Blog 7-Focus on Topic

During a small group discussion I was able to narrow down my topic. I was first thinking about focusing on the changing studying habits in students. However, I narrowed it down to the studying habits changing within Kean University. I would like to interview students on where they prefer to study, whats different about studying in the dorm room compared to the library, or studying at home. In order to shorten the topic I'm having a hard time deciding whether or not I want to focus solely on students that are dorming, commuting, or both. I think that students dorming would work best because they have access to their own room as well as the library on campus. I also think for this topic it would benefical to observe how students interact in the library and in the dorm room.

Blog 5-Shaggy Dog Stories

Personal Rankings: 1: Being the funniest 2: Semi Funny 3: Being the least

Story #1: I thought the punch line was funny but as we discussed in class with the story about the chess players when the punch line is trying to saying their is no place like home for the holidays we associate this saying with christmas and clearly this story has nothing to do with the holidays.

Rating: 2

Story #2: I thought this story was the funniest being someone who constantly watched Disney growing up I was able to associate that line with Mary Poppin's. However, someone who didn't watched these movies wouldn't understand the punch line.

Rating: 1

Story #3: This story had more detail than the other stories. In provides the information needed to understand the story. However, I thought it was funny but yet it was stereotyping lawyers. Not every lawyer would agree with this statement or "punch line".

Rating: 3

When we look at the class discussion and what the majority of the class thought was funny I would say many people would say the second story is the funniest. Most females in my opinion, (sorry Josh and Kevin if you understood this) would understand the Disney reference and find it to be amusing.

Blog 4

I know this assignment might be quite simple but I'm not really understanding what it is that I need to do. So instead of choosing to analyze someone's interview I'm choosing to use my own. First thing I noticed was that I wrote a statement for the interview with Rachel rather than the questions she asked me. She also was very compassionate which made me want to share more information with her. I think thats very important when conducting an interview because if the person doesn't feel comfortable it's going to be harder to get information from them. The emotion during this interview was of course sad because of the events were talking about. However, that didn't stop the questions or delay them because of this. As far as classifying this information I thought the backwards ways we did Andrea's was a good idea. Off the record we were able to remember certain things and talk freely about what we were feeling. Questions are of course the main way to interview but also sometimes just talking about it freely you might be able to remember more. The patterns I saw were starting at point A and ending at B. We were able to start from the moment I first heard about the attacks all the way up until how I feel about this situation now.
I'm not really sure how I would give this information a hypotheses and how I could test it out.

Adding to the post:
After today's discussion in class (9/18/12) I was able to understand that the conclusion and theory were the same thing. I would have liked to further analyze other interviews. Through a brief skim through others I was able to hypothesis that no matter who it was we were able to remember where we were. Maybe not every detail but we remember.

Blog 3- 9/11 Oral History Interview

Interviewer: Rachel
Subject: Valerie

As we spoke about in class, oral history is knowledge of the past. It can be formal or informal in my opinion because you can be speaking to someone in your family who just wants to tell you about how they grew up, where they lived, how they struggled. On the other hand you can interview someone looking for information.

Before we started the interview Rachel introduced herself and then shared with me her own story about 9/11 and what she remembers about that day. I then joined her in talking and we were both fortunate enough to not have known anyone who sadly lost their life. She asked questions about how old was I, did I remember how I was told it happened, and did I remember where I was. Due to the questions she was asking and the responses I was giving her she was able to branch off those questions she had previously asked and ask new ones. She was very sympathetic and never interupted me. She allowed me to speak freely about my experiences. After the interview we were just talking off the record about 9/11 and how sad we feel for the people who lost their lives and the families who have to deal with their loss. It was a very emotional for this country and I'm glad we were able to discuss it today.

Blog 2-Define analysis

Analysis according to the dictionary is this process as a method of studying the nature of something or of determining its essential features and their relations: the grammatical analysis of a sentence. In my own words I would say analysis is observaing something and then determining what is it that you saw and putting that information into catergories.  As we spoke about in class today we can also try and find patterns and classify it. As I mentioned in my first blog that i might want to research studying habits in the library compared to studying habits in the dorm. I feel that by using analysis during this process I would be able to observe these habits, take note as to what works and what doesnt, and then be able to create a theory.

Blog 1

In English and writing studies many methods of research take place. When looking over the course outline as well as being an observer I notice that communicating by use of oral language is most common. However, as technology is evolving we are beginning to lose touch with simple grammar and punctuation. Everything is done through text messages, emails, Facebook, etc. I believe that researching has changed from the way that it used to be. With this being said I would be interested in researching either how studying habits have changed since computers and technology has become so dominant or study habits in the library compared to the studying happens in a dorm/bedroom. I'm not sure if those are the ideas you are looking for so any feedback would be great!