Script Draft

JAMES MARTIN: The Student Recreation Complex at Arizona State University contains many different tools and resources to help its users stay physically fit.  The SRC has become one of the most popular places on campus, which can cause it to become somewhat overcrowded at times. That makes the plans that ASU has created for this building very significant.  ASU plans on expanding the Student Recreation Complex helping it to become a little more convenient for the students and members that use the facility. 

UNIDENTIFIED STUDENT #1: The biggest problem is that this place gets too crowded during the afternoons. 

JAMES MARTIN: The expansion plans for the Student Recreation Complex has great significance to ASU, due to the fact that it is one of the most popular and most commonly used facilities on campus.  These plans can make the SRC more convenient for the students by providing them with larger space for enhanced safety, as well as more equipment.  As two of the interviewees said

UNIDENTIFIED STUDENT: I’ve taken my turn waiting in line for the stair masters before.  Today is actually a slower day, believe it or not.

JAMES MARTIN: This was the only signs of complaints that arose with the SRC during these interviews, which in turn means that Arizona State University is listening to its students.  It shows that ASU wants to make improvements to keep its students happy. 

UNIDENTIFIED STUDENT #1: Yeah, I mean they came up with the expansion plans, right? I think that means they are doing a good job at listening to all of us.

JAMES MARTIN: When speaking with another student I learned that this building contains some features that many students don’t know of.

UNIDENTIFIED STUDENT #2: I am going to rent some equipment for racquetball to play with some friends of mine.

JAMES MARTIN: This shows how the SRC is tied in with many different things, anywhere from renting racquetball equipment to sponsoring the intramural sports leagues.  I then asked if the student had or was currently participated in any intramural sports leagues.

UNIDENTIFIED STUDENT #2: Yeah, I use the weight room like three to fives a week and they usually have personal trainers on hand if someone needs one.

JAMES MARTIN: A great addition to the SRC is the personal training that can be acquired by its students.  This can be good help to those that struggle with exercise.

UNIDENTIFIED STUDENT #2: No, but I think it sounds like a lot of fun and some friends of mine plan on getting involved sometime. 

JAMES MARTIN: The key words here are “getting involved” and that is what the SRC is built around.  ASU created the SRC to help take some stress of students and get them out of their daily lives.  I later met up with student employee, Kayla Johns, who gave me her perspective on the SRC and its expansion plans.

JAMES MARTIN & KAYLA JOHNS: (On Tuesday I will be interviewing Kayla Johns, a student employed at the SRC, who will be giving me her input and thoughts on the building and its expansion plans.  This will be the largest portion of the interview and analysis due to her direct connection with the SRC and its surroundings.)

JAMES MARTIN: Drawing everything together, the significance of the SRC and its expansion plans comes entirely from the students themselves.  Many students spoke out to ASU saying that the SRC was becoming overly crowded for large portions of the day.  If this was not a significant ordeal the students would not have spoken out.  As a result, the SRC will only become more significant to the campus as more students begin to use it for its new found space and convenience.

ASU Reacts: Swift

Taylor Swift released her new album, Red, on October 22, 2012.  Upon her album’s release 1.2 million copies were sold throughout the first week.  This accounted for the highest first-week sales over the past ten years, which is a great achievement in itself.  However, Taylor did something remarkable with the way in which she released Red to her fans.  Taylor took it upon herself to release her album in a less than traditional way this time around.  She chose to release her album without using Spotify like most artists do as a way of advertisement.

“I think Taylor Swift is a very talented artist.  She obviously proves it when every time she releases a new album her numbers are sky high.  According to the numbers Swift just sold 1.2 million copies in the first week of being released.  It does not seem to me like Taylor needs Spotify anymore as she is already one of the most popular artists out there,” says Jessada.

The “Secret Genius” to Taylor’s plan was that she does not need the advertisement to obtain her fan’s love and faithfulness, as she has already acquired and held it in the past.  Jessada states that he believes Taylor Swift is almost too popular for Spotify or that she does not need to use it anymore due to the fact that fan’s trust her enough to buy her music even without the use of advertisement.  Jessada even reverts back to the data astonished by the number of copies she sold.  Taylor is truly an amazing artist that deserves her popularity. 

Genre Analysis: The Secret Genius of Taylor Swift

After reading and listening to several audio essays posted on NPR, I came across a very interesting piece.  The NPR story “The Secret Genius of TaylorSwift” is a very informative review containing a strain of several short interviews, and in my perspective, somewhat of and advertisement for the popular Taylor Swift.  This report tells of Taylor Swift’s new album Red and uses many detailed examples and arguments that tell why and how Taylor sold so many copies of her new album without the use Spotify.  The reporter states “Taylor Swift’s new album, Red, sold more than 1.2 million albums in its first week.”  The audio essay uses specific factual data with numbers, names, and illustrates a photo.  This reporter also interviews several people in the audio portion of the story “Taylor already has so many fans, that she doesn’t need to have that, like, incentive.”  At this point in the story it seems as if the reporter is trying to help sell Taylor Swift by praising her work and intelligence of the music industry and interviewing several young fans of Taylor’s music. 

Differing from the academic essay and the annotated map, the audio essay contains an audio message along with a written portion.  This story has also incorporated interviews from several different people that the other projects never accounted for.  This audio essay must use specific detail and have a point to get across.  The biggest difference which I saw between this audio essay and the other two projects, other than the audio input, were the arguments that played a major role in projects one and two.  “The Secret Genius of Taylor Swift” contained almost no argument whatsoever and seemed more like a story, in my eyes.

Although the audio essay has some strong differences from the other two projects, it also has some resemblances with the academic essay and the annotated map as well.  In the story I read and listened to from NPR, the reporter analyzed the way in which Taylor bypassed the Spotify.  The reporter then began to evaluate the reasons why Taylor bypassed Spotify and was so successful even after bypassing an important thing such as Spotify.  I feel that the audio essay is a combination of the academic essay and annotated map with the addition of an audio portion, but is much more in depth than the previous projects.  This being the biggest project of the semester for this class, it will take a lot of time and effort to complete a well written and recorded paper.

I am not sure at what I will be doing in my third project for English as I have not put any effort into researching my interests towards this subject.

Project 2 Reflection: Resources Useful

Project two was a very time consuming assignment in which I put much effort.  Unlike project one, I feel that I did good job at analyzing and evaluating the area that I chose.  In project one I was being more descriptive and wrote my paper like it was a brochure for the building.   However, in this paper I did more critiquing, in order to evaluate, and I asked myself questions, in order to analyze. 

The word length for this project was very hard for me to reach at first.  For my draft I wrote a total of two thousand twenty-nine words and had a lot of filler space.  However, after the peer review and getting some feedback from professor Linthicum I was able to exceed the two thousand word minimum easily.  The information and hints that I obtained from my classmates and professor were very helpful and helped to look at the place from a different view.

Also, a big step for me in improvement in my writing and in the English class as a whole was attending several workshops and getting help from the writing center.  Before attending the workshop I had no idea how to organize my paper with the four annotations and synopsis, but I later learned how to do it and how my professor wanted it through a blog.  I was showed a link that took me to an example blog in which every element of the paper had been laid out.  Then, after attending the writing center, I was showed some flaws in my work and given ways to fix them along with many helpful tips for future writings.  The use of my resources, which I had never done in the past, was of overwhelming help.  

I felt like I had a good evaluation throughout my synopsis.  I had several different criteria in which I set for a good fitness center to meet and then explained how the Student Recreation Complex met them.  Now saying that, I do believe my paper still could have been improved and/or tweaked resulting in a better outcome.  Nonetheless, I feel a lot better about the way I wrote in project two than the way I wrote in project one. 

I am nit totally sure what I will be doing after college but this project has taught me a lot.  I never knew about the steps of evaluation that a paper needed to include when writing an evaluation.  I learned of the criteria and how to organize it in a paper as well as how rigorous these criteria needed to be.  At some point this new found knowledge will come in handy whether it be applying for a job, writing a review, or even critiquing an employees work in the future.