The following works were done during the fall and winter of 2004 for Prof. Stephen Swartz and his English 202 class.  Included are my literacy autobiography, a survey that I conducted, a paper dealing with research about the fast food industry, another survey, and a journal of my progress for the second survey.

            The first page on this site is my literacy autobiography; a paper all about me and my trepidations with reading and writing through my life.  Writing my literacy autobiography, which is titled “Un-Illiterate,” was an enjoyable experience.  I took time to find many of my old writings and read them.  I then thought back to what steps I took while writing them.  Some of my writing processes stood out in my mind, and probably will for a long time – these are the papers that I wrote about.  Reading the comments that I was given by teachers was also enjoyable.  Thinking about it, but without reading it, I believe that my literacy autobiography is a fairly decent paper, which outlined well my experiences and my back story with literacy.

            The second page on this site contains my first survey project.  I did this project to see how different groups/cultures of people deal with their medical care and health in general.  Truthfully, I was not interested in this topic.  The only reason behind me coming up with the idea and carrying it out was that my mother works in a doctors office, and I was looking for easiness of information gathering over interest in the subject.  I think that my disinterest in the subject is evident in the paper.  I did not enjoy writing it, and the end result is a dry read full of repetitive fact spewing.  After trying to add a creative touch to the paper, I ended up giving up, and that’s how the paper is now.  Feel free to take a look yourself, maybe you’ll see it different?

            After the first survey project comes the bibliographic project handout.  I felt that this was an easy little assignment, which dealt with old information of citation and researching through books to find information.  This was an entertaining project with the group work, and getting to know my group mates was also enjoyable.

            The final page on this site contains my final project, and its research journal.  I did my final project with the idea of finding a connection between extreme liberalism/conservatism and general knowledge.  I hypothesized that the more extreme a person thought they were, the more general knowledge trivia questions they would get wrong.

            I came up with this project idea because I deal with a lot of “crazy” people where I work.  I would say that anyone who works retail could vouch of numerous ignorant people who come about, in my case during a heated election.  I often found myself stopping and laughing at some of these people at different times during the months leading up to the election.  One way or another, two people with differing opinions would always find each other in the middle of my store and they would have a nice, loud argument over the direction of the country and who should be president.  In my eyes, these people who argued, in a pet store none-the-less, usually did not seem too smart, and they held very far out philosophies.  From seeing these types of people, I wondered if I just saw random “wackos” or if that was a universal case.

Included with the final project is a research journal.  This just outlines what I did with my paper and when I did it.  Please, feel free to read my writings, and any comments and suggestions would be helpful.  I thank you for taking the time to read this.