups/articles and also tend to focus on a specific topic or problem. Malcolm's book tended to look at many different topics and was a larger write up on them, then some article. Although both health articles and Gladwell do look at social epidemics such as outbreaks of diseases. In the end thought all readings are to get to some common goal or goals.

Summarizing The Tipping Point Intro. & ch. 1

In the book "The Tipping Point" author Malcolm Gladwell raises an issue on how epidemics come about and make big changes in the world. In the introduction of the book Malcolm looked at common trends such as the fashion trend Hush Puppies. He calmed that this trend grow from a few people. This Hush Puppies example is one that he would say falls into the law of the few. The law of the few is simple a law that starts one or two people can cause a trend to excel or spread. Another law that he hits on is the stickiness factor, which looks at how common sayings or quotes tend to cause a trend to spread. In chapter one he looked mainly at the Winston cigarette slogan. He said that if you were to go up to a person and say, "Winston taste good." That they would finish it by saying, "like a cigarette should."(pg. 25). This showed just how a phrase could make a product excel. The last law that Gladwell hit on was the power of context, which he clams that humans are a lot more sensitive to their environment than they may seem. The best example that Gladwell gave on this law was the issue of the 1964 stabbing of Kitty Genovese. This situation showed that even though thirty-eight people saw the stabbing no one bothered to pick up the phone and report it, because each person thought that the other or another person would report it. Showing that the environment that we are in does play on how we react to things. Overall the introduction and chapter one looked at how epidemics come about and make these changes in the world.

In class blog: Brainstorm about Research Project

Since I am a health & physical education I am interested in looking out the topic anorexia. I feel that I mainly want to look at how it effects girls more commonly as compared to boys. In addition possible look at reasons for this problem or influences such as media. In addition I could take a look at how this problem has grown from the past till now; another words how it has become more of a problem or growing trend compared to my grandparents. Also, I could look at how possible race can have an effect on anorexia. I feel that this topic is related to my career and possible something that I will have to cover as a health teacher. It is also something that some students that I will teach may suffer from. Therefore, I feel that this topic does directly relate to my career and overall a topic that I do have an interest in.

I feel that this research will help me and others see how society can have an effect on anorexia. In addition how anorexia differs by gender, race, and in possible age. I would hope to come to an conclusion as to why this seems to be such a large problem among girls. To get to this conclusion and to write a well developed paper I plan on looking up articles on anorexia. In addition I plan on possible interview or conducting a survey to see what others gather on the topic of anorexia. I feel that by interviewing different people I can get a more well rounded paper and view on the topic. This is some of my ideas on how I will go about getting the information for my paper.

Blog Assignment: Diversity / Social Changes

My overall understand of diversity is that it is what makes the world a unique place. I feel that diversity causes us to have to learn to see the world in many different ways and different cultures. In fact if it wasn't for diversity the world would end up being a pretty boring place because we would all be the same. In my eyes diversity doesn't just look at a difference in skin color or culture, but can be age, gender, social class, and basically anything that makes an individual different to the world. In a large way diversity is what makes the world in general work. For example if everyone was in a "higher" social class then there be no one to do the labor jobs.

With that said diversity is an important part of my life. Through a professional stand point I hope to one day teach in a classroom. Therefore, I need to understand that there will be students of all different diversity in one setting; which can present for conflict in the classroom or on the the flip side can be a good teaching tool. In addition being a college student, on what I consider a pretty diverse college, I am faced and can learn to appreciate the differences in people.

I would have to say to promote diversity through social action is simple becoming accepting of the differences in other. In addition learning to use theses difference as a learning tool for personal growth and knowledge. However, in my lifetime I myself have be looked at differently and "excluded". I say this because I have always been a competitive sports driven female, that often times wanted or tried to compete with the males. Often times they didn't want to play against me because they were afraid I'd get hurt. I feel that everyone at one time or another experiences being diversely different, but it is these moments that is making are world a more understanding place.

As far as what social diversity topics that I am interest in would have to any topic related to health and physical fitness as it is my major. More specifically would be thing like why are more and more of are youth overweight or why are more and more teens getting pregnant at such a young age. In addition why do issues such as anorexia and bulimia exist or seem to be a common trend in teen age girls. There is also a wide topic on why teens are more commonly committing suicide. As you can see I have a lot of directions and topics that I can chose from that look at social changes in a growing and diverse world.

Activity Five: "The Family in U.S.A"

Brainstorming: The Family in U.S.A

-Parents=More expected that both parents work
-Children=Smaller family sizes then grandparents family sizes
-Divorce/Split Families=Seem to be more common
-Technology= Seems every member in the family uses some form of it
-Dinner/Meal Time= Fast Food vs. sit down as family meal
-Day-Care= More common in today's world.
-Vacation= Differences
-Clothing= Store bought vs. handmade
-Traditions= more laid back now days
-Adoption= more popular

The ideas that I have listed above came mainly from viewing/ analyzing my family, extended family, and friends family. I also looked at my family and lifestyle compared to my grandparents and how they differ. In addition I looked at how the world in general has advanced and/or became more accepting. This is what I brainstormed about the family in the U.S.A.

Activity One: Linguistic History

Thinking back to my childhood and my writing assignments in school I feel that most of them started with the student having more freedom in elementary to the teacher picking topics and writing material in high school. In elementary school the writing seemed to be aimed toward us creating stories and topics were more on what the student wanted. As in high-school the writing was more on research a specific topic or on poems that were picked out by the teacher. I feel that the writing in both high-school and grade school the writing had a purpose and that purpose was to simple get better at writing and gain more knowledge about a given topic. In addition in both high school and elementary the focus seem to be on proper grammar use and sentence structure. One paper that I found most difficult was a group paper that I had to write on a history topic because I really am uninterested in an historical event. Also hard to me because it had to a total of 8 pages and after awhile I felt as though I was just rambling to get to the next page. As far as reading goes I for one do as little as I can or as much as I need to to get to the need number of pages. The only reading that I do for fun would have to be health magazines. If I had to pick write a paper or read a book I would definitely pick writing the paper. Although I do like to write what is on my mind I never have kept a diary or come up with poems of my own. Like most people in today's world I do commonly use technology to text message and e-mail. Thinking on how people use to speak to me as I was growing up it tended to very for group to group. Another words my family spoke one way, friends another, and teachers another. I can say my friends used more slang, were as my family used older terms sometimes leaving me ask what they meant. As far as me I never truly spoke any other language then English even though I did take some French classes in high-school I never became fluent in it. This is what I can gather from my childhood writing experiences.

In general, I feel that all writing has a specific purpose and some outline or rules that a writer must follow, even if that means following no rules at all. However, I do feel that essays/ assignments do differ from other writings in that they are used for different reasons in certain situations. For example you wouldn't write a essay to your poetry teacher or you wouldn't submit an diary to a job that you wish to obtain. So I guess you could say that I feel each writing assignment is geared toward a specific audience. Some of writing is done for self purposes, job purposes, and school purposes. In my eyes it is often times the audience that you are writing to that decides what type of writing style you will use. Essay and assignments to are often used for more information based reasons rather then a poem, which tends to be more personal based. Basically, in my viewpoint all writing has a purpose, but it is the audience that decides what direction the writing will go.

About Me

For my first blog post I would just like to give everyone a little information about myself. I am currently a junior majoring in health & physical education and working on a minor in educational psychology. I would have to say that out of all my class I have taken so far I've enjoyed gymnastics class the best; probably because it involved a lot of hands on rather than just hand written test. Another class that I have come to enjoy was adapted health and physical education. This is a course where you learn and get to work hands on with clients with special needs. In fact I enjoyed the course so much that I am working on getting a adapted aquatics(water) certification, in hopes to further my resume. One of my biggest fears is getting my degree and not being able to obtain a job in the education field. However, I have learned that if you do not go after what you want in life then you'll always wonder what could have been. After obtaining my degree I'd like to either teach in Pennsylvania or in South Carolina. As far as some of my interest in life I have to say anything active like biking, swimming, and weight-lifting. I also like to watch the Pittsburgh Penguins and cheer for #71 Malkin. All in all you can probably see why I chose the major that I did and why I enjoy hands on activities most of all. Hope this post gives everyone a little insight about me.