Whitney's World

Web Workshop

2006-12-15T09:18:00.000-08:00

I attended Dreamweaver 1 on Tuesday, December 5th. It turned out to be a full class and I was glad to see several other classmates there as well. It was also nice to see a variety of different majors that were interested in learning more about Dreamweaver. Before we began the workshop, the instructor was very helpful and provided some useful background information on Dreamweaver. Once we started creating web pages a lot of the stuff we did was review, but I also learned some new skills that may be very helpful in the future. We learned how to incorporate tables and bullets into Dreamweaver, which are helpful in organizing your sites. We also learned how to incorporate music into Dreamweaver to make pages more interesting. Although some of the information was repetitive, it was nice to have a good review of Dreamweaver before creating our final web projects.

Emergence

2006-11-28T18:37:00.000-08:00

We are finally done reading the giant pink booklet and have moved onto another set of readings in the book Emergence, by Steven Johnson. Although some points in the beginning of the book were a bit repetitive and explained in great depth, I found the book was able to keep my attention better than some of the previous readings we’ve had this semester.

Before reading the introduction I really didn’t quite understand what emergence was. It became much clearer to me when it was described in the book as being “movement from low-level rules to higher level sophistication.” The book introduces us to this bottom up world view by discussing slime mold cells and how they come together to form something greater than the sum of their separate parts. Another example of a bottom up system that was discussed was an ant colony. The individual ants are meaningless by themselves, but when they work together their sum creates a lifelong functional colony.

We discussed how it is hard for us as humans to envision emergent systems because our brains are wired to think like pacemakers. It seems this way to us because if we examine a bird flock there is always a bird in front that makes it appear as if that bird is leading the rest of them. This is not really the case. Each bird just follows its own set of rules and they end up in that pattern.

Cities were also discussed as being emergent systems because they can replicate themselves and draw in populations and grow. They possess emergent intelligence which is the “ability to store and retrieve information and to recognize and respond to patterns in human behavior.” We are moving into a world of these kinds of bottom up systems. Web sites, artists, and even video games use them and we are finally starting to recognize it.

I can't wait for Thanksgiving!

2006-11-17T09:10:00.000-08:00

I woke up this morning in a bad mood because I was thinking about all of the stuff I have to get done before Thanksgiving. It’s Friday and I’m not even excited for the weekend because it will mostly be spent in the library. I have managed to procrastinate again and am now overwhelmed with homework. For this class alone I have to prepare to present the reading for Monday and finish writing our ten page paper. I got even more overwhelmed when I realized I still had to blog for this week. This weekend is not going to be a fun one. Along with everyone else I could really use a four day break.

I felt a little better after my cousin called and told me she got our tickets to go to Germany. Some of my relatives just moved out there, so we are going out to visit them. Because we will have a place to stay, all I had to pay for was the plane ticket so I figured why not go? I jumped at the chance because I’ll probably never get another good opportunity to go. That got me super excited and that’s helped me take my mind off of school. With that in mind hopefully I’ll be able to get all my stuff done before break. I’m sure Thanksgiving will be here before I know it.

Lost in Translation

2006-11-13T21:23:00.000-08:00

During class this week we watched the movie Lost In Translation starring Bill Murray as Bob and Scarlett Johansson as Charlotte. When I first saw this movie I didn’t really like it mostly because I didn’t fully understand the meaning behind it. After watching it in class I got a much better understanding of it and enjoyed it much more. I found it really helped me understand the idea of places vs. non-places. The movie provided great examples, which also helped me understand Auge’s readings.

Lost In Translation looks at the lives of two Americans placed in a totally foreign place where it is difficult to communicate with others because of the language barrier. They experience loneliness because of the lack of communication and question their identity and what their place in the world is. I think Ague explains a lot of the experiences in the movie being non-places “where the habitué of supermarkets, slot machines and credit cards communicates wordlessly, through gestures, with and abstract, unmediated commerce; a world thus surrendered to solitary individuality.”

The hospital scene where Bob is in the waiting room with others around him is a good example of this because he cannot communicate with language, so he then tries an alternative form of communication to try to understand the person sitting next to him. The hospital starts off as a non-place and Bob tries to change this into a place by using hand gestures to communicate in another way. This passage is also a good example of how even though the characters were surrounded by people in many of their experiences they still felt a great deal of solitude. Bob and Charlotte are often walking down the street or are in the elevator full of people, but their experiences would be exactly the same if there was no one in sight. It is only when the two of them are together they turn these non-places into places because they are able to communicate to each other.

I Could Do Without Being Asked For Money

2006-11-10T09:40:00.000-08:00

I usually walk down State Street at least once a day after class and there hasn’t been a single day where I haven’t been asked for money by someone. I feel bad about the situation they are in, but it’s really starting to get annoying. I just couldn’t afford to give people money all the time, and I really don’t have a lot of sympathy for people constantly asking me.

It seems that the homeless always target college students who are walking alone. For some reason they think we have money and are too nice to turn them down. I am not one of these people. I usually don’t carry my wallet to class and if I do I most likely don’t have any money anyway. Even if I do happen to have cash on me, I don’t like giving it away because I don’t know what they are actually buying with it. I mean, if I knew someone was just using my money to go buy themselves some alcohol I’d be pissed because I could have used that money to buy myself some!

I’m starting to avoid walking down that way because it seems no matter how I turn them down I get a comment. If I tell someone I’m sorry I don’t have any on me, I’ve been accused of lying. On the other hand if I just walk by without saying anything I get some comment about how I’m ignoring them. I can’t win no matter what I do.

Although it’s sometimes difficult to avoid the homeless downtown, I’ve discovered a few things that do work if you’re walking alone. If you see someone with a cup down the street, get out your phone and call someone. Even if no one answers you can still pretend you’re in the middle of a conversation and they will leave you alone. Another thing that usually works is to find a big group of people and pretend you are with them. You can sometimes get lost in the crowd and blend in without being asked for spare change. I’m at the point where I get so annoyed that I often do all of these things. I swear some of them have to recognize me now and they still ask everyday. I love Madison, but that is one thing I could do without.

Modernism/Places Vs. Postmodernism/Non-places

2006-11-06T15:30:00.000-08:00

This week’s reading was probably one of the most challenging readings we’ve had in class so far. It was difficult to get through and I really didn’t understand them at all until after the class discussions. The first reading by Fredric Jameson compared modernism vs. postmodernism. I saw how postmodernism is so greatly linked to architecture and other forms of art. The shoe paintings by Van Gough and Warhol demonstrated some of the differences between modernism and postmodernism. Van Gough’s shoes have more of a sense of history behind them. The content is what is really important and can really teach us something, which has a lot to do with what modernism is. Warhol’s shoes, on the other hand, represent the idea of postmodernism. They are more abstract and the focus is on the form/style of the piece. That picture makes us look at art differently in the same way that postmodernism makes us look at the world differently and is a new way of thinking.

The next reading that we looked at by Marc Auge compared places vs. non-places. The postmodernism handout helped me relate the articles by seeing how a place would fall under the modernism category whereas a non-place is like the postmodernism. Places are more of and in-depth experience and are more memorable. Jordan also talked about how places are more interactive and non-places are less interactive and how the people and things around them have little effect on their experience.

We got into a very interesting discussion in class about what makes something a place and how places and non-places can co-exist. The supermarket example we talked about in class was very helpful in seeing how something can be a place for one person and a non-place for another. For the customer who may have no interaction with the people around them it may be a non-place whereas it may be a place for a cashier because they must interact with everyone who checks out with them. We also discussed how things like class size can affect whether or not something may be a place vs. a non-place. It’s interesting to realize how new technology is pushing us into a world of more non-places because we can now do many things without interaction with others. It’s kind of a scary thought that we may be becoming less and less personal with each other.

Parents Who Spoil Their Kids Are Nuts!

2006-11-05T19:58:00.000-08:00

I was watching Oprah the other day and she had an interesting show on parents who spoil their kids. These kids had been handed everything including brand new cars, expensive clothes and thousand dollar allowances every month. Even when some of the parents were having financial problems the kids still got everything they wanted. They even had grown adults with kids on the show whose parents were still giving them gas money.

I think it’s ridiculous how spoiled so many kids are these days. When I look at what some of my brothers high school friends drive to school every morning it makes me sick. I don’t know what kind of parents would do this to their kids. They will never learn to appreciate anything or learn to be independent. Your parents can’t provide for you forever. I can understand that kids may need some help from Mom and Dad to pay the bills from time to time when you’re in college, but I think that should be cut off for the most part as soon as you graduate.

I feel like I had a lot of stuff growing up, but I definitely wasn’t spoiled. I was lucky to have all the stuff I had because I wasn’t one of those kids who got everything they wanted. I appreciated the things I had that I didn’t need because I worked to get most of it on my own. Because of this I feel like I’m pretty independent and can easily live on my own.

I had a very spoiled roommate my sophomore year and she didn’t even know how to use a toaster. I had to teach her how to do laundry and even use the dish washer because she always had everything done for her. Living on her own was a huge shock because she wasn’t use to doing anything by herself. I guess parents can raise their kids however they want, but I know my kids definitely won’t be spoiled brats.

Identity Crisis

2006-10-30T09:48:00.000-08:00

Last weeks reading mainly focused on dealing with identity issues. The first reading by Sherry Turkle made it clear that our culture today is based off of flexibility and the ability to adapt to change. Because our world is continually changing, there really isn’t a normal anymore. The chapter talks about how we ourselves are always changing. We have many different sides to ourselves. We bring out different personality characteristics when we are around certain types of people.

The chapter then goes on to talk about how we wear masks all the time in our everyday life and also have the opportunity to do so online. Computers have caused disruption in our traditional ways of categorizing people. The discussion we had in class really helped me understand more about constructing fake identities on the computer. It was interesting to read about why people choose the identities they do and what they experience because of that. Some of the experiences outlined by the participants in the article were self discovery, relief, or even panic. One woman even explained that she was scared or what she may find out about herself from her online identity.

Both readings gave many reasons why people spend so much time in these virtual worlds and question some of the consequences that may come along with that. For many, choosing an identity other than your own can be an escape from real life. It gives many a chance to in a way live out their goals and dreams that may not happen in real life. It is also easier to take more chances than it is in reality because it has less of an impact since it’s not really real. These virtual identities are easier to maintain as well. You don’t have to put a lot of work into a relationship with someone who isn’t real because you talk to them only when it is convenient for you.

I think a major consequence to spending so much time in these simulations is that we may get too caught up in them and become dependent on something that isn’t real. Although it feels as if you are talking to a real person, they don’t actually understand what you are saying. I think virtual worlds go too far when we become so addicted to them that we miss out on our real lives. When people get too attached the virtual world has been a success.

The goal of a virtual world is to trick people into believing it is real. This thought ties into writing in a culture full of simulation. For our web projects, our goal is to construct a character that will be persuasive to a particular audience. It must look natural and life like in order for the audience to believe it. After the readings and discussion, I realized that simulations are everywhere and much more common than I originally thought. It brings up the question of whether or not everything is really one big simulation.

Semester Burnout is Here!

2006-10-27T07:33:00.000-07:00

It’s a little more than half way through the semester and I’m definitely showing signs of semester burnout. It seems that this point in the semester comes sooner and sooner every year. It’s the time when going to class gets harder and harder and absences become a bit more frequent.

This week has been especially difficult to get through. The thought of the upcoming Halloween weekend was a major factor in getting through another week of class. I think it has also been the reason why it has gone by so slow. When you’re excited for something it seems like it takes forever for it to get here.

It’s funny how in the summer I always can’t wait for school to start again and after a few weeks I’m already looking forward to the next break. I’m so motivated during the first few weeks of school, but it doesn’t last long. I need my second wind this semester. Six more weeks seems like an eternity, but I know it will go by before I know it.

Nothing is Original Anymore

2006-10-22T21:47:00.000-07:00

This weeks readings mainly discussed appropriation and how it is important in our daily lives. This is also known as sampling, which is borrowing from something that has already been recorded to form a new composition. Sampling is in our media and therefore is everywhere because we get all of our information from the media. Old songs are constantly being put to new use by sampling. The reading made the connection between sampling of music and writing. Hypertext works the same way as hip-hop writing.

As time goes by it gets harder and harder to create something totally original. It is hard to know exactly what is truly original because pretty much everything had to have stemmed from something else. Our ideas don’t just appear out of nowhere. This made me realize that although I may not know where something originated, it was probably a sampling of something else. The question is when does it become copying and when do you need permission for using someone else’s work?

In school, plagiarism was and is still a big deal. I was always told to create my own work while writing. It was always ok to use other peoples’ ideas as long as they weren’t copied word for word. In this case we had to cite our sources and give them credit. I always had to do several drafts for class assignments, but I never really realized a big reason for that was to prove the authenticity of my own work. I think plagiarism is a little different for music because although some of the lyrics may be copied word for word from someone else, they are used in a new and unique way.

In chapter seven of Jeff Rices’, Writing About Cool, a good point was made about how your audience should always be considered while writing because different people see things in different ways. Using something that is recognizable and familiar to your audience will help make your point more effectively. I also learned that I should think about my audience and how what I say will affect them. The main thing I took away from this reading was that it is important to incorporate others ideas into my writing as long as I give them credit when needed and use them in my own creative way.

The Coolhunt

2006-10-15T22:35:00.000-07:00

When I started reading Gladwell’s article “The Coolhunt”, I was a bit confused as to why we were reading about fashion and how different trends get started. I’m not complaining because I do like clothes, but I would have never related “cool hunting” to anything like how a new type of seed becomes popular to farmers. I soon realized that the spreading of a clothing trend works the same way as the popularity of a type of seed rises. All things are spread from one person to another the same way. I learned that in order for this to happen, many different groups of people need to be involved.

Any new concept or idea needs to come from someone, somewhere. The first ones to test something out are known as the innovators. In the fashion world especially, these people are typically the more adventurous and unique people, also know as the “cool kids”. The next slightly larger group of people who adapt a new idea are the early adaptors. They are the ones who watch the innovators and begin to spread the trend. After the early adaptors come the early majority followed by the late majority. These are the last people to accept a new idea and will only do so if it has been successfully tested by everyone else. If this has been done, the idea was a success.

If things don’t happen in this order, the idea won’t be spread. You can’t convince the late majority to adapt a new idea because they make their decisions based on what the early majority does. Something new must be started by an innovator, which is why many large companies look for and hope the innovators will wear their product and will then become a big hit. In a sense, the spread of new ideas are uncontrollable because they can’t be pushed upon just any large group of people.

After reading the article it became clearer to me how spreading these new ideas relates back to a lot of what we have been talking about so far this semester. New media in our world is spread in this same way. Blogs especially are an up and coming trend that have spread by going through all the different groups of people in order. This got me thinking about what group I would mostly fit into as far as spreading new information along. For me, I think it makes a big difference on what the idea is. While I may be in the majority group picking up on the latest technologies, I am probably and an early adaptor for many other things. It’s kind of interesting to think about.

It's no fun having a creepy old landlord

2006-10-12T21:52:00.000-07:00

After searching for the perfect apartment all summer, my roommate and I finally found it. It was the perfect size with a great view of the capitol. It was also in our price range, so I was super excited to move in. Soon after signing the lease we discovered that our landlord lived right next to us. I was a little disappointed that we didn’t have fun neighbors, but figured it wouldn’t be too much of a problem since we weren’t planning on throwing any raging house parties. We live in a college neighborhood and figured he should expect to have some noise anyway.

I realized how wrong I was when I first met my landlord. I was moving a load of stuff in one day this summer when I went to turn around for another load and saw a scary looking old man peering into my apartment. I thought that was kind of creepy, but I didn’t think much of it. Then later that week, my roommate and I decided to have a few people over to see the place before everyone left for school this year. Early on in the night we got a knock on our door. It was the landlord yelling at us because someone had put something in the door to prop it open. I understand that it’s his job to keep us safe, but none of my friends had put something in the door. We apologized anyway and he threatened to kick us out.

Ever since that night we often see him peeking into our place every time we have the door open just to make sure we aren’t destroying his property or something. I just think that’s a little excessive especially because out of all the people in the building my roommate and I are the two he should be worrying about the least. We have been super nice to him and try to talk to him, but he is always so grumpy.

Just this past weekend three friends came over to get ready to go out for the night and at around ten o’clock we got another warning from our landlord telling us to keep it down. We didn’t even have any music playing at the time. The neighbors across the street were being ten times louder than us. It’s just annoying how he’s always on our backs, when we have already done so much to make his property look better. I just don’t understand why some old people have to be so cranky! It just sucks that we now have to be so careful about having people over. If he thinks the noise is bad now, I can’t wait to see what happens when Halloween rolls around. I definitely won’t make the mistake of living next to my landlord again.

Network vs. Biological Viruses

2006-10-08T22:17:00.000-07:00

After reading the chapter on Epidemics I learned just how a virus can become a huge epidemic. The reading discussed different models and theories to help explain how these viruses spread. It was particularly interesting to read about how biological viruses and network viruses compare to one another. I had never really thought about how biological viruses relate to computer viruses until reading this chapter. Biological and network viruses are both a source of epidemics that move with the power of exponential growth. They move in the same way in that they start at a given node and then find every other one that is susceptible by branching out. All epidemics have the same goal in mind, which is to spread themselves as far as possible, but there are many differences in the ways network and biological viruses spread that we discussed in class.

Although network viruses can’t end civilization, they can have a huge economic toll. They are more troublesome because they are harder to contain and spread very quickly. With Biological viruses, often times symptoms appear and we then have time to try and get the virus under control. Network viruses don’t need to be physically brought over by plane or boat in order to infect around the globe. We discussed the fact that in order for and epidemic to explosively spread, it needs to find shortcuts to do so. With biological viruses, they can often be confined and therefore don’t explode into epidemics. Only the most infectious ones survive and they will often infect slowly, giving heath authorities time to respond with vaccines.

Another big difference that was discussed was the difference in susceptibility of a network virus compared to a biological virus. With computers, there aren’t a whole lot of factors. Most people have the same software and you are automatically susceptible to the virus if you have a certain program such as Microsoft Outlook. Humans also have an immune system to screen dangerous viruses that computers generally don’t have. Some biological viruses are harmless to humans, but can affect and transmit to animals. The biggest thing I took away from the reading is that it is important to realize every virus, especially biological ones, have a different susceptibility depending on behavioral and environmental factors.

Why are we doing this?

2006-10-01T22:47:00.000-07:00

I’m really glad one of the readings last week was all about blogging and why we do it. The article by Carolyn R. Miller and Dawn Shepherd was really interesting to read because it relates to the bulk of what we are doing in class, which is creating our own blogs. The reading really made me think about why we blog and how it became so popular. I never really thought about how different genres form, change, and often decay. The type writer was invented and eventually began to die off with the invention of something better; the computer. It was interesting to compare different genres with the survival of the fittest theory. I began to realize that blogs may also change and then die off over time as well, but no one knows exactly how long that will take. We don’t know how long anything will last, we just know why we have them today.

When computer technology came, the blog was an easy thing to adopt. Blogs are here today because they fit in with today’s social beliefs. I never really realized how much the boundary between private and public life weakened in the 1990’s, especially with celebrities. By learning about other celebrities personal lives it does make them seem more like real people that we can relate to. I think a big reason why people are so fascinated with other peoples lives is because we want to see others mistakes and triumphs to either make our own lives seem not so bad, to give ourselves hope for a better life, or to be able to relate to other people. This thought applies to blogging as well. If we read about other people messing up their lives we feel better about our own lives. If we read about an amazing wedding on a blog it makes us happy and we have hope that someday we get that same chance at happiness as well. Or, if we read about someone going through a divorce, it makes us feel that we are not alone and have other people to relate to. This is a big part of what blogging does.

I think people blog because on some level we all want to be heard or to share a story for one reason or another. I personally don’t think anyone would blog if they didn’t intend on having someone else read it. If we really didn’t want others to read what we have to say they would have just written it in a journal or on a word program and not put it on the internet. The reading helped me see that people blog for many reasons including validation, clarification, entertainment, education, or they may just want to be listened to. Even though a blog is not a real person, you know someone out there is reading your blog and in a way is listening to you. If I have a bad day, I know I always feel a lot better after venting about it to a good friend.

Sharing what was on our minds became extremely easy when the technology of the web came. Blogging makes it incredibly easy to just get out whatever’s on your mind without having to find a real life person on the spot to listen to you, which is why it has become so popular. Before blogging, we would have had to go through all the work to write a book and get it published or go on national television. This was a pretty rare thing that was only for certain people, but blogging is for anyone.

The class discussion got me thinking about other reasons why blogging may have become so popular. I think a lot of it also has to do with today’s culture being much more accepting of things. Years ago, divorce was rare and looked down upon, but now it is extremely common. More and more people are coming out of the closet everyday because it is a lot easier to talk about it in today’s society. You can find so many different subjects on talk shows that you just wouldn’t have dared to talk about years ago. Talking about our problems can be very therapeutic for many. Communicating to others helps us find meaning to our lives, which is what we are all searching for in the end.

Times are Changin'

2006-09-24T22:07:00.000-07:00

After reading Katherine Hales, Writing Machines, I realized just how much literacy has changed since the invention of the computer and the World Wide Web. Literacy doesn’t just come in the form of a material book anymore. The article stressed that when literacy is put online, it creates a different meaning to the story. It talked about how when a book becomes electronic, the content changes, and therefore the meaning of the words change as well. This seemed a bit confusing to me because I wasn’t exactly sure how the difference in the medium could change the meaning of what a word meant. I think one of the major points I got out of the reading was that we should appreciate print books and new types of print, but also recognize their differences and how they help us see the content in a new way.
After the class discussion and checking out the Lexia to Perplexia site, I had a better idea of exactly what these differences are. There are many different advantages and disadvantages to print books as well as technotexts. Today, many would prefer electronic media over print books, but there are many advantages to reading a book with just the print text. With books, you can get straight to the point without any other distractions. Sometimes technotexts have so much going on, it is easy to get confused and off track. Another advantage to books is that they are usually full of credible information without any extra BS. Technotexts can even use hyperlinks to try to market and sell things to the viewer. Looking at lexia perplexia made me see just how ridiculously confusing a website can be. We need to realize that technotexts often have lots of false junk packed into them and be careful not to let all the extra stuff get in our way of reading and understanding the story.
There are some great advantages to technotexts that books cannot provide as well. Websites can make connections to many different things, so if we don’t understand something we can easily find it out through a hyperlink with a click of a button. Technotexts can also be much more amusing to look at. So many different features can be added to the text including sound and graphics to help us understand a concept. With print books, all you have to look at it the text itself, which can often make it very dull and hard to read.
After talking about it in class, I saw more clearly how websites may seem to be much more appealing and can sometimes offer some great benefits than an ordinary book, but we shouldn’t forget about the importance of the print book and make sure we keep it in use.

Change of Plans

2006-09-21T20:30:00.000-07:00

For weeks now I’ve been trying to plan a weekend to go up to La Crosse to visit all my friends from my previous school. I finally decided that this weekend would be the best time to go since it will be my best friends 21st Birthday and I won’t be missing any Badger games while I’m gone. My plans completely changed early Monday morning when I got a call from my Mom. She explained to me that she was in an accident with my car! Thank goodness no one was hurt and it was 100% the other persons fault, but I was still not happy to hear that my baby was destroyed and that car was my only way to get to La Crosse.
I own a black 1993 Honda Civic, which has been with me even since I got my license. The estimate came back with almost $4,000 worth of damage, which easily totaled my broken in car. It’s pretty dented in, but my Dad thinks he can fix it so that it’s drivable for a couple hundred dollars, so ideally it would be nice if they gave me the money for the damage and then let me keep the car. That way I’d still have my car and a few extra bucks. Things were looking good and in my favor until we looked at the report for the accident.
It turns out that the cop accidentally recorded that my Mom was at fault for the crash. That’s kind of a crucial piece of information. I would think the cop would double check to see that he circled the right person on the report. He obviously made a mistake, and my Dad straightened it out the next day, so now we have to wait for him to file another report. These things are a pain to deal with, but hopefully everything all works out and I get to go to La Crosse some other weekend.

Introducing Rhetoric

2006-09-17T21:16:00.000-07:00

After reading the first few articles that introduced the subject of rhetoric, I felt like I had a much better understanding of what it meant. I had no idea there were so many opinions of what rhetoric is and whether or not it is deceptive. The articles also helped me to see rhetoric as more than just communicating through print and speech. They made me realize that rhetoric can have aesthetic components as well, like when we communicate to others through music, dance, theatre, and art. I could see how rhetoric would play a huge part in my career as a Dietician. My job will be all about trying to persuade someone to eat a certain way and lead a certain lifestyle. After the class readings, I thought I had a good grasp on rhetoric and its history, but didn’t really see how it pertained to my everyday life outside of work.
There were some great examples in class of how rhetoric can be used, like in political debates and classroom lectures. These examples helped me see how rhetoric is being used around me today and how it is a necessity in our daily decision making. We talked about how rhetoric is everywhere, including our social lives. We even use rhetoric while talking to others in order to persuade them to like us. Personal examples involving relationships were extremely helpful in understanding how rhetoric is used and whether or not it can be deceptive.
My classmates also helped me understand exactly what communication needs to have in order for it to be rhetoric. Rhetoric needs to involve things such as planning, adaptation to a particular audience, goals, and response. After the class discussion it became clear to me that in order for something to be rhetoric, it has to have more than one answer. Saying that Mars is a planet is not a rhetoric statement because it’s not debatable. We know for a fact that mars is a planet and it would be pointless to try to persuade this fact to someone else. These points more clearly addressed what rhetoric is not.
I now feel like I can walk down the street and know what rhetoric is around me. The examples in class helped me understand more about rhetoric in today’s day in age and not just its complicated history.

Figuring it Out is Frustrating!

2006-09-14T20:48:00.000-07:00

Growing up, I always knew I wanted to go to college and graduate from a four year institution, I just wasn’t exactly sure what I wanted to go to school for. I started out at UW La Crosse thinking I would major in fitness and thought I would be in and out in four years. Boy was I wrong. I then wanted to be a Physical Therapist and after realizing that wasn’t right for me either, I changed my major to Community Health Education. This is when I finally knew I wanted to specialize in the Nutrition aspect of Health. That’s what brought me to Madison.
I’m currently a junior majoring in Dietetics and I hope I am finally done changing my mind. I now feel like I have my academic life figured out, but after registering for classes this Fall, I’m realizing how much farther I still have to go. I’ve had so many setbacks that came with the path I chose, and as a junior, it’s frustrating to realize I’m not even close to being done with school.
Struggling to choose a major and getting the proper advising has made my academic college experience frustrating at times and more complicated than it should be. I lost at least a year of time due my decision to transfer and change my major. My advisor at La Crosse told me to take all the wrong courses that didn’t count towards my new major at Madison, so I almost feel like my two years at La Crosse were a waste. On top of this, I was told I shouldn’t take more than 13 credits a semester this year since I’m a transfer student and am not use to the difference in the amount of course work at Madison. Because of this I have at least 2 more years of class left and that’s if my advisor is actually helpful and doesn’t forget to mention a course or two that I needed to take as a pre-requisite for something else. I also figured out that to get a job with my major you pretty much need to be a registered Dietician. In order to do this I have to take a national exam and do a 1-2 year internship. It looks like my four year plan has changed to at least six or seven years of school.
Even though I’ve had an amazing time in school so far and have learned a lot, I can’t help but feel like a lot of it was a waste. It’s just frustrating to think about how much more money I’ve spent and am going to need to get me the rest of the way through. Sometimes I thing I should have just become a doctor because I will be in school for so long. I know I’m not alone in my frustrations. It’s hard for anyone to graduate in four years unless they know exactly what they want to do when they graduate from high school and stick to it. I guess I’m just going to have be prepared to stay in school a while longer. Although my transition this year has been a bit overwhelming so far, I’m more excited that I actually have a plan and a bright future.

Rhetoric: Is it Just Another Word in the Dictionary?

2006-09-10T21:22:00.000-07:00

Prior to reading the about what rhetoric is, the word itself didn’t mean a whole lot to me. I thought it had something to do with communicating through language to get a point across. When I thought about it, I just pictured someone giving a speech and almost pushing their views on someone else. To me, it was just another word in the dictionary. I wondered how in the world an entire book could be written on the subject of rhetoric alone.
After reading James A Herrick’s, “An Overview of Rhetoric”, I realized that the subject was much more complex than I had thought. My definition was correct, but there are many other definitions that are correct as well. I had no idea rhetoric had such a long and ever evolving history, which greatly expanded its definition and influence in our lives. Rhetoric is everywhere even in everyday decisions such as deciding what to do on a Friday night. It is universal and is an extremely important factor in everything we do including my career as a Dietician. My job will soon be all about persuading people to live a certain way.
My thoughts have expanded from public speaking to any form of communication that is planned, adapted to an audience, contains motives, is responsive to a situation, seeks to persuade, and deals with debatable issues. I also never would have thought that rhetoric would have anything to do with using aesthetics to clarify something. There are so many opinions on what exactly is the meaning of rhetoric, but after reading this chapter, I would expand my definition to the study of how we effectively organize and express our emotions and thoughts through the use of language and symbols to clarify or influence others decisions.

Hi!

2006-09-08T10:47:00.000-07:00

My name is Whitney, and I'm a student at The University of Wisconsin Madison. I just transferred from UW La Crosse and plan on majoring in Nutritional Sciences. I am very interested in anything that has to do with food and am excited to get started with my major at a new school. I have created this blog for my English 201 course to discuss various topics from the class, but also to express my thoughts on how my transition here at the UW is going. This college writing course focuses on rhetorics of network culture, which is a topic that is quite foreign to me. I am not a technological person and therefore should become more familiarized with the world wide web. As unfamiliar as some of the topics will be, I know this class will have information that will be useful to me or anyone else living in this day in age. That is the direction the world is headed to communicate more and more everyday. This is the first time I have every done anything with blogging before and I am very excited to try something new!