To: Ms.

Hoffman From: Travis Rutledge Re: Midterm Reflection Over the past weeks, we have been working towards a deeper understanding on what inquiry means and how to tie it to a specific culture. During class, we have read, watched, and done a lot of different activities that has slowly exposed us to what is inquiry, and how important and hard it is to come up with a good inquiry question. There are a couple activities that really stuck to me, helping me understand these concepts. The first being the fisherman story we read near the beginning of class. Reading this story and then talking about it with the class about the businessmans mentality and the fishermans happiness with his life. After hearing other peoples take on the story and what things meant, I was shocked to see how it can be taken different ways depending on what you looked at. The other activity that really stuck to me was the article about the National Parks. After reading the article we formulated questions from the article, and then were helped to shape the questions in respect to a culture, for example one group came up with the question, How does European Countries feel about national parks? This was the moment when the concept of inquiry became clear. Seeing that inquiry is not just research and reporting on it, but taking something youre interested more and looking into it with respect to a culture, to better understand it. During class, a majority of the activities were done in a group where we discussed the parts to the activity that we were doing. I am a part of a group that consists of Daniel Arthur, John Lutrell, and myself. The group benefits me greatly in the fact that in a group there are always many different takes and opinions on a topic. For each activity we did, hearing their responses and reasoning aided me in understanding what I was supposed to get out of it. I contribute my own take on it, which usually tends to be more direct and based on apparent facts, where as the others pick up on things I overlooked about the article or activity. I contribute a lot to whole-class discussions as much as I can, trying to add what I wrote or said whenever the whole class is discussing something. I try to start the discussion in class by making the first comment and hoping the class will then continue. Overall, I feel I offer a very straightforward voice to our class, saying what I think and always trying to contribute when I can. Throughout the class, we have written a lot in our personal working folder, whether it is in a physical notebook or on your laptop. I personally prefer to use my laptop to write responses to class because usually we dont always get all the time in the world to write our responses. I usually have a lot to say, so being able to type fairly fast on a laptop has made it my go to choice. One of these writings from class that I have chosen to include in my portfolio is my writing for the activity, Sin-free-ale. For this activity we were told to write our own view on how a persons alcohol consumption habits or morals towards the matter come to be. I chose to include this in my portfolio because it is a good example of an inquiry. Looking to see how alcohol consumption is affected by a persons culture was a great example on what an inquiry topic should look like. The second piece of writing from class that I chose to include in my portfolio was my

response to the article on technology that would help a deaf person be able to hear. I chose this topic for a similar reason as I did the Sin-free-ale response. This activity forced us to look at the culture itself. A question was to think of a reason why someone would be against the technology, and I couldnt think of one because I wasnt thinking in terms of the deaf culture. Because of this, I chose to include my groups and my response to my portfolio. The final piece of in-class writing that I chose to include was my questions I had written for the national parks activity. We were supposed to come up with questions the article had brought up. I chose include this because I felt that it was my first shot at writing inquiry questions about a topic in the scope of a culture. Those having been a few of the handful of writings Ive down during class, they couldnt have been written if I wasnt present and active in class. The attendance policy in the syllabus says that you are allowed three absences without any sort of penalty, every absence after results in your final grade to be reduced by one letter, and six resulting in an automatic failure of the course. I have attended every day of class this semester, leaving me with zero absences and in excellent standing for attendance. This has allowed me to be present for all class discussions and activities. In class and out of class, there was always writing to do. Over the semester there has been a couple homework assignments that we had to do on our own. I would have to say my level of investment in the coursework based on the homework Ive submitted to average. Having missed a homework assignment, shows that I was not investing one hundred percent of my time and effort to the task. However there are three assignments that have stood out to me; the first being my response to Closed for Business. This was roughly a page response of an in class discussion of the article Closed for Business. This was meaningful to me because it made me look at my view on Sundays and my stance of the argument brought up by the article. Also it got me thinking about how my culture shaped my views on it all, getting my mind ready for the course ahead. The second writing homework assignment that I felt to be important was the introductory letter. This being the first homework for the course, I got to know you as a teacher, which is rare for a college course to know your professor in that way. I then got to respond and tell about myself in my own letter. This homework assignment meant a lot to me because I feel like it is a great thing to be able to know your teacher, and they know you. The thing that really stood out to me was the speed dating activity followed by the forum discussion where we messed around with an inquiry topic and formulating a question for it. I felt that the activity did a very well job of showing me that I did well because of how prepared I was and had a great working knowledge on my subject. As of now, I have done a lot of exploring and research on topics and information for a possible inquiry topic that I will commit to here in the second half of the semester. All this time has allowed me to look in to a lot of different areas of topics and cultures until I found one I really wanted to do. Having the time to then look in to the topic to make sure I could find enough information and narrow in on an inquiry question has allowed my final topic and inquiry question to be a lot more revised and thought about than it would have been if I did not have the ample time I

was allowed. I feel I am ready to commit to my topic, with a good general knowledge and a couple of sources lines up and ready to dive in. As of now I can confirm about the research process that it takes time in order to come up with a good topic and question, and that you can not simply procrastinate and hope to have a good paper. As I have researched, I came across an article that was a transcript from a congressional hearing on my topic, and after hearing various people talk about my topic, I realized there is a lot more going on that I previously had thought. This raised further questions about my topic that I can then look in to. This inquiry project has been very different than other research papers I have done. For other papers, I have had to simply research a topic I was either given or got to choose from a pool of topics and write a report on the information I had found. This inquiry project however has been far from similar to those papers. For starters I had free reign on the topic I wanted to look in to. Also the project isnt a report on information, I am given the opportunity to look into something that I am interested in and see how things are the way they are by looking at them from various cultural standpoints. With this there are more risks, for example, I could have chosen a topic that I dont really care to much about, causing me to loose interest and diminish my inquiry. Another risk is that my inquiry question spawns more of a research paper than an inquiry project by being to broad or the wrong type of question. The discoveries that I will make about my inquiry topic will give me a better understanding to why Internet censorship is a thing, and why certain countries censor what they do and why others do not. The discoveries will also diminish ignorance in my readers lives because they too will understand more about it. This semester thus far has been filled with loads of activities and discussions that have helped shape my mind around the inquiry project. Some questions I have about research, reading, and writing are how professional writers write about a topic in a way that a person with minimal knowledge on the subject can understand. Another question I have is how does one research something that lies solely on opinion rather than fact. Lastly, I have always been taught to never put I in a paper, but in others we can, and what impact does that really have on the overall paper. As I look forward to the second half of this semester, there are some goals that I wish to accomplish for myself. Those of which include, not procrastinating my homework, and to proactively research my inquiry topic. As I come back from spring break, I hope to put in to practice actions such as doing the homework as soon as it is given and not to slack off when researching in order to achieve these goals. Looking back at the weeks prior and now at the weeks ahead, and then analyzing the two, I hope to make the best of the future weeks of the inquiry project and produce the best project I can. Your Student, Travis Rutledge