Rough+Draft

** Influential Backgrounds  ** Question: What does it mean to be educated? Joseph M. Short What direction am I taking? I am going to answer the question by comparing the expectations that students from rural backgrounds have compared from students from urban backgrounds. Using this method is going to allow me to interpret the different backgrounds to see whether or not people from different areas have different expectations on college life and what it means to be educated. Method: To increase accuracy, I am using a high number of people for the interviews, I will use a total of twelve people that fir into each section. There will be three male and female interviewees on each side, making a total of twelve and keeping it controlled and more accurate. I will separate the urban and rural aspect by the size of the graduating class, and a description of their home areas. The cutoff in graduating class sizes is three hundred-fifty students, less and equal to is rural and greater than is urban. Rural is described as countryside, woodsy, farm land, etc, and Urban will be described as cities, suburbs and high population centers. The reason a description is important is because there are numerous private schools in urban areas that graduate much less than 350 students, so it is important to make sure they are separated. Also pictures will be taken of each of the person’s rooms to show how the room matches them in all the upcoming questions. Questioning: I will use a variety of questions to determine what kind of background they come from, how they were raised (not quality but method like free or controlled), details about their family (optional), what they did in their free time, to describe their friends, what kind of activities were their friends into, their use of alcohol, the atmosphere in their high school, generally describe their high school, what their first perception of college was, has the perception of college changed, what kind of activities do they do in college (do they relate to home activities), who do they hang out with, and finally to ask them what they have gotten from the college experience so far (in terms of general feelings, overall perceived success, opinions, new experiences, and being “educated”). Results: The organization of the information will be in the next presentation section. The results however will be compared person to person, and gender by gender, producing results as a whole and the results in male vs. female. Hopefully the questioning and results will show a crystal clear view of how people from different background perceive and succeed in college. However, I could also not find any kind of pattern, which could indicate that it does not matter what your background is and that people are generally the same, no matter the background. Presentation: For me the most ideal way to organize the information would be through a PowerPoint or a massive poster. I want something that will be visually pleasing and more interesting than a formal research paper. I am going to separate the rural and urban parts so that I can make a straight comparison on that and later on move to look and compare the genders with the background. Overall I am first going to give a background of each individual, followed by a section on how they responded to the questions. Organization is key, with this many interviewees the information could be overwhelming or confusing. So it’s important to take it step by step. After all the answers from the questions are out, I can do a comparison and analysis section and show my findings. The only major problem I have is that most of this will be just what I found; I had trouble finding examples that were similar to what I was studying. Basic example: The most basic example that I have would be seen in the first couple CLUE assignments. After viewing and interviewing who guys, one city one rural, I found that they had many of the same answers. Hopefully on a larger scale this would not be the case, but as of right now it’s up in the air.
 * __ Rough Draft CLUE Assignment:  __ **