#writ1133du

We began conducting our interviews in front of the Williams tower with the intent of finding out whether passers-by thought the gold on top of it is real. Timmy proposed this question after hearing speculation that the gold was in fact real, and we attempted to confirm this by contacting the University of Denver’s architecture department. The head architect was out of the office, so we continued our investigation by striking up conversations with students and pedestrians who were in the area. We remained outside for about 2 hours, and most people we interviewed were students on their way to class or people who live in the area. We asked each participant 

Whether they have noticed the tower 

If they think the spire was made of real gold

If not, what is it made of? 

Did anyone mention whether the gold was genuine when they toured the school before becoming a student? (This was how Timmy first heard about it.)

How would they feel about the school if it were real? 

Do they think it contributes to the status of the school?

16 interviewees were very certain it was not real. Most of those people said they never really thought about the tower, and no one had ever mentioned it to them before now. One woman was very vehemently convinced that it was only copper, but the others did not have a guess about what material it was made of.

 7 of the people who did think it was real made their guess simply by looking at the tower. Many of them felt that it added to the status of the school and made them proud to attend here. 1 person interviewed was a legacy student whose parents, DU alumni, had told him the gold was genuine. Julian also interviewed a woman who works in the athletics department and was on site the day the gold was put in place. She confirmed that much care went into its installation. Specifically, the installers had to ensure that weather conditions were acceptable due to the specific variables that must be considered in order for the gold to adhere. Timmy also found evidence through an article from the Denver Post [1999] that the spire is comprised of 28 pounds of gold leaf.

 Summary -

16 people claimed they do not ever notice the tower

Those same 16 people did not believe the gold was real

7 people thought the gold was real and believed it contributed to the status of the school

Only the lady Julien interviewed had ever had the tower mentioned to her prior to our inquiries. 

There is in fact real gold on the tower, though it is only gold leaf. 

hello, greetings, salutations, and what have you.

my name is timmy and i am the ripe age of 19. oh, and first thing is first i am going to be writing in all lowercase letters, so if that bothers you, i am immensely sorry and will apologize right now.

to be quite honest, i think in terms of writing i am quit oblivious. i know that there are certain ways and conventions that one is supposed to “know” when writing. but honestly? i have no fucking idea, so i guess i’m just along for the ride. 

i mean, being in the ib program they taught you to stay true to your own authentic experience, and that’s what i did. wrote my truth, wrote how i knew how. but i guess i’m ready to learn how to be better, so here i am for your entertainment and viewing pleasure.

yes, the pleasure is entirely yours.

key terms that tend to go through my head when writing:

colloquial

run-on

comma

period(t)

on·o·mat·o·poe·ia (it’s just fun)

the definition of good writing according to timmy: good writing is when the audience wants to keep reading, and genuine interest is ignited. 

nonetheless, so excited to start this writing journey with you all!

-timmy xx

As I finish up my last map for this quarter, I can tell that I grew as a writer in many ways. Throughout this course I developed my theory of writing, and my final theory is understanding and learning through from failures I encountered. Looking through my  assignments I was able to develop my theory, I am able to observe how my theory evolved and was built upon with the assignments I had during my 10 weeks in this class.

When this quarter began, I believed my theory was “To get your point across, write with purpose, audience, tone, and evidence in mind, and in the end it will work out just fine”. I focused on things like tone, audience, purpose, and evidence. I know those things are important but what is more important is understanding the writing process and learning through failure. My new theory does incorporate aspects of my old theory since understanding and learning requires skills like tone, purpose, etc.

As I look back on all of the maps I created, they all had something to do with a process. On my map 1, I had a car and each of the car parts, writing skills/key words, have to be present on the car, the writing piece, for it to work and be successful. On my map 2 and map 3, learning though failure was incorporated because it is a process since you have to continue to try and fix piece/skills together to be successful. All of these theories about writing helped me expand my understand of writing and myself as a writer by showing me writing is not just completing assignment but understanding and learning from them. The maps also showed me I can grow as a writer no matter what the writing genre is.

Music Monday: The Civil Wars

Since we are moving into connections this week, I thought I’d share a great example of a duo with a powerful connection ... unfortunately, that powerful connection also led to the demise of their group. #complications But the music they made together was simply amazing. 

Two years ago, the University of Denver added Friday classes in an effort to improve their image and stimulate educational growth in their students. When talking, Jake, Madi, and I agreed that none of this has been accomplished. So, despite the addition of Friday classes, does DU still remain a ghost town on these day?

Methods:

In order to conduct our research, we knew that we were going to have to look at the target audience: DU students. We began with observations to reassure our hypothesis. On Thursday and Friday of last week, we observed the area in front of Sturm Hall. Many classes are taught in Sturm and it’s a popular place for tabling which attracts students. This is why we believed this area would act as a great sample of DU. We observed two different time frames (9:50-10:05 and 11:50-12:05) on each day to provide the best representation. These time frames are when classes switch causing the most people to walk by our observation area.

We wanted to conduct an interview with a DU student that often faces scheduling issues with Friday classes. For this reason, the person we chose was Hadley Michaels. She is a professional skier and full time student, so one can easily see where problems might arise. We wanted to ask her questions pertaining her attendance on Fridays and any conflicts she faces.

Our survey was a great way to collect information from people with different majors, schedules, and social lives. To do this, we utilized surveymonkey.com because it’s an effective way to survey through technology and remain anonymous. One piece of information we wanted to get out of the survey was the common reason for skipping. Is it due to kids going out on Thursday nights? Is is due to pure laziness? Also, we wanted to know if people are more likely to skip Friday class than any other day of the week. The last question we wanted to ask was opinion-based asking whether students would rather have more hours of class each day, but only for 4 days of the week or have less hours of class each day spread over 5 days of the week?

Results:

After conducting primary research, our survey, observations, and interview provided impressive results. Through our survey we found that most students will miss Friday classes due to their consumption of alcohol. Hangovers were the main reason why people missed their classes on Fridays. With 92.31% of people responding “too hungover,” it is prevalent that alcohol has a very high effect on students attending class on Fridays. Also attributing to this finding, Hadley Michaels commented on the fact that alcohol contributes to her missing classes when she said, ”I also like going out on Thursday nights which makes it more difficult to make it to Friday classes. ”

Another reason our survey participants were missing class on Fridays was because they were “too lazy”. 53.85% of the people who participated in the poll chose this answer, showing friday classes were not a strong priority for them. In addition, 100% of our students in our survey said they are more likely to miss a class just because it is on Friday.m

As we saw when observing Driscoll Green, there was much more student activity on Thursdays than on Friday. On Thursday, we observed upward of 500 students attending classes in Sturm and only 80 to 100 students attending classes in Sturm on Friday. Our survey showed that 86.67% of students would rather have more hours of class 4 days a week rather than the 13.3% who prefer having less hours of class each day spread over 5 days a week. Both of statistics showing that a vast majority of DU students would prefer not to have a class on Friday.

Discussion:

We noted some connections we made between our research and results. One of the main reasons Denver eliminated Friday classes was to “help curb student alcohol abuse, which the letter, dated May 7, states has lead to increased incidents of sexual assault,” according to the Denver Clarion. However, our survey shockingly proved that eliminating Friday classes didn’t actually solve the drinking problem with 92.31% of kids reporting they were too hungover for class. The problem grew when we discovered that 84.62% of students have missed at least one friday class this year. Maybe implementing Friday classes makes the school look better as a whole, but it clearly isn’t helping students.

Friday classes even have hindered student athletes like Hadley Michaels who stated, “Friday classes often interfere with my skiing competition schedule as well.” She went on to inform us that the school doesn’t even do anything to accommodate her when she stated, “For the most part they do not. It is really difficult for me to find the perfect schedule that doesn’t interfere with my professional skiing. Especially since I am an art major and there are less classes with even less time options.” This is clearly an issue because students on participating sports teams here at Denver not only receive help with their scheduling, but they also get to register early. So it makes sense that we found that nearly 50% of students have missed class on Friday for skiing, snowboarding, or outdoor activities.

So why are we implementing Friday classes if so many people are absent for them? A newsletter that all DU professors received two years earlier from Provost Gregg Kvistad regarding the implementation of Friday classes starting winter quarter of the 2014-15 academic year stated that students not having class on Friday roots to “a significant level of intellectual disengagement among our students for three of the seven days of the week and, in turn, a weakening of the University’s academic culture.” Well, congratulations! You went from zero students attending class on Fridays to 80 hungover students lazily crawling to classes that are half-empty when they arrive. Clearly not comparable to the nearly 500 students that were seen on a Thursday afternoon.

We will be creating a survey to ask the students at the University of Denver how they feel about greek life on campus, as well as a variety of questions to determine both its popularity and its effects.

*What is the impact of greek life on DU’s social life on campus?*

Observations: (What we are planning on observing/finding)

For the first 30 minutes of our observation time, we’ve decided to carry out our primary research in the Lacrosse game tailgate that will take place on Saturday, April 22nd. Because fraternities tend to rent out parking spots, it would be interesting to see how many people at the tailgate aren’t involved with greek life; and how much involvement greek life members and non greek life members have within each other.

For the second 30 minutes, we’ve decided to observe this dynamic at two different sorority events: Alpha Phi’s and Delta Gamma’s formals on April 21st. There, we would also observe how many people at the event aren’t involved with Greek life, to shed some light on involvement between greek sorority members and non greek life males.

Survey: (Questions we will ask)

Making sure to create locations without biases is a very important part of the survey portion. By having a lot of the sorority/ fraternity houses being close together, we are either not asking greek life participants at all or an equal amount between participants and nonparticipants, to create a fair assessment.

While asking the questions, there cannot be any guidance or leeway, pressuring individuals to say what is not true. While keeping all of the above in mind, we also have to be active and reach out in order for this assessment to be valid. This would start with locations, being where we are asking students these questions. We will plan on setting up 3 locations throughout campus (Ex: middle of campus, end of campus, off campus) to get a fair survey.

Interview:

For the interview part of our primary research, we’ve decided to conduct an interview with Lauren Utley; the assistant director of student engagement. She was the staff member in charge of both Kappa Sigma and Sigma Alpha Epsilon’s investigations that ultimately led to the withdrawal of both fraternities chapters on campus. We believe she would have an interesting and somewhat contrasting (in comparison to student) perspective in regards to the impact that greek life has on social life on campus. The questions we would like to ask her are:

1. What do you think the objective of fraternities are?

2. What do you think are the positive impacts of greek life on campus?

3. What are the negative aspects of greek life on campus?

4. What do you believe have been the positive impacts of having less fraternities on campus?

5. Do you believe that making Greek life smaller on campus has an overall positive or negative effect on the amount of applications that DU receives?

My Theory of Writing

The first thing I always need to think about is purpose. Purpose is necessary for every essay and it needs to be very clear. If you start writing an essay without knowing quite what the purpose is for your writing, it most definitely won’t be clear to the reader. The next thing I like to think about is organization. To have a good roadmap in the beginning is crucial for a well thought out and connected essay. I like to make myself outlines and then brainstorm before I start writing, and that makes it easier for me to direct my thoughts or know how or where to begin researching. I then think about my audience. Who am I writing for? With this also comes the question of what type of genre this is. I need to know who I’m writing for in order to decide which tone to use, how formal it should be, how structured it should be etc. Writing in different genres trains a writer to use different types of tones and voices in order to adapt to the audience. Finally, I focus on connection. For example, in a research paper I need to be able to take the information I have gathered from my sources and then mold them into something that can support my points.

I like to write about things that I am passionate about and interested in. That is just who I am as a writer. Also, it usually takes me awhile to get on track with the direction I want my writing to go in, but once I can get a clear view of that I can usually take off and get really invested in it. Additionally, in research, I am always looking to uncover dirt and find connections below the surface. With the research project we are doing right now, I am going to have a lot of fun digging up dirt about my topic because I am going to have to dig deep to find the information I am looking for, since my topic is a very silenced national issue. I can’t wait to get started with it!

In the past I have experimented with creative writing, research based writing, and formal writing, but I haven’t done much related to informal writing. This tweeting and blogging is new for me in an academic setting, and it is definitely something I am still adjusting to. I feel like in high school writing was largely taught in a formal tone, and I was taught to answer smaller questions in short answer response form. I definitely have skills about research based writing that I will carry over to this class, and definitely organizational skills, but I am anticipating learning how to be able to write in different genres more outside my comfort zone and what I have already done.

Didn’t talk much about rhetoric in my last writing class, and I can’t say I’m upset about it. It’s always been one of those words that my English teachers/professors have thrown around, and at the end of the lecture, I was like, what? But really, the definition is fairly simple, I guess. At least it was when I googled it.

But then Vatz and Bitzer (kinda sound like reindeer names) had to go and make things more complicated by having different takes on rhetorical situations. So lets hop right into it.

Basically, what I got from this article, was that Bitzer is all like “the nature of the context dictates rhetoric”, but Vatz is trying to prove that the rhetors and their unique perspectives on the subject dictate the rhetoric. I kind of see Vatz’s argument as an “eye of the beholder” thing, although I’m not sure how accurate that comparison is.

The political commentator example that Vatz used at the end helped clear the difference up a bit. He explains that when political commentators talk about an issue, they talk about it because it was made important, not because it was, by nature, important. Therefore, it’s not really about context, but about what the writer made the subject to be.