Place In Time

After some brainstorming I have decided on a few topics that would be interesting to write about. My first idea is when my mother and father met and got married. I know this may sound cliche but I really have no idea about the subject. The only thing that I know is that it was in Clearfield, Utah. Obviously since they are my parents and them meeting is important to my being here I want to learn more about it. I also care to learn more about it because I feel that it is pretty sad that I can not say much else about it. I think from what i can remember that there story is pretty interesting. I know that they grew up 3 blocks apart and never knew one another. You would think that the story would be they were high school sweethearts but it's not and that would be interesting to learn more about. I think someone would want to know the atmosphere and development of their meeting, and what they were thinking.

My other possible topic is a culture that my father always spoke about that I want to learn more about. He was an avid metal detecter. (Yes, it is a popular hobby.) He took me out metal detecting with him on several occasions so I began to care about the hobby. (Of course, I used to think I was only used to dig up the coins while he would locat. That soon changed.) Now the event that would occur prior to my birth is the club meetings that he would attend. He told me about a particular place in Utah (I will have to look up the location), that would host a coin collecting club. After seeing all the coins that he got at that club and metal detecting it became something I wanted to learn about and discover more. He told me about his yearly membership and how he would go to these meetings where there presentations, raffles and games. I think he won a Standing Liberty Silver Dollar there before. His favorite part was the giant yard they had in the back. I think he said that once a month they would hide coins(pennies, dimes, and quarters mostly) in the back. They would let everyone in attendence go search for them. They did put about 3-5 rare coins to the lucky finders. I think someone would want to learn about this subject because it is a neat and growing hobbie, that pays... literally (although the last time I went it was only 5 pennies). I think they would need to know what entailed in the group meetings and the atmosphere involved.

My next idea was to write about my fathers college graduation. I think this would be interesting to write about because there could be so many ways that I could relate to (hoping i graduate in may!). I want to be able to understand the impact of his family at the time. I know he was married and I know that they had one or possibly 2 children when he graduated. I think that people would want to learn about this story because it is very applicable to anyones situation that is currently in school. It would be interesting to see someone elses perspective on that evening. I think that someone would need to the class size, the major, and the impact that it had on his family.

My final possible topic I had while brainstorming was writing about a particular timeframe when my mom was painting in school. She had about six months when she was producing several paintings. They were very quality paintings and she had real talent. I am mad that she used the excuse of having a family to stop religously painting. As a side note I have made her a bargain/bet and she must begin painting again give me one as a Christmas present. I think that her story would be a great way to write about painting and art culture. I have always had a fascination for it and if I had even a sliver of her talent I might have pursed that. I think that anyone that has that same love for art would also want to learn about an aspiring artist. I think that someone would need to know about the work entailed, the competition, the hours put into her art, and possibly the financing. I might possibly show some paintings on here if I can dig up some old photos.

My other ideas

Okay, so as promised here are the other two ideas I have about the student design project that is cultural. The first came because of the stories that I have always heard of my great grandfather Cot (he was called Cot because of his cotton white hair). He lived and raised his family in Heber City, Utah. At the time things were tough and he brought in a lot of food from hunting and fishing. But the part that is the most fascinating to me of what I have been told is how else he brought in money. Apparently he made is own fish fly to go and catch fish. He became so skilled that he was able to make many and sell them to people. I find his whole lifestyle of providing for family fascinating and I think it depicts culture. There must have been many like him doing the same type of thing, hunting, fishing, etc. I espicially want to discover what it was like living during that time period and I think that right now I have one of the greatest resources available, my great grandmother is still alive and it would be great to get her perspective on life at the time and how he used fly fishing and tying flys to provide.

My other idea resolves around diabetes. My father had diabetes almost all of his life and i can remember the difference it made in our life and impact. I believe it has a lot of culture and it is clearly seen in the book that he started writing about living with diabetes. My first thoughts are of course initially how this impacted me. I only had sugar free koolaide growing up along with sugar free jello. What I want to write about is how this affected a young child life. He was only eight I believe and I would like to know what that must have been like for him, my grandfather and grandmother, and aunts and uncles. I am sure there are others that are in his situation and writing something about this might be able to apply to quite a few different individuals. Okay, well there will be more on this later if I choose it, but this is what I am currently thinking.

My Idea of Student Designed Project: Beatlemania

I must say that this is difficult to pick just one thing... I guess that is why I am brainstorming and why I am writing this blog entry. There will probably be 2 or 3 entries with other possibilities. While trying to brainstorm ideas for a project of family that includes culture I immediately, as with my other posts, thought of the Beatles. My father, an avid Beatles fan, passed some of that culture on to me. I would like to research more into that time period. What it must have been like to be in the middle of Beatlemania. I especially want to find out what it was like for my father. Now of course I cannot ask him directly, but I will be able to find out the things that went on through grandparents, my mother, aunts and uncles. I think it is quite fascinating because we have always had memorabilia, songs playing, Beatles trivia in our home. (I also did one of my high school research papers on the Paul death hoax). I think the best audience for this is someone that has felt the impact of Beatlemania. This can be either someone that lived through it directly or someone like me. I would like to explore the concerts that they performed, such as when they were on the Ed Sullivan show. Or there is the concert on the roof at the apple corp. studio in London. There is so much culture here that I would like to learn and write about.

Putting my pen to paper.

My writing process consists of gathering information and then finding a way to make myself put thoghts down on paper. Once I have my fingers rolling I will just keep typing. Often this means that I will not use half of what I write, but at least i can use the other half. I will then read over my first draft to see the key ideas that need further explanation and the ideas that make the paper strong. Once I have determined what to keep and what to toss, I make more drafts. This chisel at my rough ideas to make it into a more suitable paper.

My weakness as a writer is wordiness. I have written papers where I have thrown out almost two pages of writing because it wordy information that was not needed. This is one of the areas I need improvement on, which will drastically strengthen my writing. I also have room for improvement with my grammar. I occasionally make these mistakes and I am upset every time that I do.

It is difficult to determine my exact strength with writing. I am a science major so I have never boasted of my writing. However, I feel that because I have never been the greatest at writing I have developed a strong habit of revising my drafts. The best paper I have ever written must have had more than ten drafts. The reason I call this a strength is because it requires diligence to revise a paper that many times. It is a strength to avoid the high school routine of writing the paper the night before it is due.

From the reading I learned how important it is to just start writing. It is natural to find things to do that are not writing, but if I want to make any progress I need to focus on starting. From reading the insite material I realized how important it is to understand the genre. This will shape the convention of my writing to tailor it to the readers.