Blog 5

Blog 5:

            In Project 2, I plan to accomplish answering my critical question from a different person’s point of view.  My critical question is: what affects young adults decision making? I am going to do a profile on a person I have known for about the past 2 years of my life. I know him decently well but have never really talked about this type of stuff with him.  His name is Beau Reid and he used to play basketball for the Nebraska Cornhuskers. I chose him because I’m currently experiencing having to make good decisions as a young adult and I want the perspective of someone who was an athlete here at the university and is pretty successful in the real world today. I want to know what he did to avoid temptations and what types of tough decisions he faced as a young adult and student athlete. He will shed light on my question because he has seen it all.  Hes probably known other athletes who had problems with decision making that held them back. He has probably had to make some tough decisions in his life to better himself for his future. The aspect of this person I will be studying are his previous life as a student athlete and a young adult, and his current life with his kids and at his work. Ive known beau for about 2 years. I know him to a certain extent.  I only know him because he started dating my moms friend.  The good thing is about him for this project is that I don’t know his job and what he does so I think that will help lead to my critical question of how his decisions may have led to a successful life/lifestyle. I got his number from my dad, called Beau, and set up a time to interview him and observe him. Im going to observe him at his work for about 30 minutes, 15 minutes or so his home life, and 15 minutes of his film to understand how good of an athlete he was.

1.     What is your name and age?

2.     What do you do for a living?

3.     What was it like playing for Nebraska as a basketball player?

4.     From when until when did you play for the Huskers?

5.     Are you still involved in the Nebraska Basketball program?

6.     What were the standards for Nebraska basketball and even Nebraska athletics during your time here?

7.     What was your coach like at the time during which you played?

8.     What were the NCAA rules and regulations like back then and the culture of the NCAA in general?

9.     What pressures did you face in high school and college in regards to partying?

10. Any other pressures? Drugs?

11. What difficulties did you or anyone you know have trouble with the consequences or punishments during your time here?

12. How did you make decisions when you were faced in front of certain temptations?

13. What were the Nebraska Basketball team rules when you were here?

14. What were the rules like for other departments such as football?

15. What was the toughest decision you had to make as a student athlete here at Nebraska?

16. What was the toughest decision you had to make as a young adult in high school?

For this interview, I will be recording with an app I have on my computer. I bought it yesterday for $0.99 on the appstore and it is called lecture recorder.  I tested it yesterday and it works great.

Blog 4

Blog 4:

Part 1:

Summer camp is an example of ethnography because it discusses a group of people attending a summer camp.  They talk about how they cant wait for camp.  They love it so much.  This podcast shows the activities at camp, like camping out in the woods and how they survive in a different type of civilization compared to having shelter and food on hand. It shows the group of peoples willingness to survive. It explains how groups of people love singing, and how they have their own unique songs. It even talks about how certain groups of people at the camp, particularly younger campers, believe in the ghost stories. Even a group of boys at camp all decided to get mohawks and create a Mohawk song.  Some people even say it changes them, in a good way.  “I wouldn’t be who I am it if wasn’t for camp. People base their lives around camp.” This is what David, a counselor of the camp, said.  A song by a group of girls was even made about him because they love him so much. I think the so what of the summer camp podcast is that people are different when I around a group theyre comfortable with. For example, people say they cant wait for camp because they are probably way more comfortable with who they are around because they are all there for the same reason: camp activities and friendships that have lasted a long time through this camp. The batman podcast is an example of a profile because they did tests on 2 certain groups of rats. One of the groups was smart rats and the other group was dumb rats.  Turns out, after studies, “it was not even close. It was so dramatically. The smart rats did 2 times better than the dumb rats, except they were all the same rats. Not dumb and smart.” But it is really a profile because it talks about this blind guys life and how he gets around and lives his life. he can do a bunch of things blind people cant do, but he just learned how to do it on his own. “daniels eyes had to be removed when he was young due to cancer, yet hes the one leading me through this trail on the forest.” The so what of this podcast is to show that even with a disability, you can fend for yourself and become maybe even more equipped, for example, like the tongue clicking in the woods so he knows what is in front of him. We hear from the journalists about how amazing it is that Daniel overcomes his disability and uses it to his advantage.  To Daniel, its normal and no big deal. For the summer camp podcast, the journalist was interested in how the group of people feed off each other and how the interact. The people in the podcast just acted about their normal routine of having fun with their fellow summer campers. The ideas from the podcast that stuck with me is that there are people out there that have it way worse than I do and they would do anything to be in my position yet fight harder than I do to be normal.  I also took from the podcast is recognize the position youre in and be grateful. Be grateful for life and the friends you have and the family you grew up with because you wouldn’t be the amazing person you are today without all those things.

Part 2:

I could do an ethnography on how different people, whether it is race, ethnicity, religion, culture, etc., and how they interact differently under certain circumstances like partying.  I could also do an interview or profile on one of my family friends that played basketball here at the university of Nebraska-lincoln. I choose him because he probably has faced 10 times more pressures than I ever have because rules were way different back then than it is now. i would like to choose a different sports team, like the mens basketball team and the mens football team on the weekends and see the difference of avoidance of pressures or the avoidance of partying. All of these things would shed light on my critical question because they all have different perspectives on how they make their decisions.  For example, the basketball team has less  players than the football team so the football team is harder to regulate for the coaches than the basketball team, so maybe they aren’t worried about the consequences of their actions as much. Beau Reid, the person I want to interview, has been through all this before and I would like to know what the rules were for both the team expectations and the ncaa rules back then.  I could use all this information to determine how many of temptations and pressures over the years have evolved and maybe have become more strict….. or maybe not.  Also, looking up the ncaa rules could help me too because nobody that is a student athlete wants to get in trouble with the ncaa so it could affect their decisions they make, or maybe they don’t care about the rules.

Blog 3

My critical question did not really have any changes to it.  When we passed all the sheets around to see if our question made all the criteria, mine got all smiley faces.  My question was: how can the habits you have today contribute to the accomplishments or consequences of tomorrow? For criteria 1, this is personally meaningful because I try and work as hard as I possibly can to achieve goals for myself.  In criteria 2, it is related to society because many people have good habits and that leads them to great things while some people have poor habits and can wind up in sticky situations. Criteria 3 was about if it had multiple answers and yes there are plenty of answers you could go off this question. For criteria 4, the further questions they wrote on my paper were: How does this affect you? and how do other people relate?  I got a smiley face for criteria 5 for not being too broad. For if it is too specific or not in criteria 6, I received a smiley face. Lastly for criteria 7 on if it contains your value judgment, I also was given a smiley face.

Things that make me mad in today’s world are people that take life for granted. There is some type of party every single night and there are kids that just party way too much for their own good.  However, there are the people that work hard and work toward their goals and that is inspiring. For example, at a local gym back in Omaha, there is this kid who plays basketball who is not very good.  However, he is there every single day to get better at it. He trains harder than just about every kid my age I have ever seen. And all for what? But the thing I realize is when he is done with that type of training, that work ethic isn’t just going to go away.  It is going to translate over to into the real world.

10 possible artifacts:

-       teen drinking

-       teen smoking

-       the tv show survivor (have to work hard to survive in an unpleasant circumstance

-       the tv show who wants to be a millionaire because the prepare for countless hours, even days, just to gain more information about the show

-       the tv show jeopardy because you have to prepare for all the possible information that could be on the show. A girl at my old school actually won teen jeopardy and said she studied forever and that’s hard work.

-       Matthew dellevadova is a good artifact because he was an undrafted free agent in the nba and is now a starter for an nba team in the finals.  He is nowhere near as good as other players but he outworks them all the time.

-       Good or bad grades could be an artifact because it shows how hard you are willing to work in order to receive a better education.

-       A red solo cup is a good artifact because it show the anonymity of what is in the cup of what you could possibly be drinking,

-       Houses dirty from partying

-       Alcohol and pop and beer

My artifact is teen drinking and the red solo cup. This is specific to me because I have people that drink every night when they could’ve been doing something productive. I know people that literally don’t want to do anything but drink alcohol. The red solo cup represents the anonymity of teen drinking. It shows this because nobody knows what could possibly be in the cup, however, we all assume it is alcohol. The idea of teen drinking and the red solo cup are in contrast to each other.  This is because teen drinking is a well known thing that is increasing throughout the teenage population and people are even starting at a younger age, but with a red solo cup, how does anyone tell if teens are drinking or not?  This can relate to me because it is frustrating when I see people around always wanting to party when they could be accomplishing much more. I get it, though. I am not saying people should never drink because it is their choice, but I just think it is getting out of control in regards from where it was 20 years ago to what it is now.  My point is not just to sit here and tell you to never ever drink in your whole life, but what I am trying to say is it can be a distraction. It can get in the way of what you are working toward, whether you believe it or not. That one cheap, little solo cup can get in the way of so many things.  It is cheap, it is easy to get, and everyone can get them. Just don’t let it get in the way of things dreams you want to attain in your lifetime. Don’t let it cause unneeded mayhem in your life because once you can avoid that, you are one step closer to what you want to achieve.

Blog 2

How can the habits you have today contribute to the accomplishments or consequences aligned for tomorrow?  Everyone says they are going to be successful. They say it is a no brainer. Many people talk about success like it is easy. Success is not easy.  Granted there are some people that are going to be successful no matter what, the majority of success is behind a strong work ethic.  To be successful you have to outwork everyone in your way.  People will talk about it, but they never do it.  The habits you have today can lead you one of two ways: success or failure, accomplishments or consequences.  The biggest problem, though, is all the people that say, “Oh, I’ll just do that tomorrow” and then the next day it is the same exact thing. Being a teenager you get to experience it first hand.  There are kids my age that drink every single day, which is a horrible habit to get into. Then in a couple years, if they aren’t successful, they will wonder where they went wrong.  But then there are the kids that are studying on Friday nights instead of going out and partying.  Those kids are ahead of the pack.  People say they want success more than anything in the world, but many fail to see the tomorrow because they are blinded by the temptations of today.  However, just because you work hard doesn’t mean you will automatically be successful, but it does increase your chances of doing so.  Many kids in sports will say “I want to be the best” but they train and workout for 30 minutes a day, and then they go out that night and party with their friends for 4 hours.  Well, that pretty much cancels that 30 minutes from earlier, and they are back to square 1. The beautiful thing, however, is that any day of the week, you can change your habits.  You are in control of your dreams for the future.  If you are questioning whether you have the habits to contribute to success for tomorrow, odds are they are the habits that hold you back from accomplishing so much in this world.  I truly believe every person in this world has a full potential they can reach.  Many people that come from unfortunate, and sometimes even fortunate, circumstances don’t believe that.  They get down on themselves easily and claim they are destined not to be successful.

            I have two favorite quotes.  My first quote is “When you want to succeed as bad as you want to breathe, then you will be successful.” This is a quote from an inspirational speaker I listen to frequently named Eric Thomas.  It brings so many thoughts to my mind about success because people say they want to be successful but don’t want as bad as they say they do.  They just talk of success like it is guaranteed.  My next favorite quote is “Being realistic is the most commonly traveled road to mediocrity.”  This quote is from Will Smith.  This relates to my critical question because if you have dreams for tomorrow, start getting into the right habits.  Every person needs to have unrealistic dreams because that is what keeps people going.  Nothing is impossible, but when someone tells you that something is unrealistic, it makes you think it is impossible, even when it isn’t.  Having dreams about reaching my full potential is what keeps me going.  I do whatever I can today to contribute to my success and dreams for tomorrow.  And even if I feel like I am not going anywhere, I just remember that if I keep outworking everyone in my way, I will be successful.

So are the habits you have today contributing to your success or failure of tomorrow? The great thing is that you get to decide.

note: i just chose a question and wrote instead of brainstorming