Budget Cuts

1) Its late and the only light on in the small one story ranch house with its cracking paint and sagging porch is the kitchen. A Husband and wife sit across the round wood table that was made a long time ago and needs to get replaced. There are two calculators sitting in front of each of them and papers and receipts scatted all over the table and a trash can filled with crumpled paper and rejected ideas. The looks on their faces are worried, and their brows are creased in concentration. They have been there all night and they will probably be there a lot longer with the amount of paper left on the table. They talk quiet almost in a wisper. They do not want to wake their eight year old son up who is sleeping in the next room.

"What are we going to do" the wife says to the husband

" I don't know, it will all be ok"

" I'm so sorry"

" Its not your fault, there's nothing you could have done"

This is the reality for many Penn state employ's layd off due to the recent budget cuts.

2) " Every one on campus is very careful on extraneous spending now, we are trying to be very careful with our money" -Office worker West wing

"I disapprove of the cut, I don't think that education is a good place to be taking money from" -office worker west wing

"They should cut the budgets for clubs that not a lot of people are interested in" -Freshman east halls

3) PSU has seen a $68 million decrease in state funding (Megan Rogers Collegian Staff Writer)

After the budget cuts were passed PSU raised tuition 4.9 percent for in state students and 3.5 percent for out of state students (July 15 2011, The Associated Press)

The budget cut could have been far worse. it was brought down to 19 percent from 52 percent. (July 15 2011, The Associated Press)

Penn State got rid of the Counseling Psychology Doctoral program because of budget cuts (Penn state college of education)

4) While researching I came across a very interesting opinion article It asked Penn state students how they think that Penn state should cover the proposed budget cuts. This was very interesting and I plan on asking similar questions to faculty and staff and a few students. I think it should be investigated more because it is an interesting side of the issue to see how people think it should be fixed.

I also want to go into more detail about if the people feel that the budget cuts were necessary and if they approve or disapprove of them. I think that would add an interesting view to my paper.

Number 1 party school

The issue of the piece is how being a number one party school effects the people Living and working in State College. There are a few reasons they want to investigate the issues. Gram Spanier said that the number one issue at Penn State is alcohol, not money or academics. Another issue is that the residence of state college are being affected by the Drunkenness of Penn State students. In the intro of the piece They sit on the porch of Sarah Koenig. In only thirty five they see people waking down the street, people littering in her neighbors yard, pulling out a street sign, and multiple people peeing in her yard. I think that the intended audience is middle aged people and possibly Penn State alumni. This was a talk show radio broadcast. The only people I know who listen to talk radio are adults and I don't think the message that they are putting out would be very effective on current Penn State students, most of which like the number one ranking and like the drinking. Ira Glass used a lot of evidence and interviewed many people on all sides of the issue. He interviewed a twenty one year old who was tailgating in a parking garage because Penn State canceled tailgating that weekend because of a huge snowstorm. He says that the drinking at tailgates is a big part of Penn state drinking. Families drink together and when everyone around you is drinking it makes it feel like its ok even if you are not twenty one. He also interviewed an alumni who told them that drinking is just part of the culture and that is part of the reason they sell 110,000 football tickets every Saturday. They also interviewed a freshman outside of east halls and and road the "drunk bus." They said that they were on their second loop because they missed their stop and that they were having a great time. They also interviewed local businesses and most of them are doing great because they gear their businesses to college students. Mclanahans has been very successful but they are still dependent on the university and on if the football wins that weekend. They also interviewed Officer Haines. He is a police officer who has been working in state college for years and he says that most of the crime in State College is due to drunkenness and that the crime is also dependent on how the football team does. The conclusion is that Penn State needs to do something about the drinking and atmosphere of Penn State. They included many interviews of various different people in all aspects of State College life they also used police and hospital reports. They used stories like in the beginning when they sat on the porch and watched the drunk people do what they do. they also used stories from the police and bar owners. Overall I enjoyed the report. It gave a very balanced look on the issue and got points of view from all over state college. I think it ran a little long though and they could of done without some of the lengthy explanations and examples

Inspired

The book Bird By Bird taught me a lot about writing. one thing that particularly inspired me and changed the way that I wrote was the examples she used for writing in detail. Back in high school I was never very good at being descriptive in my writing. It was hard for me to put what I was seeing or a scene on paper and make it feel right. When Anne Lamott talked about looking through a one inch picture frame and describing everything you can see and then moving the frame until you have the whole scene really helped me. I used it in my narrative and it worked very well for me. I could describe the scenes and get everything I wanted down on paper. The part about school lunches helped me with description. The way she could describe school lunches and make it flow so well it was a very good frame work for me writing my narrative, and setting scenes. I also like the part of the story from pages 154-157; she tells a story about a young writer who went to a writing conference and had his work evaluated by Lamott and others in a small group. One women really tore into him and Lamott tried to give him advice and said to just write it again and see where he got from there. This helped me because a lot of times when I write I think that my peice is bad and I just want to throw it away and start over but this helped me just reevaluate my work and work through it instead of scraping it and starting over. I really liked the poem at the end of the section it went

"Above me, wind does its best

to blow leaves off

the aspen tree a month too soon.

No use wind. All you succeed

in doing is making music, the noise

of failure growing beautiful"

I like this poem a lot it helped me realize the more I work at something the better that the end product will be and the failing and shitty first drafts are just a part of the process and they help me make a good final product.

The other part that helped me was the chapter"Someone to Read Your Drafts." I never used to show my writing to anyone or have anyone edit it for two reasons: I thought it was bad, and I didn't want people to see what I wrote. but after reading "Bird by Bird" I realized that other people are a very useful tool for improving my writing and seeing how my paper can improve. It also brings up things I didn't think of on my own. When we were doing the peer reviewing it showed me interesting places to use dialogue and a place to cut out extra things that were confusing and took away from the point of the story. Bird by bird really helped me with being descriptive and editing my work. It was a very good book that I will reference in the future when I need some writing advice.

Meltdown

In the article "Meltdown" by Wells Tower He is telling us the story about the trip he took with his father and brother to Iceland and Greenland. He is also telling about a personal story and a promise him and his father made to each other that for every year that he was still alive and fighting cancer they would take a trip. His father ended up beating his cancer and they take a trip together every year. There are many sources of tension in this story. It starts out with the tension of Wells wanting to leave the bar that they were in because he was concerned for his father who had a bone marrow transplant just two months before. The tension quickly shifts in the next paragraph when wells takes us back eight years and tells us about his fathers cancer and how the doctors only gave him three months to live. This is when he introduces the context of the story. When the doctors gave his father only three month to live they made a pact that every twelve months that his father was still alive they would take a trip to celebrate. There is also tension between Wells and his brother. Wells describes their not to fond childhood to set the stage for how the first part of the trip would go. The tension started when Wells brother did not get to go to the breakfast he wanted because Wells and his father had already had the trip all planned out. He started by "passive resistance" as Wells called it by staying in the car everywhere they stopped to do something or explore. The tension culminated in a fist fight between the two sons that embarrassed their father. After the fight they were back to normal and they all visited the sites together. The story ends with Wells and his father in the same bar that they started in having a good time and dancing with two local women. They finally found some peace in their stresses trip. This article was written for outdoor magazine so the intended audience is hikers and travelers. this is supported by the end of the article where Wells describes their exact route through the two countries and the expected amounts of money needed for flights and lodging throughout the journey. This is relevant because it serves as both a travel journal and also a story that can relate to everyone, a story about overcoming obstacles and making the best out of situations that are less than ideal. I really liked how in his story how he started at the end and then went back in time and made his way to a final conclusion which was right where he started. I hope to use this in my narrative. His transitions were also very good he gave breaks in between time changes to give the reader time to catch their breath before the next scene, he also makes it very clear what time period he is in like when he said in his first transition "eight and a half years ago..."