"Field Trip" Next Week

Don't forget about where we are meeting on Monday and Wednesday, this place:

We will meet in the lobby at 10:00 am, and I will collect your polished drafts of the Survival Guide there on Monday, and your final drafts of the research paper/annotated bibliography on Wednesday. Please do not be late, or else you will miss the lessons completely.

Remember that I am asking you to come to these classes with some form of writing prepared. What you choose to put on your cup is incredibly important, so pick your words carefully. Here is an article I found which might help you develop your own phrase to write:

Happiness: Summing Up a Big Idea in a Short Sentence

Posted Tuesday, November 10, 2009 6:09 AM | By Gretchen Rubin

Although it may seem reductive, I think people grasp and remember great truths better when they’re snappily summed up. I love epigrams, aperçus, apothegms, and aphorisms of all sorts, and I try to to sum up my happiness conclusions in catchy, yet of course profound, axioms.

My greatest success so far: The days are long, but the years are short. That short sentence says it all.

I was thinking about my Second Splendid Truth. Just getting it down to these two statements took enormous effort on my part. It sounds so simple, but there is a circularity to these ideas that confused me for a long time:
One of the best ways to make yourself happy is to make someone else happy;
One of the best ways to make someone else happy is to be happy yourself.

So true, so true. But not very snappy.

But yesterday I hit on this!
Happy people make people happy.
This simple language almost makes this point sound trivial, but the epigram actually conveys what I think is one of the most important arguments about happiness.

Also ...
Making people happy makes people happy.
Again, the language is simple, but the argument is one made throughout the ages by great philosophers, religious readers, and scientists.

See you on Monday.

iSearch, youSearch, we all Search for ice cream

Just a reminder that Monday's class will be based in the Waldo Library. We will meet at the usual time of 10:00, but we will congregate outside of Dunbar, at the bottom of the amphitheater (between Dunbar and Friedmann). From there we will walk as a group to the library, where you will have the opportunity to find resources for your iSearch. This means that you should have a viable question prepared by Monday, and be prepared to look for books and articles that will help your search for the answer. Keep in mind that your rough drafts are due on Wednesday.

Remember that you also have dialogues due on Monday; and you also have some blogging to do by tomorrow night. Just for kicks and giggles, I'll leave this post with a story I wrote in my blog freshman year at WMU. Enjoy.

The discount retailers came back to Western last week, and I was able to catch it on the last day. I found some nice Express jeans for men ... and secretly maneuvered over to the $9.99 girl jeans. Not knowing girl jeans came in increments of 2, I found a size 6 ... and scoured for a size 5. Woops. So I decided to buy the not-as-tight-as-expected girl jeans and the Express jeans. When I got to the register, I had the following exchange with the cashier:

"Did you find everything alright?" he asked.

"Um...yes," I quietly responded.

Coming across the pair of girl jeans he looks at me and says, "Oh, who's the lucky lady?"

"Me."

Awkward.

Janie's Got a Gun

I really enjoyed reading about the many lives of this incredibly awkward girl. It was interesting to see how many of you wrote about her being a single mom, or a pregnant single mom. And then there were several people who called her "bighearted." Many of these thoughts never came to my head as I was looking at the picture. So I thought I would share some choice sentences or stories from your responses, just to give you an idea of what others were thinking.

Kathy Nicole Harrison "Today I walked into a small supermarket, slowly lifted my arm, and pointed my black pistol at one of the cashiers, demanding watermelons. He began to panic, raising both of his arms in the air. I smiled, stepped closer towards the man, and aimed the gun at his temple. Then he asked me, 'With or without seeds?'"

Betsy Merdosh "While I was driving to the market in my 1987 Ford F-150 I came upon two men having a dispute in the middle of the road. So being the bighearted woman that I am I took the one man's gun and made sure that they would not be getting up for awhile."

Ana Jacobs "The watermelon describes me because I am a nice and sweet person. Many people like who I am and can always be around me. I have a big heart full of love and care for just about everyone."

Tammy "Today was the BIG! day, my photoshoot with Marc. When I got there I was all ready for a big high fashion shoot. But let's just say Marc had other ideas in mind. He put me in a frumpy old dress with flowers all over it (you know how much I hate flower dresses), pulled my hair back, and to top it all off gave me a watermelon and a gun to hold. Crazy right?!"

Amanda "She's a lonely mother; with no husband. She's been divorced twice. So in this picture she has the watermelon for her kids as some sort of food, and she has the gun because she hates her life, and wanna end it. She's having a hard time choosing between the gun, and watermelon. So she's just standing there with both of the options in her head, and she's hoping that someone would tell her the right answer."

Betty "Although Betty's life may seem perfect, it's far from it. There is a lot of domestic violence in Betty and Heath's household. Contrary to the typical male-abusing-his-wife, Betty hits on Heath... Betty beats on Heath for various reasons such as: Not cooking dinner on time, not cleaning the house, and not helping the kids with their homework. Heath even gets abused when he doesn't have sex with Betty when she wants."

Bethany Melon "I found my dress in a dumpster behind a funeral home."

Awesome: In Which I Explain Blogging

Again, welcome to the 1000 blogging community. In this network we will share random thoughts, ideas, information, creativity, and whatever else comes to mind. You at least have an active audience in myself, and I encourage you to visit your classmates' blogs whenever you can (see the list to the right -->). There is also the chance that random people from around the world may stumble upon your writing and read it ... and maybe enjoy it. Regardless, I want you to write for no specific audience.

Write for yourself.

Write anything and everything. Anecdotes, reviews, stories, poetry, commentary. It is not my goal to put words and ideas into your heads, so for that reason I will not assign topics and questions to answer (you can enjoy doing that in class). Feel free to mess with the title and design of your blog to match your personality or your style. Posting videos and pictures is encouraged (for example, Kelvine wrote a bit about Kanye being an idiot at the VMAs ... he could have added a YouTube clip of it happening so people could better understand the situation).

I will try to model different ways of blogging throughout the semester on this page. I will also update with any important information in regards to the class (like FLYER ROUGH DRAFTS DUE WEDNESDAY) Stuff like that.

As far as expectations go, it would be hard to tell you if a post is good or bad because that is not the point of this assignment. Basically, I want at least two posts every week, beginning Monday morning and ending Sunday night. Now, I understand that you may write more than twice a week (and I encourage that) but I would like the writing to add up over the week. If I think you are not writing enough, I will let you know. That is much easier to do than putting a number on the words to be written.

Make sure to add this blog as well as your blog to your bookmarks on whichever browser you use. I won't be sending out many more mass e-mails in the future, so if you miss class or simply forgot what is happening, you are more than likely to find an answer here.

That's all for now. Have fun.

Weekend Reminder

This is to remind you about your "homework" for the weekend. I expect that when you come to class on Monday you will have brought at least 4 flyers/posters you collected over the weekend. We're looking for flyers that are either exemplary or sucky ... and maybe some that are just okay. Pay attention to the fonts and colors and words and pictures and if they have any run-on sentences (like this one). Don't stress over it, just collect them.

The best place to find them are either in your dorms, common rooms, or at tomorrow's Bronco Bash. Here is some copy pasta telling you more about the Bash:

"Crowds nearing 25,000 are expected to gather on the campus of Western Michigan University for the 29th annual Bronco Bash from 3 to 8 p.m. Friday, Sept. 11, at Fountain Plaza near Miller Auditorium.

"The gathering is an annual rite of passage into the fall semester, and a great way for students to check out what WMU and the local community have to offer. With live bands, lots of free stuff and novelty games with prizes, it is also a fun way for students to socialize, meet new people and celebrate the start of a new school year.

"The bash is free and open to the public, and will feature more than 450 student organizations, WMU departments, community groups and local businesses giving out freebies and answering questions about their products, services and opportunities. The event will kick off with a Sept. 11 tribute and performance of the national anthem by the WMU Pep Band. A diverse lineup of live bands, including headliner Sugarcult, will play throughout the night."

I have no idea who or what Sugarcult is, but it does not sound promising.
Well, do have fun with this assignment. You will be working with these flyers for the next two weeks, so it's in your best interest to put in what little effort it takes to grab a piece of paper.

[Insert Witty Title Here]

I know, I know. Does the world (wide web) really need another blog? My answer is a mildly confident "Yes." Not that it will be of much interest to anyone outside of our class, but this blog will at least be important to you. I will post pieces about due dates and assignment reminders, as well as any other random things I think you will find helpful/interesting/inane/funny. This will be the central hub of our class' blogging community, and a link for each of your blogs will be listed on this page. I will troll the blog roll throughout the week, making comments whenever possible, and I encourage you to do the same. You are more than welcome to invite other people to join our little community, and there are no rules against importing your posts to Facebook or MySpace.

Do what you will.

All I ask for are two posts a week ... on any day ... at any time. Length of entries will be discussed in class, but, on average, it should be about double the size of this posting. I will update soon with ideas on what to post, but for now let's end this with a bang.