Laura m. Green

I can smell the beach and all the smells that come with it. Summer is almost here and I have a couple things left to finish. I think to myself could this really be the end or is this just a dream. I pinch myself and realize I have never gone to sleep. This semester has been a whirlwind of new things for me.  Writing Research and Technology has introduced me to Weebly, Twitterive, Oral history and a Collaborative research project. Never in a million years did I think I would ever be this knowledgeable in all of these new things. The reflective piece is my last piece of the puzzle that needs to fit to make this semester complete.

I am so happy that tomorrow is the day I get to turn in my portfolio. This semester has been very tiring with all the new things we have learned, but very exciting. This is always my favorite time of the semester when I can start crossing things off of my list and know that I am finally done.

For the collaborative project, I think it turned out pretty good. We work on it to change it and get what we wanted out of the project. We used a lot of suggestions from the class to see where we should take it. The biggest help was the professor. He steered us in the right direction and got us moving again.

Now I think I am ready to turn in my website!

Thanks for a great semester and a great class it was so fun!

Now I feel relived things are starting to come together. I can finally smell the summer. This semester has been very challenging. Every time I had something due I felt like all my other classes had something due at the same time. But like all college students do, stay up late and drink a lot of coffee. With finals next week it is a relief for me because I only have one final. (Lucky) Today I have been working on revisions and things that are due next week. I love when I get to cross something off of my list, it feels like a weight is lifted. The only things left to do on this list are revisions and finishing my reflection.

I can’t wait till tomorrow when we get to present because then it will be revision time on the Collaborative research project. We also need another opinion because we are at somewhat of a standstill and we really don’t know how to finish it up. We did get a lot finished on Monday so that was really exciting. The hard part is working around schedules to get together during the last weeks of school. Everyone has a lot to do, so Lindsay Jones and I have changed up our approach. Work on it at home when we have time and then piece each other’s together. That is probably the hardest part of the whole project.

This semester is coming to an end and I’m thankful that I only have a few things to do. Summer please come fast.

Ok this weekend has been really crazy. I am in the National Guard and I have to do one weekend a month and two weeks in the summer. And of course my weekend fall on the week of school that I have so much to do. And of course at drill it was a big deal a lot of higher up people came and were hanging around. In the NG I am a cook and my unit has decided that they are going to do a big cooking competition.  The cooking competition is not a regular competition I have to cook on something know as the Mobile kitchen trailer (MKT). You might be thinking that sounds cool. But I hate to burst your bubble it’s not. So while me and another soldier was cooking for fifty people we had people watching every move we made. It was so STRESSFULL and really annoying. But we got it done and feed everybody. The best accomplishment was that everyone said the food was really good and we did an awesome job. The competition is in July and this and all the drills until July are just practice runs. Hopefully we win because this is like the academy awards for culinary arts in the NG. So that was my weekend which meant no homework at all. So today and the rest of the week is cram time.

I have just finished the outline of our project. I have no idea if it is good enough but I have worked really hard on it to get it where it is. I found out that there is a lot of people who are for high protein diets and a lot who are against. So it’s really hard not to get bias information from these sites. A couple that I thought were really helpful was the WebMd site and the Live strong site. I felt like they were the most honest as well. I feel like the project is never really going to come to an end but the semester is so somehow we have to make it end. There is so much good information about this topic. I hope that it comes together at the end.

Before I begin my last assigned blog post of the semester I have to admit I am overwhelmed.  All of the things that are due can make a person crazy.

Ok now to talk about my collaborative project with Lindsay Jones. I have to say it has been going very well. We have decided that we are running out of time so we need to do some of the project by ourselves and then add the project together at a later time. Because the semester is ending so quickly it is very hard to have the dialogical approach we started with. We have somewhat of a mix. We have split up the work and are currently working on this project separately.

I’m pretty sure the shortness of time left in the semester would be a big struggle. I feel like there is not enough time left. But somehow I hope it all comes together at the end. I feel the collaboration we have will help us get this done without a problem.  The good thing is we agree on pretty much everything which is easier on us and makes the project a lot smoother.  For the interview part of the project one struggle was trying to find an interviewer. We did have the dietician that works at Rowan. But because of our schedules not working together, because she only works on Wednesday, we decided that she was not the right fit for us.

A win I feel like we had was the interview. Even though finding someone was a little bumpy in the beginning. Once we found Stephanie Lasch everything was up hill from there. She was a very good person to interview. She was very helpful and passionate about the subject. She helped us out so much and said if we still need her we could always call her to get extra information. This was a very nice thing. Although we have not used her any further we may have to call her to ask her some simple questions.

I feel like this project will come together soon. I am just waiting for that to happen!

For our oral history interview, Lindsay and I decided to use sound cloud. You can record from your phone, IPad, or computer. I downloaded it on all three devices and tried it out before we conducted the interview. Sound cloud is a very easy program to use. It is very user friendly.

We got to our interviewee’s house. We talk to Stephanie Lasch and explain our project to her. She was very excited about our topic because this was something she is very patient about. The interview started and everything was going well. Stephanie is a fast talker and we saw that we were running short on questions so we decided to add dummy questions in to slow her down. She was really a cool person to interview. She knew how long our interview had to be so she would keep looking at the time and made sure she gave extra examples or interesting facts to fill up some of the time. Stephanie was a very useful resource and said if we need any help later on this topic to not hesitate to call her.

Something that happened after the interview that was not funny at the time but is now funny that we have it saved in every place possible. After the interview was complete sound cloud has two options upload now or save for later. I pushed upload now and forgot I was not connected to the internet. My face got really hot and I was so nervous that we were going to have to do the whole interview again. I would have hated to waste anymore of Stephanie’s time. And just when we thought we had to do the whole thing again because I thought it was lost forever, it popped up. Thank God.  I was so glad that we did not have to do the interview again, because I felt it was so good the first time.

After that little glitch everything else went smooth. It was a very easy process to upload it to weebly. Lindsay and I did the prologue and afterlogue in class. It’s an easier task to write when you can bounce ideas and sentences off of each other to make sure they sound good. I’m very thankful that we found Stephanie Lasch and that she helped us out.

Lindsay Jones and I conducted our interview on Thursday with Stephanie Lash. She is a student at the University of Medicine and Dentistry of New Jersey .  She currently Total Fitness in Williamstown NJ. With her experience at the gym and her University, we asked questions to try and find out what a high protein diet is. The interview went better than expected. We asked all the questions that we needed to find out.

1.      Can you tell me a little about yourself?

2.      What influenced you to do in to this profession?

3.      Can you tell me what a high protein diet is?

4.      Is this type of diet safe?

5.      What are some of the risks associated with this diet?

6.      Why would a person start a high protein diet?

7.      Would you try a high protein diet?

8.      How do these types of diets work?

9.      What are some foods that are considered high protein?

10.   What type of person would you recommend this diet to?

11.  What is a safe age to accomplish this diet?

12.  Working at a gym have you seen any cases where this diet has gone wrong?

13.  If you stopped this diet would there be negative effects to your body?

The interview we found out could take us in too many directions. Topic questions that we have not thought of before the interview. We were very happy that this happened because it opened up more doors and more options. One thing that we thought of was doing a vs. with maybe a fad diet against the protein diet. We are also still trying to figure out what age women we would like to focus on.

We decided to use sound cloud for the interview. We recorded the whole interview and then went to upload the sound and for some reason it was not showing up. We spent at least fifteen minutes trying to figure out where the sound was. Then when we were just about to do the whole interview again, the sound popped up. We were so nervous because we did not want to waste the interviewer’s time again. But it all worked out and we got our sound clip.

 We have so far had a dialogic collaboration for this project. We have done everything together, we have also been emailing each other back and forth to update on the project. We both went to the interviewer’s house and asked the questions.

After Lindsay and I brainstormed possible topics we decided we wanted to do a topic that was not bias. What are the effects of having a high protein diet? And our target was going to be adult men and women.  We email Professor Sabatino Mangini to see if our topic was ok. He informed us that it may be a little too broad and focus of a specific age group. We are still thinking of an age to narrow it to be we are going to limit it to the effect of a high protein diet on women who are active.

            We were also asked to define what a high protein diet is. I found a good slide show explaining a high protein diet.  http://www.webmd.com/diet/ss/slideshow-high-protein-diet.  We have decided to examine the negative and positive effects the diet can have. I also found a video about Protein diets which can help with our project.

We have not done the interview yet, it is scheduled for Thursday. We have so far had a dialogic collaboration for this project. We have done everything together, we have also been emailing each other back and forth to update on the project. We will update the blog post when the interview is done to discuss what we have found and how the interview went.