Script Draft:Cost of an Education

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ME: Hello my name is Alexandra Navarro. As a freshmen student in college going to Arizona State University also known as ASU, and attending school in a time where the economy is just coming out of a recession is financially hardening.  With tuition prices increasing  and the price of books and materials rising, going to college is not as cheap as it once was years ago. In the fall of 2008, nonresident, undergraduate tuition and fees was $8,976. That is dramatically less expensive than the $11,489 for tuition for an nonresident undergraduate degree for this fall of 2012 year. These prices don’t even include the prices for living on campus which is another couple thousands added to the tuition just for on campus living. Who would have thought that living off campus would be easier and cheaper option for students. With tuition rising through the years, going to college isn’t as easy as it once was. The rise in the need for scholarships has also dramatically increase along with the number of scholarships offered. Arizona State alone, in the 2011-2012 school year, thousands of students were awarded more than $367 million dollars in scholarships.

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ME: I’m here with Linda Mabe, who’s daughter goes to Arizona State University. As a mother who has a daughter in her first year of college, paying for her education must not be easy.

Interviewee:  yes having my daughter in college during a time where the economy isn’t the easiest. When she was applying for college and filling out the FAFSA report, I was unemployed at the time. This unfortunately did not get her much money from the government because although I claimed as unemployed, my daughter on got one grant. With the one grant which did not cover the tuition and all the fees so along with my portion of the money, my daughter had to take out to loans to pay for the rest. This was just to cover the first year at Arizona state.

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ME: In this economy people are have to either learn to be frugal with their money and be super savers or take a second job if they can even find a first one.

ME: So how now that you have a new job and with the economy the way it is, do you think it will be easier or harder to pay for your daughters second year of college.

Interviewee: It will definitely be somewhat easier to pay for her education. Having a job helps. But what will really help us is the scholarships. Last year when my daughter was applying for college and financial aid, she didn’t know where to look at for scholarships or which ones  to apply for. But since going to ASU, there are tons of resources for her to use to help her with that. To help her decide what scholarships to apply for and to help her on her application.

ME: The recourses that Linda is talking about is of course the undergraduate student advisers are always there to help with anything and to answer any questions.  Also the Arizona State University website has a whole section dedicated to the general scholarships offered by the university and you can also go to the certain college under ASU and look at the scholarships the specific college offers. For example, the Mary Lou Fulton Teachers College offers many scholarships just for the teachers college students.

ME: As a fellow freshmen at Arizona State, I have also spent a lot of my money for university events and other college experiences. Tickets for the big football games, and other activities have also been added expenses.

Interviewee: Tell me about it, my daughter wanted season tickets for the football games, outfits for themed parties and other little things like books and materials. They have added up but they are all apart of that college experience. Luckily, ASU offers a discount for student season tickets for all the sports, and for the materials for her classes, the Apple Store offers a discount on laptops and apps for students. We have also found her books online, and cheaper on sites like amazon. The little discounts really help in the long run.

ME: The whole college experience does cost but in the long run do you think it is worth it? Couldn’t your daughter just not go to college, instead get a job and work her way up to high management, then later maybe go to college? Or instead go to community college?

Interviewee: sure she could have gone to community college but the number of students that drop out of community college is a lot and, the community college wouldn’t have the great professors or the opportunities that the university offers. Plus the community college doesn’t give the real college experience and the freedom for he to grow up that the university would give her.

Me: In this rough economic time, given the choice of a university or community college, even parents choose the university. Arizona State University offers many scholarships to help pay for the tuition. So although in this rough economy and the rise of tuition, Even parents agree that going to Arizona State university is worth the cost.

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ASU React:Earthquakes and Elections

   Hello I am Alexandra Navarro. In an interview I conducted with student Alexxis Munoz earlier this week, when I asked her about the NPR Moring Edition piece called What Earthquakes Can Teach Us About  Elections, where Adam Lichtman makes the connection between political elections and earthquakes. After listening to the piece, Alexxis makes the comment that other listeners had also made that when a political election is close, that when watching the news, the terms “seismic number of voters” and others mentioned in the audio, have been used my people on the news. She also said that she thought it was weird to think of earthquakes determining the elections by a series of unstable and unstable elections in the past.  In the NPR  piece, Lichtman states that the earthquakes can determine the winner of the election by if the economy is “unstable” like the surface of an earthquake than a new, opposing candidate will win. The same if there is a “stable” and good policy that is working, than the current officeholder will keep the position and win the election. This has been a report on my interview on Shankar Vedantam’s What Earthquakes Can Teach Us About Elections.

Genre Analysis:What Earthquakes Can Teach Us About Elections

     What Earthquakes Can Teach Us About Elections

    On NPR's Morning Edition, I listened to a piece by Shankar Vedantam called What Earthquakes Can Teach Us About Elections. In the piece, political historian, Adam Lichtman  is interviewed and asked how it was possible for his prediction of the presidential election winner to be correct, before the election. Lichtman says that geophysics is the answer to the political predictions. Lichtman tells how a lot is actually stollen from the geophysicist. For example: "Tremors of Political Change", "Volcanic Elections", and "Seismic Numbers of Voters". These are terms that are referred to elections by many political analyzers. In the interview, Adam Lichtman also talks about how there are two stages of earthquakes, stability and upheaval. In the elections, when you have stability, that means that the incumbent  will win and when you have an upheaval, the opposing party wins. An example of this is if there is a major foreign policy win, the incumbent will win, but if there is a recession, the upheaval will win. How Adam Lichtman knows all of this is that he has studied elections from 1860-1980 and came up with questions that is 6 of them are answered in a certain way, there will be an earthquake or an upheaval and the opposing opponent will win the election. 

    To analyze this interview we must first ask, "What is the genre?" When you typically think of genre, you usually think of books (fiction or non-fiction) or music (rap, pop, country or house music). But the genre is just what form the reading form takes. Many factors take place when analyzing the genre of this interview. Was the interview formal or informal. In this case, the interview was formal with proper names and titles given and the questions asked. Another part of is the interview was that it was full of evidence which is key when analyzing the piece.  Both the interviewer and the person being interview gave their information and then cited where they got it from. In the case of Adam Lichtman, he told the interviewer where he learned all about geophysics from. Finally, and one of the most important pieces of analysis, is organization. The interview was very organized in the way that a statement would be told and then they would information about that statement so the listeners would understand it. 

     All in all, this was a very good interview on NPR's Morning Edition. It had all the parts that of a good interview when analyzing it. 

Project 2 Reflection: Procrastination

 
    For my English 101 project 2, I only have one word: Procrastination. The guidelines for project 2 were pretty simple; make an annotated map of the ASU campus with a synopsis of 800 words and choose 4 locations on the map and write 300 word on them totaling 2000 words and include a work cited page, and visuals of the location. I choose to do my annotated map on how ASU provides the best for its incoming freshmen. My choice of subject, I thought, was really good, it gave me a lot of options on the four locations which made it pretty easy. Unfortunately I suffer from procrastinationitus (not a certified disease yet). Procrastinating was my ultimate downfall in this paper. It all started with the rough draft. Professor L gave us more than enough time to work on the project and submit the rough draft but the procrastination reared its ugly head and I found my self working on the rough draft right until i submitted it at 11:59. Another problem I had with the paper was getting all the ideas in my head on paper and making my ideas clear. This caused problems with my thesis. I kept getting confused on how i was suppose to incorporate it into the work and how to get an argument on wether it was good/bad had me confused too.  But after the peer reviews of the rough draft, the feedback helped me a little. Something I feel like I did well on would have to be choosing locations and arguing my thesis on them. This allowed me to just state my voice and how I feel. Also another element of this project I feel like I succeeded at would have to be creating a blog that anyone from around the world can look at and understand and know what i am talking about. All in all, I learned from this project that I really need to stop procrastinating. What I  will take from this project that will help me in the future will be to not procrastinate and will help me on other projects that may include a blog. For example, I want to become a high school history teacher, so for one of my lessons, I could create a history blog for my students and create an annotated map of pre WWII europe and write little posts on locations. This will be a lesson plan that I will actually use in my job after i graduate. This project was relatively easier than the first project because it allowed us to be more creative and fun.