Write Stripes

What attracted me to Clemson? Well...1) I got early provisional acceptance to Clemson, so I was guaranteed admission if I applied 2) Clemson is in-state 3) money 4) it was far enough from home while still being close, and most importantly 5) my twin brother had decided to go to USC.
What attracted me to my major? Honestly, I don't really know. I was accepted as an architecture major, switched to undeclared, then declared nutrition during my sophomore year. When I declared nutrition, I had been planning on going on to physical therapy school after graduation, and nutrition met most of the prerequisites for that. I have also been interested in nutrition and exercise and all of that kind of stuff too, which probably helped to sway my decision. I guess I mainly chose it because I had to make some kind of decision. Now that I am no longer going on to physical therapy school and really have no idea of what I am going to do after graduation, I really don't know why I am a nutrition major.
What comes to mind when you think of geology? Honestly when I think of geology, I think of middle school, because that was the last time that I really had any exposure to the earth and physical sciences such as geology.

Next Week's Post #1: (We are changing gears here): 3 questions: What attracted you to Clemson? What attracted you to your major? What comes to mind when you think of Geology? (Individual postings, three questions.)

I think one think I'm having trouble with for this project is narrowing down the information I'm finding on some candidates while trying to dig up opinions from other candidates. I think balancing the information for all candidates so that the site represents all of them in an equal light is a challenge our group as a whole will face. I think it will be especially difficult to narrow down information without misrepresenting the candidates.

For our website I am dealing with the Future Perspectives of Stem Cell Research. It has been very easy to find information for the website because genetics, cloning, and the use of stem cells is of major concern throughout the public. The hardest part of my research has been concentrating on issues I believe will affect the college population, while including other generations. With so much information and touching almost every medical quagmire that society has encountered, stem cell research affords many opportunities in the near future. By comparing present treatments and their lacking charactersitics to the advent of stem cell research I think that I will be able to demonstrate the POSSIBLE solutions to many present-day problems.

For our website I am dealing with the Future Perspectives of Stem Cell Research. It has been very easy to find information for the website because genetics, cloning, and the use of stem cells is of major concern throughout the public. The hardest part of my research has been concentrating on issues I believe will affect the college population, while including other generations. With so much information and touching almost every medical quagmire that society has encountered, stem cell research affords many opportunities in the near future. By comparing present treatments and their lacking charactersitics to the advent of stem cell research I think that I will be able to demonstrate the POSSIBLE solutions to many present-day problems.

I am doing the conservative view of stem cell research. In other words, I am doing George W. Bush's views and actions on stem cell research. I thought that it would be relatively easy to find information on the president and it was. However, Bush has not dealt with stem cell research much since 2001. This is when he passed the laws to limit stem cell research to existing lines. This is the last substantial statement that Bush has made on the subject. I really wanted to find more up to date info that would be pertinent to this election, but so far that is all that I have to go on. I emailed one of the respresentatives of the Bush/Cheney re-election crew, but have not heard back from them yet. This has been with out a doubt the hardest part of this project.

Overall, my job has been fairly easy so far. I didn't have any trouble finding information about the history of social security and I know exactly what I want my page to look like and how to make it navigable. But I guess the hardest part for me is that I am supposed to make my group's website attractive (since I'm the only girl in the group). This, in itself, is not a hard concept; however, I am waiting on the class to decide what the homepage will look like. I want our group's homepage to be consistent with the overall design of everyone's page, so I guess the hard part hasn't occured for me yet.

I think the hardest part of the project for me is trying to fully describe the candidates views on the issue while not loosing the interest of the students. I think it is hard to try and sum up what someone thinks about such a complex issue as stem cell research. It isnt as easy as a yes or no answer. So basically, relating the positions of the candidates without going into so much detail as to lose the interest of the reader is a little difficult. Overall, this is the thing I have found hardest in this project.

The hardest part of this project for me is that there is so much information to sort through and try to condense and try to make sense of. I am part of the War on Iraq group and I had the task of finding out where each candidate stands on the issue of our foreign policy and the war and such, and, not only did I find so much information that I had to read through, I also found it hard to find very many conclusive statements. It seemed to me that the candidate's were all making just general, broad statements about the issue instead of getting down to the specifics of what exactly they would do if they got elected to office. Also, since the War on Iraq isn't a black and white issue, it isn't just voicing an opinion about whether they're for or against it, and since it is currently going on, everything changes from day to day, with new news about it all the time. I think that trying to condense the abundance of information is the hardest part of this project.

The hardest part for me with the project so far has been making sure that I am including everything that is important to explaining what is going on with our foreign relations and why we are under attack from terrorist groups. It is hard to try to include everything but to at the same time keep it easy to navigate and follow so that readers do not get overwhelmed. There is a lot of information and a lot of different attacks to include and it is hard to know what to include and what to leave out.

The hardest part of this project for me, since I am the tech liason, is working together with all the other groups to form some sort of symmetry among the different group websites. Each group is working at their own pace, with different deadlines, so that makes it hard to come together.

First prompt for this week: What is the thing you're having trouble with while working on this projet. (Think broad rather than narrow.) Individual posts this time.

Here are the 3 Commandments from the stem cell research group:
1) Be impartial and unbiased. Many people get turned off because they think people are trying to push their views on them. It is important that the website not become propaganda for certain positions or views.
2) Be creative and include lots of graphics and pictures. The website and advertisement for it should attract attention.
3) Along those lines, have a good blend of visual appeal and written appeal. Have a good balance between focus on the appearance and cool graphics and focus on the written portion. The webpage needs to be interesting enough to cause people to read it, but it is also the actual written information that is the important goal of the project.
- Lauren, Jonathan, Mary, Kim, and Brannon

Here our the three things our group thinks are important:

1) Clear, understandable format...easy to access, follow, and navigate. Simple layouts, navigation bars, and organization of topics are key.
2) Thought-provoking headings and titles...gets the user to continue reading. Most importantly, the language should address the student--make it understandable to them.
3) Pictures and graphics can give the page some life. Plain text gets tiresome after awhile.

Andrew, Suzy, Amy, Cortney, and Sarah

Our group thinks that the three best practices for our website and other groups websites should be to...
(1) maintain parallelism
(2) keep it concise
(3) make it relevant to the audience without interjecting our own opinions
By maintaining parallelism, the website should be easy to follow and our audience should be able to find the information they want. If we keep it concise the viewer will not be overwhelmed by unnecessary information. Also, by not giving our personal opinions and keeping the information relevant, the reader should gain the most from our websites.
-Ashley Carson, Brian Church, Lindsay Green-Barber, Leslie Horn, Erin Pardue

When I asked my friends what turns them off about a candidate, most agreed that they don’t want one that is dishonest. They want a candidate that will take a firm stand on issues and not be wishy-washy in order to spare someone’s feelings that they don’t agree with. Other people didn’t like it when candidates made promises while running for office and then never delivered while holding that office. One person commented that he did not like how Bush seems to not be the brightest candidate with his vocabulary on a fourth grade level. Regarding the way political subjects are reported, many disagreed with the way the media seems to dig up dirt on the candidates. Some of the things reported seem so trivial and not important to the issues, for example, when the media made such a big deal about the Bush girls drinking underage. Students are also turned off about how some media portrayals of the issues and candidates seem to be biased toward a particular party.

Okay, this again is kind of late, but it takes me a while to find all of my friends to ask them anything.

However, my responses were so definitive. Everyone said something about integrity and/or trustworthiness. They want to see a candidate they can believe is telling the truth; most people said they were turned off by dishonesty, fakeness, or two-faced-ness (I don't think that's a word).

Some of my friends digressed, and said that candidates should be topical. That is, they should address issues that are relevant. They're turned off by politicians bringing up relatively insignificant issues for political gain.