Week 15

I feel like I have improved on a lot of things with being in this class. One of the things I have improved on is being able to cite correctly within my paper. Also, within my writing I think I have improved upon giving more detail to something. I could still probably give more detail in my writing, but I feel like I have improved some in that aspect. Also, I have learned about the various different subcultures just from reading some of the blogs. I feel as if the ethnography paper has helped me in many ways become a better writer with other different writings. With the ethnography I did a lot of researching and observing. With having that experience, I think it will help me in my other papers. The things that I feel still like I struggle with today is my use of vocabulary in the paper. I could have better word use to give the readers the idea that I am very knowledgeable. Also, I feel like I could do a better job at searching for book and article sources besides just the usually internet sources. Some of my suggestions for next year is to have more conferences because I felt like when I met one on one with my professor I got a better understanding of what he expected within my paper. Overall the class was very organized and I would not change anything else. I like the fact that we do these blog posting and I really like that the professor put up samples of other student's works in the past so we had a basic idea of what we needed to do for our assignments.

Week 14

My favorite piece of data has probably came from observation. When observing you go to your subculture sight and visit and you are surrounded with their atmosphere. For me, I feel like I learn a lot from just watching and getting a feel for things. Not only have I visited my subculture, but I am apart of this subculture too. When taking the time out to observe some of the things we do and some of the things about us, I realized a little more about my subculture then I did before. I tried to look around and observe everything in my head in extreme detail so that I could give my readers a good picture of what my subculture is really like. With being in the subculture for along time, I have a strong credibility for what I observe.

Week 13

As I walked into the gym the lights were dim and I could see the dark shadow of a few people sitting on the floor. I had just arrived at cheer practice and was not looking forward to all the work we had ahead. All us cheerleaders were waiting patiently in the dark gym for our coach to appear. After waiting for a couple minutes the lights in the gym turned on blinding us with there rays of brightness. As the coach walks in she hollers, "5 laps then get on the line." This means we had to run five laps around the gym, then stretch and get ready to tumble on the baseline of the basketball court. After she said these words, you could hear grunts and sighs come across the whole gym. When we were finished running our laps our coach made us get on the baseline and repeatedly throw tumbling tricks. If we threw our tricks without landing at the same time then we had to do them again. We practiced our gymnastics tricks for a good half hour of our practice and I just kept wondering if it was ever going to end. Every minute I looked up at the clock and it seemed like the time never moved. When we finished tumbling we moved on to stunting. Stunting is what consumes most of our practice time. During this practice we first worked on basic stunts and then move on the harder ones. We could never end on a stunt if it did not hit and land as it was supposed to. This practice was already not going to well. In many of he stunts one build group would hit and the other one wouldn't and it kept alternating throughout the practice. Also, many people were getting hurt during these builds. In one stunt a flyer was falling and she happened to brake a girls nose. The practice ended up being very dangerous and it just wasn't going well. Our coach finally decided to let us go because of all the injuries that where happening, but before we left we all had to run stairs. Stairs were the worst thing that we ever had to run. After a point of running them your legs start feeling numb and you feel like your not even in control of them anymore. These stairs were long very long and never ending. Every time I would climb them I'd look up to see how many were left and it made me feel as if I was running in place, going nowhere.   

Week 12

Rhetoric to me mean a form of language that uses certain skills to persuade people of an idea. The skills that it consist of is ethos, logos, and pathos. Rhetoric ideas mainly come from our own beliefs from our credibility within the subculture. Also, it comes from research and reasoning for some of the things that are done in the subculture and from ideas based on your own emotions. I mainly hear the word Rhetoric come from my english classes or my communication classes for when we are writing or speaking to persuade people. I believe many of the rhetoric concepts are used in my subculture because I am trying to persuade people that cheerleaders are not the snobby and stuck up girls that people sometimes think they are. In order for me to persuade them I have used many rhetoric ideas. I have stated my own credibility within the subculture because I am an insider and I have also talked about some of the different rules and things that we do and have given an explanation. Lastly, I have stated my own emotions about some of the stereotypical ideas thought about cheerleaders. For my mini-ethnography I plan on writing about my own experience with the subculture. I also with write about some of the roles cheerleaders go by and some of their rules. I also will talk about some of my on emotions and thoughts about the subculture and give explanations for my ideas.

Week 11

My writing process is still pretty simple. First, I think about what I'm going to write and do some brainstorming of my ideas. Then, I try and for some kind of outline to make my paper sound organized. For me to write a good paper it is beneficial for me to write a lot of rough drafts and read them to weave out some of the things not needed in my paper and to state my ideas in a better way. Since the beginning of this course my writing process has changed a little bit. My process mainly depends on what kind of paper we are writing. One of the assignments they gave me some trouble was the annotated bibliography. This was my first time doing an annotated bibliography and I was some what unsure on what I was supposed to do. The process for this writing assignment was fairly simply once I understood what was to be done in the assignment. My process for this was to read all my sources and get the main idea of them. After getting an understanding of the sources a gave a brief description about each of the sources and gave reasoning for why this source would be beneficial for me to use in my mini-ethnography. This assignment of the annotated bibliography was surprisingly one of the easiest assignments in the class also once I understood the concept of it. I believe I write because it is a good way to express feelings and emotions. Writing makes you feel like you have some kind of a voice and people who read your writing will listen to you and understand. In my life I believe writing plays an important role. If I do not want to talk about some of my feelings I can just write them down instead of keeping them inside which is unhealthy. Everyone wants to be heard and I feel like writing is valuable in letting that happen. For almost every type of writing you give your on feeling and opinions based on what you believe. Writing for my future is also important in the previous ways they are now, but also in other ways. I plan on being a teacher and being able to write is very important for me in that career.

Week 10

I plan on structuring my mini-ethnography by first telling them my interest within the subculture and my place within it. After letting my readers know my interest I will then talk about some of the stereotypical ideas that are sometimes thought about cheerleaders. Then I will take each different stereotypical thinking and try to give an explanation to each of them from my research and from my observations. In my conclusions I hope to give people a better view of cheerleaders and let them know that just because there might be a few bad apples doesn't mean that cheerleaders as a whole are bad. I believe that this structure seems very organized and will be easy for my readers to follow. I am basically listing some stereotypical ideas and then throughout the rest of the paper giving explanation to each of them, because I want my readers to get a better idea of cheerleaders and then let them make their own opinions about them. My paper will leave people with the truth behind cheerleaders and then people will have the right to make an opinion about cheerleaders with really knowing something about them.

my relationship in this subculture is just being an insider to it. I have developed a better understanding because within the subculture I have developed relationships with fellow team members and have got a better understanding of each opinion. With my mini ethnography I want to stand some what outside of my subculture and get a new view from a different perspective. 

The meaning behind are words a very similar to my own. With being an insider it influence my own fixed positions of the subculture because I feel like the subculture has very little faults. My informant and I are good friends and cheerleading and this year we are both struggling on wether we should try out this year or not. We both enjoy cheerleading, but feel it may take up to much time with our studies.My informant speaks with confidence about her feelings and is not afraid to express them.