The topic that my group chose was the media influence certain issues. Are topic is based on gun control and immigration since those are two of the main issues being publicized by the media. Gun control and immigration have been ongoing controversial issues throughout the years. My group and I noticed that these topics have always been a problem, but we realized that these issues are just now being brought to our attention because the media has publicized it into something big.

I care a lot about this topic. Many people such as me are not even concerned about certain issues until they are brought to our attention by the media. What interests me personally is how guns and immigration has been brought up plenty of times before in the past years. Now that there has been a shooting masquerade and a shooting at Sandy Hooks Elementary school, the government now wants to implement a law for gun control.  Since this law can affect the citizens, the media decides that they want to publicize this issue. Now that President Obama is talking about the immigration reform, once again the media wants expand on this issue since it can affect the citizens.

http://www.foxnews.com/politics/2013/01/29/obama-presses-immigration-agenda-as-senators-draft-new-overhaul/
This article is President Obama's immigration reform. I chose this article because immigration has been such a controversial topic over the past years and I would be interested in hearing more about this topic.

http://nbcpolitics.nbcnews.com/_news/2013/01/29/16758482-senate-votes-to-confirm-kerry-as-secretary-of-state?lite
This  article is about Senator or John Kerry being elected as the new Secretary of State. This article caught my attention because I wasn't aware that there was a new person in office for Secretary of State.

http://eatocracy.cnn.com/2013/01/28/gatorade-removes-controversial-ingredient-after-girls-online-petition/?hpt=hp_c3
This article is about Gatorade changing up its formula due to a ingredient that was found. This article really grabbed my attention because I love to drink Gatorade and to see an article about something I like makes me want to read it even more.

If I were to walk up to a group of people at a party and join into their conversation, I would listen to what they are saying about the topic first. Then I would politely say excuse me I couldn’t help but overhear your conversation and begin to expand the topic. More than likely I’m sure they would ask me how I know so much about the topic and where did me get my information from. So then I would explain to them how I received the information and where I got it from. Since technology is so advanced now, I would probably go to my cell phone to pull up information about the topic we are discussing to show them that the information I have is reliable and that I did receive the information from a trusted source.

If the situation was turned around where I’m in the group conversation and a person walks up to add their opinion I would definitely listen to what they have to say. I’m the type of person who likes to listen to everyone’s opinion. As I am listening to the person explain their self about a topic I would try to see if they are being by biased. I would also listen out to see is what their saying sound factual and ask them where they found their information.

I wanted to interview one of my professors but I did not get a chance so I decided to interview my friend’s roommate Karla. Karla is a junior and her major is criminology. Karla started off by telling how the length of her papers have increased greatly.  As a freshman her papers ranged from 2-3 pages, but now they range from 10- 15 pages.  Karla told me that she used the internet for the bulk of her research papers but now her professors require that she use more books in her research. She also said that her professors are very particular about the resources that she uses, therefore her professors provide her with certain websites and books that they would like for her to use.

            One very helpful tip that Karla offered was to get to know my professors on a personal level. She said that getting to know my professor outside of class will help me a lot. Karla told me about a time when she needed a letter of recommendation and she was not sure who to ask. Karla decided that she would ask one of her professors.Karla said that her professor told her that many students ask for letters of recommendations but she often says no because she does not know the students on a personal level to write about them. So I definitely took this tip into consideration.

            In conclusion, interviewing Karla was a great experience and I got a chance to get to her know better. My interview with Karla went very well and the information she gave was very enlightening.She gave me a lot of helpful tips and gave me an insight on what to look for in the future.

My favorite research project was working on my science fair project in high school. It took me about three months to complete the research for this project. The first thing I had to do was come up with a topic to research. I went to Google to find science fair topics. The topic that I decided to use was does evaporation occur faster in sunlight or artificial light. Once I came up with my topic, I bought the materials and began research on my project. This project took me about two and a half months to complete because I had to take data everybody and had to run the experiment twice until all the water was evaporated.

Once I completed my project I turned it in at school and my teacher felt that it was good enough to go to the county fair. I entered my project into the county fair and came in first place for my division. After I won the county fair I went to the state fair in Athens. I didn’t win the state fair, but I enjoyed having the experience.

For this assignment, I decided to apply the evaluation criteria for the coffee science website, http://www.coffeeresearch.org/science/news.htm. The first thing I looked for was advertisement to see if the website was persuading people to buy something, but as I searched through the website I did not find any advertisement. Next I looked for the purpose which was for the pursuit of scientific understanding of coffee so they can provide their audience which is general consumers and professionals with useful info and tips. While browsing this website, I found quite a few sources such as researchers from Davidson College and University of Texas. I also found the author of the website who is Michael Griffin and that most of the research for this website comes from the Coffee Research Institute. The date for this website was 2001-2006. I felt that the date was somewhat outdated and the website needed to be updated. Finally, I looked at the relevancy of the content to see if the information was directed toward the purpose. In my findings, I found out that the information on the website was relevant and if I were doing research on coffee I would probably use this site. Overall I did feel like the coffee science website was stacked up to most of the evaluation criteria. 

About Me

Hi everyone. I am from Decatur, Georgia and have lived there my whole life. I decided to come to University of West Georgia for a few different reasons: inexpensive tuition, the criminology program, and nice sized campus.Other reasons I decided to come to University of West Georgia is because it’s not too close or too far from my home in Decatur and I wanted to be in a different setting. I figured since I've always lived in the city, that it would  be interesting to experience living in rural areas.  My major is criminology. I chose this field of study because I like studying people and their behaviors to figure out why they do what they do and I also enjoy finding the pieces to the puzzle. What I expect to get out of this class is to enhance my library and research skills.