Tag Archive for: instructor-none-2

Hello classmates, for those of you that don’t know me my name is Lauren Thomas. I live in Santa Barbara and currently work at Cottage Hospital on the Telemetry floor as an RN. I started at Cottage Hospital almost a year ago and went through their new grad program, which was a wonderful experience! I’m currently working nights but I’m hoping I get to switch to the day shift soon as I miss my sleep!

I finished my ADN at Mount St. Mary’s College in Los Angeles because the waitlist for the RN program in Santa Barbara was over 4 years long. I lived in a cute “hipster” part of town called Los Feliz and enjoyed hiking to Griffith Park as well as frequenting the many restaurants in the area. I chose to continue my education at CSUCI because I believed that I needed to obtain a BSN in order to stay current in the nursing profession. This as been a challenge being a new nurse on the night shift and keeping up with school, but it’s something I know I’ll appreciate later into my career.

In my free time I enjoy spending time with my family and friends. I love being outdoors, whether it’s running on the beach, hiking the many trails of Santa Barbara, or enjoying a glass of wine in Santa Ynez Valley. I love animals and have Persian kitty at home who keeps me company. When I’m done with the BSN program my goals are to travel more, I’m thinking Bali might be a good idea when I graduate!

What is a genre? This is the question which i will explain further and answer in project 3. Most people have relatively the same idea of what they believe a genre is, which is a classification of movies or music. Such as country music or action movies, yet there is a much different meaning of the word genre’s when it comes to discourse communities.

Genres are around us everyday, new and reoccurring ones. As Dirk states, “when something new happens that requires a response, someone must create that first response…genres develop because they respond appropriately to situations that people encounter repeatedly.” Dirk continues to go on to explain how situations that are experienced for the first time create the setting for the genre. Such as the first state of the union given by George Washington. He was the first one to give such a speech and had no outline to go by, but since then there have been many state of the unions with similar layouts to the first.

Dirk goes on to explain the importance of genres by stating, “knowing what a genre is used for can help people to accomplish goals, whether that goal be getting a job by knowing how to write a stellar resume, winning  a person’s heart by writing a romantic love letter, or getting into college by writing an effective personal statement”. This further explains the necessity to know what the matter at hand is, and there will a genre to go along with it. And if there is not, then you, yourself are going to create the outcome and layout of that specific genre.

Now that we have the notion and idea of what a genre is, I will go ahead and discuss the different genres that take place within my local Santa Barbara surfing discourse community. And the first of that would be the local weather forecast on 17ft.com. The website tells you the forecast for the week in many different categories, from swell height, peak period, average period, swell direction, tide, and detailed graphs and maps of the region. And the projections are reliable, they have their projected analysis in red and the actual in blue. In the screenshot below you can see the accuracy and detail.

Not only is it a good place to check the report and swell, but not anyone can read the buoys and know the best spots to surf. That is where local knowledge comes in, anyone can see that the waves are coming in at 6ft at 13 seconds with a little south wind but not everyone knows where the best spot in Santa Barbara county is the best to surf in these conditions.

Another local source of information and reading for the surfing community in Santa Barbara would be Bliss Magazine, they are free at most of the local surf shops. And they cover everything form local up and coming talent to the latest events and tour info. That is the WSL tour events, world surfing league. Speaking of which the next event that is coming up is the premier of the new Volcom surf movie, Psychic Migrations on Sept 17th down in Newport. But not only is it a local news source for the surfing community it also gives local artists a chance to showcase their work by having a new artist featured in each magazine.

It not only appeals to males either, it often times showcases new bikini lines and female surfers that are changing the way we look at the sport.

Another genre within the surfing community would be Surfing Mag and Surfer Mag, they are international and cover the latest events and happenings of the surf community. They have articles that everyone can relate to about traveling, girls and just life in general. Not only that but they have articles of surf destinations that many of us have never even heard of, getting surfers all around the globe to travel there, meet and advocate the global surfing community as a whole.

Sources:

Dirk, Kerry. “Navigating Genres.” Writing Spaces: Readings on Writing. Eds. Charles Lowe and Pavel Zemliansky. Parlor Press, 2010. 249-262.

“Santa Barbara Surf Report.” Santa Barbara Surf Report.m N.p., n.d. Web. 19 Aug. 2015.

“It Works | SURFER Magazine.” SURFER Magazine. N.p., 31 Dec. 2013. Web. 04 Sept. 2015.

“A Discussion on Style.” Surfingthemag.com. N.p., n.d. Web. 29 Aug. 2015.

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History always seemed like a dull or boring subject, until I did research on past letters to Congressman Bizz Johnson during the Vietnam War. I read a total of 38 letters addressed to the Congressman, all during the year 1970. The average “push” in all the letters was to dissolve the Vietnam War and bring our troops home. My most surprising discovery upon these letters was that about 95% of them were written by women, just common household, child bearing women. I was so taken aback because in that time period women did not have the same rights as men to voice their opinions, especially in politics.

The most interesting letter I came across was from a young Californian  woman named Nola Houlgate. Like her I’m a teenager with younger brothers and a responsibility to look out for them. She begins her letter by informing Johnson that she opposes the “‘conflict”‘ in Vietnam and states that she feels that the government is lying to American citizens. Nola then goes on to say that in our country (US) it is illegal to murder people, but our people are killing thousands. One of her arguments in the letter that I personally agree with is, “Who is the government to decide who shall kill and be killed?”. It interests me that a 17 year old girl has the courage to write her political views to a Congressman, but these letters foreshadow the upcoming battle for women in that time period.

It has recently occurred to me by looking upon past wars that there is always a big push or movement for a specific group of people’s rights after a war. So in the 70s’ the second wave of feminism started to progress, mainly with issues involving inequality in the workplace. Women pushed for rights such as: equal pay among men and women, non-discrimination laws during the hiring process, and total gender equality. Reading the all the letters from the women brought me to the conclusion that women were taking charge and voicing their opinions of the war so they could also make a stand for their civil rights. Thus being said women were mostly the ones losing their husbands, sons, and brothers to the war, which forced them to take over the mens jobs.

Sources:

• http://www.workforce.com/articles/the-women-s-movement-in-the-70s-today-you-ve-come-a-long-way-but
• CSU Channel Islands Bizz Johnson collection

The course of the Vietnam War was reasonably stable in the beginning. With the Red Scare and the war against communism in effect, the initial periods of the war went without much question from the people. Later into the war, however — particularly between the years 1967 – 1971 — due to a mass amount of casualties on the side of the United States and an abhorrence for death the people began speaking out against the government, as noted in these letters to California congressman Harold “Bizz” T. Johnson. 

Though, that’s not to say that everyone was entirely ready to pull out of the war, including the congressman. Politics was still a game, and some of the people wished to maintain a strong stance against the dreaded force of communism.

Though it would come to pass, as the decade turned to the 1970’s, that it was a wiser move for government officials to stand by the action of pulling out. The letters speaking out for the war had grown quite numerous by 1971. People protested about the senseless death, and women and children pleaded for the men to come home before there wasn’t an opportunity for those of a young age to meet their fathers for the first time.  At the beginning of 1973 in January officials from both the United States and Vietnam met in Paris to sign a peace treaty. A more extensive article covering the specifics of that can be found here. That was a more official mark for the end of the war, finalizing in 1975 when the last of the American troops were lifted out of Vietnam; however, the true pivotal point was the beginning of the decade when the people vehemently spoke out. Though the question is still posed that if the government hadn’t been so lax with the voice of the people, then perhaps the tragedy and blunder of the Vietnam War would have been lessened.