In-Class Writing Assignment 4/12

How To:  Make Your Schedule Without Becoming Victim to the Big Orange Screw

Since the birth of the university, students everywhere have had to endure the often nightmarish scheduling of classes.  Scheduling classes is often stressful and frustrating, but by using these 10 tips you can avoid at least prepare yourself as much as possible. 

 1.      Print off the list of classes you must take each semester for your major, and research the classes and your options for general requirements.

I brought in 6 hours of AP credit.  I will also have some summer credits, and had a few semesters when I took over 15 hours.  I realized my sophomore year that I hours-wise I could graduate a semester early.  As a speech pathology major, I have to go to graduate school.  I thought that I could use this semester off to save up money and take a break from classes.  As I looked into my classes, however, I realized that many of my classes are only offered in either the fall or spring semester, and that many of them require pre-requisites.  If I had planned earlier, I could have re-arranged my schedule and graduated early.  Instead of making money for a semester, I have to pay for that last semester just because I can’t get two three-hour credits until spring semester of my fourth year.  Even if you are an undecided major, research what classes are required by most majors (especially those you might be interested in) and take those until you decide on a major.  Find a list of majors and their requirements here: http://catalog.utk.edu/content.php?catoid=11&navoid=960

2.     Realize your advisor is not perfect.

As a freshman at orientation, I let my advisor talk me out of taking honors calculus.  Math was my strongest subject in high school and I had already taken college-level calculus my senior year.  I ended up taking a much easier math class to fulfill my math credit.  It was extremely easy and I made over 100 average, but I know I could have made an A in honors calc.  I need 7 honors credits to graduate in the Chancellor’s Honors program, and this would have been an easy way to knock one out.  Also, it seems like almost every semester my advisors arrange my schedule around a class that ends up not being offered.  Check with other students in your major (older students, preferably) and professors to make sure you’re taking the best classes for you.

3.     If you plan on taking summer classes or studying abroad, start researching your options ASAP.

If you’re a business major, you have more options for study abroad.  However, most majors do not have study abroad trips that allow you to earn upper-level credits.  Especially if you want to spend a semester abroad, realize that your best option is to set aside 12-15 hours worth of gen-eds so you don’t throw away a semester an put yourself behind.  As for summer classes, UT requires all students to take their last 30 hours on campus.  For many majors, their schedule does not plan for a 30 hour senior year, that way you have time to interview for jobs, write your thesis, or apply to graduate programs.  This means that any classes you plan on taking off campus (at a community college, at a college in your hometown, or on a study abroad) must be taken the summer between your sophomore and junior year, not your junior and senior year.

4.     Not all professors are equal.

Just like there were notoriously terrible teachers at your high school, there are some professors who are much better than others at college too.  The difference is that you now have a choice in which professor you take.  Research professors and talk to your peers.  You are not going to get an award for taking the hardest professor.  Take the professor you can learn the most from while keeping your grades up.

5.      Before the day you can register for classes, write down all the CRNs for the classes you want to take.

The CRN is the blue number listed to the left of the classes when you search for them.  Write out all the dates and times of your classes to make sure there aren’t any conflicts, and then write down a list of the CRNs.  Then, on your registration day you can simply type those numbers onto Banner without taking the time to search for each class individually.  Since Banner is notorious for crashing during registration, being able to sign up for classes in the small windows of time it is open for is extremely helpful. 

6.     Check your myutk page several weeks before registration to make sure you have no holds on your account and to make sure your registration time is when it should be. 

Once semester, several of my friends did not do this, and did not realize until they were signing up for classes that UT had forgotten to give them the priority registration that is one of the biggest perks honors students receive.  Luckily, the problem was fixed quickly, but it caused a lot of stress that could have been easily avoided.

7.     Sign up for more hours than you intend to take.

UT allows you to register for up to 19 hours.  Even if you do not plan on taking more than 15 hours or even 12 hours, you should register for at least 18 hours.   At least half of the semesters I have been at UT, I have had at least one class dropped.  This past semester, UT pulled an honors class I was registered for less than a week before classes started.  Also, you can drop classes for the first couple weeks of class without being penalized.  This is extremely helpful if you realize the class is harder than you thought, and more than you have time for that semester.

8.     Have back-up options

It’s probably safe to say that no student in the history of UT has ever gotten every exact class they want on their first try.  By knowing in advance what options you have, you can still take as many hours as you need, keeping you as on-track to graduate as possible. 

9.     Don’t be afraid of waitlists.

I made this mistake my freshman year.  My advisor told me that all beginner Spanish classes were already full, so I didn’t bother to put myself on a waitlist.  Since Spanish 111 is only offered in fall, this put my Spanish one whole year behind.  Now, while I have finished almost all my other general education requirements, I still need both my intermediate Spanish credits, and will have to take them as a junior.  Trust me, you do NOT want to deal with a class as time-consuming as Spanish when all your other classes are within your major. 
 

10.  Know yourself!

If you aren’t a morning person, don’t sign up for 8am classes.  Your parents aren’t going to come and drag you to class every day.  You have to be responsible for getting yourself to classes.  Also, know that most college students stay up until at least 1am, so 8am is going to feel a LOT earlier than it did in high school.  This doesn’t make you lazy, it makes you human.  Also, if you know you won’t pay attention if you take class with your best friend, don’t sign up for classes with your best friend.  If you do better when you study in groups and having friends in class will motivate you to go to class, then do sign up with friends.  It’s all about being honest with yourself, and making your schedule accordingly. 

Analyzing Documentary Photography- 4/4

My mom is an avid photographer.  She shoots with a Nikon D-90, which is the same camera many professional photographers use.  It feels like every second of my life is documented in photographs, and her favorites are put into the 30+ lovingly made and carefully designed scrapbooks that fill a hutch in our living room.  Also in the hutch are several antique cameras which my mom inherited from her grandfather, also a photographer.  My mom is always looking at photographs, explaining to me how it should be clearer or how to crop the photo to get the right effect or what the best lighting for a given situation is.  She has won several awards for her nature photography, and our family jokes that Ritz Camera is her equivalent to the bar in the t.v. show "Cheers".  Everyone there knows her name, and one woman even has her phone number memorized.  My entire life I have grown up immersed in photography.  So, when reading this chapter on analyzing photography, a lot of it was about things that come second-nature to me. 

What struck me the most when reading this chapter was the idea that photography forces us to look at a scene from the perspective of the photographer.  This made me think about all the things that go un-photographed in our lives.  There are millions of photographs of beautiful ballerinas, yet few that document the anorexia that is more common among dancers than even models.  Photos of cities like New York, London, and Paris are the subject of the posters on my apartment walls, but the picture they paint shows nothing of the homeless, the drug addicts, or the prostitutes that lurk just around the corner.  Getting a little more personal, my facebook page has 76 albums full of pictures, supposedly documenting my life since I joined facebook my sophomore year of high school.  These pictures show most of the best times I have had.  They help me to remember the things and people I valued most at any given point in time.  However, they leave out millions of moments that went undocumented, either because I did not have a camera or did not wish to remember these moments.  I have no pictures of me when my high school boyfriend (who happened to also be my best friend) broke up with me, and I experienced true heartbreak for the first time.  No camera accurately photographed the feeling of combined triumph and sadness I experienced when I danced for the last time with the studio I had grown up with.  I have no pictures of the moments when I cried in my dorm room my freshman year, wondering why in the world I had chosen UT.  I have no pictures of the countless nights I have spent in the library.  Conversely, in high school, I worked harder than I had ever worked in my life to get the position of drum major in the band, but there was no camera to capture the moment when I found out I had gotten the spot.  I have no pictures of my best friend dragging me out of the library to go to the movies with him countless times, forcing me to forget school for at least a little while.  When I finished my first 8K road race, my mom snapped a picture of me crossing the finish line, but there is no picture that can show the extreme sense of accomplishment I felt running the last 50 feet of the race I had trained so hard for, or how finishing the race felt from my viewpoint.  There are no pictures that show how a student-led bible study I attended in high school called Project 217, completely changed my life forever.

Photographs are extremely interesting to me.  They usually show only the best of ourselves, helping us to feed our egos and remember the great times we've had while forgetting the bad.  The quote "the older I am, the better I was" rings so true in relation to photography.  Of course, there is photography of the devastation caused by wars, the starving children of Africa, the victims of Hitler's infamous concentration camps, and countless other horrifying moments in the world's history, but these still force us to look at events from the photographer's perspective.  Regardless of the picture, photos always give us a somewhat distorted sense of reality.  This can be a powerful way to make a point, a way to save a precious memory,  or it can present us with a false truth.  Obviously, photography is very near to my heart.  I am a very visually-oriented person so photos are to me what poetry or paintings are to others.  It is important, though, to remember when both viewing and taking photos that the photographer has complete control over what we see.

Ethos, Logos, and Pathos as writing strategies; 2/7

Ethos, logos, and pathos are important strategies in writing effective papers.  Essentially meaning ethics, logic, and feeling, respectively, I have always used these themes in my writing without being formally introduced to the terms ethos, logos, and pathos.  After reading this article, I feel that I can more effectively read against texts, whether I am analyzing my own writing or someone else's.  This skill is of utmost importance in improving my writing abilities.

Finding a subject/Finding a voice 2/23

Recently, I read the popular book and now movie, "The Help".  The book is about the hidden side of African-American maids of the 50s, doing everything for affluent Southern families from cleaning their toilets to raising their children.  With this story so freshly on my mind, I was interested to read an article about a young black girl who chose to speak up about the racial injustices in America and particularly the South.  While laws were supposedly in place against discrimination by the 1950s, they were rarely enforced.  The fact was that the majority of blacks knew that they were unwanted in the white world and did not want to mess with the powerful whites who controlled their chance at jobs, their government, and held the power to ruin their lives if they so desired.  It's interesting that Clarissa, the girl who wrote the article, mentions that simply by speaking up to the NCAA she became the face of thousands of other African-Americans too scared to risk their lives and speak out against the injustices committed against them.  I know that there are still racial issues in the U.S., but reading articles like "The Plaintiff Speaks" reminds me of how terrible things were less than a hundred years ago.  It reminds me that to cause change, we must confront our fears and speak out about the things we believe in. 

Posters Reading 4/3

Everyday, one of the first things I see when I wake up is a poster of pop-country singer Taylor Swift.  As I walk into my kitchen to start a cup of coffee, I walk through my living room and see three more posters--one of Big Ben and a red double-decker bus in London, one of the Eiffel Tower in Paris, and one of the actors from the TV show "Friends".  When I walk back into my bathroom to put on makeup and fix my hair, I pass a poster of Disney's "The Little Mermaid".  Shortly thereafter, I will walk out of my apartment building and across UT's campus to class, bombarded by  various posters everywhere I go.  I pass all these posters, but I never really give a second thought to why they were designed the way they were.  In my apartment, we chose the posters because they remind my roommates and me of where we want to travel in the future, of our favorite t.v. characters, my roommate's favorite childhood movie, and my favorite singer/songwriters.  The article I read on posters made me realize just how much thought goes into posters.  The graphic designers contracted to create them carefully orchestrated the posters to draw our eyes in a specific direction, to get our attention, and to give us the information they want us to have.  They control our thoughts without us even thinking twice about what we are doing.  The graphics, and often the type, capture our attention and draw us in.  Posters are iconic, giving us a little glimpse of what was going on when the poster was created through their use of imagery, colors, style of type, and the message conveyed.  To me, the most interesting thing about this reading was realizing just how much thought goes into the posters that I see on a daily basis.

3/27 Lecture

How to convey energy in prose

• Adjectives: positive, dynamic,avoid cliches and overused language
• Adverbs and other modifiers
• Verbs: active, simple verb forms
• "I believe that people might be interested in a concept like this one." -incredibly boring, vs. "Conscientious people believe in existentialism."  Both sentences are saying the same thing, the second sentence is just more specific.  It's stronger because it has an active verb which means something. 
• Be specific! Avoid being vague.
• Avoid self-reference. 
• This doesn't mean you can't ever use "I", it just means that you shouldn't interject yourself into every situation. 
• If you're talking about an experience you had that supports your point, obviously you should use that.
• Public writing is not academic writing; use second person.
• Don't presume too much about your audience, though.
• Consider your audience, work on your ethos.
• Use assertive, aggressive short sentences to make your point.

Affirmative Action Definition

Affirmative Action, essentially, is a policy put in place to give minority races the extra help they may need to get jobs, college degrees, etc.  The thought process behind Affirmative Action is that after 300 years of being treated as a a sub-human race, these groups deserve and require certain preferential treatment to level the playing field.

Affirmative Action is a sticky subject.  The acts of violence and unjust exclusions that African-Americans have had to face in the U.S. since before its creation are indisputably wrong.  How to go about fixing these injustices is a more difficult subject that plagues many majority Americans, and especially law-makers, college deans, and CEOs.  I think that Affirmative Action is simply the easiest and most fair solution we have been able to come up with.  In practice, it clearly has its problems.  Many white Americans with low-class backgrounds may find themselves stuck in a cycle of poverty and discrimination without the resources to escape and make something better of their lives while African-Americans in middle-class society find themselves being given opportunities that help them to climb even higher.  The fact is though, that these scenarios are the exception rather than the rule.  I am a white, upper-middle class college student with two siblings who will be college-bound in the next few years.  I receive several scholarships, but my parents are constantly pushing me to find more.  The fact is that there are few available to me because of my race and my parents' income level.  My parents find this unfair, but the fact is that there are a limited amount of finances available for scholarships and financial aid.  I would have to agree that, in general, most African-Americans truly need the money more than I do.  Affirmative Action is a complicated issue but as a whole,  I agree with it.