Investigation

A description of something for my investigation would have to be Dean Thomas's office. As you walk up to the second floor you go into a gorgeous office where there are two or three office desks one can see. Then you take the right, right as you walk in. You must walk through the Dean's Assistant office to get to his office. Once you enter his office, one may be amazed at the size of it or maybe how beautiful it looks. If one takes a second to look around they will notice a nice sitting area with large chairs and couches. Then after that he has his own meeting area, with a huge long table and the best technology so everyone can get a good feel for what Smeal has to offer. After one looks around to take in the Dean's entire office one can see pictures of his children scattered around his desk and in the book shelves behind his desk. Then if one sits down to talk to the Dean they will notice on one of his chairs he has jacket laying over it, which gives you the feel of a very down to earth person who is just there to assist you in what you have to ask.

Quotes:

Jordan Walls (student) - "It is going to be hard to see the Dean go. He is a very personable man and he makes the atmosphere amazing around Smeal. He tries to give it the feeling of almost like you are home."

Lynn Tressler (Dean Thomas's Assistant) - "He was a great man that all of the professors like talking to as well as the staff. It is going to be hard to see him go because he was a great man to work for and to watch him leave with all the hard work he has put in to make Smeal an amazing business school."

Facts:

Wall Street Journal - Penn State Smeal College of Business is the number one recruiting school companies to higher from and Penn State's business students start at a higher pay then other students around the country.

Lynn Tressler - Dean Thomas is not completely leaving Smeal, he is staying to teach one or two classes a semester. As well as Jim will be staying the Dean till next Summer just to take make sure everything is still running smoothly.

Two other areas of interest that occurred to me while doing research and interviews is the fact that the Dean is not leaving Smeal but staying around to teach. This interest me because I want to know why he still wants to stay and what he plans on teaching as well. Another area of interest is how are they going to pick the new and if Dean Thomas will have any say in who will be taking his position.

Number One Party School

During this recording American Life investigated Penn State being the number one party school in the nation. They define and make great since of the issue at hand. They go at the issue in many different ways to give the audience different views of the subject. The reasons why the issue needs to be investigated immediately is to prove or disprove weather or not Penn State is really the number one party school in the nation. People were curious weather this poll was true or because Penn State tries to be number one at anything. The facts and details of this issue are put very clearly. American Life goes through many different views to see how this effects different people and how this is a good or a bad thing for the college. They go to different people who have different effects on the issue and people they issue effect differently. They want to investigate every angle of this issue, so they can have a full idea of what is occurring. Since this was a recording every person is quoted. They get peoples views as things are occurring and as people are being effected by the issue. The recording is a great way to see hear everything, so people can hear first hand what is occurring. The conclusion, I feel, American life is trying to get a crossed is that Penn State just wants to be the best at everything they do. No matter what it is Penn State will try to win it. The students want to be able to say they go to the best college in the nation. I think this investigation was a great way to go about this issue. They got everyones point of view. The issue wanted they to investigate was amazingly investigated. They just wanted to see what life was like on Penn State and during that they discovered Penn State was your normal college town when it occurred to drinking, but what Penn State is not, they are not a normal college town. They want to be the best.

The First Draft

From what I understand about what Lamott is saying the first draft is the most important part of the writing process. When she said everyone writes "shitty first drafts", I felt much better about my writing and the paper I just wrote. I had multiple people look over my personal narrative and every person ripped it to shreds. I was a little unhappy with this because I thought the paper was good, but I guess the only way to make it better is to have people look over it and over it so you can make your own writing better. I think writing the first draft to my paper was not good at all, but after looking it over and looking at what people had to say and looking over it more myself I had a lot of mistakes and parts of my paper I could have made much better. I also like what Lamott said about the only way to write something good is to write it terribly the first time. I agree with this because nothing is perfect the first and everything can be made better by working on it, tweaking it, and just redoing it. If everything was done perfect the first time everyone would be great at everything and there is no fun in that because if that were the case this place would be a very boring one. The first draft is more about the process of writing than it is about the product of what is written the first. A lot of time someone's first draft is about getting all of their ideas out. It does not matter what kind of order they are in, but the ability to get everything in one time is great because everything can be fixed to be great. Also if everything was about the product and not the process nothing would be fun in life. When people are doing anything, it does not matter if its writing or any other activity, they tend to like the process and the time it took to get to the product. Most people are like this, as am I, because you have a great time working towards the finally product. People have fun with the things they are doing, they are working with people the want to, and the experience of the process is much more rewarding a lot of time than the final product. The final product of writing is the same way if we never had fun with the process of writing we would not have some of the great writers we have had and no one would like to write. The point of the first draft is to suck, but in the end if you do not have the "shitty first draft" you cannot have the amazing final draft.