The question that I am asking this week is: “Do you think that political correctness is hindering our first amendment rights as American citizens, including freedom of religion, press, and speech?”. I already have strong beliefs on political correctness but I want to see if there are opinions that differ from my own. I don’t want to write this synthesis paper with the belief that most people believe the way that I do; it would be pretty bad if I did that and then we discussed our opinions and no one else agreed with me. I came to this question because I’m thinking that my thesis is going to have something to do with the PC culture taking away our rights as citizens.
The Perfect School
One group had the idea of being paired with a group of no more than 10 people with different backgrounds which really intrigued me. I want to couple that with another idea of having certain times for individual, group, and instructor led learning. I think that being able to work by yourself is just as important as working with other people, especially in our changing times. I might even go as far as to say that the 10 people in each group should rotate so that students don’t get used to who they are working to and let their work slip. I also like the idea of “Challenge courses” for students who feel as if they are not being taught at a high enough level. I think that by doing this, you would separate the successful students from those that are struggling. Then, teachers wouldn’t have to slow down or confuse students. Students would also be more comfortable in a setting of other students with around the same academic capacity. I’m leaning back and forth on whether I like the idea of having course level based off of previous assessment instead of grade level or age; I can’t imagine a 12 year old in the same class as an 18 year old.
I think that Writing 102 could definitely include the individual/group/instructor learning style. By doing this, we could learn how to get things done by ourselves while also feeling comfortable with debating things amongst a small group. I think that maybe there could be an optional “challenge project” that would push us toward our maximum critical thinking levels.
Being Different Isn’t Always Bad
The biggest thing that I learned from watching the three op doc videos was that all of our animated projects will be different and that’s okay. We saw a faced paced and slow paced videos that were animated in completely different ways. Each of these videos were organized and put together in a way that best fit that particular story. I think that’s what I am going to have to work on. If I can read over my script a few times and get an understanding of how I think my animation should be put together, I think that everything will come together.
Recovering with Creativity
Today in class we had to listen to several other multimodal projects. I can honestly say that after listening to about fifteen seconds of other pieces, I could tell how awful mine truly was. Once again I was witness to the writing rule that your first draft is pretty much absolute crap and so are the next five or six tries. I also learned that I wrote my script filled with evidence, which would be great if my audience were forty five year old high school teachers that desperately want to see evidence. Sadly, that’s not my audience. I learned that I have to make this script more interesting, and can possibly do so by taking away some facts and evidence and putting them into the project visually instead of audibly. I can guarantee that two days from now my script will be nothing like it is now.
My Learning Style: With No Words
Mistakes, I’ve Made a Few
It feels as if I have made more mistakes this semester than I have my entire life. It’s easy to see your mistakes in college, especially if they include not studying hard enough for a biology exam and then regretfully seeing your grade later. I have learned that I cannot put off studying especially for that bio class because it will drastically hurt my grades. One of the biggest mistakes that I have made so far would have to be taking Biology 160 instead of Biology 102. Although I am still suffering and struggling in that class, it has taught me that not everything in life is going to be easy and I need to learn how to adapt to difficult circumstances. I realize that I will continue to make mistakes in college, but isn’t that what college is about? We are supposed to spend these years learning from our mistakes so that we can learn about ourselves.
What’s All the Fuss About?
I think that the last two weeks here on campus have been filled with argument. It’s crazy for me to see our campus experience some of the same divisive times like previous Ole Miss students have had to go through in the past. The Confederate Flag is a major controversy that I don’t see dying down any time soon, especially if you take the past week into consideration. I am indifferent on the subject but I often have felt like I am the only one. On the news, in the DM, and all across social media sites, people are taking sides to the ongoing flag debacle. When these people take a side, they go full out toward it. I have yet to see someone on the news or in the paper try and discuss both sides of the debate; everyone is extremely one sided. Each side tries to persuade people to join them by either discussing the history of fallen soldiers or how truly awful their ancestors felt (pathos is key in their persuasions because that is the only way that they feel like they can gain members).
What I Love (& Hate) to Learn?
I love to learn many things. I have had an attraction toward anything dealing with politics since I participated in the Trent Lott program for high school students. I like to learn about the things that affect me in my everyday life. Before coming to college, I thought that I liked Biology but that theory has been proven dead wrong. One of my favorite classes is Psychology, and I think that is so because it focuses on what makes us who we are. Psychology also makes me feel like I am in a medical class which excites me because I am a pre-med student (for now). It is a little odd to have politics and medicine as my two favorite subjects to learn, but I guess that’s what makes me who I am.
Analyzing the World Around Us
I think that people in general analyze more things than they think they do. I personally tend to analyze any new situations or environments that I am placed into so that I can learn about the things around me and become more comfortable. I feel like when you analyze something it allows you to see that thing from a deconstructed perspective which in turn lets you have a better understanding of the subject. It is part of our nature to analyze things, whether it be people, places, or things. The exercises that I have done so far in this unit have helped me break apart the different “Op-Docs” and see them from a view that I had not previously done before.
Same Video, Different Opinions?
Collaborative thinking allows you to have more opinions on a certain topic. By getting in our groups of three, we were able to each express our own individual thoughts about the material, but then also be able to see how someone else’s opinion and how the three of us were thinking differently. Another set of eyes never hurts, especially in writing. In reading and writing, it is great to understand all sides of the material which can be eased by listening to others.