UNIV 200 Progress
Mikayla DeCastro
Where I came from:
The last two semesters (UNIV 111&112) were both great classes, I really enjoyed it despite my hatred for english classes. We read the Circle and Radioactive while still incorporating current stories into our lessons. We wrote around 4-5 papers that we chose our topics on. These papers were mostly argument style papers but I wrote mostly about the pros of my topic rather than the cons.
Coming to a new class and professor:
After a great experience last year, I came into this year optimistic and ready to go. After a couple classes of confusion, my excitement quickly faded. I am a very structured person and I enjoy having my schedule strictly written out. It makes planning much easier and does not make me nervous since I know exactly what is coming my way. It took me a good three weeks to figure out the "groove" of this class.
Readings and Blogs:
The readings were tough to get through, I did not appreciate their length nor how old they were. Although it was cool that their ideas were so advanced for their time. At the beginning while writing my blogs I feel as though I just had one idea per nugget. I was not going as deep as I could have been, considering the implications of the articles. The blog post about writing about something obvious really helped me realize that there is more to something then just what you see. It is just whether or not I want to dig deeper depending on my interests.
I did enjoy the discussions in class about the readings. I thought that they were thought provoking and I tried to give my best input. Although it was hard for me to put myself "in the readings" I did try. It was kind of like they thought of the technology we use today. It did make me reevaluate how the Internet is used and reaffirmed my belief that there are people who really use the web for the wrong purposes, not how the inventors intended.
"Backpack"
I thought that the tools were helpful when trying to critically think. The SEEI technique is something I try to use everyday even when just explaining things about me. Just saying something is not enough, you have to explain it to make sure your right intent gets across. The domain diagram also helped me get the idea for my paper. Since it is exploratory I chose the three domains that I thought were going to be most affected by the Internet to help explore if the Internet should become a social norm.
FInal Paper
I am very disappointed with this section of the class. There was no formal rubric given out before the writing process (which would have been nice for planning purposes). The class was also told that different sections of the paper would be due in a timely manner, intro due one day, next paragraph due the next, but I did not see that. We had to write about sources but nothing actually written was due. It seemed like the first draft was thrown at us before anyone had really began there paper (well at least the people I talk to). I also did not like the fact that we could not chose the complete topics of our paper, it had to be involved with the Internet, which is something I personally do not like. This paper is interesting to write because I tried to write equal sides of both arguments rather than just the side I wanted to pick.
Overall
Since I am a business major, all my business classes are pretty straight forward and vocabulary based, nothing has been theories or anything I can question. For example: the income statement is a result of revenues-expenses. That makes sense, I cannot question that and try to say that liabilities fits into that equation. Next semester though I am taking contemporary economic issues. This is a class I know I will be able to use great questions in, questions that dig deeper. I did notice myself using some skills we learned in class in the economics club. Often times we have two sided discussions and whenever someone makes a claim I always ask well how do you know that or a clarifying question such as what do you mean by the upper class? Someone who makes over 120000 a year or a billionaire? They both have very different lifestyles and goals.