Dear President-Elect Obama,

Congratulations on winning the election! Now that the easy part is over, it’s time for you to deal with the country. It’s not in good shape right now but it’s all we have. I just hope that you can live up to everyone’s expectations. Your ascension to the White House has been very well documented and highly anticipated.  It would be very disappointing if yours is not an improvement from the current regime. The most important thing is that you do what you say you are going to do. We don’t need someone to lie to us or to tell us it’s ok. We need someone who can inspire us to move forward as a nation. You need to fix the economy and restore economic security. We picked you, so now make it worth our while.

Sincerely,

To me the Phillies winning is not really that big of a deal but it is a big deal to the city. It was really cool because we haven’t won in a long time. I’m not a sports fan but I have lived in Philly my whole life so it was still pretty exciting.

 What is your ILP (describe the organization/project)?

My ILP organization is Drexel University and the Drexel Writing Center. At Drexel University I take a college class a quarter for real college credit. At the Writing Center college students help us learn more about writing.

What have you done?

    I have taken three classes at Drexel and this is when most of my learning occurs. These classes covered topics such as art history, disease, and history. At the writing center we also wrote a letter to a senator about something that mattered to us. All in all I done a lot this year.

What have you learned?

-During my first class I learned all about diseases and how they shape history.
-In my second class I learned all about world history, which was also very interesting.
-The last class that I took was all about art history and symbolism and was by far my favorite. I also learned a lot about art and culture at the Drexel Writing Center.
    
What were your expectations for your ILP?
    
I did not have and expectations except that it would be hard.

How did these expectations meet with what you have accomplished?
    
The classes were hard at times but easy at others.

How does your ILP connect with your future career plans?

My ILP did not connect with my future career plans .

How does your ILP connect to learning at SLA?

My ILP does not connect to my learning al SLA.

How does your ILP connect/affect your ILP plans next year?
    
IT does not.

What are you taking with you from your ILP experience?

College Credit
What advice do you have for someone else completing a similar ILP so that they can have a positive experience?

-work really hard
-pay attention and take notes.
-ask questions

    So far my team has done a lot. I was scared for a while about how long it would take, but it went a lot better then expected. I also thought that there would be the problem of how un-uniform the writing would be, but again it was not as bad as I thought. It was my immense pleasure to make sure that everyone was doing his part. One member of the group had some technical difficulties that were very annoying but were eventually overcome. Now I just have to hope that everyone does his recording part!

    The actual task of compressing the text was much harder than I thought. Before I began, I was afraid that I would compress the text too much, but that turned out to be the least of my problems. I found that my part was actually rather long. My group’s script turned out to be a good length so it worked out well. The best method that I found to condense was to look at the end and beginning of each block of text and take important lines from those sections. This was my method with not only each block of text but also each scene. Through condensing I am also learning a lot about the characters in this play.

    Again, one thing that I am feeling so strongly is that Iago is so big. He seems to be everywhere. He is popping up in many scenes and just turning people’s minds to his will. About Othello, I am really seeing how crazy he is going. When I have to read each line carefully I realize how violent he is becoming. I am only beginning to notice how little Cassio is in the play. At first he seemed so big, but now it seems that his part is minor. Hopefully I’ll have good insight on Brabantio, Cassio, and Lodovico.    

    For in this project, we have not done much except pick groups and begin to condense Othello. So far, the group dynamic is going pretty well. I am the team manager and Gracie is the production manager. It seems to be going much better than I thought it would. The hardest thing, by far, has been to condense the text without taking away from the meaning. I am afraid that my condensed text is too long. I will have to revise it to shorten it later.  All in all, it is very time consuming but not incredible challenging.

    Through this I am learning more about the characters than I knew before. In my study of manipulation, I am seeing Iago in a whole new light. I never realized how prominent he was until I found myself seeking out his lines. Another thing that I am starting to realize is that Cassio is not as innocent as I once thought. He really is quite mean to Bianca. Whether she is a whore or not, Cassio is not shy of calling her such. I have one more scene to condense and it will be interesting to see what else I learn.

Hmm… My learning. Well right now I’m learning about Othello and finding it to be actually fun. It’s my favorite Shakespeare play though it does get unpleasant at the end. Right now we’re analyzing the characters and events in Othello, which is very important because these people are very complicated. It’s really like a huge Elizabethan soap opera. Does she really love him? Did he really do that? Not to mention lots of Oh-My-Goshes. I think that’s what makes it so easy to relate to, the themes are timeless. There will always be jealousy, that’s not going to change. So, props to Chase for making the play even more interesting. The activities that we have been doing have just highlighted all of these themes. So far it looks like my learning about Othello will have a happier ending then that book itself.

    Ok, the biggest pain in the butt about this project is the change agent. Actually that part might be the only pain in the butt. I admit that I wasn’t proactive about following up with my change agent after I received lees-than-helpful email. They have however been very forthcoming with advertisements, which, much to my dismay, are not what I need. So, as I battle my shyness to continue talking to my change agent, I hope that we can keep this going.  

    Well, other than the change agent, things are going very well. I am up to date on all my blogposts and will even be ahead if I submit this early. Now I just have to deal with this whole action plan, and I’m not really sure if the action plan will be a bad thing. But I will need a change agent to show my action plan to, so I better get on the change agent train. All in all this project is going well, and as I finish this post I get one step closer to the end.

    It may not have to do with the entertainment train I’ve been on, but I need a little break from that, so I decided to talk about the seal slaughter. First I sought to gain the basic knowledge about the situation, and just the title of the article, Canada to Cull 275,000 Seals This Year , made me think about how many seals that actually is. I was even more shocked when I read this, “Canada has adopted recommendations of the Independent Veterinarians Working Group to ensure beyond any possible doubt that a seal is dead before it's skinned." Would that imply that there were seals being skinned alive. If you’re going to do something like that to an animal, you might as well try to cause as little pain to the animal as possible. This article also says that animal rights groups protest this every year, so I thought I’d look at that next.

    The thing that really sets me off is the way the seals are killed. A quote from one site states, “Sealers bludgeon seals with clubs and ‘hakapiks’ (clubs with a metal hook on the end), drag conscious seals across the ice floes with boat hooks.” That does sound very unpleasant, and it’s a shame that there isn’t a more humane way to kill them. The only other plausible option would be to shoot them, but that is discouraged because it damages the valuable fur. While looking through other search results about the seal slaughter, I found an even more disturbing article that details how it is even becoming a sport in Norway. That’s right! Now you can go to Norway and “shoot baby seals.” I can almost understand why it is necessary to control the seal population, but making it a sport is not the way to go about it.

In my next blog entry I will either compare opposing viewpoints or think of something else.

I admit that up to this point my blog entries may have seemed somewhat one-sided, but that stops now. This time I am looking at both sides on the issue of circuses. I have consulted an anti circus website and the website of one of the biggest circuses in the world, Ringling Brothers Barnum and Bailey . Evidently these two different groups are not very fond of each other, and each mentions how the other is in the wrong. Contrary to my expectations, Ringling Brothers Barnum and Bailey is very forthcoming with information on how they treat their animals. On their website is a seven page PDF file about their animal treatment and Elephant conservation effort. I’m sure that both sites are biased, but I’ll try to pick through to find the truth.

So I started picking. The first difference I saw was about the naturalness or unnaturalness of the tricks that animals, in particular elephants, perform. On the Ringling Brothers page it says that the tricks their animals perform are similar to what they do in their natural habitats. However, the PETA anti circus site says, ”The fact is, animals do not naturally ride bicycles, stand on their heads, balance on balls, or jump through rings of fire.” This is a tough one to call. The idea of animals playing in their natural environment sounds very plausible, but I think it can also be assumed that there are no fiery rings in the wild. I do have to say that if Ringling Brothers Circus is telling the truth, then they are being very open about their practices to even answer the question, “Do you mistreat your animals?” They clearly answer, no we don’t, but the PETA site clearly says, yes they do. These two sites contradict each other on every point, so I now give up on trying to see who is telling the truth. Can you tell?

    Now this project is just downright hard. The elevator pitch is not that bad, but the whole idea of change agents it being a huge pain. My change agent replied to me, but it was not a very helpful email, and I’m a little to shy to reply. I know that I will have to reply soon in order to stay in touch, and I think I’ll ask if they can give me with another person’s phone number. The best way to get in contact is to call but that also takes a lot of guts. So, I’ll try to work up some nerve over spring break.