response number five.

“I work at colleges of last resort. For many of my students, college was not a goal they spent years preparing for, but a place they landed in. Those I teach don’t come up in the debates about adolescent overachievers and cutthroat college admissions. Mine are the students whose applications show indifferent grades and have blank spaces where the extracurricular activities would go. They chose their college based not on the U.S. News & World Report rankings but on MapQuest; in their ideal academic geometry, college is located at a convenient spot between work and home. I can relate, for it was exactly this line of thinking that dictated where I sent my teaching résumé.”

“I work at colleges of last resort. For many of my students, college was not something they spend their entire education and life preparing for, but somewhere they just, ended up. The ones I teach don’t come up in the debates about adolescent overachievers and difficult college admissions. Mine are the students whose applications show indifferent grades and have black spaces where the extracurricular activities would go. They chose their college not based upon the U.S. News and World Report rankings but on Mapquest. They did that so they could find a college that is convenient to them, between work and home. I did the same, for it was this line of thinking that determined where I sent my teaching resume.”

After completing this article, there was no spot that I had to go back and re-read it, nor was I confused on what the author was trying to get through to the reader. So instead of choosing a passage that made me wonder, and confused me a bit- I chose a passage that had the most effect on me, and could relate to me the most. To explain, this passage had the most impact on me because- of all the similarities to my life. My grades in high school were and are always really random. It really depends on the time of year, the grade level I was in, the people I was hanging out with…etc. I chose to do running start this school year for that exact reason, that no matter what time of year it was, or who I was hanging out with- I would be succeeding or trying my hardest to accomplish good grades- because if I don’t, I won’t graduate. Obviously, I chose Whatcom Community College because not only is it the only place nearby that offers the Running Start Program but it is fairly close to my house, and just minutes away from my work. Being a senior in high school, college applications are rolling around the corner, Universities are coming into the picture now. In relation to the passage I chose, my first completed application was to Western Washington University. I know I have the capabilities to go to other Universities, but because of the convenience in location, I have only completed and sent one application- and that is to Western. This passage really clicked to me when I read it, because it’s seriously what is going through my head right now- as I choose where I want to attend school in the future.

Plain and simple, everybody is different. Not all people are going to think the way I do, or think the way the author thinks- in convenience. Most people already have their dream school picked out as children, and will go to that school if that means quitting their job, or moving far away from home. By all means, go for it- but I really think that people need to think about the situation and their lives before they go jumping all over the globe. Society today has led the American people to believe that, secondary education is crucial- and is the only way you will succeed in life and score yourself a good job. Yes, in some cases this may be true- but even if you do decide to go to school for ten years to become a doctor, or a teacher or a lawyer, there is no set in stone guarantee you are going to land yourself a job. If that was true, there would be endless amounts of jobs, and common- that is a bit unrealistic. On the other hand, secondary education, and its effects on Americans and getting jobs, may be a bit farfetched. To explain, have you ever thought about kids who start working for a business at a young age in life, then gradually work their way up to the top- or those who take over businesses for grandparents, parents, etc. In some situations secondary education is unnecessary; why I say people need to think about their situation, status and lives before they start jumping all over the place.

The passage stated above is found near the beginning of this article. It gives the reader a background of whom and where the article is coming from- and where it is going to go. It touches base with other campuses, and their similarities with admissions (depending on location). As well as, where he teaches the students are not those with 4.0 and honors, they are just normal people with indifferent grades, which are completely capable of succeeding like everybody else.

reading response #5

Jared Eckert

Reading response #5

"I work part-time in the evenings as an adjunct instructor of English. I teach two courses, Introduction to College Writing (English 101) and Introduction to College Literature (English 102), at a small private college and at a community college. The campuses are physically lovely—quiet havens of ornate stonework and columns, Gothic Revival archways, sweeping quads, and tidy Victorian scalloping. Students chat or examine their cell phones or study languidly under spreading trees. Balls click faintly against bats on the athletic fields. Inside the arts and humanities building, my students and I discuss Shakespeare, Dubliners, poetic rhythms, and Edward Said. We might seem, at first glance, to be enacting some sort of college idyll. We could be at Harvard. But this is not Harvard, and our classes are no idyll. Beneath the surface of this serene and scholarly mise-en-scène roil waters of frustration and bad feeling, for these colleges teem with students who are in over their heads."

"I work at colleges of last resort. For many of my students, college was not a goal they spent years preparing for, but a place they landed in. Those I teach don’t come up in the debates about adolescent overachievers and cutthroat college admissions. Mine are the students whose applications show indifferent grades and have blank spaces where the extracurricular activities would go. They chose their college based not on the U.S. News & World Report rankings but on MapQuest; in their ideal academic geometry, college is located at a convenient spot between work and home. I can relate, for it was exactly this line of thinking that dictated where I sent my teaching résumé."

There wasn’t any part of this essay I didn’t understand or that posed any sort of difficulty for me to read. The “chunk” above though really hit home for me. In high school my grades were far from consistent and for the most part were low. To be quite honest, I sometimes wonder how I even graduated. It’s not that I am not smart; because I believe I am deep thinker and I grasp concepts well. I actually love learning, I love being stimulated and being in a position were I must or in the best of cases, want to induce complex and abstract thought processes. My problem is if I am not engaged enough by and instructor or a subject my interest drops dramatically. God forbid if it is a subject I am not interested, I might as well not come to class. I also have a problem with procrastinating, unless it is with something I am interested in, then I’ll belt out all the work I can. In high school there were only two courses out of the four years I went there were I actually felt attentive and interested. Photography and astronomy; I had over 100% in those classes by course end. For my other classes I’d be lucky If I hit about above average, or in some cases above 60 %. When applying for college, all of it was last minute. I didn’t research any schools that would focus on what I wanted my major to be or how good the education was there. This is mostly because I didn’t have the grades to get any university. I have come to community college to raise my gpa and help myself prepare for the big university experience. Maybe even get a better sense of what I want to do with my life. I have many interests but I don’t see a lot out there that I could find myself doing for the rest of my life; and if I am not interested in it, I am doomed to fail miserably.

             College isn’t for everyone by no means at all. Some aren’t capable of completing it (as this essay explains) and some are capable but have found better or easier ways of obtaining what they truly want in life. I think America and even the world has given us the idea that if you don’t seek secondary education you will not succeed in life. I believe pursuing higher education is a fantastic idea and that most of us should do our very best to get it. But today, even with a college degree, it is extraordinary difficult to get a job. As the United States still suffers from this recession it is not unheard of for people with PHD’s to be on the side of the road with signs that read “Anything helps, God bless” or “Spear change please?” How are any of us suppose to compete with that? How the hell am I suppose to believe that going to college is going to land me in a better position than a doctor who has spent countless time and money to get an advanced education, now on the side of the street begging for nickels and dimes?

            This “chunk” above is the introduction to Professor X’s article. It gives a good indication about what the passage is going to be about. It paints a picture of the campuses he works at. Giving the vibe of what most colleges give of, the feel off young minds being taught and trained to conquer the real world; but tells us that not everything is what it appears and how sometimes these facilities have people who just are not capable of  being trained or taught such things. 

Link to Professor X's article and Reading Response Prompt

http://www.theatlantic.com/magazine/archive/2008/06/in-the-basement-of-the-ivory-tower/6810/

Response to Professor X: Reading in Three Keys

Reading in Three Keys in an activity to help you being to chew on a piece of text you’ve read but that perhaps you haven’t formed a theory or thesis about yet. It helps you come at a text from multiple angles and perspectives, and allows you to respond to a text with different readings of it. Here’s what you’re going to do:

A. Select a “chunk” of text (more than a sentence—usually a good sized paragraph) that poses some reading difficulty for you. It might be a chunk that you don’t “get” on the first read, a passage that leaves you with that feeling of “incompleteness,” something that seems important, but you are not sure why, or a passage that you just want to think more about. Copy it down on your paper.

B. Attempt to “come to terms” with the passage by writing what it “says.” Paraphrase the passage using your own sentences and words.

C. Write about how your passage functions rhetorically within the text and how it connects to other ideas in the essay (For example: Does it elaborate on an earlier idea? Is it being used as an example or explanation? As background? As an application of an idea? As a piece of complicating evidence? And so on).

D. Respond to the passage in three ways, writing a paragraph for each “key.”

¨ Personally: What is your emotional or gut reaction to the passage? How does the passage make you feel? Does it connect to or remind you of anything from your own experience?

¨ Intellectually: What ideas come to mind as you read this? What questions does this passage raise about the subject of the essay, yourself, human beings, life, the state of the world, etc?

¨ Rhetorically and stylistically: What do you notice about the way this passage is written: Format? Language? Sentence structure? Tone?

This response should be at least 600 words (not including the repetition of the passage).

Response on the "Digital Nation" video

Are you aware that the many forms of media are causing you to live in a virtual world? If you use Facebook, Email, cell phones to communicate, or play video games you have entered the virtual world. In the video “Digital Nation-Life on the Virtual Frontier” which was produced and directed by Rachel Dretzin and Douglas Rushkoff, it is shown that young and old alike have embraced digital media for everyday tasks. South Korea was among the first to adopt the virtual world into their culture. One thing Dretzin mentioned was how kids in South Korea will stay up all night playing video games at cafes and some have even died because they have forgotten to drink or eat while they played for extended periods. They are now having to rethink healthier ways to use digital media including establishing Rescue Camps to teach children how to use computers more responsibly. One positive example digital media has had on education is the story of Principal Jason Levy. He brought digital media to a failing school in the Bronx and dramatically increased the number of students passing their classes. Dr. Gary Small at UCLA found that reading a book actually uses less brain energy and decision-making than using the Internet. One other interesting change that digital media has brought to young people is frequent multi-tasking. Dretzin and Rushkoff report that when they observed students on the M.I.T. campus in Cambridge, Mass., everywhere they looked , the students were looking at some type of screen, sometimes two screens at once. A study in California went even further, conducting mind tests to measure the level of distractions as students multi-tasked. The military is using digital media to fly drones in Iraq from a base in Nevada and treating Post Traumatic Stress Disorder with the use of virtual space. Digital media has brought so many profound changes, both negative and positive, to our lives.

After watching this video, I have related it to my life and realize it has had a large effect on my writing habits. Although many positive things were discussed in the video, I can see the negative portion of this affecting me more. My writing has become short-handed and unfocused. When I write an essay, I find I have to do a lot more editing than I did just three years ago. I find myself more distracted by things that sound more fun than sitting down and putting the pen to paper. While writing this, I answered my phone, checked Facebook, and answered my email, all while the T.V. played in the background. The video gave an example of the MIT student who suffers from the same problem. There are so many distractions, and the possibilities seem to be growing day by day. With these negative issues also come positive effects. Huge amounts of money have been saved because people are able to communicate online rather than fly long distances for business meetings. Digital Media has also made it much simpler to research things and find any information we desire, ultimately making us more educated. Though there are some drawbacks, I believe that Digital Media has brought us more positive changes than negative.

Like a plague sweeping the nation, digital media in every form has infected a great majority of the population. Facebook, Video Games, You Tube and many others have been known to take up most of our generation and now older ones have embraced this digital media into their lives. The controversy surrounding this epidemic is whether or not it has made our society stronger or weaker. In “Digital Nation” director Rachel Dretzin shows us the many sides of digital media, from young to old, from someone that just passes the time to someone that is considered addicted to video games. One similarity that we can see in today’s youth is the ability to multitask, we see people on their phones, checking their email and studying at the same time. In California at the Stanford University they put on the first study of brain activity and multitasking to the test. In the study professor Clifford Nass found that “multi-tasker’s are terrible at every aspect of multitasking” and they are worried that “it may be creating people who are unable to think well and clearly”. This made me stop and think about myself for a second, am I a victim of this multi-tasking thought process?


Although I agree that it was wonderful that we have more opportunities to be creative and to meet more people I insist that multitasking can’t fully allow deep thinking and I can see it in my own life. While I am typing a paper or trying to concentrate on something, I feel myself wanting to go do something else. I can still remember getting on a computer for the first time when I was about 7 or 8 years old. Thinking it was the best thing that could have ever happened to the world, writing to people in another country that I would have no opportunity to talk to elsewhere. Soon my family got a computer of their own and they would ask me a 10 year old how to do certain tasks on it. We were raised in this digital era, and our brains rewired to it. We no longer have the need to remember dates and quotes alike, we simply look them up on Google. On the other hand is there really need to remember these things in the first place? Of course it allows me to become more constructive and to do more in a short period of time, but do I retain any of this. Is my multi-tasking causing me to push out this “useless” information? I find myself in this very moment watching “Digital Nation” while typing this paper and frequently checking my phone to see what time it is or thinking about the list of things I have to do today. I can see it in my roommates as well, during the writing process they may take a break to play the PS3 or to show me something they found on youtube, or facebook. Whether you believe that is for the best or for the worse, we can all agree that is changing the way we view the world in a very significant way.

Reading Response on Digital Nation

The video, Digital Nation is a 90-minute documentary on digital media. It was produced by Rachel Dretzin who teamed up with one of the leading thinkers of digital age, Douglas Rushkoff to continue to explore life on the virtual frontier. This documentary film tells a story about how everyone is completely immersed in technology all the time and survey whether our 24/7 wired world is causing us to lose as much as we have gained. Dretzin and Rushkoff begin their exploration in M.I.T. (Massachesetts Institute of Technology) campus where students are among the World’s smartest and most wired. They see staggering amount of students who are constantly multitasking with their tech tools; distracted by everything. They question what multitasking is doing to the students’ brains. Dretzin and Rushkoff asked professor Clifford Nass at Stanford University who presented tests to some selected “Multitaskers” to examine how these students are really good at it. The results yield troubling discoveries; students were not effective as they thought they were in multitasking, they were terrible at it and were in fact slower when switching tasks. Rushkoff goes to South Korea, where playing online in that country is a craze for many youth. These online gamers are so obsessed with their Internet games that their addiction has affected their health. Many cannot unplug themselves from their digital life that they forget to attend to their body’s basic needs. This suggest, being wired 24/7 like this in the digital world can present a threat to people’s mind and body especially for those who simply cannot unplug themselves from the virtual world. In Chatham High School (in New Jersey) however, teachers are embracing the digital media because it keeps students engaged. Their results found that the use of technology in teaching has helped boost students’ attendance and test scores. Jason Levy, a Principal of a middle school in New York South Bronx says, “Technology is like oxygen to the kids.” Here in the Bronx where most of the kids were not engaged in school at all before, providing technology has clearly been a Net gain. M.I.T students on the other hand confess that in their case it is a Net loss. They confirm because of constant interruption, it has affected their reading and writing.

As the documentary video presented interviews with MIT students, scholars and die-hard World of Warcraft and Second Life players talking about heavy media use, the point is clear that people are wired all the time. I agree that young people use an awful lot of media, and in some ways it distracts them from their studies, but in other ways using media may make students more focused. I believe young people are where they exactly want to be. Technology can be to one’s own disadvantage and advantage. Technology like the online media offers a lot of learning tools and it is up to the kids how they want to take advantage of these offerings and tools. Although the online media also presents entertainment of all sorts like online gaming for example, again it is up to the kids how they want to respond. There are beneficial things to do online like read news, ‘google’ subjects or issues, utilize the online encyclopedias, create blogs, email friends and colleagues etc. I do understand and concede that technology also has its negative influence. The power of entertainment especially can attract kids today and cause them to allocate more time on technology’s pleasurable activities as opposed to school work or constructive online media activities. But I reiterate that Technology can be to one’s own advantage or disadvantage. Perhaps the main concern here is how to make use of the technology given at hand.

Reading/Viewing Response #4

“Digital Nation,” written by Douglas Rushkoff and Rachel Dretzin, is a video that talks about how we (the today generation) are constantly multitasking with ‘tech tools’ and are immersed with technologies. This puts us almost into different worlds. Rushkoff and Dretzin did a study on the campus of the Mass. Institute of Technology in Cambridge. The M.I.T. students are the world’s smartest and most wired. Dretzin saw that everywhere she looked on the campus that “students were always looking at a screen, sometimes multiple screens.” This could possibly be a result for how busy these students are all the time so they are distracted by everything else. The students think they are completely capable of multitasking. In California, they did a study at Stanford where they discovered that they get super distracted and lose their focus easily. They discovered this through mind tests on carefully chosen students where they identify numbers as odd or even, letters as vowels or constantans, but its full of distractions. With NASA testing them on how fast they can switch between tasks without losing their focus. Virtually they were slower at multitasking. Dr. Gary Small at UCLA discovered that using the Internet compared to reading a book uses more brain energy and decision-making but isn’t necessarily good. Small found out that many kids in Asia are addicted to video games, especially in South Korea. “PC bombs are a big gaming craze there, where cheep high-speed Internet is offered and can be accessed twenty four seven at over a thousand spots to the tens of thousands of kids, so they can play video games all day or all night,” explains Rushkoff. They met a fifteen year old, who told them how he plays seven to eight hours a day and stays up on weekends to play video games. This resulted in his mother sending him to an Internet Rescue School for two weeks. The Korean elementary schools teach kids how to use computers responsibly starting in second grade. Some middle schools require lab tops and Dretzin sent her oldest son to one of these schools. The virtual worlds are becoming more and more used to create a new reality and many people are playing these types of online universes. Some companies use virtual worlds to communicate and they have never met before. Also, virtual world gamers talk to one another without meeting for a long period of time over the net. The U.S. military also uses virtual spaces for PTSD therapy and for flying drones in Iraq on a base in Nevada.
I agree that the today generation is trying too hard to multitask and is using the net a little more often than needed. This makes us less focused and addicted. It seems as if we are learning through video games to a sense. This point needs emphasizing since so many people still believe that we are immune to this happening to us. I’ve noticed that the Internet or technologies have affected my life. There isn’t a lot of reason as to how this came to be but I seem to need the technologies of today to get through each day. In the video, students are not aware that their multitasking isn’t improving their skills but lessening them in many ways. They are less focused and distracted more easily. I can relate to this because I get easily distracted and when I’m online I tend to be less focused and my mind is all over the place. I also realize as I watched this video again and as I write this, that I am multitasking or at least trying to and it isn’t helping my focus at all. Then as the video talked about the video games and virtual worlds, people are not realizing that they are getting addicted to these things when in reality it’s all they think about. Personally, I can’t relate to this because I think video games are a waste of time and that instead of going onto virtual worlds, I rather live my life here on earth as myself, no avatars or any virtual people to express me as a person. I can see though why all the people who use these do because they have nothing better to do and I guess they could be fun. All in all, the technologies we use on a day-to-day basis are making us almost less sociable and comfortable. We need these technologies to get by. It seems as if we are addicted to all technologies that we can have access to.