In today’s class, we:

• Learned how to blog in this here 121B blogosphere. Welcome!
• Swapped, blogged on, and discussed your Response Paper 1.1 playlists.
• Considered the importance of “warrants,” or the assumptions used to mobilize arguments, and how they influence the ways in which we write, work with others, and understand the world (and even sounds!).
• Blogged and historicized our experiences with “service” and how those experience might be mapped onto work with Boys and Girls Clubs in the near future.
• Familiarized ourselves with this quarter’s keyword collaboratory on “service” and noted how we — as a class — are representing the UW, the Carlson Center, the Keywords text, and the English Department through that collaboratory, which will be made public for a broad audience and used by future faculty, instructors, and students.
• Traced and unpacked five definitions for the word, “service.”

Did I miss anything? Oh, robots, cars, and “interest” to be paid. More on those later, I suppose.

In the meantime, don’t forget to register for service-learning! Registration ends on Monday!

As for Tuesday’s class, please:

• Read “Acoustic Cyberspace” by Erik Davis.
• Read Megan Nordstrom’s Autumn English 121 E-portfolio (with an emphasis on the portfolio text and less on the attachments).
• Respond to Blog Prompt #2 in YOUR OWN blog entry (and NOT as a comment on the prompt). Note that the prompt asks you to discuss at least one quote from each text, respond to the rhetoric and implications of each quote, and explain each quote’s relevance to sound.
• Comment on TWO of your peers’ responses to Blog Prompt #2.

We’ll begin Tuesday’s class with a group discussion of Davis and Nordstrom, their relation to understanding “sonic culture,” and why studying sound matters in the first place.

Until then, be in touch with questions, concerns, and the like.

(Schedule for the intro meetings in Art 347 below my name.)

Best,

Jentery

Tuesday, January 10th in Art 347

11:50 – Sam

12:10 – Seth

12:30 – Ashley

12:50 – Juhi

1 – Jenna

1:10 – Nathan

1:20 – Krysta

Thursday, January 17th in Art 347

11:50 – Sohroosh

12 – Francis

12:10 – Miriam

12:20 – Alexandra

12:30 – Casey

12:40 – Aly

1:30 – Jillian

1:40 – Scott

1:50 – Ainsley

2:30 – Colleen

When I hear the word “service”, I usually associate it with the notion of sacrifice. Some may argue that the intention or ulterior motive is usually different for each type of service, but I believe my association remains true when it comes to giving something up ‘to serve’. Sometimes time is given up, and other times energy is given up. In my case, I had to give up my fear of failure. Two years ago, I visited my sister in New York City for my spring break. She told me that I would be volunteering for her school. She works as a math teacher at Kipp Star School in Harlem, which is a charter school for 6th graders to 8th graders. At first, working as a tutor, it was overwhelming, because the kids had just met me and they let it be known that I was a stranger. Either through angry glances or words under their breath, they constantly nagged me. However, I decided to use humor with a couple of the kids that did respect me, and once I won over those kids, I ended up becoming very comfortable as a teaching assistant.

The eleven sounds of “The Sonic Version of Influential Events in My Life” seem to portray a person who is athletic, and has gone through tough trials in her life. First, the rationale of the order of the sounds seem to exhibit that she started out more melancholy and had a more somber mood. This is shown by the fact that it starts out with “crying” as the first sound, then continues to “Live Like You Were Dying,” and sports coaches yelling. However, by the end of the playlist, it has songs such as “Girls Just Want To Have Fun,” by Cyndi Lauper. It shows that the author’s mood has lightened up and I feel that there is more control in their life.

Other sounds which could fit into the playlist would be things which are downbeat in the beginning of the playlist and more happy in the end. For example, in the end of the playlist, cheering or sounds of congratulations could be put on the list. Perhaps Arethra Franklin’s “I Will Survive” could go on here.

This person has a music taste for country, rock, and some classics. She most likely is a girl due to the fact that it has “Cheer Coach yelling” as well as “Girls Just Want To Have Fun.”

Throughout my high school career, I was a student who was up to their waist in “service learning.”  If there was tutoring to be done, I did it- I loved to volunteer, but the main project I completed was helping design and implement a freshman orientation program at my high school.  Starting my sophomore year, a group of students and myself got together and designed a program to help the transition of eighth grade students into the high school atmosphere.  We had to figure out what methods would be the most effective and when we decided on using peer mentors, we had to recruit and train around 150 students at the high school.  From the starting point to when I graduated the program had gone through some good and bad times.  It was tough trying to keep a program of that size effective but at the same time you were able to see the impact.  Overall I think the experience was helpful to my personal development and I believe it will help with my service learning in 121B.  In the orientation program I was able to interact and act as a mediator between students and staff at the school, so I think it’ll be helpful working in the Boys and Girls Club.

During my senior year of high school, it was required for all seniors to complete 40 hours of community service and a community service course. I was placed with a Head Start program at a local elementary school. The Head Start program aims to give children, ages 3-5 years old, from low income families the pre-school education they otherwise could not afford. I worked with these children twice a week, 2 hours a day from serving their breakfast to reading storybooks and playing games with them. This community service experience allowed me to realize that these organizations need all the help they can get and that although I was limited in my abilities, I was still a crucial part of their program. It was a very positive experience for me and I had a lot of fun working with the children.

I have had many chances and opportunities to serve my community as well as learn from these experiences, and sure enough I have served. One of the most prominent experiences I’ve had volunteering has been tutoring and mentoring young third graders at a local elementary in Federal Way, WA. It was during my sophomore and junior year. The kids were in need of much help, many of whom were ESL (English as a Second Language) students. I felt a huge burden to help and assist these kids, not to mention that I needed community service hours as well as extra credit in my Spanish class. However, these were just extra perks which made the experience that much better.

The experience can now be felt as beneficial and definitely positive. Not only does it look good on paper, but it gave me experience and the chance to impact the lives’ of numerous kids. The atmosphere was just amazing; right when you walk in the door they shout your name and just have a mood of excitement at your presence. Even if you aren’t teaching them anything, just being someone the child can talk to can have major benefits for the child. Nothing about it was unproductive or negative.

I now have experience with working with kids, and I believe that may help at the Boys and Girls Club. Hopefully it goes as smooth as my past experience.

I volunteered for 1 1/2 years at Jubilee Women’s Center, an organization that provided transitional housing and other services for women in poverty. It was an experience that worked out better than I would have expected. I needed service hours for my school, and I was interested in helping in JWC’s computer lab. The building was only a few blocks from my school, I was interested in computers, and it seemed like an organization worth supporting. Due to communication and organizational problems, I never ended up working at the computer lab, yet it ended up being a great experience – probably an even better experience than if I had worked exclusively at the lab. I spent a lot of time helping in their boutique, where women can get free clothing. There was consistently plenty of work to do – more than I could get done in my 2-hour shift. I had been reluctant to work in the boutique because I have no interest in or experience with clothing, yet it ended up working out well - fashion experience wasn’t needed, and I felt like I was really making a contribution. Although that was my default position, I also bounced around plenty, becoming an all-around assistant who could do whatever was needed. Again, this made me feel that I truly was addressing the organization’s needs – I wasn’t just creating a service opportunity where it hadn’t really existed. My service ended when the organization moved. They had *immense* need of volunteer help during the move, and as it happened, the move coincided exactly with the time period when I had finished school and hadn’t started working, so I was able to put in lengthy hours.

Myself and about 15 other sophomores, juniors, or senior from the Seattle area were Cabin Leaders at Waskowitz Outdoor School. It was for one week during March of 2007. Fifth and sixth graders from many different schools come with their teachers to spend the week in the forest of North Bend, Washington on the Snoqualmie River.

Our job as cabin leaders was to get our cabin groups excited about being at camp and help them bond with the other kids. We had to help them learn teamwork, how to respect nature, and help them get over homesickness.

It was a very positive experience and very productive. Our cabin won the Smokey Bear award for cabin cleanliness and spirit. The girls all became friends and I made a new friend with my co-cabin leader.

My Camp Waskowitz experience will help me with service learning at the Boys and Girls Club because I was working with children there. It was interesting to see how much they want to be like you, so I had to be a good example.

When I was in high school, we had to do 60 hours of mandatory community service to graduate. For about 20 of those hours, I chose to do freshman mentoring my senior year.. We met with the kids once a month, in their history class, in groups of 6 or 7 (at least– they were supposed to be groups of 6 or 7, but I was one of only about 2 people who consistently showed up, so it turned into us leading the entire class), and talked with them/played really lame games, etc.

It was actually a really interesting experience, way more so than I thought it would be. I didn’t connect very well with the black kids in my group, which I felt really bad about, and I unconsciously favored the kids who were siblings of my friends/people I knew, and talked to them more. I “adopted” a freshman into my group, who subsequently hit on me when we took the same bus one day. I developed less personal relationships than I had hoped, but still managed to have one of my kids (my best guy friend’s little sister) look up to me, which made me feel pretty good. I was really upset with the laxness of the other mentors in my class, and with the lead mentors for not giving us stuff to do that didn’t waste our (and their) time.

However, I think this experience will help me in the service learning for this class. I deliberately chose the Rotary club, not only because I went to Leschi and Washington, as I’m betting a lot of them do, and because I also grew up underprivileged, but to push myself into figuring out how to go against all of my history classes and society and interact properly with black kids. Hopefully I will develop some long term relationships with these kids, and will once again be a mentor.

I did volunteering at a local hospital in my junior year in high school. My initial intention was to have some extracurricular activities for my college applications. The volunteering job itself was dull. Most of the time I did my work changing and refilling things in patients’ rooms. Other times I would help the front desk file, print, and copy. I figured out little things that would help me get things done quickly. Overall it was a positive experience for me from the gratitude of helping out others. Although I would like to be doing things that are most productive, I think that this experience helped me with my “service-learning” in this class because I learned how to get through things that at first might seem dull but later on find good out of it.