Ciara!

@bestsince2003-blog

I'm the girl with the great personality with the name you can't pronounce and the jokes that you don't like.she/herDU 2020

27 posts

Website!

https://crmkali.wixsite.com/writ1133duciara

dont be sad I’m leaving, I’m never more than a pom pom throw away.

Maps 3

(1) My theory of writing began by just pure failure on something and developed in the second maps to including the process of editing it and now finally my latest map will include sending it back out into the world to be used by others and by your audience. So here’s my theory of writing in a very general sense. The process of writing has to include failure in order for one to gain insight into what must be done to correct the flaws. This allows us to make sure we know exactly what we need to tell our audience. This allows me to use our information to the best and create a clear interpretation of the rhetorical situation.

(2) The biggest overlap in my maps is the theme of failure as a good part of the writing process. This connects in all three of my maps in order to make it clear what the most important part. The conceptual maps helped make it clear which order things need to come in and how they work together to get there.

(3) My maps make it clear how I feel about writing. I think it shows how in my old schools it was really obvious there was only one appropriate but now it allows me to open the forms of writing and what makes it good. Its interesting to try and use other types. The maps go in steps because the first one shows me trying to use my processes, the second one is applying it and the third is using it to help others.

Research Journal Week 8

Week nine means we are entering the dreaded final weeks of the quarter. I can’t wait to be done but at the same time I’m not ready at all. Contradictions! The theme of this journal (did you see that nice transition, that’s some smooth work right there).

The first and most obvious contradiction I came across in my research was that my secondary said that 33% of the population is introverts while the rest are extroverts with few in between. this contradicts my primary research which showed that almost half were introverts. That could be that people took this quiz while they were alone.

Similarly, the interviews continued with this trend by giving a lot of interesting insight on to why this happens. Sophia Drembling said it could happen because of the fact personalities work on a spectrum instead of as a single type.

The idea that opposites attract brought in a new section for my essay. It appeared that a lot of things needed to be right in order for these friendships to work. However the public often stated they thought that communication was key. This was seconded by Drembling who said that in order to set their boundries on what they would or wouldn’t do the couple would need to communicate. Both sets of friends I interviewed parroted this, they reported that the biggest obstacle they faced was a lack of communication. When this happened they often fixed it by having an isolated talk with each other in order to see what the other is thinking.

Official music video for Synesthesia Get Synesthesia here: http://smarturl.it/ThePopUnderground Directed by Hamilton & Cooper Karl on tour now http://www.and...

It is interesting to me that the students reported feeling like writing in English class is expressive. To me, writing was always done in English and that meant that all I was writing was academic. But I guess this was the main point of the article because this provides an obvious need for transfer – moving the skills I used to get by in English into other writing I do so that it can be as strong as my essays and less like these posts (cough first person is my true downfall cough). The article also called it “natural” which is just plain weird to me since I struggle with anything but formal writing.

On the opposite side I totally understand the idea of students not transferring their knowledge from one thing to another. “It is this sense, after all, that teaches them to understand the rhetorical situation of school writing and that makes them aware of its limited scope” I think students often do understand when they aren’t taking things they learn in one place and applying it to another. Students are stubborn and want to stay to the rules that have gotten them this far. It seems obvious that you should transfer your skills but from experience, if you don’t actively go out to change something, you often wont.

Finally, the last conclusion I got from this article was “they often learn those skills by trial and error, sacrificing at least the first paper and often several papers to the “crapshoot” of writing in each new course”. This relates to my main point in my theory of writing that failure is key to learning how to write well for college and for life afterwards.

The music video shows these conclusions because while it makes almost no sense, it makes a lot of sense at the same time. kind of like how you can write about something and not know much about writing and make it very powerful or you can know almost everything about writing and still not transfer it over when you need it in other things. Does that make sense?

Research Journal Week 7

Lets make some connections!

Alright so with primary research finally over I can begin to connect it to things I’ve already found in my secondary research. My three themes I found most common in my research were the physical differences of introverts and extroverts, the commonality of their relationship, and the steps necessary to keep these relationships going.

First – the physical difference between the two. This was evident in the observation when the multiple people I observed carried themselves. This was most evident in the coffee shop and party when people whould cross their arms over their chests or lean behind their partner thus trying to make themselves smaller – a body language give away for introvert as Sophia Dumling explained to me in our interview. The extroverts appeared to be more tactile. They liked to touch everything and anyone that was around them. One boy spent a good ten minutes folding the Starbucks straw he was holding into different shapes and tying knots in the plastic.

Second – the commonality of the relationship. My survey went against the secondary report of 1/3rd of the population being introverts. My observation was about 50/50 and inconclusive on this front. Sophia told me that my statistic was accurate if one only took introverts and extroverts as the only two options. She said if we actually took it as a spectrum, the statistic would show more of a 50/50 stand still.

Finally – the maintenance needed in these relationships was something common through all my research. Everything I did made it obvious the most important thing for these partners is communication. The observation made it obvious that these partners were out to talk. The interviews provided evidence of these partners communication and the survey reported that everyone believed it was the most important trait.

1) Start by talking about your map – why does it represent your understanding of writing, specifically what writing means to you? You MUST use at least 2 of the readings we’ve done this quarter to support your response to this question.

The map I’ve drawn shows the two words “prove it” which relate back to the idea that you need to take the idea you have and flesh it out. whether you do this by failing and rewriting (like in the XXXXXXXXXX) or by taking things we know from one place and connecting it to other pieces of research in order to create a better argument, as in the most recent reading on Transfer. So now I’ll explain it. The top left has two dinosaurs because the dinosaurs didn’t know and didn’t believe that an asteroid (the flaming almost sad face) was coming at them. if they had someone to warn them they could’ve formed knowledge communities in order to find the best way to avoid it. Next we have space. Space is always being added to as we learn more about it allowing us to have a better understanding. this is similar to the way we increase our knowledge when we realize writing is more than what we just learn in school. the eye is supposed to go with the magnifying glass next to the t to be a literal detective-like prove it representation. there are fences on either side as a way of showing how we open up a lot of possibilities when we let go of the idea that writing is one thing. (the mountains are just because I can draw mountains well)

(2) Next draw out one conclusion from your map – what that conclusion looks like is up to you.

The map shows that using various ways of developing what we want to say gives us a better sense for what we’re talking about and makes our writing stronger and more reputable.

(3) All of the maps are leading towards your final theory of writing … so, how might a visual representation of key terms, and in the case of this map a key phrase, help you to better understand your theory of writing? What is your theory of writing right now in a single sentence?

My theory of writing is that as we develop our work we need to keep in mind that it is alright to make mistakes which lead us to finding truths which we can apply to our writing in order to make it clear and show exactly what we mean to say to our audience.

Research Journal Week 6 (5.7.17)

The biggest success this week was my survey so I will now recap the survey information I’ve collected so far.

My results differed from the results of my sources which claim that the introvert population is one third the size of the extroverted population. I reported that nearly half of the survey takers (49%) were introverts; with extroverts and “neither” making up the other half.

98% of people reported that they believed introvert and extroverts can make a good couple/friends with only two people reporting otherwise.

My secondary and primary research aligned when I asked what is the biggest factor in determining the success or failure of a introvert/extrovert relationship – 88 people reported that communication was the most important (85.9%)

When asked which personality the strongest relationship was with the surveyed responded with over half reporting an extrovert. Similarly, these relationships are 61.5% of the time platonic instead of romantic, but this could’ve been influenced by the fact people my age who would most likely respond to my survey are not of the age where dating and relationships really matter yet.

People ranked their relationship with their platonic extrovert a 9/10 on how strong it is, when asked to rank them from 1 being weakest and 10 being strongest.

When asked what type of personality type do you have the most friends with the majority of people replied that they had an equal amount of both personality types. 58 people said both, twenty three said the opposite personality type, and twenty two said the same personality type.

Overall, 104 people have responded to my survey so far. Even though I am choosing to leave the survey up to collect any last stragglers, I am not actively advertising it any longer. When asked how I advertised, I placed a link on my personal facebook, my class page, and in the cheerleaders group chat. I collected more responses than I expected.

Unfortunately the biggest disappointment of this week was my interview. None of the three ‘experts’ I’ve reached out to have responded. I am running out of expert opinion ideas and while I do have interviews with couples/friends lined up, I do not want the publics opinion to heavily impact my writing as I have been taught in high school to not trust these results. It may become overwhelming for my paper since my survey has been such a success. However, there are not many people that have studied this phenomenon and that makes it hard to reach out.

#writ1133du #introverts vs extroverts

Transfer Learning!

1 Transfer of learning happens when we take skills we learned in one area and apply them into a different situation in order to accomplish a task. Transfer is the foundation of how we build on old learning and continue through life. There can be negative and positive transfer such as when learning a language and it doesn’t collaborate well through their native and learned language.

2 An instance where transfer occurs easily would be when you learn teamwork from working with a team in a sport and then later use the same method of working together to get something accomplished at your job. This means that you have applied technique you learned in one situation into another.

3 Some things I’ve learned from this class that I expect to use more of in the future include the proper way to conduct surveys and interviews. Needing to use open ended questions in interviews and concise questions in surveys are important to remember. Similarly I expect to use the limited writing of twitter to shorten on the lengthy sentences and such that I do on tumblr. (I really like words). I hope to never have to do a lit review again but that’s probably a vain hope and I expect it to catch me eventually. Even if it doesn’t, I expect to use the methods of synthesizing I applied in the lit review to other research, whether it be my own or others.

Transfer fits into everyone’s identity as a writer because it is how we are taught to do anything. We are taught in steps and the same goes for writing. You need to learn what a thesis is before you write a research paper. You need to learn to spell before you write a paragraph. Similarly it applies to my theory of writing because my theory is all about how failure benefits writers – the most effective teacher is failure. We are forced to transfer other skills from other learning when we fail. By using other methods we’ve learned from other genres of writing we can write a stronger argument that can reach more people and deliver its message better.

Failure

Definition:

Failure is important to writing. With failure comes a new chance for success and an opportunity to retry the worst parts. Failure is the act of making mistakes in order to succeed in the future. Failure can range from academics to personal.

Significance:

By failing we can learn and develop better theories and practices. Failure is a motivator to keep working harder. We must realize that revision is a key part of writing. Without rewriting, the process of writing comes to a stop and our ideas do not get across to our desired audience. Without changing what we write we do not get the power behind our words that we hope for. We write to communicate and create our own knowledge pools that allow us to set out an idea and get information back. By communicating with these groups, our original work can grow and develop.

Writing can come into play for a lot of reasons. Revising and rewriting gives a new sense of what we are trying to say. We need to be able to recognize when something is not working. Finding out why is the hardest and most frustrating process. But as Toni Morrison says, “it is worth it to look into our mistakes and find out what flaws need to be fixed. Without this process, knowledge cannot spread through our works”.

If we can keep in mind that writing must fail in order to eventually succeed, this makes us better writers, audience members, and thinkers.

Sources:

Jenkins, Henry. Convergence Culture: Where Old and New Media Collide. New York, NY: New York UP, 2008. Print. Morrison, Toni. "Write, Erase, Do It Over: On Failure, Risk and Writing Outside Yourself." AMERICAN THEATRE. N.p., 06 Jan. 2017. Web. 03 May 2017.

Self Analysis

- The overall goal of the lit review was to collect sources and see what fits where and how these connections could fill in the bigger picture. Mine for instance held that the introvert/extrovert relationships are different than other relationships and went on to show why and how. I’m using the existing body of research to give a background for any further research or studies I read or perform and how they connect to the topic

- The intended purpose is to show the connections and eventually make it easier to write the final paper cause you already know what fits in with which theme. This will make analysis easier in the future. I want the audience to see the foundation of my research and have an idea of where I’m going with my primary.

- I need to add theme titles and make it clearer where my themes begin and end. I also might need to add more analysis instead of using only synthesis like I used in this draft

Proposed Questions

Proposed survey questions

1. Are you an introvert or an extrovert? (if you aren’t sure, please take this questionnaire http://brainfall.com/quizzes/myers-briggs-are-you-extroverted-or-introverted/#HygLKkE1W )

a. Introvert (over 55% on the grading scale)

b. Extrovert (over 55% on the grading scale)

c. Neither (45-55%on the grading scale)

2. Can introverts and extroverts make a good couple and/or friends?

a. Yes

b. No

c . Other

3. What is your strongest relationship

a. Romantic partner

b. Platonic partner

c. Other

4. Is your strongest relationship with an introvert or an extrovert?

a. Introvert

b. Extrovert

c. Neither

d. Don’t know

e. Other

5. On a scale of one to ten, how strong is this relationship?

6. Introvert and extrovert relationships depend on which one(s) of the following:

a. Communication

b. One on one time

c. Similar interests

d. Shared friend groups

e. Other

7. What type of relationships do you have the most of?

a. Relationships with the same personality type

b. Relationships with a different personality type

c. Same amount of both

d. None

e. other

Interview Questions

1. Do opposites attract?

2. How can introvert/extroverts benefit each other?

3. How common is a relationship between two opposite personality types?

4. Do these partners form better bonds than partners of the same personality type?

5. How do these relationships differ from others?

6. Why do introverts and extroverts attract (if yes to #1)

Research Journal Week 5

This week was a busy week for everyone. Midterms week took us all by surprise, though mine was more of getting grades back then taking the tests. That doesn’t mean we stopped with the research, however. We have continued our search for a popular source for my secondary research and this week, we have brought in the reinforcements “ the librarians. I emailed them two days ago and I’m getting updates sporadically while they chase down an apparent elusive documentary for me. I love that they can navigate the library for me.

On the other front we’ve begun our survey questions considerations. The main question I’m debating is weather or not I would like to ask for their personality types on the survey or just for their opinions. For example, if I asked for their personality types and the personality type of their closest relationship, I would link another quiz that would give a result about whether or not they’re an extrovert or introvert. This could provide quantitative evidence to support my hypothesis but on the downside, less people would want to take two quizzes for one person. If I asked for opinions my questions would mostly follow “do you think opposites attract?” or “could an introvert/extrovert relationship be stronger than an introvert/introvert or extrovert/extrovert relationship?” this would give me the public’s opinion but no quantitative results.

As for the interview, I have started debating who to interview. Should I find a behavioral psychologist? Would they know the most about relationships? Or should I try to find a marriage counselor? Could I interview different couples such as best friends, married couples, dating couples? Would this give me any important information?

I think my paper will be interview heavy. It seems most of my secondary sources reflect on their interviews but I feel like there is valuable information in both surveys and interviews. My hypothesis has already taken a hit I recently discovered that introverts are dying out. They now make up around 35% of the population so with those kinds of numbers, introvert/extrovert relationships are most likely not the most common. Maybe I am just a special type of extrovert. Or maybe, like The Genius of Opposites suggests, extroverts attract introverts because they both see the other as lacking something and they want to help out their partner with this missing trait.

Thinking and writing go hand in hand

Similar to the way everyone thinks in different ways and with different logic, there are multiple styles of writing that differ from person to person. Writing is hard to dissolve into one basic formula that everyone can use, most often, it has to be a practiced and developed skill. This makes it difficult to teach and to learn if one considers themselves "an untalented writer” .

Thinking must be included in writing. The clearest example of this comes from the fact that most people write by transcribing as they think. You must start with an idea and as one writes they continue to generate increasingly more information and opinions on the topic. This allows us to think while writing, but just as important is thinking about writing. No matter if thinking about writing comes before or after the writer begins to write, there are certain steps they should begin with. First, you must understand what you are writing in order to begin. After you have finished writing consider thinking about the general message and audience’s perception. This will allow you to find mistakes and things you want to phrase differently.

Most interesting about thinking and writing is how derailed one can get when the thinking takes over the writing. When caught up in the details of spelling and grammar, it becomes easy to stop the train of thought one was on and become unable to regain what the sentence was trying to convey. This is common for many people as they try to write. Instead of fixing while you go, consider writing and then going back or having a friend go over what you wrote. After all, two heads are better than one!

The Outdoors and DU

Methods:

In order to get an accurate look into the relationship of students at the University of Denver and the outdoors, our group divided the research into four separate collections. These methods included observations, a survey, interviews, and secondary research. We started by looking into what the University advertises as the benefits of living in Colorado. DU’s website hosted our secondary research and allowed us to get a good feel for the University’s official stance on students and the outdoors. Secondly, we sent out a survey to the DU population on our various social media accounts. This allowed us to receive an anonymous look into what the students perceived as their outdoor lifestyle. Next we went outside Graduation Green, Driscoll Green, and the front of Centennial Halls, and watched students over a period of twenty minutes each. We followed this up by interviewing an active outdoor club activity, the club rowing team, to see how they saw the “active Colorado lifestyle” coming into play in their club.

Results:

From our survey we found that the majority of people spend 5-7 hours outside per week (41.9%). Students spend most of their outdoor time going to class (91.9%) and also enjoy their time outdoors (91.9%). Similarly, all four seasons are within 17.6% of each other with summer being the most popular time of year to spend outside (97.3%). Denver weather impacted college decisions (30%) of DU students. The survey we conducted also found that students generally wake up around 8-10 and weekends remain the most popular time to be outside (52.7%).

The observation results revealed similar findings. We watched upwards of one hundred people walk to class during our observation period. Besides the walkers, we observed a variety of social events such as talking with friends, listening to music, tanning, and playing with pets. These people were outnumbered by the walkers but still retained numbers around thirty people each session. Similarly, we found people doing business outside. Activities we categorized as work included studying, tabling for clubs or Greek Life, and activism on campus. These numbers held the lowest population with Driscoll Green holding the highest population at twenty people participating.

In order to get a feel for the student club population we interviewed Kat Silver, Secretary of the DU rowing team. In our interview we discovered she considered DU students to be more active off campus than on campus when it comes to the outdoors. She told us that weather did affect club participation while offering a variety of trips did not hurt nor help her club’s numbers.

We looked into the way the University advertises Colorado as a perk of attendance. By looking at the website under prospective students, we found it highly advertises the ideal of a Colorado Lifestyle, including the Rocky Mountains, Alpine Club, and the boasted 300 days of sunshine. The website also listed different mountain activities that are easily accessible such as natural parks, whitewater rafting, hiking, and mountain biking. After all, “you’ll have plenty of reasons to get outside” (du.edu).

Discussion:

Our hypothesis proved correct in that DU students remain active outdoors and live up to the ideal Colorado Lifestyle. What surprised us the most came from our survey where people stated the weather in Colorado impacted their decision to come to DU positively and reasons to go outside varied greatly between submission to submission.

Our findings echoes this point; students at DU live up to the advertised ideal of DU’s Colorado Life. This is shown by the survey results for mountain and off campus activities boasting second highest population of 63.5%. Similarly, Kat Silver touched on this when she stated that off campus clubs draw more participation - displayed on the DU website as the Alpine Club’s 300 members. The off campus outdoors are calling to DU students and they are answering with a resounding here we come.

Secondly, we found the weather as a huge factor in nearly everything we researched. It affected student’s college decisions nearly 30% from the survey and continued to appear in our other research, Kat Silver claimed that weather impacted her club’s participation, “if it’s cold, raining, or snowing less people show up for practice or meetings. No one likes to be outside in it” (Interview source???). The observation we took happened on a sunny, warm day and showed the most common results for spring - an active on campus outdoors. We have no doubt, however, that if we continued this into the fall and winter, the outdoor population would decrease. Finally it was covered again by DU itself, boasting the 300 days of sunshine in Colorado in order to pull in prospective students from other states. This shows how the weather not only impacted on campus activities but also affects people who have never visited DU.

In conclusion, our hypothesis found support from our research. DU contains an active student body that find the outdoors a necessity in their everyday lives - from walking to class to social events to off campus activities. University of Denver students remain active and ready for their next adventure, no matter where it may be.

Research Journal Week 4

“Charm and charisma are a lot of fun, and they're like a tonic for introverts - they draw you out, engage you, spare you from having to start or sustain conversations while the extrovert is able to voice themselves freely to you - in turn finding out who they are at their core.“ - Washington Post advice columnist Carolyn Hax

This week was spent reading and looking into sources for my secondary research. I had successes and failures during this search which was strange because in my experience, sources were always pretty straight forward â€“ they were what you wanted or they were useless. Most of the time if I’m being honest, I can tailor what sources I use to what point I want to make. This project became a little different when I could not find as much information of the relationships between extroverts and introverts.

The sources I did find were either single sided, insanely detailed, or useless. I found a self help book in The genius of opposites that detailed the author’s ideas into how to make relationships between introvert and extroverts stronger. It’s a nice source for ways introverts and extroverts can benefit themselves together.

In the first dissertation I found, it seemed to be exactly the same question and premise I had but this time they took the opposite stance that introvert and extrovert relationships were fewer than the same personality types. Their results supported the idea that introvert and extroverts relationships don’t work as well and as often as the others. With a 31% rate of opposites attracting, they countered my hypothesis that opposites would attract.

The source that didn’t make as much sense, was one I couldn't come into contact with. I found the article “Do opposite attract? An investigation from dynamical systems” but it wasn’t available. I emailed the library and they could only find the source in Spanish. Which obviously doesn’t help me since I unfortunately cannot read Spanish.

For the first time, it seemed hard to find my sources. I haven’t started looking for popular ones besides a quick search on the documentary website but it did not pull up any sources.

Research Check-in

My group and I started with a very easy question. We wanted to know how many people (students and otherwise) took advantage of the weather in Colorado.

We started by meeting up in the library and talking out possible survey questions. this was followed by me making the survey on google and then we sent it out on our facebook pages and group chats. This was followed by us going outside and sitting in a few different places including Driscoll Green and Graduation Green. This is where we found tons of people sitting outside and participating in other activities.

A few of the more notable activities we witnessed included walking a dog, playing Frisbee, and running to class. similarly it was hard to stay out of the atmosphere like we are supposed to because periodically a few of our friends would walk by and say hi to us. obviously we have to say hi back.

Finally our research survey matched the results we got from sitting outside for so long. Our survey received 71 respnces since we put it up with most of the replies pointing to yes, people do take advantage of the outdoors while theyre here.

Most surprising to me were the number of people we saw tanning in our various locations (it was windy but warm) and the number of people that responded by telling us that Denver’s weather was a very big influence on their school choice.

research journal #3

This week we did a lot of preliminary research. It started with looking into the library’s resources and looking at what they had to offer. It turns out you can search some really vague terms to to find results you want. For example, just searching the term friendship or relationships found at least two sources that I could use for my paper. The search program does a really good job drawing form a multitude of different areas, however, I noticed one problem – there aren’t a lot of popular media sources. In my first quick search I found no magazine articles or popular media and in the second deeper search I found one magazine article. I think I’m going to have to go to Youtube and see if anyone made a documentary about the same topic. The academic sources I found have been great and seem to be following my hypothesis. I thought that people with opposite personalities would end up fitting together better than those relationships with two of the same relationships. The first that I read argued that the people involved in opposite relationships help to pick up where the other left off. For example, in a social situation the introvert would notice little instances the extrovert would ignore and the extrovert would help to keep their partner comfortable and involved in what was going on. This means that the two work together in perfect tandem to help both succeed. I hope to find more and more sources like this and find more proof for my ideas.

Ciara! @bestsince2003-blog - Tumblr Blog | Tumgag