Advertisement Project

For this project, I was thinking of making a sexist guitar ad for Ibanez.  I was going to make it blatantly obvious that whatever guy plays an Ibanez guitar will have girls swarming to their sides (simmilar to axe commercials).  I just hope i can draw enough information out of that to write a decent reflection paper!!

Researching for Papers

I found this reading very interesting.  It opened my eyes to many different ways that you can put research into a paper, such as field research.  This is all good to know for every class that you will be doing research papers in.  Not only does it list the different types of research, but it even goes into great detail and gives several exaples for each.  Also, I like that the beginning basically tells you everything you need to know about why research is useful in papers.  I assume that our reading this foreshadows a research paper that we will be doing.  Regardless, im glad we read this first.  It has given me all the tools I need to properly gather, input, and cite information from all different kinds of sources.  The ending about  academic dishonesty was also good to know.  It is good to have a clear definition so that you are not accidentally doing something that you should'nt.  Especially with citing.
-Stephen Kobliska

Cantor's views on higher education and race.

Cantor beleives that higher education is still talking about race becasue of our failure to disregard what Jim Crow left behind.  She points out that a lot of people dont get the chance to live with, or even communicate with others of a different race until they come to a place of higher education.  She says, " we must create learning and living communities that will make true integration possible, and we must create ways to assess how well we're doing."  I could'nt agree with her more about this.  I beleive that higher education is the most important place for integration to take place, because that way people can learn and develop together as equals.  It is also very important for after graduation, because this way it is more likely that people of a different race will work together.  Therefore integration in the workplace.  Everywhere you look at a university, there are always things promoting the integration of different cultures and backgrounds.  There are many activities that students can do, or even classes they can take.  Overall,  I agree with Cantor that integration in the workplace and everywhere else, starts at the university level.

Multiculturalism

To me, this reading cleared up a lot of common misconceptions, and pointed out many things that people overlook when referring to multiculturalism.  An interesting point that she had to offer was that americans complain about people of another ethnicity not being able to speak english.  However little evidence supports that case, and in fact, after three generations in the U.S., most minorities speak only english.  This also brings up the point that the urge to assimilate into american culture is a huge part of immigrants lives now.  It's almost as if we are forcing the to be like us, instead of accepting and embracing their cultural views.  I think everyone can learn a lot about multiculturalism from this reading, there are a lot of great facts and several things that really make you think hard about multiculturalism in your own life.
-Stephen Kobliska

Peer Review

The peer review process for the personal narratives was a very good experiance for me.  I got some honest feedback about my paper, and I also got to meet and talk to a fellow classmate.  I think we should continue to use peer review on a one on one basis.  It is a good way to get connected with classmates, and a great way to receive feedback about your writing, and how you can continue to make progress as a writer.  The only drawback I can possibly think of, is that peer review cannot fully perfect a paper.  We are all students and still learning.  We may even give the wrong advice to somebody.  However, overall, I think peer review has more pros than cons.  But we should still be careful when using it.

Sedaris

In "Me Talk Pretty One Day," Sedaris makes a point to describe other nationalities and include them in the story.  I think he does this because in the story, he is taking the class in France, which means there is probably a large population of french people.  Also in the story, the teacher continuouly singles people out, in particularly, him.  My theory is that he has all the other nationalities in there to make it seem like he is not out of the ordinary for being from a different country.  I think this supports the purpose of the essay because it shows that everyone else is going through the same thing as him, but in the end, he is the one that fully understands the teacher.
-Stephen Kobliska