Blog #10: Ethnography Topic

For our ethnography project I was thinking about writing about the discourse community that is SDSU's very own Alpha Phi Omega, Alpha Delta chapter. APO is the largest community service fraternity worldwide and is grounded on the idea of Leadership, Friendship, and Service.
I wanted to choose this fraternity in particular because I'm part of this discourse community.
It interests me because its what makes up the majority of my social circle and my brothers are, essentially, my extended family.
What I already know about this community is that they strive to be a welcoming group of people who accepts anyone who wants to join. Because of this, it's a large organization with nearly 200 active members and about 35 pledges each semester. Although the pledging program is different each semester, I'm familiar with the basic guidelines since I was a pledge 1 1/2 years ago.
To be a part of APO one must attend a few recruiting events, be invited to pledge, and then attend a pinning ceremony that makes the pledge status official. The pledge then goes through a rigorous program for the rest of the academic semester and will have to complete leadership, friendship, and service requirements that the pledge trainers assign them. Upon completion of these requirements, the pledge goes through another pinning ceremony and officially becomes a neophyte.
I want to research APO's history from its father chapter to SDSU's own chartering. I want to look into all of the traditions, symbols, coat of arms, and other miscellaneous characteristics that gives APO its identity. I want to see how it's executive committee functions so that their able to properly communicate with the active body to achieve the goals they set for themselves and successfully retain old members and induct new ones to the fraternity each semester.

Blog #9: Learning to f(x) in a New Workplace

Elizabeth Wardle's chapter titled, "Identity, Authority, and Learning to Write in New Workplaces" was an interesting piece that showcased the story of Alan, a recent college graduate trying to fit into his new workplace and failing miserably due to his inability to learn the proper writing skills needed for his position.


Wardle's analysis of Alan's actions leading up to his resignation emphasized the need for hasty assimilation into a new workplace's way of thinking, writing, and functioning. She mentions in the beginning of her chapter how there's often a grace period for new hires to acclimatize to their job and how "neophytes must learn and conform to the conventions, codes, and genres of those communities." If they fail to do so in a timely manner and show little indication of future improvement, then they better start hunting for another job.

What I thought about while reading Wardle's chapter was my own experience starting my first ever job. I was only taking 13 units last semester and felt like I needed to keep myself busy so I started looking for easy, entry-level jobs. I had zero experience prior to applying so I was willing to take whatever job I could get.
I ended up getting hired by a new cryotherapy center as a technician and a front desk assistant. I'd say it's a pretty cool job and the work is really chill. lol

I related to Alan because I struggled much like he did when he first started working for the Humanities department for his school. I've been geared towards working in the health industry my entire life so the idea of needing to market to and attract customers and actually getting them to want your services was completely mind blowing.
If you work in the medical field you have a steady influx of customers because literally everyone will eventually get sick and need medical attention.

At my new job I had to work on my customer service skills and learn how to become a saleswoman. It's not writing like Alan in his poorly written mass e-mails, but it's communication through verbal exchange. I had to learn how to talk to clients in a way that persuaded them that we offered products and services that they wanted/needed. Had I not learned how to push for sales, keep customers happy, and maintain good relationships with my coworkers, I probably would've gotten fired and left a bad reputation much like Alan did. Poor kid.

Blog #8 Drucker and trash talking

This is a response to Peter Drucker's assertion that "interactive service workers lack the necessary education to be 'knowledge workers."
I don't have any experience working in the food industry at all but I wholeheartedly disagree with Drucker's statement. Being in college and learning about the many different jobs that people end up with has broadened my perspective on the varying and unique skill sets necessary for each individual worker to have in order to accomplish their duties.
Each person has their own assigned job and position withing a company. Sometimes prior experience is required but sometimes it's not. Workers acquire functional skills as they accomplish their day-to-day tasks and consequently gain mastery of these skills the more they keep repeating them.
Servers, for example, work long hours, deal with all types of people, and need to know how to act and communicate around their customers to keep them happy. It might be "easy work" that people can pick up with minimal education, but becoming a good server calls for repeated practice and experiential learning.
I don't have experience with the sanitation industry either but I'm going to use garbage men as an additional example. I'm assuming that garbage men need to be familiar with multiple neighborhoods' trash schedules, their own daily traffic routes, proper waste management protocol, and have to abide by the city's waste management regulations. We would have trash all over our streets and polluted neighborhoods if these sanitation engineers weren't "knowledge workers."
Every working person has mastery of what their job entails whether it requires less or more education. One can't discount the knowledge of their craft just because it's not as specialized as say, a neurosurgeon or an F-18 fighter pilot.

Blog #7: My Identity Kit

I've mentioned this several times in my previous blog posts but I feel like my identity kit in college, as seen by other people at least, is that I'm a smart cookie who has her sh*t together.
In reality, I'm usually just in a constant state that looks a lot like this:

I was concurrently enrolled in a high school and a community college which is why I was able to earn 60+ units of college credit before I even came into SDSU. I had Junior standing as a freshman and every time I mentioned this to any new person I met they'd always say, "Wow, so you must be really smart then!" And I'm like... yeah....not really. I guess I just work hard?
There really is a big difference between being smart and being a hard worker.
If you just so happen to be both you're basically on God mode.
Unfortunately, I'm not one of those people.
Anyways, my friends always regard me as this smart and hard working dude because I somehow manage to do well in my classes but I'm faaar from being the perfect student.
I hardly ever study and I procrastinate like no other - I just know how to take exams.
I've spent most of my undergrad writing lab reports and studying for exams and quizzes literally on the morning of. What irritates my friends the most is that I do just a tad bit better than them even if they study way more and put in more effort than I ever do.
I rely a lot on my short term memory to memorize concepts for exams but the bad thing about that is I never ever remember any of the class content after I turn in my exams. At this point I feel like I've mastered "The Art of Getting By" but its during my senior year and the period where I'm applying to graduate schools that I'm really starting to feel the repercussions of my lazy habits.

Taking the GRE last week was a really hard reality check for me. The GRE is basically the SAT on steroids and it's what most grad schools require as part of their application process. I crammed for it for two weeks and BARELY, JUST BARELY got the minimum score that I needed to be eligible for DPT school. This wasn't a test that I could study for during the morning of and I truly got the score that I deserved. Had I put in more effort I could've gotten a more competitive score that would've made me a better candidate for the prestigious schools that I plan on applying to. Up until now I've regarded my undergrad as sort of a joke. It's unfortunate that its only during my last semester at state, now that my future's at stake, that I'm actually trying my best to be a good student..
I've mushfaked being a good student up until now but my time is up. I have to put on my big girl pants and actually WERK. Old habits die hard but I have to start working on developing a professional and responsible identity kit unless I want to risk being a scrub for the rest of my entire life. Wish me luck!!

Blog #6: Developing a New Identity Kit

Being a college student required the acquisition of a new discourse. Like I wrote about on my Blog #5, we are all part of a discourse community that is the SDSU student body. Joining this discourse community also meant developing a new identity kit because unless you were a complete badass in high school, I'm pretty positive that most of us want to abandon that juvenile version of ourselves and blossom into the educated young adults that college is supposed to help us become. 
During my freshman year I was feeling multitude emotions because of all the uncertainty of being in a new environment. This is my third and final year of college and I'm nowhere near to even reaching my final form. I've changed and learned so much about myself that I'm completely unrecognizable from my high school but I'm still really young (the ripe age of 20) and have a lot of room for growth and maturity.

During these past two and a half years I've learned about the importance of having a college education and how much of privilege it is. I've become so appreciative of my parent's who invested in my education so I can have a better future for myself and not be a complete and total scrub. I try to work as hard as I can but I won't lie I definitely have moments where I just lose hope in my my own abilities and try to find an easy way out.

I think that the most important addition to my identity kit that I've acquired since joining this discourse community is the diligence that it takes to keep on keeping on. We should just be like Miley and always believe that "We can't stop and won't stop" in the pursuit of a higher education (YIKES I SOUND SO CHEESY but its true though) and better versions of ourselves.
In due time we will all walk across the stage with our red stoles, black gowns, and blinged out caps but that's not til after we get past the shitstorm (pardon my French) that is our undergrad.

Blog #5

After struggling to read John Swales' chapter on "The Concept of Discourse Community," I honestly couldn't understand what the difference was between a genre and a discourse community.
From my understanding, genres are types of work that share commonalities including style and subject matter.
On the other hand discourse communities, as defined by Swales, are "groups that have goals or purposes, and use communication to achieve these goals."  

And then a lightbulb went off in my head.
Genres are the chosen form of communication that discourse communities use! (At least I hope my assumption is right otherwise I'm probably going to sound like a total derp)
Going back to blog #2, Devitt stressed the importance of critical genre awareness as a student learning objective. This ties in with our discussion for the week because Swales' actually describes the groups of people who utilize those specific genres - DISCOURSE COMMUNITIES.
For today's blog post task Professor Flewelling asked us to identify a discourse community that we belonged to and analyze it based on the six characteristics that Swales described. The boring science side of me wanted to talk about researchers/scientists as a discourse community but I decided against it because I talk about it way too much. Sorry :/
Instead, I chose to write about a discourse community that we can all relate to - the SDSU student
body.

1. Goals: Get a good education and have fun while doing it!
2. Mechanisms of intercommunication: Classroom interaction, sports events, social gatherings i.e. school club events, greek life, parties
3. Information exchange: E-mail, Blackboard, WebPortal, social media i.e. Facebook, Twitter, Instagram
4. Genre: Newsletters, e-mails, school advertisements, textbooks
5. Lexis: Bb, Cuic, Chappy, T-nasty, Aztec anything, EC, the dome
6. Membership: All SDSU students and alumni #AztecforLife

Blog #4

I chose to read the JSTOR articles, "Where American Public Schools Came From," "Viral Black Death: Why We Must Watch Citizen Videos of Police Violence," and "'Stranger Things' and the Psychic Nosebleed." Last Friday was the first time I've ever heard about JSTOR and it piqued my interest because I'm so used to reading lengthy scientific journals all focused under the same discipline that finding a database with shorter articles covering a broad variety of other topics seemed a lot less boring and strenuous on the eyes.
As an undergraduate research assistant for the Neuromechanics and Neuroplasticity lab her at state, I have A LOT of experience finding, reading, and even contributing to writing academic articles for scientific journals. I'm used to the structure, jargon, and word count of such articles so I thought that reading the three articles above were really interesting (as nerdy as that sounds).
The article by Gershon explaining the history of American Public Schools seemed to me like a reading from a high school textbook. He only had one citation and was very straightforward. I appreciated the conciseness of it and how he didn't have to unnecessarily  fluff up his writing.
Fain's article about Viral Black Death was a little on the lengthier side but it made sense because she had a lot more points to talk about. I feel that she was really good about establishing logos as she referenced the "Legacy of Lynching" as a parallel to white police brutality specifically targeting black civilians. She also appeals to the younger generation and establishes pathos by including the #staywoke which is known to be a powerful hashtag.

The last article written by Tracey discusses the extremely specific topic of psychic nosebleed in the new Netflix original series, "Stranger Things." I thought this was the most fun article out of the three just because it was such a "strange" topic. Tracey mentions how its such a common phenomenon for psychics to get nosebleeds when using their powers and attempts to explain it from a medical standpoint referencing a scientific article, "The Five Signs of Death.

Switching on to the three editorials - I read, "Why Facts Don't Unify Us," Trump’s history of corruption is mind-boggling. So why is Clinton supposedly the corrupt one?" and "Criminal rape cases should not be on a ticking clock."

After talking about each of the JSTOR articles I realized it's not that great of an idea to talk about each one individually since there's a strong likelihood that my classmates read other articles and have no idea what I'm talking about. So for the three editorials I'll talk about them in a more broad sense.

Maybe it was just Ms. Flewlling's choice of weekly readings but compared to the JSTOR articles, the editorials seemed to cover more pressing matters. They talk about climate change, politics, and social injustice whereas the JSTOR articles talk about anything else really. Editorials are opinion pieces written by established reporters who no doubt have a well-established reputation if they're featured in national newspapers such ad the The Washington Post and The Los Angeles Times. Pathos is assumed almost immediately. Since these are opinion pieces they also have to have a good balance of ethos and logos. The authors build credibility by showing they can support their opinions with facts while simultaneously appealing to the their audiences' emotions.