April 5, 2010

This week we don't have classes because of conferences with Tess. Then the next week we meet, we begin our presentations. I go first because I am the kind of person who likes to get things over and done with. I am not sure how I am going to go about my presentation but I think I want to do a powerpoint. When I turned in my rough draft, I realized I didn't make my argument very clear in my paper. My argument is that adoption is becoming more popular because of it's history and now that it is done legally. I should have put this in my rough draft and I kind of did, but I didn't just come out and say it like that. It will be nice to have the week off to work more on my final paper.

March 23, 2010

Yesterday. my group and I met in the library to put the finishing touches on our presentation. Everyone got their pictures around and sent to Anna so she could finish the Power Point. And I logged onto our account on surveymonkey.com so that we could talk about that in our presentation. We were the first ones in class to give our presentations and I think it went okay. I know some of my group members, including myself, could have talk longer so that there wasn't that awkward pause while waiting for the slide to change but it's over and done with now. I also feel like I shouldn't have talked so fast. The group that went after us did pretty well also. Their Power Point was very neat and organized and I feel that they got their thesis across pretty well. I look forward to seeing the rest of the class's presentations.

March 18, 2010

Today instead of going to class, my group and I went to the library to work on our group project. We sent out our survey about the library, started our slideshow and caught up on all the other loose ends we needed to finish. We also decided to meet again on Monday to finalize our project. I also sent my interview summary that was due today so I got that finished up. This project snuck up on me faster than I thought it would. I felt like my group could have used a little more time to get it done, but we made do with the time we were allotted.

March 4, 2010

Today in class we finally turned in our annotated bibliography. Although I think it was a helpful assignment, I did not enjoy doing it. I do realize it was a necessary assignment. I have, however, enjoyed working on the observation part of the group project. A friend of mine and I went to the library Monday night to do our observations. I saw things I expected to see, like study groups and people working on computers. I also saw things I didn't expect to see, such as people meeting friends there before going on to somewhere else, and people on Facebook on the computers. Then, in class we discussed our observations and my group members and I got a lot of the same observations but our observations also varied. I am very much enjoying working on this group assignment!

February 24, 2010

Yesterday in class we got our first draft back of our annotated bibliography. I didn't realize that I didn't know what inter-country meant. I wondered why it was so hard to find sources I wanted when I entered that phrase in, but now I know. I am now looking for different sources to add to my annotated bibliography and I am adding on to the annotations that work with my topic. I am also fixing the spacing in this assignment and making sure all the sources are in alphabetical order. I didn't write what the source was about and then my opinion on it and how it would help my paper, so I am now going back and doing that. I think I understand this assignment more now that Tess has looked over it and put what I did wrong so I now know what I need to fix. It's slowly but surely getting there.

February 24, 2010

Yesterday in class we got our first draft back of our annotated bibliography. I didn't realize that I didn't know what inter-country meant. I wondered why it was so hard to find sources I wanted when I entered that phrase in, but now I know. I am now looking for different sources to add to my annotated bibliography and I am adding on to the annotations that work with my topic. I am also fixing the spacing in this assignment and making sure all the sources are in alphabetical order. I didn't write what the source was about and then my opinion on it and how it would help my paper, so I am now going back and doing that. I think I understand this assignment more now that Tess has looked over it and put what I did wrong so I now know what I need to fix. It's slowly but surely getting there.

February 23, 2010

My group and I have decided to focus our research observation project on the library. Three out of the four people in our group commute, so we thought this would be the easiest place to make observations about for everyone in our group. We all plan on studying one area of the library at different times so we can see how the library differs with time. Once it is time to do the interview, we are going to start with the same basic question, even though we know that all our interviews will vary. We have also decided to split our power point up evenly and we will do 5 slides per person so that everyone can give their two sense. I am actually looking forward to this project because, it is not the normal assignment and it let's us go out and have some fun gathering our information.

February 16, 2010

Today in class we did the activity with the moon and talked about the annoted bibliography. I am not looking forward to this bibliography because it seems extremely time consuming and very difficult. I do not have all the sources yet either, so I still need to make trips to the library and start searching the web. With the in class activity however, I do think that we did land on the moon, because it seems like there is too much information out there and too many people believing it for it not to be true.

February 4, 2010

I have my topic proposal almost done and ready to turn in for next Tuesday. After my conference, I have decided to narrow my topic down to adoptions that happen within the country. My cousins adopted internationally and that may be an easier topic for me to conquer, but I am up for the challenge and have many questions about what goes on with adopting in the United States. My big question when it comes to adopting within the country is why it is more difficult to adopt in American than it is to adopt internationally. I still have a lot to learn about this topic, but I am so excited to really get the research started so I can learn more.

January 26, 2010

My last post was about the topic I thought I was going to do my paper over. Show choir. I feel like I knew too much about show choir to make it a "research paper." I also couldn't find very many sources in our library on show choir. Since the last time I had to post a journal I have changed my mind. I am now going to do my paper over adoption. I am not in this subculture but my cousin did adopt two babies from Russia. I don't know much about the process itself other than it is a long, tedious process. I guess that will be my main question: what is the adoption process entail? I also want to know if it is expensive and whatnot. I have found books in the library and cannot wait to start researching this topic.

January 21, 2009

Today in class with my group I brought my topic of Show Choir to discussion with them. I was in show choir while in high school and this is a topic I would really enjoy doing some research on. One thing someone in my group told me is that I could see if the new t.v. show "Glee" has made show choir any more popular. Some other questions of mine are who is interested in show choir? What does it take to be a part of a group like this? What does show choir consist of? How did a group like this begin? Fundraising is a big part of show choir, why is this? What part of the country is it most popular in? How does it affect school work? What are show choir competitions like? How are students that are in show choir viewed by their peers who are not? Does show choir keep kids out of trouble because of how much time in consumes? How much does someone need to know about music to be apart of show choir? I haven't thought of one main questions, but these questions will get my brain working and help me decide on one definite question.

January 19, 2010

I have read the first assigned reading from the Bedford Researcher but I don't remember what I read so I am going to write about the syllabus. I like how she has every major assignment laid out on paper so we know what it is and how much it is going to be worth. At first I thought her attendance policy was a little strict but then after she explained it and said if we miss one class or none that we get points back, I understood it a little more and thought it was a reasonable policy. I do like that we get points for attendance because those are easy points to be earning towards our grade. One final thing about the syllabus, I like how she has we are going to be doing down to the day of the week so we know what to expect and nothing can take us by surprise.