Final Exam: TCU Parking Flyer/Sign

My argument essay was about the pros and cons to TCU Parking. I discussed different perspectives in my essay and my own point of view. I feel that TCU Parking needs to be improved, whether by bulding a parking garage or doing a better job informing students of the rules and regulations of parking at TCU. I feel that students should make themsevles heard more or just be more informed of this problem.

I chose to make a flyer/sign as my medium for my final exam project. I will either make a flyer that can be handed out to the students or a sign that could be put all around campus so students will be able to easily see it. My audience is students at TCU so that's why I feel a sign or flyer would be the best way to reach them. I plan to include statistics on my flyer/sign showing how many tickets are given out, cars are broken into it, and parking spaces on campus. I want to put enough information to get my point across but not too much that it becomes cluttered. I will use bold, dark colors for the statistics and try to have the sign/flyer stand out. I'm still deciding if I want to use some type of image to get my point across. I will put TCU on the sign/flyer but I don't know if I will use an image yet.

As I thought about what I wanted to do, I was trying to think of what would appeal to TCU students. I wanted to make sure that I didn't put too much writing on the flyer/sign because I know college students are always on the go and don't really have time to stop and read. I think some kind of image would be effective but I'm still trying to decide what exactly I want to use. I want to make my flyer/sign effective and to the point. Hopefully, the statistics will shock students and make them want to do something or realize the parking problem at TCU.

Argument Essay Topic

For my final essay I chose to write about TCU parking for students. I chose to write about this topic because I think this is a really big issue at TCU and its frustrating for a lot of students, especially for Sophomores. I am interested in finding out if TCU plans to add additional parking or have any ways in fixing this problem.
I'm interested in this topic because as a student at TCU I will be affected by this issue. I'm also curious to find out what they plan to do about it.
The brevity of this topic will help to make it clear and not too generalized. The subject is concentrated on the TCU campus.
The topic definitley involves disagreement. The students have their own opinion on the matter and TCU has another. I'm curious to find out what both sides have to say about the parking situation. I think there could be a wide variety of perspectives on this issue.
Informantion about this topic will be easily accessible to me. I hear students talking about the parking consistently. I think I will be able to find many opinions on this subject. Hopefully, I will get a better understanding of what they plan to do about the parking.
This topic raises many questions and there aren't just two sides. Many people could have different opinions abou the parking and I'm interested in learning more about this topic.

Ethnographic Essay Topic

The subculture that I chose to research and observe are servers, or waiters and waitresses. I thought for awhile on what would be something that I would be interested in and would be pretty accessible to me. I've always wondered about this occupation and respected people who were involved with it. Everytime I go out to eat, I admire how hard they work and have wanted to just ask them all kinds of questions and now I'm able to. I definitley think you have to be a certain type of person to be a waiter or waitress and it's not an easy job. A lot of my friends are also servers so I will be able to interview them and ask them questions about this topic.
This topic is accesible to me and the members gather at places I can visit. It is something that I would be able to research online or at the library and I'm not a part of this subculture. I definitley think that waiters and waitresses feel a sense of identifcation with one another. They are connected through their job and are around each other a lot of the time. They share the same rituals and are all motivated to have a job and make money. They are expected to be polite and commited as a server and so they also have similar behaviors. They also have a certain type of language that they follow. Even certain abbreviations they use when writing that only other servers would be able to understand. I think this is something that will be interesting to learn more about.

Glossing Activity

After doing the glossing activity, it helped me to look at the organization of my essay in an easier way. It also helped me to figure out what I needed to add to my essay and what to take out. I started off the essay with facts about the social networking sites and then I added a couple of personal experience stories towards the end. I think that, overall, my organization was effective but I could add more sources and spread out the personal experience stories. I think making these and a couple more changes to my essay will make it more effective and have a bigger impact on the reader.
I also plan to add more descriptive stories to show the pros and cons to these social networking sites. I think that detailed stories are very effective and I should have a few more. I also want to add more quotes to my essay. I think hearing it by someone else also provides a lot of support for whatever point you are trying to make. Glossing my essay really helped me to figure out what else I need to to.

Researching

At first I was a little confused about how to begin my research. It was difficult for me to figure out which key words that I should use so that I could get useful results. After figuring that out, I really thought the articles I found were very helpful. They seemed to be exactly what I needed. I had to change my search several times because I was getting articles that related to my topic. After I changed it a couple times I found articles that related to my topic. I thought that the most helpful was the Academic Search Complete, but I also found articles from Infotrac Newspapers and Google. I think that these search engines will really help me get information for my essay. I would tell anyone that was going to use these search engines that it might be difficult at first but that you will get used to it. Also, you can't be too picky on what keywords to use when you search. You should try several times with different words to find the results you need.

Topic for Discovery Essay

The topic that I decided on was on how myspace and facebook impact people's personal lives. I really am interested in writing about this and want to learn more about it. I also think that it is very important in our society and it does effect a lot of people.
I think that I will have enough to write about on this topic. I've been hearing several stories dealing with this topic for about a year now and especially recently. I also am interested in writing about this topic so that will help me as I write it. There have been a few things said about it and especially on about how teenagers are easily effected by what is said over myspace and facebook and how they put too imformation on these websites. This important topic does raise more questions like what can we do to prevent this from happening? And does it have any postive effects on people's live? And more. I think it really does matter and it is very important in our society. People's lives are effected everyday by the interenet and especially myspace and facebook.
One of the main reasons I chose to write about this topic is because I think people's lives are effected everyday by this and no one really does anything about it. Kids are putting personal information on these websites and getting themselves in trouble. Kids are also being bullied by messages or comments. There are many ways that people's lives are being impacted.

Personal Essay Workshop

I want to thank Mandi and Bobby for reading my essay and providing me with a lot of great and helpful feedback. It really helps to have different perspectives and point of views to tell you what you need to do.
They mentioned that they could feel all the emotions I was going through as they read the essay but I needed to add more detail. I should describe the scene more and the tension everyone was feeling. Mandi also mentioned that I should try not to use just and basically a lot which I thought was very helpful and interesting. Bobby thought that the essay progresses well and it started off well. I wasn't really confident on my introduction so it helped to know that it made sense.
I really like getting feedback from my classmates and it was much easier to do revisions using their advice.