"The End is Near, Yet Still So Far ..."

Hello, everyone.

First, thanks to several of you for inspiring the title of this post in class today. Second, for those of you struggling to focus your issue question, or if you are uncertain that you can actually begin to answer it in an organized fashion, your best options are to:

1. try situating the issue question within your community agency;
2. try orienting your question toward the "leadership" definitions or the "citizenship" frameworks that we took from Blume, Magalhaes, and Battistoni;
3. try "up-drafting" sections from your fieldnotes in order to discover essential focal points (FW 427-441);
   
4. locate 1 or 2 final sources of information, either from academic archives or from community-based archives.

Finally, it's a busy time, so I thought you might appreciate some reminders of what is ahead for us in the next couple of weeks:

4/7 -- Final blog posts due!

4/7 -- Lou Malcomb is leading an optional information session on finding, interpreting, and treating statistics as "sources" for community research and writing at Wells Library Information Cluster #1. She will also be on hand to provide individual assistance if you are in search of specialized or unique sources for either your Public Document Project or your "Big" Ethnographic Essay. The session is optional, but I highly encourage you to attend.

4/12-4/14 -- No class next week, so that we can have one-on-one conferences on your "Big" Ethnographic Essay. Please use this time well for researching, drafting, and/or working with your group on the Public Document Project. Here is the current conference schedule:

Tuesday 4/12/11
1:20 Ashley Thomas
1:40 Morgan Metallic
2:00 Chelsey Brunner
2:20 Sam Adams
2:40 Michael Wey
3:00 Eden Faye
3:20 Corey Rosenblum
3:40 Cat Nichols

Wednesday 4/13/11
1:20 Maria Ficker
1:40 Mollie O'Reilly
2:00
2:20 Jacob Janicki
2:40 Broderick Thompson
3:00 Alyssa Alley
3:20 Talia Shifron
3:40
6:20 Jessi Daugherty

Thursday 4/14/11
1:20 Sara Troutman
1:40 Garrett Montgomery
2:00 Kristine Meade
2:20 Alyssa Rudner
2:40 Andrew Cook
3:00 Claire Robinson
3:20 Jack Pupillo
3:40 Cameray Boyden

All conferences are in BH 474. As a reminder, bring your completed triangulation heuristic and an outline, as well as any other questions you have. I have uploaded both the heuristic and a tool for outlining to our Oncourse Resources folder, if you need them.

4/19 -- an in-class workshop on converting your blog to a portfolio (we're back in SE 045). In advance of this workshop, I'll give you a short prep sheet with about 10 minutes' worth of instructions for preparing your files to be able to link them.

4/28 -- we are all dressing "snappy casual" for the end-of-semester poster presentation (otherwise known as "Friday office dress," "comfortable but put together," and numerous other interpretations that I can only imagine!). If someone can give me a concrete example of "snappy casual," that will help me know how to dress.

I'm quite excited by how your issue questions are taking shape. You may not feel or realize this yet, but you all have covered some incredible ground in your work as community researchers and writers! Good luck as you work through these projects, and see you in conferences.

-Professor Graban