Class Reflection

For me, the biggest struggle of the project was knowing what information needed to be included in the documentary. There was never really an official syllabus which was positive and negative, it was positive because we were free to do whatever we wanted, but negative, because i never really knew if what we were doing was right.
The aspect of the documentary that makes me most proud is how we placed all the interviews and the other footage together really well, so that you weren't looking at the same thing for a long time.
The aspect of the documentary that i would have changed would have been to go into more detail about things at the station like the soundboard, instead of focusing on the workers.
I was personally responsible for creating a storyboard, which i found to be really challenging. It's hard to pick when something should be shown, and what should come before or after it.
I was really grateful with how cooperative my group was. We were all very understanding if we couldn't make it to something, and we all tried to contribute and work on the project together when we had the time. I wish i could have been more helpful when it came to the actual editing, but otherwise i helped get a lot of the footage. I feel like everyone in the group contributed a fair amount for sure.

My critical thinking skills are not that great, and i think this course really did help me think outside the box.
I HATE ESSAYS. So yes, i liked how this course was something new for me. I've never been in a class where i had to make a documentary and had to use editing software like that.
In the future to make the class better, maybe go to the hub more often and actually get on the computers and maybe ask the workers to do some sort of tutorial on how to use the software.
If i could change one thing about the course, it would be to have some more opportunities to have grades, and as crazy as this sounds, maybe more speeches/presentations because the more presentations i do, i've noticed i get better at it.

Thanks for an awesome semester! :)

Radio Group Annotated Interview

Jessie, Marissa, Andy, Garrett, Ryan


So far, we have visited the WRFL station, taken some pictures and videos, and talked to a worker. We have also interviewed random students asking if they have heard of the station.

Ben- Ben is the manager of the WRFL station. We plan to ask him questions that relate to running a radio station, and just general questions about the station.

Matt Gibson- Is a worker at the station, he has been there since 2008 and we just talked to him about what he does and what he likes about his job. We asked him about any interesting stories.

Sarah Cawood- Is a student at UK who we asked if she has heard about WRFL. She said no, but that she has seen advertisements for it on campus.

Cristen Hagood- Is a student at UK who we asked if she has heard about WRFL. She said no and just left it at that.

Olivia Thompson- A student at UK who has heard of WRFL, and listens occasionally.

Born Into Coal response

Born into coal was a very interesting documentary. I’ve always known that coal mining was a very big deal in west Virginia. It was interesting to see other things that are a big deal in west Virginia, like pageants, and how the two things correlate.  One thing that the documentary touched on was the mining tragedy of 2010, where 29 miners were killed in a west Virginia coal mine. The documentary changed moods a lot, like how at the beginning it focused on Arianna’s pageant life, and how she didn’t want to seem like just another dumb small town pageant girl. Her mother was talking about how she didn’t choose to be born into a coal mining family, she just was. I think that families of coal miners are very close because that is such a  dangerous job, and they can’t take a single day for granted because they might loose their family member any day, as the tragedy of 2010 prove.  I liked how in the background the person speaking would just be talking and then it would show the person just sitting, or show her hands stained with coal.  Since my part of the project for my group is to put together a storyboard, I paid extra attention to how the scenes were all put together. It started out with pageants, then went into coal mining and all the positive and negative things about it. Then it went back to pageants and showed the dad at the pageant. It just really showed how close these coal mining families are, and how they all support eachother.

Websites and Rhetorical Choices

Most people these days spend a lot of time on the internet, especially college students. Whether they are on blackboard or webassign doing homework, on twitter or Facebook stalking someone they like or dislike, or watching netflix in the little free time they have, the internet is a must have in 2014. For me, then websites i visit most frequently are twitter and Facebook. They are structured very similarly, you can add friends or follow people. You can post pictures and videos. You can post statuses and tweets. Both are good ways to get your words or thoughts out there to many people. This can be a good and bad thing, because you have to make sure what you are saying won't get you in trouble. These websites have many purposes. Twitter to me, is a place where people can be funny and post random things that would be helpful to other people. Facebook used to be that way, but now i use it mainly to post. You can also create groups on Facebook, which is what my sorority pictures from college that my parents and family can see so they know that i am doing well uses to communicate, which is very helpful. Both websites are social networking but have slightly different purposes. Both companies are pretty credible because there are millions of users on each website. You can definitely tell that they are somewhat competing, because they have similar features. You can “like” a status or picture on facebook, and on twitter you can “retweet” or “Favorite” someone’s tweet. Some people actually like what you have to post, other people use it as a form of flirting. I consider facebook to be more of a website for older more professional people, and twitter to be more for high school and college students. This may be because facebook has been around longer than twitter has, and times have changed. With facebook you can essentially DO more things instead of fitting one small post into 140 words. But with twitter you are least likely to post something bad by mistake because you have less room to. Both websites make good and bad rhetorical choices, but the good ones always overpower the bad because both websites are very popular and frequently used.

Death row articles

Both of these articles about the last meals before being executed helped define the use of visual rhetoric for me. Sometimes when you are trying to convey an idea, visuals make or break people's interpretations. What i noticed in both articles is that some people want a huge substantial meal before their death, others might pick their favorite food, and some are probably too worried about that fact that their life is ending, and don't even have an appetite.
I think that the second article "Last Meals" is more compelling because the audience gets to see the look on the victim's face and compare it to their meal. I also think that the portraits that are in black and white are very compelling, because when i think colorful i think happy, and death is not happy so the black and white effect carries a message. A thought i had while looking through all these pictures was that maybe people's meal choices say something about their personality. For example if you chose a big hearty meal, you probably cared about yourself and your health a little bit more than they people who just chose to eat an olive, or a cup of coffee, or just a bowl of ice cream.
Also, some people appeared to put a lot of thought into their last meal, for example Ronnie Lee Gardner wanted to read Lord of the Rings while he ate. I know i probably wouldn't be thinking about books when i was awaiting my death sentence. The first article was more colorful and clear, and i didn't really feel as sad looking through it as i felt when i looked at the second article. Just seeing the bad quality pictures of these people, and seeing all the terror in their eyes made me feel depressed. Both articles are compelling visually, and really make you think.

Speech Review

Watching yourself speak in a video is a very painful experience. You realize how annoying your own voice sounds, and all you can notice is the flaws in your presentation and think, "Great, do I really look and act this awkward on a day to day basis?". Although it is a little painful to watch, it is very helpful to see exactly how you present. As i watched my video i noticed i did a few things positively, and a few things negatively. On a positive note, i think i did a good job with making it a conversational proposal. I wasn't just trying to thrust information upon the class, i tried to make it more laid back. When i give speeches i always worry so much about remembering the information, so i ended up writing a lot of unnecessary information on the cards, and i found myself looking down a lot. I think that that could be easily fixed by writing less, and practicing more. You said i was engaging when i looked up, but that i didn't look up enough, so i think that could be easily fixed by just knowing my information better. Looking back i did like how i decided to talk about other presentations, but honestly they did help me with my own. I wish i had the ability to just say a 3 minute speech without any notecards like a lot of classmates did, but that would take a lot of practice for me. I do believe that practice really is the key to giving a good speech.

Questions i hate answering

I am going to talk about three annoying questions that i get often. The first one is "How do you pronounce your last name" GOUGH. It is pronounced like "Cough" but with a G. I don't think it is that hard to think of. People often pronounce it like Vincent Van Gogh, which is guess is understandable. It's just frustrating having to explain it when it looks so similar to a common word.

 Another question is hate being asked is when i'm at a party and a guy immediately asks me what sorority i'm in. I don't mind being asked what sorority i'm in in general, i just hate when people, especially drunk frat guys, act like it is the only thing that matters. Like if i say a sorority that they aren't very fond of, are you just going to stop talking to me? One time at a party i got asked what sorority i was in before i was asked what my NAME was. I think that is just ridiculous. I understand that greek life is huge at UK, and i love my sorority and everything that it involves, but there is more to me than my sorority.

My final question that i hate being asked is, "If you're from Lexington, why do you live in the dorms?" Ask anyone, the dorms do suck but it is all apart of the college experience. I love all the friends i have made in my dorm, i love being able to wake up 30 minutes before class and walk there, i love having a meal plan and being able to save money that i would normally spend on food, and i love not having to drive from my home to campus everyday. My house is a solid 20 minutes away from campus and you never know how bad lexington traffic is going to be. I love my parents to death and i enjoy visiting them occasionally, but i am an adult and want to learn how to live on my own. And do people expect me to live at home for all four years of college since i'm from here? I sure hope not because i do not want to live with my parents when i'm 21 years old, i want my own place. College is when you grow up and move out and that is why i don't still live at home. Yes it would save a lot of money, but even my parents agree that they want me to have the dorm experience. They are from Lexington and went to UK, and they lived at home and the regret it a lot.

 This is how far the drive is from my house to campus, would you like to drive that everyday just to go to class?

Jessie Gough- TED talk

http://www.ted.com/talks/juan_enriquez_how_to_think_about_digital_tattoos.html

I chose the Ted talk "Your Online Life, Permanent as a Tattoo". I picked this speech because all high school and college students ever hear from adults about social media is "be careful what you post, it will never go away, it will come back to haunt you, etc". It wasn't surprising to me at all that the speaker was an older man. Young adults and teenagers think that when they post something, only their friends or followers can see it. But adults know that employers and college admissions workers look at people's social media to see the types of things they post. So that's why it wasn't surprising to me that an old man was giving this speech. His audience was to anyone who uses social media. He did a great job during his speech, he was confident with what he said, he had multiple examples of why you have to be careful on social media. My favorite was the tattoo comparison, because it really is true, anything you ever post is permanent, like a tattoo. He had great usage of visuals saying that yes, tattoos can be beautiful if you get something that is beautiful. But if you get something that is ridiculous you have to live with it, like if you post something ridiculous you have to deal with the repercussions. Overall this speech was great because you could tell he was passionate about the topic, he never stuttered and always had information to back up his argument.

Being from Kentucky, I have never really been concerned with the city of Detroit since it is a northern city and doesn't really concern me. So I learned a lot from this article. I always kind of knew that Detroit had a lot of crime, but that is about it. I didn't know that the city was bankrupt and apparently that was a huge deal. The article points out how when Detroit was on the cover of every newspaper with the story of how they were bankrupt, all the newspapers talked about was negativity and how bad the situation was. They never pointed out an positive point or talked about how Detroit could bounce back from it. This is just a prime example of how the media always makes us look at the negative things. You rarely hear a happy enlightening story on the news, it is almost always bad. The author of the article visited Detroit and saw the run down city, had been told to not be alarmed if he heard explosions, and so he instantly formed his opinion that Detroit was a bad place. And then he overheard two people talking about how Mark Wahlberg was in town and he immediately felt bad for assuming things. The main part of the article that grabbed my attention was when he was talking about the good things, like the Heidelberg project, Kendrick Lamar concert, Belle Isle park, and the Hart Plaza Amphitheater.  This grabbed my attention because he would act all excited about these great things, and then talk about how deserted they were and how people weren’t actually using them. The Belle Isle park is huge and he said it was completely empty. The said the Hart Plaza Amphitheater was virtually empty except for a homeless man sleeping in it. Then he saw the vandalism and definitely felt discouraged. He talked about how the Kendrick concert was awesome, everyone was singing and having a great time and they all forgot about the horrible things happening in the city outside of the concert. It really took a famous person to come to this city to get people to go out and enjoy themselves. Basically what I got from this article is that people let the bad things overpower the good things in life.

My Bodies of the Year Response

My Bodies of the Year was a pretty typical article about body image. Body image is a very controversial topic these days. People are always writing articles and talking about how people, women especially, are very revealed in the media. In advertisements for things that relate to partying and fun, such as cigarettes and alcohol, the people in the advertisements are normally skinny, tan, and hot. When in reality, over usage of alcohol and cigarettes will eventually deteriorate your look, but companies don’t want people to know about that. So body image is definitely important to companies that are trying to sell products that appeal to people. 

The article points out that it seems like every celebrity nowadays is getting naked, and thinks nothing of it. I think that’s because once one person does it, and they get all that attention, everyone thinks that it is acceptable to be half naked up on stage for the whole world to see. People have somewhat lost the importance of actual music, because as long as some sexy naked person is singing the song, they will be attracted to it, which is also why I think music these days is going downhill.

 Wesley did mention how movie stars have to look a certain way physically in order to fully achieve the look for a certain character. I believe that how you look is very important in this world. It shouldn’t be the top priority, and it shouldn’t make or break you, but if I was interviewing someone for a job and they were clean and well kept, it shows a lot about their personality, it shows that they care about how the look to people and that they want to look good. 

But there is a fine line between putting effort into your appearance like cleaning yourself, wearing a little bit of makeup and doing your hair. But when people get excessive spray tans, plastic surgery, and crazy hair dyes, that is when, to me, it gets to be too much. I don’t think there is such thing as the perfect looking person, I feel that if everyone put a little bit of effort into their appearance, but not over-the-top, everyone would look and feel great about themselves.