Fieldwork Mini-Assignment

For our fieldwork mini-assignment, we decided to focus on expanding on a greater number of examples and providing explanations on  how those examples tie into our unifying theme. 

 We decided on the theme of Public Expression. This theme appealed to all of us for many different reasons.Our examples that we utilized were writings on desk tops, expressive t-shirts, and random writing around campus.  These"forms" of literature are far from what is traditionally thought of literature.  The non-traditional aspect of these examples is what originally attracted me to explore these forms of literature further. For myself, I love the authenticity and creativity attributed to forms of literature that fall under this theme. Things like writings on desks are often overlooked and thought to not have much importance; but while observing and taking note of all of these forms of public expression I believe that one thing that ties them together is a great significance to the author. Since most of these examples were anonymous  authors were left with no room for judgement, ridicule, or limiting rules. Therefore, opening up a wide range for creativity. 

                                                                  Desk, desk top writings, chalk and picture of concept map:

The first place we re-visited was the building, Denny. Last time, I only confined myself to the rooms that I had classes in. This time around, we visited rooms I had never been in. We were primarily focused on finding different writings on desk tops. I believe that the writings from students on desk tops during class are the realest depiction one can get of what is going on in their head. There's no certain standard for this type of writing, leaving much room for creativity and freedom of expression.

Graffiti, t-shirts, and re-mapped areas:

We then traveled to the front of Atkins Library. In front of the library, there are many t-shirts with various writings on them. None of us were really sure what these shirts were for or what purpose they served. When taking a look at many of them, we saw that some advocated things like non-violence and anti-bullying. Most seemed to come from a place of hurt or despair. Very few of the t-shirts had any bit of a positive outlook. Happy or sad, they all contained messages to that had a lot of meaning to the author. Most of these T-shirts were anonymous  I think that this leaves a lot of room for these people to express exactly what they want without any fear of other's opinions.

As we continued around campus, we noticed a couple of spots that contained graffiti and sidewalk chalk. We couldn't read any of the graffiti but it still appealed to us because of the creativity it contained. The sidewalk chalk contained mostly messages that brought attention to certain events going on around campus.

My Mapping Blog

The place that I decided to map out is the building Denny. I really just drew the class room that I go into the most.:

Sorry that it's blurry, technology keeps failing me tonight :/

Denny mostly has lecture hall that have those annoyingly small wooden desk. I'm quite the doodler when I get bored in class. The desks in Denny let me know that I'm not alone haha. Almost every desk has writing on it. One day I was at a desk that was holding an on-going debate on the best fraternity haha. Other writings I've seen are initials of two people who are going to be together forever...and expressions of how awful a person thinks a particular class is. 

I love writing like this. It's uncensored, it's real, it has no set guidelines and rules, and it's much more entertaining than any other form of writing that I have ever read. In Denny, you can't get any cell phone service what so ever, but honestly I haven't minded that too much this semester and I can attribute that to all of the writing on the desk tops that haven't ceased to entertain me. :)

The joys of grammar....

In class on Thursday we talked about grammar. When I get any paper back from an English class half of my points off are ALWAYS for grammar. So of course, I get a little annoyed and question the significance of grammar. However, when thinking about it in class I realized that there are certain grammatical errors that I can't stand! I thought I would use this blog to talk about them. :)

When someone can not use the correct forms of your and you're:

Knowing the difference between too, to, and two:

When someone has to go out of their way to misspell something: 

I don't mind a misspelled word that much, but this shows that it can be pretty important: 

Maybe grammar is more important than I give it credit for. When it comes to myself...I couldn't care less about it! but as soon as I see a silly mistake from anyone else...it's suddenly some big thing that bothers me. Does any one else have any grammatical pet peeves? 

Midterm Reflection

     My writing group met in the Atkins Library at 10am on Tuesday morning for our mid-term assignment. We were pretty lost at first. We asked around to other groups, some told us to look for a short story but avoid books, while others said to look for a poster or something like that. Eventually, we saw the newspaper section on the second floor of the library and decided that it would be a good place to find something. We each grabbed a paper and looked for a while.  We found an article in the Charlotte Observer on the city of Belmont creating a “bicycle culture”. A link to the article is here.This article immediately stuck out to us, for various reasons. 

     Getting a photocopy of the article proved to be more challenging than what we anticipated. There were several technical malfunctions with the copiers we were trying to use. Luckily, the librarians at the library were nice enough to help us out.

                Once we finally got that out of the way, we found a quiet spot and did our writing beside the text. This wasn't as difficult as I thought it would be once we got going. I actually was able to write a lot. That really surprised me.     

     The article said that in 1991 Belmont became the first city in North Carolina to adopt New Urbanism-a neotraditional zoning in order to measure growth and development.  This adaptation included measures like creating many sidewalks throughout the city.  All of this was in an attempt to create a “bike-friendly city”. Basically, the city of Belmont was on a big health kick, and made many changes to adapt to this new way of life.

     I was interested in the length that the city of Belmont went to create a certain “culture”. Our culture is essentially, who we are. However, we have a role in creating a big part of our culture. It’s up to us to decide who we’re going to be. I thought about the lengths we often go in order to improve our own culture; sometimes these lengths are more extreme then others. Just like how the city of Belmont strived to create a “bike-culture”, we strive for our own sense of culture and a definition of who we are.

     I believe that one aspect of our culture involves our writing and writing processes. We all have our own, individualistic “cultures” when it comes to our writings. This can be made up of different places, events, or people that have had an impact on our writing. Our Literacy Narratives for example, describe one event that we seem to think has had a significant impact on our writing. That assignment-along with this semester-has made me realize certain events of my life, and their impact on my writing, and culture as a whole.