College & Caviar

and here it is!

As a reflect back on this quarter, this was by far my favorite assignment. I love creative translations, and in a way I believe they effectively help my brain come to closure with my research. By that I mean my advertisement finishes this research assignment exactly how I wanted it to – with a call for action.

Note: unfortunately wordpress would not allow my advertisement to be posted because it exceeded the file capacity (super high quality ad!). So, I had to upload a screenshot (that has some markups), please reach out to me if you would like the higher quality version.

Source: Leslie Akin

most important factor of my project = intended (target) audience

second most important factor of my project = making sure I include all elements of my research that I find relevant for my goal of the project

*note: this post will be written quite informally as it is more about analyzing my thoughts and laying out what I need to keep in mind when creating my advertisement, also this post is written before the completion of my advertisement, it is part of the planning phase

AUDIENCE:

• I want politically inclined humans (I learned in my high school gov class, that usually means older people). I want people interested in sports, who have time to really get into stories, and are fascinated in the back stories / personal accounts (not just the ending scores).
• At this point, I realized all my factors point to a magazine advertisement. So, for this project I will be assuming my advertisement will be put into Sport’s Illustrated.

FACTORS:

• to funnel my audience into how I am thinking: I want to put emphasis on how, when thinking of sports, there is so much attention put on the “success stories”  (the few star players rise from poverty to fame), and no attention put on the thousands and thousands of “failure stories” that come with each success.
  • I want to include a large variety of average athletes who didn’t make it big, as well as athletes who, due to their lack of education, became criminals, etc (I will include their mugshots).
  • I want the pictures of the select few who made it big from notoriously bad circumstances to be faded, almost dream like, so the audience gets a sense of how unrealistic these few stories are. I want the other athletes to be bold. Because these athletes are the reason for my research, and the reason for why we need better education systems leading up to college
• The caption “you know them” next to the star athletes just impounds more into each individuals brain the likeliness everyone knows who these people are ( I mean I EVEN do!). This will connect to the fact that communities rally around star athletes because they think they will become one of these guys… when in reality the chances are SO slim to never.
• The next caption “but do you know these men’s stories” relates to to the fact that you most likely do not. which is sad, yes, because we can learn from the many humans who rely on sports and think they know that will be their destiny, when in reality an injury, bad grade, NCAA investigation, etc can end it instantly. These people must have back up plans, and the solution to this problem that so many of them do not, is to prepare them for more opportunities in life, and to make sure they have the average to above average education they need.

Ah! Time for a quick breather…

Source: ReactionGIFs

ALRIGHTY! Back to it. We have one week left, and it’s time to do something fun. I have been assigned a “multimodal” translation of my research. In order to do this correctly and effectively, there are several steps one must follow.

Numbers = broad steps

Letters = my individual process regarding my situation

1. analyze and address your “rhetorical” situation –> know exactly WHAT you are trying to say, WHAT you are trying to get people to do, etc.
   1. I want to encourage sports fanatics to support honest college athletics
2. what type of writing am I targeting –> this will basically come to you in step one, but this step is to make sure that you know yourself… examples include persuade, inform, entertain, etc
   1. I want to persuade people to write to their congressmen and women advocating for a solution to the source of my problem –  redefined grammar school graduation requirements!
3. who should hear what I have to say –> your determined audience
   1. this question I had to ponder for quite a while. I originally wanted to compile a video advertisement using Camtasia because I loved the software. But, once I realized who I wanted my audience to be, I determined that isn’t the correct form of advertisement (at this point I realized a lot of other factors are important in the marketing business than just the advertisement!)
   2. so. I want politically inclined humans (I learned in my high school gov class, that means older people). I want people interested in sports, who have time to really get into stories, and are fascinated in the back stories / personal accounts (not just the ending scores). At this point, I realized all my factors point to a magazine advertisement. So, for this project I will be assuming my advertisement will be put into Sport’s Illustrated.
   3. Even though this doesn’t fill my creative itch of video designing, THIS WILL BEST SUIT MY GOALS AND BE MOST EFFECTIVE (the two most important things). I want to reach my audience, there’s no point in creating an awesome ad if the greatest percentage of my targeted audience will not see it.
4. Become proficient in the composition type you chose to make
   1. my advertisement I am making via apple’s pages because I like the flexible manipulation of images offered
5. Make sure you include all elements of your research you want to be in the re-vision
   1. THIS IS SO IMPORTANT
   2. I will revisit this step, because it is a lot of work, in my NEXT blog post.

Whether an audio essay, a short video, a digital narrative, or any other type of project, one must follow these steps in this order so that your project can be EFFECTIVE.

Last Tuesday morning I had the great pleasure of getting to go hang out with our SCU librarian Gail! It was great, we not only reviewed the last session we had there, but also learned some new stuff!

Similar to the annotated bibliography skills, the “quote sandwich” session was fun and informative (although it was really about “quote sandwiches”‘ top bread piece). We had detective hunts (per usual) and Konnor and I had a blast. We learned about the importance of introducing your source, what type of source it is (scholarly? etc), as well as if you should tell your audience it that it comes from a place that is “open access.” Gail taught us how some databases (especially medical journals) can be tens of thousands of dollars, so it is important to not exclude important details that give background to your sources because it can affect the reputation this source has (and you can build off its reputation in your analysis!).

Below are some example introductions to quotes we made… enjoy!

Basic pattern (can vary!): Summary/Point of Source, who the author(s) are and the type of source/database, the database, description / purpose of source’s origin.

A scholarly study that discusses possible correlations between mobile phone dependence and underlying neurobiological mechanisms, by a camaraderie of academics and neurobiological doctors published in open-access peer reviewed journal, Frontier Psychology, which covers all aspects of psychology. 

A scholarly argument about promoting the uses of informal language using digital in order to engage students to write about content and use critical thinking skills in less formal ways, by an associate professor of curriculum and teaching at Fordham University published in Phi Delta Kappan, a professional magazine for anyone interested in K-12 education. 

Source: Giphy

I thought it would be interesting to post a before and after of my territory map. This before picture is when I had read 4 sources – soon I will post an after pic. I’m fascinated in how my research progression will change my understanding of my topic and focus on certain gaps.

Before:

Source: Leslie Akin

Mid Way: All sources annotated, with post its of main points, gaps, etc.

Source: Leslie Akin

*This post will be updated

Soon I will be posting a picture of my “territory map” – a map of my thoughts between the sources I have read so far. I found myself thinking in the order I read things – A BIG NO NO. But, I think that just proves how extra extra important it is to understand how the sources talk and work together before you even begin to write. This is something I plan to do for the rest of my essays (in all classes) because I have always had difficulty with organization and clarity in my writing. Underneath the territory map I will explain it all!

Time to keep going! (This is the middle of the beginning of a long process!)

Source: Tenor

GAP: gaps are good! I can analyze the gaps and then start a deeper conversation with other sources! I have a pretty clear gap in the UC davis source – they mention how much better the athlete’s grades are (with no explanation – it was more a data report) and I want to investigate and bring to my audience’s attention this GAP. I can build off this as it brings a great chance for an introduction to many of my sources. While reading this, I was near my brother (who graduated from Vanderbilt 3 years ago) and I asked if he ever saw athletes get special easy classes – thinking the answer would obviously be no because a) vandy isn’t too athletically competitive and b) their sports are not even that good and c) they seem like a respectable institution, I was wrong. He brought up some hilarious classes that he heard about, but also brought to my attention something a lot of my academic sources did not even mention – teams often travel together, so they should take classes at least all together (but not easier classes!).

As I read through my sources, I start to notice each author kind of puts a blame on someone for these scandal – the NCAA, the primary schools that are to blame for supporting athletes slack, the coaches, the administration, the students….

Also, I’ve come across a source I would usually forget about and pretend I didn’t read… but this source was an exceptional outlier in that it gave a case of a young man who got hurt by the NCAA because he had a tutor who changed 3 of his sentences in one essay ever. Because of that he never got to play football again, and now has a very simple blue collar job. This source kind of starts dialogue with the sources who blame the NCAA – maybe they are not to blame for everything.

As I reflect so far on this process – I find myself a bit lost. I’m not sure if my SCU archival artifact will have a significant presence in my essay, other than just being another example and I guess relating to my campus (where I could also pull in my survey demographics, etc). I also have felt a little confused on what the style of writing it for each assignment, and I’m worried I might majorly screw-up and write something totally wrong! Overall I am intimidated, but I’m not sure if there’s anyway to get over that then just start writing!!

As I decided how to approach my sources, I decide to lay out some ground reminders (thanks to Kantz):

1. Make key lists – words, dates, phrases, facts, numbers. Color code to source (cause soon I’ll be dealing with many)
2. think while reading: what do I accept as facts? What are beliefs? Is this bias? What does it mean to disagree? Agree? What is the truth? These questions are important when reading sources with data (all the same, but maybe slightly different data)… what we can do is try to understand why one source says there was more and the other less… who wrote this? whose side were they on? who was the audience (a request to a king for ships? then you would over estimate; taxes on ships? then you would underestimate). Discover these gaps- that is what makes this all interesting! (Krantz)
3. Notice the a) speaker/writer b) audience c) topic. Just taking note of these in the top corner of the printed out source will help keep your mind straight and also help when you refer back to the source!
4. as soon as you are done reading, decide what the primary goal of this piece was (diary: express thoughts; advertisement: persuade). We often know this but don’t consciously realize it until we force ourselves to go through this three step process. And realizing this can add a lot to analysis of sources, and bring to light some interesting patterns or outliers! This will also help with the organization and flow part of writing (both of which I have always needed improvement in). With a decoder-to-reality perspective, we allow ourselves to get influenced by the text, but understand why and what is making us feel this way.
5. do not summarize the sources – argue with them, have a point!
6. the importance of rhetorical gaps (noticing them is not a sign of weakness instead it is a sign of strength!)

Conclusion: we have not embraced the gaps, or looked for ways sources contradict and use that. Writing: we need to add something to this conversation! (don’t tell what other people have told us – no telling back! – its okay to do in the first two paragraphs, we can launch off the previous conversation)

This weekend I am reading 3 sources. Below I will not include all my notes (I like to hand write my notes ON the sources) but I will make a little reference to the above 4 pillars (thanks to Krantz and others) and how they helped / what insights I got thanks to them!

Source 1: Maxymuk, John. “Cheated: The UNC Scandal, the Education of Athletes, and the Future of Big-Time College Sports.”

• What is super interesting about this source, is it seems like a review of a book – or a summary in a magazine — makes sense because the speaker is a writer for this magazine – so we are definitely getting a bias view!
• Look at this first sentence and the loaded language it uses: “Higher education currently faces several existential crises over its inflated expenses, tentative connection to the real world, and general usefulness, but perhaps the most odoriferous rot comes from the corrupt relationship between academics and sports on campus.”
• he states many facts as, well, facts: such as the use of “paper classes,” a term I have not hear yet but totally makes sense! This source is short, but adds a lot for my analysis because it is a review of a book all about UNC’s academic scandal
• ending with a verdict that anyone education, public affairs, or college athletics will find this book ESSENTIAL.
• key things: UNC, paper classes, odoriferous rot, whistle blower (I should research that guy and look more into perhaps his initial whistle-blowing!), the phrase “offer two paths forward: pay college athletes and separate athletics entirely from academics or take academics seriously and provide the heavy remedial education that so many athletes need to perform work at a college level”
  • follow up: I should reach out to my friends who play college sports and interview them, I should research the references Maxymunk makes to important details in the book, I should investigate his wording and background because he is definitely bias

Source 2: MacKenzie, Bonnie L. and Davis. Office of Student Affairs Research and Information. California Univ. Academic Performance of Intercollegiate Athletes, University of California, Davis.

• only UC davis – how they measured performance was graduation rates and GPA  (so understand this isn’t about a scandal directly, but could give some background (if there is a correlation) as to why (maybe!) a scandal could happen
• gotta take into consideration the decade this was – college sports was very different then and didn’t produce nearly as much revenue
  • follow up: I should find a source with data about how college athletics has changed (football revenues, advertisers, etc) – follow the money!
• 13% of over 1000 male athletes years 1970-1979
• this filled jack pot: “57 percent of male athletes graduated during the 6-year period, compared to 39 percent of male nonathletes. At the end of 2 years of college work, cumulative GPAs of the intercollegiate athletes were comparable to those of male students in general. Among the specially-admitted males, athletes had slightly higher grades than male students in general. Three sports had high percentages of specially-admitted students: football, basketball, and baseball.”
  • my goodness I am thinking so many things: 1) does athletes having higher GPAs mean they probably managed there time more (I found when I was playing a sport in high school I was more committed to finishing my homework in one sitting) or 2)  that the CLASSES offered to athletes WERE EASIER!! Is there any way I can find this out?
• quick note: because this source was an academic paper, I love how clear and organized it is. I will not necessarily target academic papers because of this but I will definitely spend more time looking for ones similar!

Source 3: Congress of the U.S., Washington, DC. Senate Committee on the Judiciary. The Collegiate Student-Athlete Protection Act of 1983. Hearings Before the Committee on the Judiciary. 

• CAN YOU BELIEVE I FOUND A HEARING?? how awesome is this source? it just shows how great having a diverse bunch of sources can be – not only for me because it offers different perspectives/motives for writing, but also it will keep my audience interested!
• “encourage college student-athletes to complete their undergraduate education before becoming professional athletes” – so this bill I could definitely use as a follow up/ so what /modern day because it not exactly addresses my type of scandal, but more enforces that motives of these scandals to calm down
• “The proposed legislation was prompted by the signing of the University of Georgia’s football star, Herschel Walker, by a member team of the United States Football League.”
  • follow up: who is this? what does he have to do with this? why does he care / want to change how college football works?
• how does the US Congress have power over changing a student to feel “free from pressure to abandon their education”

Today we visited sweet Gail and started to do some individual source searching via Eric and OmniFile. Part of our assignment was to find two sources with different perspectives. As I was searching and “foldering” (a way of collecting sources to send to myself!) I realized I was judging a lot by title. Konner and I discussed that we are basically doing what Greene so very much gets extremely annoyed about! But, scholarly articles should have informative titles, and when these sources are listed via “relevancy” and the number adds up to nearly 400 options, I believe judging by titles, dates, availability to me, etc is really okay.

Below is my report on the two differing perspective sources I found. Note that I mention their titles- because they do give a sneak peak into what they are talking about. However, just one little step further of reading the opening statement adds SO MUCH MORE. The “more” includes what I add on in my second and third sentence of analysis.

(Imagine the “more” I could get by reading the entire source!)

As I go further and further into my surface level research where I start to take stock of what people are saying about my topic(s), I realize how important it is to do background research on the authors and read the whole source. This also adds a purpose to the annotated bibliography – it forces one to research (for the most part) correctly!

Hello there! Long time no talk – lets get up to speed!

After completing my survey (where I was pleasantly surprised by the amount of respondents I got!) I realized I am quite fascinated in how students today believe athletes should be compensated for their work and commitments – if at all. Thanks to the archival research I did, I was opened up to the world of athletic academic scandals…

oooooh

Source: Giphy

I decided to start on a pretty basic, background (if you will), level of research. Since I have not been watching ESPN the last 5 years, I decided my first step would be talking to my father – an avid sports fanatic.  He immediately brought to my attention the UNC scandal. So, I decided my first exposure of it should be a newscaster’s reaction, so I found a report via CNN (a relatively unbiased source, although still bias!! – something I definitely kept in mind). As we talked in class about annotated bibliographies, I decided it was important I pay attention to several things as I look through and for other sources: what drew me to this, how does the topic compare to other sources, how doe the rhetoric / style compare to other sources, what is the intended audience? is that different from the resulting audience? how does this compare to my archival research? In what ways is this source bias? etc.

I’m looking forward to continuing my research, especially using more scholarly sources (like the Library Database offered) – I felt very overwhelmed about connecting my archival research to today, but after this survey assignment (and experience!) I am confident that I will in fact put more emphasis on the modern implications of my research in my final paper!

Source: Giphy

Shout out to my favorite librarian Gale (refer to earlier post for explanation) – for making a tutorial which was all about being about to distinguish “different types of periodical sources.”

While completing this tutorial I realized how it will help me when stumbling along blocks I will face, for example:

•  what a scholarly article is (if I want to look credible with what I SAY, then I should only use sources who are credible is what THEY SAY).
• what is a “periodical” (a lot more than you think!)
• how can I tell what what I am reading is?

Hope you all have a lovely day!

Especially for this english class, a lot of what we learn you start to realize has so many connections to other classes… and I’m not the only one who notices this! Check out Jake’s Post here.

For this personal post, I wanted to show you how marketing and BEAM connect. Both “things” (areas of life?) are things people use. Even though I’m not exactly interested into going into full on business when I grow up, I am in the business school here at Santa Clara and honestly I kind of enjoy learning how marketing works. That makes a little bit more sense when I tell you I LOVE shopping, and mostly online – so when I say “how marketing works,” I mean how these smart business people target me as their victim!

I swear I could earn money by letting marketers and business analysts see my techniques for shopping, how I get the lowest prices, how I organize my tabs, and ultimately what I pick to buy. Anyways, I have always fallen for the marketer’s tricks (whether it be through a celebrity’s Instagram, the ads that Facebook thinks I will click on… and always do, how things I’ve googled magically appear as ads on other pages (this one kind of freaks me out), and most importantly, how these smart people get me to click on them!). So – I am donating a post (ha! donating a post?, more like discovering and creating and pulling out of my mind a wonderful product) about how what we have learned – specifically Joseph Bizup’s BEAM – connects to marketing, or at least what I’ve learned about it thus far!

Now my connections may kind of be a stretch, but if we can use BEAM for reading we can use it for analyzing shopping too!

Lets take this one screenshot of this one dress I wanted online for example:

Source: Mura Boutique Australia

For an interactive post click this link and get directed to the site!

B: background aka show that people care

• OH NO! last one?? I should probably get it because look all other sizes are sold out and clearly other people want it so it’s definitely cute and I will like it.
• I’m not the only one who can label the tricks I am falling for, check out this article if you want some more info on this “Latest Online Marketing Ploy.”

E: exhibit aka analysis / interpretation

• *this one is tough so bare with me…
• you can’t see this in my screenshot, but there is all sorts of information on the dress below, including details of possible outfits, care instructions, model details… although these may not be exhibits I think how we (the audience and clients of Mura Boutique) take in the information in the order they gave us and kind of get guided to make a certain opinion on this piece.
• Oh this model is a size medium? She looks so skinny in this dress though, so I will definitely.
• Oh this dress is on your top best sellers?  how they organize this best sellers list and portray it to you changes what you think about the item, also Tirabassi’s principle of categorization and selectivity are apart of this technique!

A: argument aka extends info in some way/secondary source

• yes the information below the dress adds to this, but I can’t double dip that in my analysis and I already used it for exhibit.. so lets go on a further stretch to extend Bizup’s A for argument of BEAM to this dress
• a secondary source could always be one of these:
  

  Source: Mura Boutique Australia

  

  Source: Mura Boutique Australia

which they conveniently put below the picture, so you can easily see fellow shoppers reviews on the dress via instagram, their website, and even bloggers!

• • especially if it’s a somewhat big purchase, I always look up reviews, and I find it useful (also bias) when the website provides links to reviews of the item

M: method aka name dropping, technique imitation aka why it is important because of who agrees with me

• often in the collection of pictures of the item shopping websites will use a photo of a celebrity wearing the item (usually a classic paparazzi style pic so the shopper knows this person is famous and thus very important)!
• Moreover, some websites name specific items after celebrities (like this “paris dress” named for its striking similarity to Paris Hilton’s 21st Birthday Dress).
  • this is definitely considered name dropping, and in the same way as “argument” adds this give you encouragement through reassurance or example that you should buy this!

So, from Cher Horowitz and I, good luck shoppers!

Source: Rolling Stone