Pugatory

My territory, as talked about in previous posts, is college football. I’m curious as to what kind of impact the implementation of college football at SCU would have on students and the university. This matters to me because I’m a college football fan with what I’d like to consider a high level of school spirit. However, I do not see much of this same school spirit at SCU and I would like this to change. College football is a billion dollar industry that has universities adding programs every year. Adding teams has both positive and negative effects for the schools which is why I would love to see how Santa Clara could handle such a drastic addition to it’s athletics.

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The gap I intend to bridge revolves around the question of how Santa Clara could implement a football team and if it would have the same or different effect football has on the bigger, successful schools. Many of the sources I reviewed talk about football’s impact on large, high student population, Division 1 schools whereas the smaller school’s football programs aren’t as widely covered. Therefore, the sport may effect Santa Clara in different ways than it does at schools like Ohio State or Alabama. Also, many of these schools have the funding to pay for football’s budget while Santa Clara would have to develop a booster club and raise the money needed to sustain a team. In addition, revenue would be very unpredictable because who knows how many of the only 5,000 undergraduate students at SCU would show support. I look to address these issues in my research paper next week.

Kantz appears to be a literary genius who has the whole writing thing figured out, so to compare her styles to mine is absurd. However, a few of her points have come up in my research process and I will strive to implement more.

Straight From Thea

In Kantz’ “Helping Students Use Sources Persuasively” she talks about how students must do more in research essays than simply retell the story that the sources tell. They need to avoid believing everything they read is true and state authors’ bias or arguments that serve a purpose rather than just agreeing or disagreeing with evidence. Lately, I’ve been doing a better job of “bringing something to the table” when writing. I’ve tried to read rhetorically, as Kantz states, and step into an ongoing conversation as opposed to picking a side.

I like how Kantz uses the strategy of bridging gaps between the Encoder (person writing), Decoder (audience), and Topic (reality). These gaps contain questions and by answering any one of these questions in research-based writing is a way to voice one’s thoughts that can be relevant in an argument. I feel that I’m getting better in this area but like anything else, writing is a process that requires plenty of practice with new strategies before they become natural.

As I’m coming to an end of my first year at Santa Clara, I’ve reflected and discovered that the only thing I’ve learned more about than laundry is research. I still hate both but thanks to this first year, I won’t have problems with either during the rest of my time at SCU.

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For the article I found for last class, I relied on good old Google to do the job. Since my topic for further research will be on how addition of football teams have influenced universities, I searched “addition of college football” and found an articled titled “Four New College Football Teams Take the Field in 2015.” This article talks about the four new football teams added in 2015 (can always judge an article by it’s title, huh?) and gives a list of previous football team that have been added dating back to 2008 and programs that are set to take the stage in 2016-2018. From this article I will choose a few of these teams that play for schools similar to SCU and do some research on their performance and how the schools have been affected.

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I found the tutorial to be very helpful. A lot of the information I’ve learned before whether it be in this class or another but still important to be reminded of it. It does address stumbling blocks I may face and definitely clarifies what professors are asking for.

One of the greatest pearls of wisdom a teacher has ever left me with was the quote “The lazy man works twice as hard.” Obviously, my sophomore English teacher, Mrs. Eastham, didn’t create it off the top of her head at the time. It is one of the most common quotes spoken by the “old-timers” but this was the first time I heard it and it is one of the many quotes/core values I try to live my life by. For those who don’t understand the quote, it essentially means that when one does a half-a** job, they will have to redo that job to do it right thus working “twice as hard.”

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This quote came up in conversation this past week while I was in the gym with a teammate. We showed up at the same time to lift together and he started to lift right away without stretching. I gave him a hard time for this and he responded, “I don’t need to stretch.” I then hit him with my insightful quote and he asked me to explain it. If Mr. Too Good For Stretching wouldn’t have stretched he would have put himself at a higher risk for injury and possibly hurt something, leading to pain and rehab time before he could lift again (working twice as hard).

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I thought about this quote from a literary sense. Everyone has their own styles of drafting but I feel it makes more sense to work hard on the first draft rather than to BS it just to reach a certain word count or page number by a deadline. Therefore, when it comes time to revise, simple edits can be made rather than completely rewriting the paper because one did a poor job the first time. Or if one decides to turn it in poor and not rewrite the paper how he/she should then they will receive a bad grade and possibly have to ask the professor if they can rewrite it anyway. Being lazy is never more efficient!

My favorite thing about education is literally learning something new. I find myself to stress about school all the time, but when I learn something entirely new to me, school becomes fun. I’m not sure where in my upbringing this became truth. Maybe it was my mom never settling for the response of “good” when she asked me “How was school today?”. She’d insist on me telling her something new I learned that day. Or maybe it was because school came easy to me growing up so I was always looking for that extra challenge. Regardless, I’m thankful that I possess this trait because it has led me to immediately attempt to be the best I can be at whatever I learn, whether it be ice-skating or a new swing.

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I found this to be more apparent when learning in class about how to construct survey questions. The only survey I ever remember making in my school career was for my high school senior project. To be honest, I bulls***ted it given that my only instruction was to get fifty responses. I re- thought about this senior project when my English professor told us that we would be making surveys for our next research assignment. She gave us many rules ranging from how to write the question to what order the questions should be in. This greatly sparked my interest to the point where I snapped out of morning grogginess and was sitting up straight on the edge of my seat trying to assemble the greatest survey ever written (gotta aim for the stars and if you miss, you’ll land on the moon). Class from then on was very enjoyable and I’m more than excited to get responses back and write this next essay.