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Digital Portfoliooooo

https://gwenbalusekportfolio.wordpress.com

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Map Take 3!

My last and final tumblr post…kind of sad but I think it’s most certainly time for summer break. Throughout the quarter i’ve been building on my theory of writing, and alas I have come to the conclusion that in order to be an effective writer one must have a strong voice, which requires having an understanding of one’s self. The voice is essentially what holds all the shit together, and doesn’t make the reader fall asleep in the middle of your intro paragraph. But as i’ve worked on my theory over time I found that in order to have a strong voice, you must have a developed understanding of yourself, including your beliefs, ideologies, and views on the world. If you don’t have a developed self-awareness then you can’t have a developed voice, and you’re essentially fucked. I’m just kidding…. but not really, because the voice is what gives life to every rhetorical situation from business memos to academic journals to tweets. 

At the beginning I knew I had to write about the voice, but I wasn’t really sure the reason why it was so important, or the factors behind what makes a strong voice. During the journey of my theory and untangling the cluster-fuck of ideas in my head I realized during my second post about my theory that the voice requires self-awareness. I really had to think about what the secret ingredients are to my own voice, which took time: I realized that if you are very self-aware, and have a developed opinion, a sense of your own character, an understanding of what makes you unique, then you can develop a strong voice. Creating the maps was actually very helpful because when you are forced to think about an idea visually, you have to think more critically. Also I always tend to come up with the best ideas when i’m doodling or making something. Today I came up with the aspect of understanding your “uniqueness” in order to develop your voice… a direct result of having to brainstorm my theory visually. 

Looking back at my maps I can definitely see how they have progressed with time, because at first I had only one term and didn’t really understand why it was so important, and now I have a fully-developed theory with its own set of vocabulary and terms that each play key components, such as: self-awareness (which came to me during my second map), and uniqueness (which came to me while making my third map). It definitely shows that I am a visual learner, and that I need time to reflect on my ideas until they build on each other to the point where I have a solid theory. Just like my set of key terms for my theory and the theory itself, my maps became more and more intricate and detailed. I first started out with writing an important writing term (voice) down on a piece of paper with some doodles, to creating a detailed, thought out masterpiece... which I think competes with Picasso.

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Comp in New Genre: Plan

Genre: For my Composition in a new genre, I am going to be writing an opinion editorial. This means that the tone for the composition is going to be a lot less formal compared to my original research project. Opinion editorials are much shorter, and therefore they are difficult because they require getting to the point rather quickly. Also, the genre is much more creative, meaning shorter paragraphs, and a rather open-ended amount of options in how the composition can be written.

Purpose: The purpose of writing in this opinion editorial genre is to transform my research into something that can be read and understood by the public. Opinion editorial style compositions are much different because they require a bias, or an opinion, rather than simply stating what I did, and what I found. This means I am going to have to add my opinion on my findings, and try to use an argumentative rhetorical situation to try and explain what a certain aspect of my research revealed. Audience: The audience in an opinion editorial style genre is basically the opposite from that of the research genre I just completed. The audience is essentially the public, therefore it requires that I present my research and findings much more explicitly and quickly, so that the reader can understand what I did and why I did it. It also means that my tone can be relatively relaxed and informal.

Plan: First I am quickly going to introduce what the research I did was, and why I did it (what was missing from secondary research/why memes are important). Then I am going to focus on a certain finding of mine: racially oriented memes. The title of my op-ed is going to be: Are Americans Assholes for Liking Memes? Overall my argument is going to be that yes, memes are at their core created to make fun of people, and to put others down in order to boost one’s own self-esteem. Then I am going to explain why this is the case. I am going to go into explaining my finding that people seem to understand that many memes are offensive, yet they still find them funny. Then I am going to talk about my observations I found from people who were unamused by having been targeted by memes. Overall, memes are so popular and prevalent in society because of the fact that they target others, which makes those who are not targeted feel better and superior.

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Research Journal Week 8

Unfortunately (but not really) this is probably my final weekly research journal… summer could not come any sooner. Throughout these past few weeks I’ve learned so much about primary research. For one thing, I realized just how fun conducting primary research is. Seriously though, you should try it. Never would I have thought I would find out so many interesting findings from researching memes… It just goes to show how primary research can be conducted about literally anything. Also, just FYI, no one likes to take surveys, and even if they said they would take it, they probably won’t. Gotta say i’m definitely one of those people. 

On the other hand, I didn’t know before this past quarter that if you are conducting primary research the questions for your surveys, interview, and observations should greatly vary, because that way each of them finds something different, and then you can look at them as a whole and compare what each aspect found. Before this class I would have thought each one should have similar questions, but it turns out this is not the case. It’s important for each aspect to differ because then there’s simply no reason to conduct all of them if they are all about the same thing. I also learned a shit load about the organization of a research paper, and how each separate section should differ. After conducting primary research over the past few weeks I realized how important time is for the process. Good research requires a ton of time. I only got 61 responses to my survey, and that is barely enough to say it can represent the American population’s views on memes, let alone the entire global view on memes. However, I did find out a lot of information within the limited amount of time I had, which goes to show that if I took longer I would probably find out a ton more about memes.

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Writing class is not simply a discipline. I think students have this idea that writing class can be equated to that of a math class, or an algorithm, with a sole purpose of attaining a high grade. This stunts the perception of writing as well as the amount of what we get out of it. Rethinking the idea of writing class is vital because as we rethink it, and realize that it is so much more important and greater than a simple A grade, that’s when we can really start to understand just how important writing is in our lives. The study done by Bergamo and Zepernick concludes that students don’t give credit to where it is due: English classes. Even though we think of writing as being “portable” from one discipline to the next, there seems to be a failure of perceiving that the information learned in writing classes could be transferred to other disciplines. Wow, that didn’t really make sense because it’s completely contradictory, however at the same time, very true. I have realized throughout this quarter and the duration of this class just how important it is to try and look at writing with a different lens. 

Throughout my time at DU i’m gunna try and make some changes to my own perceptions of writing, so I can benefit. I think this class really made me understand that in the future I have to see writing as more of a creative opportunity, and less as a way to try and get a good grade. So when it comes time to write a paper for any of my other classes, I am going to stop and take a moment to think about how I can arrange my ideas and what I have learned from previous writing classes to try and make something creative, or different, or embrace the creative opportunity given by writing. As I writer I want to try and do things in a different way, or see future assignments not as a chore but a chance for expression. That got really fucking deep, wow. I swear I am not smoking a joint right now. ANYWAYS, I chose this music video because I think it really captures that student ideology we must get away from in order to get the most out of writing; writing shouldn’t be a chore, and it should have the sole purpose of receiving a good grade.

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Research Journal 7

Ok so I have FINALLY finished all of my primary research. Thank the lord. Surprisingly the primary research was actually kind of fun. I couldn't have imagined memes to be so interesting. After reading back through my secondary research notes as well as my literary review I found a bunch of connections. First off, after collecting all the data from my surveys I found it weird that I majority of people said they weren't at all offended by the racial memes. However, there were also a ton of people that said the complete opposite, saying that they found them extremely offensive. In my secondary research I found a study that was done, which noted that non whites rated memes as more offensive compared to whites. I think this really shows in my primary research results because it would then make sense to why a majority of people said they found the racist memes not offensive at all. 

I know that the people who I gave the survey to were most likely white, maybe one or two people of color. Though I did not specifically ask a question that asked the surveyor to describe their race, I know that the majority of people that I shared the survey with were white. I shared the survey on Facebook as well as my friends and classes, however I am simply not friends with a lot of people of color because I come from a mainly white town, and a majority of students that go to DU are white. Also, in my interview I found that the person I interviewed noted that she definitely thought memes enforced racial stereotypes, as well as made her very pessimistic. She also said that she thought political memes actually did influence her thoughts on certain politicians, and that because many memes target republican politicians, she sensed that it actually made her more liberal as a whole. She also said that unfortunately she found that she tended to actually almost use memes as a news source, because they tend to poke fun at current event or things going on. This is fuckin scary, because I guess I realized that I do as well get some of my news from social media as well as memes, and not from reliable news sources.

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DOODLE SHMOODLE

My map may look like that of a schizophrenic stuck in a mental hospital, but I think it really captures the essence of writing. Writing is so insanely complex (much like my doodles) because there’s an endless amount of rhetorical situations, genres, and styles. When it comes to writing everyone starts off having to pull ideas out of their head, piece it together, and make it a coherent piece all together. My doodles are definitely a solid representation of whats going on in my mind, because there’s literally so much shit going on. Shirley Rose talked about how writing is endless in that everybody always has more to learn; writing is infinite. My key word was audience, a key component to the rhetorical situation. The rhetorical situation is infinite… I think thats really what my map concludes. Much like Vatz’s theory of rhetorical situation, my doodle caused the rhetorical situation that I am currently writing about. If my random ass doodles can cause a rhetorical situation, then I think that basically everything in this world can spark a conversation or create a rhetorical situation. My map helps me grasp the concept that writing is insanely complex, the rhetorical situation can be born out of a sharpie pen, a piece of paper, and 30 minutes. I think whats important about this visual aspect of the map is that every single person’s doodles are unique. In respect to writing this connects to my main threshold concept that everyone has a voice in writing, and that voice is what pieces writing together, and what makes a good writer, a good ass writer.

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Transfer of Learning

The transfer of learning is pretty damn complex. Who woulda thought? Essentially it’s a pretty simple idea: Learning one thing can then transfer over to when you need to do another task in the future. According to David Perkins, there’s two types of transfer: near and far. Near transfer is basically when you apply previous learning to something fairly familiar. Example. You've been having issues with your shitty boyfriend and have dealt with all that drama… and then your friend comes to you for advice in solving her own relationship, and you can give her some solid advice. Far transfer, as Perkins noted, is like when you use your previous knowledge about chess strategy to help you become a good politician or businessman. Except, it aint that easy. Teachers think the transfer of learning just kinda happens… but really it requires a lil more effort. I took a required class in high school about sorta basic life needs, like how to write a resumé or how to do a good interview. However, when it came time to actually do that shit I had no idea what I was doing. Point-in-case, instead of just taking notes on a powerpoint of good things to say in a resumé or job interview… we should have actually practiced writing them.

Transfer happens super easily for me when I am trying new workouts or exercises, because my past experience as an athlete makes it easy to take on a circuit or running interval. At least it used to before I came to college and gave up on being in shape. I guess it just happens because I’ve had so much previous experience doing it, that trying a new thing isn’t hard at all, because they are closely related in context (near transfer). In respect to writing… I guess my knowledge about research writing or argumentative writing can be widely transferred to any other academic class. 

My International Studies teacher just assigned an argumentative essay about Immigration, and I’m gunna have to use my knowledge of writing a solid argumentative essay from writ1122 (***shout out to Prof. Benz***) to write the thing. Writing itself is one of those subjects that transfers over to literally everything. From business agendas, to science lab write-ups, to writing emails to my mom. This class itself is especially transferable to so many things in my life because now I know how to write in a social media voice. So basically this class will make me a killer tweeter, blogger, and of course a killer researcher. I’m still growing up, learnin new things everyday, and learning to write in different contexts is gunna be huge once I get out into the real world and actually have to do something with my life...

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Research Journal 6

Ok so I’ve come to a conclusion: reading people’s comments and conversations to online pictures like memes is basically almost as good as reality t.v. Seriously, people get wayyyy to into arguments with random strangers on line about pictures that are meant to be jokes. So, I went online to read some reactions to memes because I wanted to get a sense of how people seem to react to memes. I ended up finding out about this huge controversy that I somehow missed last summer. Apparently, there was a major freak out by a ton of serious liberals who argued that the Harambe the gorilla memes were racist. I’m assuming everyone knows who Harambe is because… let’s face it, if you don’t know who Harambe is then you’ve been living under a rock. Even my mom knows about Harambe, and she called me a few weeks ago asking what Instagram was…. So these liberals said it was racist because the gorilla’s name was very African, and that American’s were mocking it; “another side to Harambe’s popularity-one inexorably tied to racist ideas about black people, Africa, and gorillas”. They also argued that it was right around the time that the hashtag #BlackLivesMatter was trending, and that the gorilla was a great cover-up by the American public to move the attention away from the serious topic of African American rights to something stupid and unaffiliated with race.

This whole thing made me realize just how much memes played a role in society this past year, specifically with social movements like the Black Lives Matter movement. The meme, which originally was a reaction to a specific event eventually created its own event that then created its own dialogue and discussion; basically, memes are pretty damn powerful. This also ties into my research about race-related memes, because according to a study many minorities said they had been the target of micro-aggressions, and thought this was directly related to the extensive use of stereotypes in the media. For the case of Harambe, it was particularly popular amongst stereotypical white, “frat boys”. It made me think about the liberal argument, because I think there’s something to be said for the fact that the meme blew up in the young white male world right around the time that the black lives matter movement was popular, and targeted specifically young white males. People use memes as a reaction to events, but also to create a dialogue. 

Then I looked for some reaction from people who had become memes… and their reactions were pretty classic. Denzel Washington became a meme during the Mayweather/Pacquiao fight, and was photoshopped to have an over bite and side-berns, and was named, “Uncle Denzel”. The photo was captioned with things like, “So your mom doing good? She seen anybody?”. When asked about the meme during an interview his response what honestly fucking terrifying. He responded with: “If I had my wallet I’d show it to you, those who can do, do, those who can’t talk about those who can. Now can you or can you not?” Ouch. He was apparently really offended by the meme, as was fellow celebrity Demi Lovato who had a meme called “poot”. Apparently she refuses to talk about it, because it makes her so angry. Then there’s an asian woman who was a model and then became a meme. Apparently the meme “ruined her life. Because of what has happened I haven’t been able to sleep and have broken down crying many times”. I guess everyone loves memes…until you become one.  It’s interesting how much American’s love making fun of one another, almost to boost their own self esteem, yet they flip out when someone makes fun of them.

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Self Analysis- Lit Review

For this lit review, my overall goal is to create a paper that synthesizes my main point of interest by having many different themes that can help back up my main point of interest about memes and their interactions with society. There are many sub categories I have explored to explain my main idea about the roles memes play in society, such as their impact on the political world, and their impact on stereotypes. My theme that describes the sociology and psychology effect of memes really brings all of the themes together, making my secondary research daily cohesive. For example, I am connecting the ideas and studies conducted by psychologists and sociologists about memes with how they then impact societal views and norms.

My purpose overall is to try and show how memes are a major influence on global culture, people’s views on certain current events, as well as norms. I think that many people don’t see memes as having a major influence in our daily lives, and so I think that this literary review really shines light on the significance of memes in our current culture. I hope people will walk away with a greater understanding of memes and can then look at them with a new perspective.

I think for my revisions I will definitely try to make my themes more clear. Dylan noted that maybe I should add a little bolded intro before each theme change. Also, I would like to go into more depth about how politicians are beginning to use memes themselves as a campaign strategy.

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MY Threshold Concept

Good Writing Requires Self-assurance:

A good writer has a strong voice. No, this doesn’t mean you’re a good writer if you can sing like Queen B. A strong voice, IN WRITING TERMS, means no matter what subject you’re writing about, what genre you’re writing in, what audience you're writing to, you can still get a sense of the author’s uniqueness. It’s what separates the author’s writing from another. And it’s damn crucial if you want to be a good writer. It’s what makes your writing pop, and makes it authentic. No one wants to read a piece of writing, no matter what genre, that sounds like a robot. The humanity the voice provides in writing gives readers the will to continue reading, to understand your thoughts and ideas better. HOWEVER, obviously as a novice writer, you are young… one would hope. As you grow up, with each year, you develop as a person, as a human being. It’s our experiences and our mistakes that allow us to develop a strong voice. Obviously as a young’n I simply didn’t have enough experiences to understand who I am as a person, let alone who I am as a writer. You must figure out who you are as a person before you can start implementing it into who you are as a writer. This requires self-assurance, or confidence in one’s character. You can’t become a good writer until you are fully self-aware and confident in who you are as a person. Obviously as a high schooler I was far from confident in who I was or what I believed in, simply because I wasn’t fully developed as a person. For example, think of a writer that became super-successful before age 25. I certainly couldn't name more then five fingers worth. This is definitely correlated with the development time of people. The brains of humans aren’t even fully developed until age 21. Writers who write opinion editorials like, say, for the New York Times, are successful because they have a strong voice, and this is due to the fact that they are confident in who they are, what they believe in; their beliefs, ideals, experiences translates directly into their writing, giving them a strong voice. You cannot have a strong voice unless you have confidence in your character. Once again returning to the op-ed writers for the New York Times, their specific genre absolutely REQUIRES their own developed opinion on the world. However, a developed opinion is required for not just op-ed writing, but for most writing genres. A developed opinion helps guide thinking and planning for other genres, and believe it or not, most academic writing is biased due to the author’s opinions and their self-assurance. Case-in-point, a good writer must be self-assured, confident in their character, because this is absolutely essential for the development of a strong voice.

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Research Journal 5

Ok, so now we are in business. Primary research business, that is. So I FINALLY have decided on my broad research question that is: How do memes affect how millennials view the world? I’m going to interview my older-sister Meryl, because I want to get a good person in my generation who understands a lot about the meme-world. She’s a senior at the University of Colorado Boulder and if there’s anyone that knows a lot of about memes… it’s her. She is also an anthropology major so I know she has taken many classes about pop-culture and understands how our society is affected by things like memes. I didn’t want to interview a student at DU just because. No offense to my DU homies out there. But I didn’t think I could find someone who would actually take my shit seriously. And I know my older sister will get wayyyy to into my questions and give me the good stuff I need to help my research. So far, I’ve come up with 5 core questions I am going to ask during the interview: How do you think memes affect your own political views? ***SIDE NOTE*** I am at Starbucks currently and the baristas just started talking about their favorite memes. I shit you not. Anyways… back to my interview questions: Do you think memes make you more judgmental, and why or why not? Do you think memes have a positive influence on our generation’s views on the world, or in other words, do you think memes influence your pessimistic view/optimistic view of the world? How do memes influence your ideas about stereotypes? What would you say is your favorite meme, or type of meme, and why? So far, these our my 5, but if I think of anymore I may add some. On to my survey questions… I am going to try and do a lil experiment within my experiment. I am currently searching for some good memes right now, and my plan is that I am going to find a good example of a political meme, a racially oriented meme (African American oriented), a meme about another stereotype other than African Americans, a meme poking fun about body image, and then I’m going to put them on my survey and make the surveyor pick which one they think is the most funny. So for question 1 on the survey it would be a sequence of pictures from each of the genres, and the surveyor will pick which one they think is the funniest. Then for question 2 it would once again be another sequence of each of the genres, and they once again have to pick which they think is the funniest. I’m gunna do at least 6 of these types of questions, and then I wanna do a seventh question. This seventh question is going to ask if they found any of these memes offensive and rate it on a scale from 1-5, one being that they weren’t at all offended, 3 being that they thought they were somewhat offensive, and 5 being that they were very offensive. And then for a final question I am going to ask them to explain why they answered what they did for question 7 (I’ll have another answer which says, “Prefer not to answer this question”). HOPEFULLY, some people will not skip my last question. I’m trying to get a good grasp of what types of memes people tend to favor over others, and if people are offended by memes. LASTLY, for my observation I am going to go on the web and browse through the comments sections of some memes, particularly racially-oriented and politically oriented, to see if there’s any good arguments going on. I also want to go on youtube to see if there are any vloggers out there with some good reactions to certain memes, like rants and what not.

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Primary Research: Adderall Use Amongst DU students

As students in the DU community, we recognized the excessive use of adderall of students on campus. Whether it was prescribed or not prescribed, we were curious to see if students were knowledgeable about the negative effects of this drug, if they perceived as a problem, and if adderall was being abused amongst the DU community. So, we posed the question: what are DU students thoughts about the prescription drug adderall?

Methods:

To begin to answer this question that we had posed, we needed to use multiple different sources of information from a handful of DU students. The methods we used were in the form of a short 4 question survey that we gave to 15 different students, an interview with one student that we posed about 6 questions, and lastly an observation. With the survey, we wanted to find information on the average student's opinion and knowledge about the use and abuse of the prescription drug adderall. We handed out this survey to a wide range of DU students. The interview conducted was with one freshman student. We prepared a few questions to ask the person, similarly to the surveys but a little bit more in depth. For the last part of our primary research, we conducted an observation of a college party here at DU. We went to a few different parties until we witnessed students abusing the adderall. Then we watched how their actions changed due to the drug. From these three different methods, we gathered a lot of information in means to answer our question.

Results:

After surveying a variety of freshman DU students, 7 boys and 6 girls, we found some interesting information that caught our attention. Our first question gave us some notable results; we used a scale system from 1-5, one being that the student did not believe that there was any abuse of the prescription drug adderall amongst students on campus, 5 being that they thought there was a lot of abuse. Overall, 40% of those we surveyed marked 5 on the scale, while 0% marked one, meaning they did not think there was any abuse at all. From our data we also found that 46% of students claimed that they absolutely no knowledge about the negative effects of the prescription drug. Another 40% of students said they only knew a minute amount of information about the negative effects. Similarly, our interviewer, a freshman girl, said that she believed there was a problem with adderall abuse on campus. Though she thought there was, “definitely a problem with adderall abuse on campus” she also noted that she thought the drug’s widespread useage was, “positive,” because it helped students get better grades and kept them more focused while they studied. Our interviewer also noted that many of the students she knew who used the drug were, “taking it before going out to parties to keep them more awake,” and that many students “snorted adderall”. Our observations also reinforced the information we received during our interview. On wednesday night we split up our observations into 20 minute intervals, and began our first observation at about 10pm at a party off campus.  Four freshman students, 3 girls and 1 male had snorted adderall prior to arriving at the party and began consuming alcohol. Compared to the other party-goers, the four who had taken adderall were noticeably more energetic, and acting as if they had just consumed a ton of caffeine. While observing, one girl said to another girl, “I am addy’d up as fuck right now.” 2 hours later, all four were still very high strung on the drug, and did not end up going to sleep until around 4 am. We then also observed a few students on adderall that were studying in the library for 20 minutes and found that they were extremely focused on their work. One student in particular wrote a two page paper within the amount of time we observed him work.

Discussion:

After conducting all of our primary research we have concluded that despite there being an evidently widespread usage of the prescription drug, that many students had little to no knowledge about the negative effects of the drug. This finding is quite concerning because students at DU don’t seem to know much about how adderall can be harmful to their bodies. According to the FDA, adderall can lead to short-term effects such as, sleep difficulty, irritability, mood swings and aggression (FDA, 2007). Long-term effects for people who heavily use adderall over a long period of time include: anxiety, panic attacks, headaches, tremors, hallucinations, heart disease, excessive weight loss, thoughts of suicide, and inability to concentrate (FDA, 2007). These alarming possible side-effects are concerning because 86% of students in our survey admitted that they knew little to no information about the drugs side-effects (marked either 1 or a 2 on the scale). Another finding was that there seems to be a large population of students that use the drug to keep them awake while they go out at night to parties. This also was extremely concerning after we researched the dangerous effects of consuming alcohol while on adderall. Because adderall is a stimulant medication used to treat ADHD it can dull the effects of the symptoms of being drunk, leading to a greater risk of over-drinking, alcohol poisoning, and death; in fact, adderall is considered a schedule 2 drug according to the government due to its high potential for abuse and addiction (Morris, 2016). Considering the fact that there is already issues with alcohol abuse and engaging in risky behaviors in the DU community, this raises even further concerns about the drinking culture on campus. During our observation one boy in particular said to a friend, “dude I am on so much fucking adderall right now.” Furthermore, this shows that students seem to be abusing the drug despite knowledge about its side-effects, despite being prescribed, and don’t seem to take the useage problem seriously.

Conclusions:

Our results from our primary research conclude that so many students use the prescription drug adderall at DU, and that they should be better informed about the side-effects of the prescription drug adderall. Clearly it is important that this problem be addressed in some form so that students are using the prescription drug more safely, and are not putting their bodies in harm's way.

Citations:

Morris, S. (2016, July 29). Dangers of Mixing Adderall and Alcohol (A. Carter Dr., Ed.). Retrieved from http://www.healthline.com/health/adhd/adderall-and-alcohol#introduction1

FDA. (2007, March). ADDERALL® (CII). Retrieved from https://www.accessdata.fda.gov/drugsatfda_docs/label/2007/011522s040lbl.pdf

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Research Journal 4

I guess I was pretty surprised to find so many research and studies performed about memes. I never thought about them being something even remotely worth studying or understanding…probably because most of them are a bunch of buttjokes. However, there’s actually a shit ton of depth beneath memes and how they influence our behavior, social norms, and political views. Apparently there’s a study out there about how memes have been linked to an increase in micro-aggressions against marginalized communities. It also talks about how memes can be linked to the lingering prevalence of racial prejudices and discrimination online. I decided to take a step back and go look at some meme accounts on instagram… and jesus christ there’s a ton of racially themed memes out there. The study investigated whether subtle offline racial discrimination can influence perceptions of online content, specifically the racially themed internet memes. I believe everyone is kind of a little bit racist. I’m not admitting that i’m a racist, because I'm not in the least bit discriminatory or prejudice against minorities… I’m just saying that now that I think about it… I do laugh at some racially related memes, or memes that poke fun at stereotypes. But don’t we all? I think if we just make ourselves aware of the subtle racial discrimination we experience on social media and in memes, then it would help separate us from those who are actually fucking racist. I’m sorry but how are there still people out there discriminating against minorities… like c’mon it’s 2017. And especially people who are young. Because I guess I kind of understand the old racist people because they grew up in a world where racism was kind of accepted. For example, my 97 year-old grandpa has said some really racist shit… but my family just kind of turns a blind eye because, hey, he’s fucking 97 years old. But anyone born later than the 1950’s and yells at someone for being black… I’m sorry but you’re a borderline psychopath. I’m trying to look at memes more carefully now, because each of them are a piece of rhetoric and you can use discourse analysis to figure out the social meaning behind em. Hahahaha not all of them though. I’m laughing because I just got tagged in a meme of a praying mantis with a photoshopped joint in his mouth with sunglasses on. BUT, at the same time I also got tagged in one of a young black girl with white eye shadow on and her eye lids shut, and the caption is, “Thought she was possessed.” I’m not saying its racist or anything, just that race does play a role, and I think its important to be aware of that.

[gmbalusek-blog]

Primary Check-in

Annie and I have become full blown detectives. We started brainstorming a few questions to research and decided to go with the topic of adderall use among DU students. Our main question we decided on is: Are DU students informed about the prescription drug adderall? Low key there are so many fucking kids on this campus using it, prescribed or not… and we wanna know if they all actually know what they are putting in their bodies. We are working hard on coming up with some good survey questions. We’ve done a lil research about the harmful affects of adderall just to give us a lil background on the drug… turns out it’s really really really not good for you. We have some interview questions in the works, which include: Do you think adderall use is being abused at DU, why or why not? Can you think of any negative effects of adderall on DU students? We did our observations… we split them up into three 20 minute observations. We watched a handful of students out at a party who used the drug. We didn’t see them take the drug but they told us that they had snorted some of it, prior to coming to the party. We watched them throughout the night. Overall, that specific handful of people seemed to be more intoxicated compared to others whom were not on the drug. We noticed some of the negative affects we read about in the research going on right before our eyes… it was definitely really interesting yet terrifying to see how unaffected everyone seemed to be about the drugs use.

[gmbalusek-blog]

Concepts Shmoncepts

Immediately in high school, there were those kids that were designated as, “good writers”. Along with that title came the stigma that they know all about writing and are fucking perfect. The threshold concept that all writers have more to learn caught my attention for this exact reason. It makes me wanna send this goddamn pdf to those specific kids. In high school writing is almost categorized as this one thing, this one idea that can be mastered or can come easily to people… like, say, math. Rose explains herself that, “there is no such thing as writing in general”. God I wish someone had told us that in high school. I think kids who didn’t do well in writing class in high school were immediately deterred from all writing in general because they thought they weren’t good, or whatever. But writing class in high school was just trying to clump all the genres together to make this “general writing” that just doesn’t fucking exist. Sophomore year I was picked to be a writing tutor, along with a select group of students who thought they were damn writing prodigies who knew everything about writing (I was only picked because my sophomore year teacher was basically always high on vicadin, loved me, and because I brought scones to class one day). I realized early on once kids started coming in with questions that all of us had absolutely no damn authority on the topic, and truthfully probably fucked up some younger kids’ papers. I think this goes along with the other concept that failure can be important. I’ve seen so many fellow students do poorly in writing because they were scared to take a risk, or really embrace a certain genre. I know that in this class we’ve been focusing on embracing an informal, social media type voice, and I think that scares the living shit out of people. No one wants to go out of their comfort zone to try a new genre, or do anything besides another fucking formal research paper. Rose even said that people risk failure, “for fear of damaging their grades”. At first I was nervous about not having grades in this class, but honestly now I’m feeling good about it. I’m feeling more willing to take chances and do whatever the fuck I want, like throw eggs at kids out of my car window… kidding… I mean it with regards to writing…