Researching 1 in 6 million & How I Fell in Love with Post Its

First of all, I thought it was very interesting that Hilary wanted to learn so much about her grandmother, although I was sort of confused why she wanted to know so much information. I think in this article she explained too much of her own experiences, and not enough advice on how to do such in depth research. She mentioned that she made calls and many emails, and I think it's great that she put so much effort into it. This has made me realize that not all research comes easily, you have to do more than just type a topic into the google search bar. In How I Fell in Love With Post-Its, I basically learned that Susana really is in love with post-its. I agree that by using post-its, it is a great organization skill and can keep your research concise. I found that I had a lot in common with Susana; she always needed to be in a quiet place to work and once I get started on a project, I need to finish it. I cannot take breaks and stay focused at the same time. I like how she mentioned the fact that there's always a size, shape, and color for any type of information that you need to flag. I feel like after reading this, I will use her methods when researching.

Linguistic Awareness Project

For my linguistic awareness project I would like to create a poster on study strategies for college students. I think it is important for college students to learn how to study the right way because most come from high school, where they were not taught at all the proper ways to study. At least for me, I did not study much in high school unless I had an important test, but now I have realized that in college you need to study for every class if you want to earn good grades. I think by using posters to demonstrate this, students will be able to easily access study strategies anywhere on campus. When I walk through the quad, there is a whole poster board which would be a good place to post them. I also think that I could put them on the bathroom stall doors because there are always posters in there to read...haha. I know that if I were to encounter a poster about study strategies, I would stop to read it.

A Bullet For Your Arsenal

While reading this article, I learned that advertisers will display any image to get you to buy their product. Like Rodriguez describes, the iPod cutouts are of the "coolest" "hippest" and the most "physically fit" kids. It makes you want to put yourself into one of the cutouts as if you are the one dancing to the music coming from your iPod. Advertisers even carefully pick out certain colors to put into their advertisement so that it draws in the eye and makes it visually appealing; they never use more then one set of complementary colors in one ad. The iPod ads use bright, neon colors to attract they eye. Even the viewing perspective of the ad has to do with the way a person views it; looking up at an ad, say a billboard, can represent admiration of whatever the ad is portraying. Once again, this article has everything to do with the audience of your ad, paper, or any genre for that matter. Whoever you are trying to get to buy your product, you need to appeal to them the most.

Graffiti

I chose this image because it is about world peace. It says that once people stop obsessing, "loving", power, then maybe one day we can have world peace because people will care more about love than power. People need to learn to love one another and to know that power is not everything in this world. This is directed towards people who are possibly in power, or people who want to be in power. I bet the person that created this, is not a person of power because they are the ones that know how to love and want world peace.

This graffiti is saying that God made everyone, whether they are gay or straight. Everyone deserves to be happy and whoever created this graffiti, obviously wants everyone to know that although they are gay, they are happy too. Whether you are gay or straight, it should not determine your happiness. This person could possibly be pushing for gay marriages to be allowed in their certain state. I am not sure who created either of these graffiti's, but I think each of them portray important messages that are problems within our world today.

Interviewing Luca

The importance of the Language Awareness project is to see the different languages that are used within people's families and how they differ from one another. I interviewed Luca Hansen on not only his own language, but also the language spoken within his intermediate family. He is my friend in my english class and he comes from Geneva, Illinois although his mom's side of the family is from Italy. His grandmother speaks differentely when she is around the entire family; she uses specific Italian slang and has an accent although she is speaking English. Luca was born and raised to speak English because that is what his parents spoke, and that is who he learned from. In high school, he took two years of spanish, but does not remember most of it. While in the classroom he spoke Spanish, but didn't use it much outside of school. Luca says that he speaks different in front of his parents than his friends. He would never swear or say anything inappropiate in front of his parents. He is more proper and respectful. In front of his friends, he is more carefree and relaxed; he is not as conscious and he is more open. His tone also changes depending on the person he is talking to. When talking to his grandparents he uses a softer tone, and remembers to be very polite.

Getting Personal & Critiquing & Changing Genres

From reading "Getting Personal" I learned that you have to want to "dig deep" and really put your feelings out there to be able to write a personal essay. If you just list events it becomes more of a narrative. You must meet the expectations of your readers, so that they feel like it was worth their time to read what you had to say. You can use a personal essay as a way to explore your own problems.
While reading "Critiquing and Changing Genres", I had never thought that a writer could actually create a new genre; this is true because whenever you write you are being creative and putting your own thoughts into your writing resulting in variation. If a writer modifies too many elements of a genre, the reader will no longer be able to recognize what genre they are reading. By critiquing your own genre, you are able to identify the scene, key patterns within the genre, and what the patterns tell us about the scene. Genres are changed when peoples attitudes, ways of knowing, and goals change.

My Languages

In my family, we do not really have any sort of second language; we all speak english. A lot of people outside of the city of Chicago say that we have a Chicago accent. I think that when you live in a place for a long time, you can develop an accent and you begin to speak like the people around you. I used to live in Texas so we had a bit of a southern accent and said words like "y'all". When I moved from Texas to Chicago, many people asked me where I was from but it didn't seem to me as if I had an accent. Now that I live here in Chicago, people say I have a Chicago accent. My best friend from Kansas always laughs at me when I say "Wisconsin". She thinks that it sounds like I am saying Wiscawnsin, whereas she pronounces the "O". Also when I went to visit my cousin in Iowa, many of the people there guessed that I was from Chicago by the way that I spoke.