Panels

Conference 1:



When I first walked into the room I saw a bunch of professors sitting in chairs surrounding the room and my expectations for this panel was going to be very low. The first speaker was Dr. Alvina and she began her presentation with a handout. It was a list of five quotes that she found extremely interesting and though we would really enjoy. The basis to her speech was making us aware to the many ways we use text. Some examples were; telling a friend a story about the weather or what happened to us today. She also made us aware to why we tell those stories. It is to entertain to inform? That this telling of stories such as these helps our minds to develop concepts and thoughts we would have never thought of before.

The second speaker was Dr. Gloria Park. She teaches research writing and wants to concentrate on social issues that I would be aware of and that pertain more to my age group. She is having her class do the same social project that we are required to do, and she mentioned that we need to own our research. That means she wants us to connect with it and make sure we understand it to its fullest so we can truly have it change the way we think about that issue and impact our daily lives. She said that peer editors were a very useful tool that her class will be using. Her last note of the presentation was her personal philosophy; moving beyond the class to assist them in finding opportunities to present formally and informally; to merge personal, academic and professional interests.

The third and final speaker of that time slot was, Dr. Watson. Her speech seemed more personal and it seemed like she had sent less time on what her notes cards said, and more time on the concept of her presentation. She stated something that stayed with me after I left the panel, “Literature is a way of getting places people would not normally be able to enjoy themselves.” She also stated the many ways we read each day without even knowing it; text, facebook, and twitter to name a few. She said that even though we are reaching millions of people each day with this form of text we are not truly connected with people. That reading real literature and books help us to gain more relationships with people because we judge less from reading the characters in a book.



Conference 2:

The second panel I attended was with three graduate students who all read short stories they had written. The first was a young girl, early twenties that read her story titled; Flies on the wall. This passage was about a high society couple who gets divorced and that even though they may seem perfect on the outside, behind close doors it is very different.

The next reader was a young man around the same age maybe a little older, with a certain confidence about him that made his story even more drama filled when he read it aloud. His tale was called The Baby. It was about a woman who had just had the plug pulled on her while pregnant, and the husband had to decide what to do with the child inside of her. He dramatically decided to let the baby die along with his wife. As the author described his story he said it was a style of writing called flash fiction. That is a burst of drama and no real end or beginning just the main scenes of a story placed into a few pages.

The third and final reader’s story was lighter hearted than the first two. It was called Sip, and was about two drunken girls who find love in each other while having a night out. One girl is taking care of another who is puking because she is so drunk, and while she is watching her vomit everywhere she finds herself attracted to the other girl. They exchange words and finally kiss each other. This story seemed to be more on life experience then the author had lead on, saying that the only connection she had with it was taking care of a sick friend.



Conclusion:

I enjoyed going to the panels. I had enjoyed them more than I had originally thought. I would go to another if I was given then opportunity.

Gladwell ch. 2

      Gladwell is a very interesting writer and in his book what I found most interesting was that the fate of our country could have been so different. If the people had not listened to Paul Revere we would not have a country. Freedom of free speech, freedom of religion and others freedoms would be just a myth. Men, women and children would dream of a different world, one not ruled by Britain and their monarchy. Revere was a salesman in the fact that he convinced the people that it was time to fight and not a false alarm. Many people even today have become numb to alarms. For example when a store alarm goes off as you walk out the door many people don’t even check to see if you have stolen anything because so many false alarms go off every day. He had to be very careful on his choice of words not to seem like a false alarm, and have no one respond.

Types of Reading

Some types of reading that I come across everyday are casual and formal writing. I consider casual to be facebook and texts for example. I view formal writing as emailing a professor or reading a text book. I use this type of reading every moment I am awake until I go to sleep at night and do it all over again the next day. Gladwell has a very specific type of writing style that I do not come across often. He combines casual language with formal language. One moment he can be talking about a memory he has and another moment a statistic on a major world topic. I do not read this kind of writing often, as I do not have as much time with school work and my other obligations, to do pleasure reading. Reading this book is less of a requirement and more of a delight.

Epidemics When I was Growing up.

         When I think of my childhood and major event that happened, the first thing that comes to mind is Y2K. My father is a computer consultant and he had to come up with many plans that he may need to use if computers were to crash. People fed into the hype of the end of the world mindset. They were willing to buy any new product and software that they thought could save their cyber world. Businesses profited from this immensely, mark ups were at an all time high, taking advantage of consumer’s fears. As a ten year old child I didn’t understand the whole thing, so to me it was just another new years eve. Y2K came and passed and computers were unchanged, but this epidemic will always be remembered.

Ch. 1 Tipping Point

            Chapter one was a very interesting, and the content is quite surprising. Gladwell introduces us to the notion of the “Tipping Point”. On page 12 he describes this as “the moment of critical mass, the threshold, the boiling point.” In chapter one, The Rules of Epidemics he talks about how sexually transmitted diseases are spread, and how 20 percent of people do 80 percent of the work on spreading a disease. Another factor that may influence of any kind of epidemic rather it be a disease or a new fashion trend, moving the infected people will help to spread the item.