To curate for me means to sift through a collection to find the best of the best. This could be informal, like posting pictures and interesting things on Pinterest for followers to see, as as Chelsea Emilie Kelly explains in her article “What does it mean to Curate?”. It could also be a profession, like selecting the best paintings and artworks to go in a museum. Although the dictionary definition of the word “curator” points in the direction of a more professional job in a museum, there’s not really another word that can be the informal replacement for the word. Thesaurus.com shows eight synonyms for curator, which are: administrator, custodian, manager, keeper, conservator, director, guardian, and steward. These words are nowhere close to what a Pinterest user would be classified as, or would like to be called. Jay-Z’s site is similar to that of a Pinterest site. He picks topics that he finds interest in and takes one representative photo to post as a little square in the mosaic of many other squares, which lead to stories.
I curate all the time in my life. When I take pictures for the yearbook or “The Daily Orange”, either the photo editors or I choose my selects to get printed. This process can be long and tedious, depending on the shoot. Sometimes I am assigned to photograph sports, and I often end with more than 500 photos to select from. I am sure most of us do some sort of curating; this could be as small as picking the best selfie of yourself to upload for your weekly “Selfie Sunday” Instagram post.
The idea of curation will affect my final portfolio because I will have to select the best works that I have done to show. I will have to edit a piece of writing to crank out the best possible sentence structures and the best way of expressing and communicating my message.
So far I know what I want to do, but I haven’t been able to execute it due to being backed up on a lot of other projects. This project should not take that long, but will still take a few hours to edit. I hope to film everything on Wednesday and finish the video by midnight, since I only have one class on Wednesday, in the morning.
I have written the script that I am going to be narrating as a voiceover, so everything else should be fairly straightforward.
1. What’s the difference between paraphrasing and summarizing?
2. How does Howard suggest that we stop patchwriting?
3. Howard mentions comprehension. Is it necessary for someone to read the entire article to comprehend what the writer is trying to get across? Is this necessary for an accurate summary to be written?
I think MLA would be the format that I would use the most. Since I am a film major, I won’t be citing many things… at all. However, for this writing class and most likely next year’s writing class, I believe MLA will be the most popular way of citing works.
During class on Tuesday, I suddenly had an epiphany. I found that my claim in my draft does not really work and that it was way too straightforward and jaded. I decided to make a whole new claim. Here is my pitch:
Partygoers and non-partygoers are part of the same discourse when they are not at a party or talking about their past party experiences. However, when they are at a party or are talking about their party experiences, everything changes.
From my personal experience, I relate completely the same to non-partygoers and partygoers when I am in class or at the dining hall. We have the same language and lexis. For example, a complaint that I seem to share with others are 8 AM classes and the horrible music that Miley Cyrus produces. However, this all changes when partygoers are at an actual party or are talking about their party experiences. Once they talk about how many shots or beers that they plan to take or have taken in the past, I cannot relate, since I do not have prior experience.
This will be the basis of my new essay, and I will try to prove that all students at SU are the same whether they are partygoers or non-partygoers… until they are at a party.
Where are you right now? Think for a minute. You are probably participating in a group, which categorizes themselves as separate from others. This may be happening right now, at this moment, or constantly, in the background. For example, you may be in English class at the moment but also participate in a sport that is ongoing. You’re probably wondering why I am bringing this up. I’m talking about discourse communities, which is defined as a group of people who share the same overall goals and certain lingo, or lexis, which are vocabulary words that only people who are a part of the “discourse community” would understand.
I plan to investigate the discourse of architecture students at Syracuse University. I want to find out what the goal of each architecture student is and if it is similar to that of other students in the same major. I want to find out if within those goals, there are alternative genres. For example, they may all want to design a building when they grow up, but perhaps they may want to design different types of buildings.
Another topic that I could research could be if architecture students hang out with students from other majors. I want to find out why, and if they view themselves as a clique.
I could also research some statistics, asking students how much sleep that they get on a daily basis.
1. Why did you choose architecture?
2. How do you like school so far?
3. How much sleep do you get on a regular basis?
4. Who are most of your friends?
5. Do you interact with people working around you? Or is it mostly solo work?
6. What do you do on weekends?
7. Would you say that these people are your family?
Why do people go to parties rather than hang out sober?
Questions I asked:
1. Would you say that you are a partygoer?
2. What makes you say that?
3. Would you say that you get along more with partygoers rather than people who do other things on Fridays and Saturday nights?
4. What do you think about people who don’t go to parties? Do you think they have fun?
5. What is your definition of fun?
6. Is going parties the only way to have fun?
7. Do you think you could have fun without going to parties?
8. So what makes you want to go to a party?
9. Is it the fact that you get to dress up and feel like you’re another person?
10. Would you say you have a different personality when you’re at a party? (code-switching)
11. Any stories
Limits/Concerns:
I am concerned that the subject would feel uncomfortable with these questions. I feel like some of these could be personal. However, with the two subjects that I interviewed, they seemed to deal with it just fine.
Notes:
Michelle seemed very happy and eager to talk about the subjects. Doyin was very relaxed and had no problem answering the questions; sometimes he seemed even a little too calm. I gave both of them some time to think of the stories to tell before they told them. Those were not taken in one continuous interview/shot.
Transcript:
Q: Would you say that you get along more with partygoers rather than like, people who do other things on Fridays and Saturday nights?
A: Um, no, I think I get along better with people who aren’t necessarily going to parties all the time. But, it’s not hard to meet people either.
Q: Why do you say that you get along more with people who don’t necessarily party all the time?
A: well, because, I mean, people that are constantly going to parties are usually drunk all the time, and it’s just… I don’t know.. it’s just harder to bond more but it’s easier to bond more with people who actually have other interests.
Q: In English we learned this thing called code-switching, which is like, um, like changing how you act like what you say, for example, if you’re in a classroom setting versus when like you’re out with friends. Would you say that you code switch at a party?
A: Yes. I would code switch because when you’re in class it’s class time… but when you’re at a party it’s party time. You understand? You know what I’m sayin?
Q: So do you use a different language?
A: Of course I use a different language. When I’m in class, I talk to the professor like this: “hello sir, how are you doing, my name is Doyin Adeyeye-Akintobi.” At party times, I speak like this, any other times I speak like this, cause I’m still drunk…
Documents:
“yo you going out tonight?”
“this girl next to me is feeling me, but not attracted to her”
“yo she dipped”
-Doyin’s text messages
Notes on a location:
Doyin speaks in a very straight forward manner. He is blunt and concise with his words. He is very opinionated.
Michelle is also very straight forward. She knows what she is saying.
Reflection:
I was actually very surprised at how different the two subjects were. Michelle goes out to enjoy herself with her friends, and does not really care about her appearance in any interest to attract the opposite sex, which was what I assumed why people went out for, other than to have fun. Doyin, on the other hand, goes out to dance with girls and to basically set himself free. Overall, the interviews flowed pretty smoothly and my subjects were comfortable with what they said. They knew what they were talking about and I am happy with the way that it turned out. These two interviews also brought up some other questions. I used to think that some partygoers go to parties only because their friends go to parties. This brings up the topic of peer-pressure. However, with both of my interviewee’s answers, I learned that they don’t necessarily go to parties because of peer-pressure. They go just to have fun and to dance.
Peel 