Entry 6: Research

It is Big Ten Season. Penn State is playing an average squad from Chicago, Northwestern University. NU is not that great of a team, but they are good enough to keep the game close and make it exciting. Penn State is a good team this year, closing in on their first NCAA tournament appearance in 10 years. So, the crowd was filling the stands in support of their finally good basketball team. Well, not really. I walk in 20 minutes before tip, and I can pick practically any seat I want. The older season ticket holders have found their seats, but there isn't much more than that. The Bryce Jordan Center feels cold and empty. A sea of blue can be seen, but not from fans shirts, but from the color of the fan-less seats. A black curtain is covering half of the upper deck, as those tickets will not be sold due to no interest. Closer to the game, the walk up ticket buyers start to fill in the stands and it starts to look a little but better. But, the student section is the main concern. The student section is split into two sections. One section that is parallel to the teams benches, and it goes back about 15 rows with standing room in the front as well. The other section is behind the hoop, and it covers all rows in that section except for the upper deck. This section never fills, and on this day it is filled about five rows out of 40 or 50. The other section has the standing room filled and then some students in the seats. A poor showing again. But why is this? Penn State has a huge student body, yet basketball games can barely attract any. Why?

The first quote I got is from someone like me who went to every game last year and is a Freshman at Penn State this year. "It gets frustrating to go to every game and to keep seeing this empty student section. When you look at other schools, some get huge student crowds, and the atmosphere in those arenas is so good. I just wish we could have that, instead of only filling up for 1 or 2 games a year when people decide to jump on the bandwagon, then PSU loses and they never come back. It sucks"

The next quote is from a member of the student section, Ben. He is part of their committee that makes decisions. " We keep trying to spread out interest to others in different ways. Free food and shirts and videos but it still hasn't really caught on. (New head coach) Pat Chambers has done a great job thus far in spreading the news and getting kids interested so we are optimistic that things are getting better."

The last quote is from someone that hasn't been to a game and is a Freshman at PSU. "I haven't heard great things about the team but I know they did pretty good last year so I will probably go to a few games to see what's up. I just don't see myself going to a lot of games because they are during the week and I have lots of things to do on weeknights."

I have do dig up some of the facts as one of the main ones i wanted to use looks to have been taken down from th epenn state website. It said that this year a record number of student tickets have been sold to freshman. So the incoming freshman are excited about the team. It also said that they had sold them with football tickets for the first time, so maybe that is why the sales increased. So those two facts need to be dug up.

http://espn.go.com/blog/collegebasketballnation/post/_/id/23576/some-things-never-change-at-penn-state

This article on ESPN about Penn State talks about the university and how they treat the team poorly. So if they are treated poorly by the higher ups, why should students care.

http://www.gopsusports.com/sports/m-baskbl/spec-rel/040209aaa.html

THis article talks about the year the team won the NIT tournament. 36! buses full of students traveled to new york city to support the team. SO the support is there, maybe success is all the students want?

Entry 5: Party School

The issue that This American Life is discussing is the naming of Penn State as the number one party school in America. They talk about how the drinking at Penn State is hurting students, and the community. First, the students grades and health are being worsened by the amount of drinking they do. Some students can't keep up with their school work after long nights. It is also hurting the community because drunken students can damage property and other people's belongings. And drunken students just create havoc in the surrounding communities.

The audience is people that listen to this program regularly. Their usual audience is middle aged adults, so they try to gear their discussions towards that group. This is why they bring up the topic of students also hurting the communities. Since their listeners aren't students, This American Life had to get their listeners connected. By saying that drunk students were damaging communities, the program was getting their older audience more connected.

The facts they present are mostly from interviews with various members of the community. Residents, policemen, and even pizza delivery guys. They all give insight to what the drunk students actually do, and the damage they cause. The resident said that people pee on their property and pull out road signs. The cop talked about continually getting calls about drunk kids walking into other people's homes and falling asleep in them. The delivery guy also had many stories about hungry drunks.

The conclusion they seem to draw is that from the outside, it looks like the drinking is causing harm, but from the inside people don't seem to mind it. The students love Penn State the way it is and they keep coming back and they keep giving back. So, if everyone loves Penn State the way it is, should they try to change?

They used a lot of dialogue in this piece. I will try to use dialogue in mine, so listening to this did give me some insight into how I could do that. But, I probably will not use as much as this piece did.

I did like listening to it. The amount of interviews they did enabled them to have many interesting and entertaining stories so those were fun to listen to.

Entry 4:Bird by Bird

Reading Bird by Bird was a good experience for me because it was different than anything else I had tried before. People always give you advice on how to be a better writer, but its always boring and hard to put into action. Lamont uses stories and actual life experiences to get her points across. That helped me connect a lot more and I found it easier to use some of her techniques because of the way she presented them. The main one is her advice on the writers block. I have always struggled with getting started and I was excited when I saw she dedicated a whole entire chapter to this very problem. I read her advice on starting from the beginning and I didn't think that writing about something off topic would help me that much. The piece of advice that got me thinking was her letter idea. To write a "letter" to someone describing what you want to write about and how. I like this because if I can get all my ideas on paper and see everything I want to write, it will make a much clearer picture. Seeing everything in front of me will help me piece everything together. Instead of being a jumbled mess in my head. I can see all my ideas together and just start writing about them. When I see all my ideas together, it will be easier to decide their order and meaningfulness. I realized that not knowing how to begin was never my problem, it was not knowing what to begin with.

Entry 3: Bad Teacher

This story is about a writer who wants to make a difference. The writer decides to become a teacher. Not just any teacher, a teacher in the Bronx. The Bronx is known for having bad schools that don't care and students that don't want to learn. The writer tries to turn things around but is told he is wrong and a bad teacher for trying to fix things. IN the end, he can't deal with the idiocy anymore, and leaves the job. The main conflict is between the principal of the school and the narrator. The principal won't let the teacher do anything he wants to do. She shuts down all of his ideas and basically pushes him out the door. That is the resolution. The narrator leaves the school for good.

The point of the story is to educate the reader about the injustices and stupidity that rule this school. But not only this school, schools like it all across the country. The writer wants a change to occur. It is almost a calling for someone out there to try to do something. The writer tried and failed, and now they are asking if anyone out there thinks they can do better.

There are some writing techniques used that I found interesting and helpful. One that this writer uses really well is dialogue. There is tons of dialogue in this piece and it really keeps it entertaining and interesting. The writer uses it very well in that they are short but informative conversations. There is always a point to the dialogue, it is never unnecessary. Another thing I like is that he got the reader on his side. It may sound dumb, but I think it is really important to this story to have the reader on your side. If the readers liked what the principal did or didn't think anything was wrong, then the whole point to the story is lost. He did a good job of painting the picture and showing us just how terrible the educational system was. I also liked the chapter breaks that were used. To introduce you to a new scene, the writer made "chapters". Just small titles at the beginning of the scene to show that you were starting on something new and important. I don't know if I can use these for my memoir because the style conflicts with it, but I will remember it for the future.