Pop Culture

Yes I'll admit it. I watched Twilight this past week. I figured "what's the big deal every one makes about it" so I watched it with a couple buddies and almost fell out of our chairs with laughter.
I apologize to any die hard Twilight fans, the story could be interesting, but the cheesiness of the movie was too overwhelming.
In the end I don't understand all the dislike towards it. Sure it wasn't a great movie but if it made as much money as it did, which according to Wikipedia is $392,616,625, then there can't be much arguing with it. It was extremely successful.

I think that as long as you don't take it too seriously and watch it with some like minded friends then it can be a fun experience


Have a great day!

Source

One of the sources that I have found that I will be using in my annotated bibliography is that of an article written about the prejudices against tattooed and pierced people in the work place. I found this source through the MTSU library data base. I believe that this source is reliable as it is an academic journal and therefore is written by an academic for academics.

Pop Culture

Oh the emotional roller coaster of being a sports fan. This weekend was the rivalry game between my beloved Michigan State Spartans, and the University of Michigan Wolverines. It is always hard to watch one's team lose, but the agony of thinking you just might could pull it off makes it that much more of a let down when the team loses. It was a sad day being that my Spartans had a 1 point lead with 12 seconds left and the Wolverines were on the edge of field goal range until Denard Robinson hit a 20 or so yard pass to set up an easy kick to give them the lead with 5 seconds left. The ensuing kickoff the time ran out and my team lost. Oh the pain of losing to one's rival.

Oh well.

Have a Great day!

Citations

I have had a lot of experience with a very narrow field or citation. In my high school almost all the works that I handed in over my Junior and Senior years had to have citations: however, I have only ever used MLA format and would be completely lost if I had to do any other form of citation. I find it easy to do as long as I have a computer with internet access as there are cites such as easybib and so on which the citation process much easier and simpler. I would be able to do a level of citation MLA if I was told to do it without a computer but it would not be completely correct. There are different citation styles for different subjects and I'm not exactly sure why. I do believe it has something with making it internationally understandable in those areas of expertise but this is just my assumption. Using MLA will help with using different styles because usually a lot of the same information is used in the citation only in a different format.

Have a Great Day

Old School Notion

I feel that there are several valid helpful points in this article. I completely agree that writing seems to be somewhat of a dying art and that it is something that our current generation needs to be challenged about. People have not been trained in ways that equip them to conduct themselves successfully in their area of work either career or academic thereby crippling them. I agree that though one cannot completely revamp someone's ability to write argumentatively in a short amount of time you can start it in the right direction.

Have a great day!

Pop Culture

This past week I watched "Revolution". I would not say that it was a great or even good show. It was OK not any better. The problem for me was the main character. The girl Charlie is not an experienced actor and so she is hard for me to take for long periods of time. I did like the uncle though, he gave the show some type of character. Also the two companions who are with Charlie add character and the concept is interesting but I don't think that I will continue to watch. If I do I hope that the main character becomes more bearable or else I can't continue to watch much longer.

Source

One of the sources that I have found so far is an academic article written by Velliquete in a sociological study of tattoos and the culture surrounding them both from the the tattooed people's side and that of the rest of society. I found this course through another one of my courses here at university, sociology. I believe this source will be very helpful as it is reliable, due to it's use in the world of academia as a teaching tool, and covers much of the items I wish to find in my research.

Have a great day!

Pop Culture

Today I went to the homecoming parade. This was the first time I have ever been a part of a homecoming event. When I was growing up we never had a homecoming in the countries I was in. It was a fun experience. Yes it was cold, but the atmosphere was a lot of fun and so it made up for it. It was awesome to see all the little kids who got so excited to be able to run into the street and collect up the candy that had just been thrown out by the last passing group. My favorite group that passed by was the Band of Blue. They are one of my favorite groups to watch on the campus. At the football games they always have really great spirit and have some awesome dances. 

Hoping that I will be able to see several more during my time here at MTSU

Have a great day!

The Shadow Scholar

Some organizational strategies that I have developed from previous classes and research projects is the ability to separate larger sections into smaller more specific categories allowing me to place information into those smaller categories for easier access later on. Other organization skills that I have learned is that of using color coding to highlight things to keep them in, again, those smaller more specific areas.

The Shadow Scholar. This is an extremely interesting article about academic cheating. The idea that someone sits around doing other people's work for them on such a large scale is something I had never thought about. I have heard of people doing small work for one another, say for a good friend, but the idea of cheating on such a large scale as this is mind blowing. The problem in this article is that people are not doing their own work on things such as Ph.D's and the sort. It is scary to think that people can be 'qualified' for something through the work of another person.


The Shadow Scholar defends his occupation by reasoning that the reason students cheat is not because of his services but that the school has not clamped down or helped to fulfill the needs of some students who cannot write to the level required. I believe that when people do use these services it is damaging the state of education however it does bring out the idea that many students have, "the only important thing is the grade." While I agree that grades are important they are not so important that skipping the info and having another individual do the work for you is alright. It is sad that this is what people would do instead of doing the work and learning themselves. So I do not believe it is his fault necessarily but I do think that because of him and his coworkers this cycle is perpetuated and a stop is not being put to it which does hurt the state of education.

Have a great day