Finishing up alllll of this

Last week took forever. Work wise I felt overwhelmed and I think I felt that way because I was so underwhelmed before. Our group felt okay on where we were because we followed the "manual" to the book. We did each step individually and I think that was problem number one. It was easy to spot that six different people wrote the different chapters of the book because we all write differently. Not a good plan. Second of all, why did we feel the need for to follow the manual so closely? That didnt make any sense in the end. We needed to write something that was interesting. Scholarly shit is boring. And we have to make it interesting. Make it worth reading. Plus we included wayyyyyyy too much information. information that was not worth putting in because what was the point? Going so in depth is just ridiculous because that doesnt help explain the event or help with the beliefs. What is necessary is to get the point across and that doesnt include everything.
Learned:
- you dont need all of the information
- focus on what is important
- make the voices stupidly obvious cause its better than not knowing who is saying what
- narrow down the beliefs because it gets to be overwhelming
- point what is necessary and interesting first, everything else can either go to the back or go

So much work to have the truth

One, can i say how proud of my group I am? Like, we are so doing our part individually making it easier for everyone else in the group. I think a group who is willing to do their part will work out and do a great job.
Alright so when I first read the list of everything that was needed for the frankendraft and finished work, I wondered "Is all of this necessary?" Yes we need all of the background information and the "before, during and after", the major players and all of that but is there an extent where it is just paraphrasing? I often feel like I am reguritating facts with some of this work, minus the beliefs and motivations as most would not know them but sometimes I am like is this going to go over all the reader's heads? How do I make it intriguing and easy to follow without being too much? It is taking alot to keep the focus narrow but I think we are nailing it on the head.
Finally it is a ridiculous task to state for facts what is someone's or some group of people's beliefs as how can we know for sure. I find it beyond challenging to say "this is what they believed in" because honestly, every single person in a group sees an idea differently and wants different aspects of an idea. I want to be able to say for sure what people believe in but I don't think even those people know what they believe in. I do not know if I am making this more complicated that what it has to be or if it really is that complicated.
With all this information and all these voices im just overwhelmed.

Groups and Focusing

So march break took me down south and I was like great no school work and i get to relax but nope! i had to read about Tiananmen Square and i thought greatttttt (note the very obvious sarcasm) So I read the book and it really opened my eyes that an event is more complicated than anything in history because there is not one motivation or one cause, the history of the world and its people lead up to this single moment. My book looked in-depth into how an event is so intwined and Tiananmen square is just the example to prove that point. I really for some reason never thought that ever aspect of a society has to affect the event. Even though the event was huge, it could have been a mimimal event and still would have had to have every aspect of the society change it. In class when we all got back we really had to figure out where the hell we were as a group and it was quite evident that none of us, including all the groups, we all did not know how to narrow down. Finding out which information was useful and what was not was so drawn out but it really showed me how in an event "noise" as i like to call it can take up space. Eliminating those useless things left us with very little or extremely narrow information. It scared me because i worried how i could branch off from those pieces and articles or if i was going to branch off too much. I SHOULD NOT BE THIS WORRIED ABOUT THIS. but i am. Anyways, I felt alot better thursday because I felt like once we reevaluated, we all were all the same page which was what we really needed. I need to breathe. I just dont want to go off course or be to specific. The horror!!

Feasibilty Reports

Hmmm why is it so complicated to narrow down ideas? I understand the idea of not shutting up the minority and just saying yes lets go with the majority but honestly, we are first year university students. I feel, once again, as I if we have been maybe given too much responsability in this decision making. We don't really know how to make these types of scholarly decisions because we are just 1st years. I just feel lost. Like I know what I would prefer to do but do I know what is best for the class? No. I do not like being like here is the basic information and go with it and make a decision you want to do for the rest of the semester. I am feeling as if it took too long to narrow down ideas in this class as everyone has an entirely different stance and outlook on all the topics. I am glad though that four options were left up as that gives people plenty of choice. I really hope that none of the topics end up being a dead horse being kicked over and over again like pirates in last semester. I want interesting mixed with plenty of information. Also I worry strongly about people being too protective of their topics. Like what you feel is what you feel but dont force it on all these others. Because it is the beginging, I am afraid and worried about the future.

Long time no post

Soooo i guess it is kind of obvious that i haven't posted in a while. So new semester. Wasnt too excited coming back because of personality clashes and still cannot say I am excited about it because I there are already problems. But let's move on from that. I thoroughly enjoyed what we have done this month with the separate classes and I was curious to see how the classes would merge together but I am impressed with how they have. I love how we got to choose something that spoke to us individually out of all we have read so far. And we have read alot of diverse stuff. I for some reason, assumed that not many of us would choose something from the journalism readings not because they weren't interesting but because most of the readings were already events themselves. I did not think that many people would want to go further in those readings because in the past, the religious studies and english topics intrigued the class more. I was pleased though with selections of what was choosen because it opened me up to what we could expand on. Much of it I thought was done but it was proven in class that there were alot of questions unanswered and events in events that could be looked at. It is funny, even in the laughing out loud sense, to see what people saw in different lights from me and from the rest of the class. The questions we ask are so our personalities. Some of the more religious people in the class are even challenging religious texts and it makes me happy not as an athiest but as a student that we can question things that we hold dear. It was interesting to hear what people wanted expanded on or not beause of kicking the dead horse like pirates and I think most people didn't want to expand on their favourite topics as they would be ruined and uninteresting to them now, not because they really did not want to. This week, people defended things I was surprise to see being defended by them because it did not seem to fit their past understandings. People will back up work no matter who they are as a person cause when they see something as important it is interesting to see how it became important to them.

The end is near

I hate pirates. I cannot stress it enough how much I hate pirates now. I want this thing to be over. I am tired of googling the word pirates. I am tired of going on academic search premiere. Its like have we not done this? Have we not gone over this? I understand the work in the library because that is a new research technique but honestly googling and creating bibliographies is getting on my nerves. I want to learn something that I was not taught in grade 12 English and I feel like we are going in circles. It is so frustrating. I do not know how to make this clearer that I am tired of doing this research. So I am glad I got that out of the way so moving on. THIS WEEK we looked out what we summed up and how it could be clearer and what questions would be asked from a academics perspective. It was important to have our bibliographies clear, our names, the authors name, the publisher, and the title extremely clear. The summary has to be summed up in a fashion that things are stated clearly that people who have not read the article can understand FULLY what was written. The citations are so important because through comparisons with others you can see which one among authors is most useful. I really hope this week we move in a further direction.

Pirate Research and Questions

Pirates are enemy number 1. I am glad that we are actually doing some work on it that seems grown up because as soon as we picked this topic I was like if this becomes which pirate movie is our favourite, I debated hanging myself from a sturdy beam. Kidding but not really. I never knew how much citations were important and from deciding which websites were usable I truly based most of my research on citations and specific ideas. It is such a frustrating task though that what I think the profs forgot to remember was that we were not use to doing research like this and we needed more guidance or we were going to slack off and not do what was expected. I am getting more and more frustrated with this class because I feel like we were not taught the same in high school and to be specific instead of assuming we all know what the hell the profs are talking about. I knew that they wanted citations and specifics and then I did that and some how it was wrong but it was never explained what was wrong considering I did exactlywhat was asked. Anyways on a side note, can we please stop talking about the marks? The profs have explained this is just the way it is, whether we like it or not, and we are not going to be able to change it. I come to class to learn and not to be overly concerned with marks. The profs are too set in their ways for us to change anything. I have enough motivation for me to write something good whether or not its a tick and i take pride in my work and I think that is what is important, me learning not being obsessed with whether I got an A minus or a B plus. I look back on the last week's class and all I can think about is how much my frustration is consuming me. The research is fine but if i have a question I am too scared to ask questions, i am too afraid to bring anything up in class incase everyone goes off on each other. I am not in high school anymore.