Observations

The observations by Horace Miner in "Body Rituals among the Nacirema" really pointed out that things we do everyday can be odd to someone that doesn't live in our culture. I tried to remember the story when doing my own observations. It's difficult to pick out the things people from different cultures would find weird when you're so used to it. My group went to the Atrium together to see what we would observe. Our observation session turned into our group discussing and thinking about why we do the same rituals we were observing. There were things we do but never stop to think why.

Moon Landing

The website I did for the evaluation practice was the top ten reasons the moon landing was fake. They provided information that seems like they might have a somewhat reasonable arguement but they didn't provide sources they used or credentials on the authors. Once you get to the bottom, they try to sell DVD's that cover the topic more. The motives behind the website kind of discredit it. They could make up facts to make their arguement better to sell their DVD's. I believe that we actually did land on the moon. It has been too long for a hoax to still be a secret. I also don't think the government would risk their reputation by faking the landing.

Library visit

I liked going to the library for class because instead of a ten minute walk to LaFollete in the cold it was only about three minutes to the library. I vote that we move class to the library every day. The presentation covered a lot of the stuff we covered on the trip there in 103 . I did learn a few things though. I didn't know about the inter-library loan program before. It's good to know that you can get a book even if our library doesn't have it. I think the ease of contacting a librarian with any questions is very helpful. There are many ways to ask small questions and get quick answers and can schedule a conference for bigger questions. It's a resource I will most likely be using during the annotated bibliography project.

Topic Proposal Conference

When I went to my conference on my topic proposal I only had about a page and a half for the project. The conference really helped with knowing what else to add to my paper. I didn't have enough about what aspect of cystic fibrosis I wanted to focus on. After the conference, I realized the aspect I really wanted to focus on was care-giving to a child with cystic fibrosis since it is something I could face in the future. I also added more to my personal story of how cystic fibrosis has affected my life. It was still hard to make the paper four pages because I felt like stretching the paper anymore would make it start to lose its meaning. I ended up with about three and a half pages.

Topic Proposal

I've decided to go with cystic fibrosis as my subject but I haven't figured out what specifically I'd like to find out about it. One thing I'm thinking about is the symptoms, treatments, and the possibility of a cure in the future.
I've found a couple of good sources already. Some are academic and some are popular sources. Whichever aspect of cystic fibrosis I do, I'm sure I'll learn a lot of new information about it.

Topic

Picking a subject to research and write about for the next three months is a tough choice. I'm having a hard time deciding on a subject that will keep this project interesting to me. Some topics I've thought about are underage drinking, something related to economics, and cystic fibrosis. It might be hard to find enough academic articles on underage drinking. I haven't picked a specific area of economics to research. I'm interest in cystic fibrosis because it has had an impact on my life.

I think there will be a lot of information on cystic fibrosis and it is a topic that can have an affect on anyone. I'm interested in finding out more on cystic fibrosis because for the effect on my life that it has had, I don't know nearly as much about it as I would like to.

Syllabus and Bibliography

The major thing in the syllabus that caught my attention was the attendance policy. In 103 I know I missed at least 3 or 4 classes, but in this class it'll kill my grade to do that. Since the class is at five it won't be as big of a problem to go to class. I'm not a morning person at all.
The bibliography project was hard. My group thought we did everything right but we got something wrong on everyone one we did. It's also hard to tell apart academic sources from popular sources.