A Big Warm Hello To All Of Marlen’s Finnish Students!!

I have been honored to have been asked to provide some help from the student perspective to Dr. Harrison’s bright and talented Finnish students and I could not be more excited to get started!

So let me talk briefly about myself and my experiences in Marlen’s classes.

I started as a Freshman at Indiana University of Pennsylvania in the fall of 2008 and College Writing was my first college level english class since High School. And might I say what a CHALLENGE it was!! Marlen started the class by laying out his expectations in an email to all of his students about a month or two before the class even began (many of you may have received a similar email) and he basically scared the crap out of some of us right from the start. But I decided to meet the challenge head on and so I started by setting up this blog on August 15th 2008 (as you can see here: http://dann1burk.wordpress.com/2008/08/15/my-first-blog-post/#comments) and got rolling.

Some of what I learned early on in Marlen’s class is that you have to look at the website, keep up to date with your homework and reading and make sure you double and even triple check your work!

Later in the Research Writing course, 202, the pace was a lot more self determined and at that point in my college career, I was able to manage deadlines a lot better than I had been as a freshman, which is what Marlen expected from us, and especially from those of us who had been his students before.

And in this class I ran into a lot of road blocks with my project idea. People who committed to help me dropped out at the last minute, I had interviews that didn’t go in the direction that I needed them to and I had difficulty finding refereed sources from which to find information about my topic, or even about similar topics that I could draw information from. Over the months my project evolved from one scope and size to another, based on the types of resources I had at my disposal. And once I determined that I just didn’t have the resources I needed, I had to look inward.

I ended up using the most available resource I have to guide my research, myself and my friends! I composed an Auto-ethnographical paper to contrast the difference between two individuals who are on opposite sides of the political participation scale; I, who am active in political circles and causes, and my long time best-friend Rob, who couldn’t care or understand political issues or processes unless he was willing to risk his head exploding!

Even though we come from the same place, had a very similar upbringing, we have developed very different political attitudes, and this fact indicated to me that perhaps there was some data in our respective outlooks that could be applied to the broader community of young people from our congressional district. That, in conjunction with refereed journal sources about the national and state-wide trend of youth votership, was the premise of my research.

And so I know how it is to hit road blocks, but believe me there is always a way forward. It may cause you to take a different approach than you have envisioned but that is OKAY! Flexibility is key and you will learn lessons in this class that will help you in whatever you undertake, because honestly, to get things right, I have learned that research is at the heart of most good decisions in life.

I have more, much more to say about what I have done with research in my life since college and how I am using it to get me into a university next year, but this time hopefully with a full scholarship from the United States Air Force (fingers crossed!!). However, I will let your feedback and class curriculum guide those kids of posts.

So wraps up my first blog for XENY002, I hope you will take the time to leave comments, questions and concerns below or you can email me directly at Burkhardt.Dan@gmail.com!

Have a great day!

#17 – Reflections

“I warned you, right? This was pretty intense and unbelievably time-consuming, right? Reflect back on the beginning of this course – your fears, anxieties, worries, etc – and discuss how you turned these into strengths throughout this course this semester. What are your future goals as researchers? As writers? What was your proudest moment in this course? What do you think will most stick with you long after this course?”

Oh my god, I would say that this course was everything I expected it to be, especially knowing Marlen and how passionate he is for making sure we do the best work possible. I think that I overloaded myself in a lot of ways because I took a lot of difficulte credits this semeseter, but I should have thought abotu that before I was selecting all of those other classes for this spring. Over all, I was concerned that for a period of time I was not giving it my all and this was right, I had not for a short while, but I think that I finished pretty strong and came up with a great result in my paper.

I think in the future I will probably be more interested in writing historical non fiction or fiction, or opinion types of pieces because they seem to motivate me the most when in the writing process. But im sure I will have to perform plenty of research in future and this course has introduced me to the world of research writing and the research process. My proudest moment would have to be the presentation because at the end of the course I really wrapped it up nicely. The thing that will stick with me longest after the course is the the way I conduct research and my new found reliance upon and comfort in Academic journals.

#16 – Creation Process

• • 1) What assignment/document was most useful to you during this proces? Explain your answer.  2) What was the most helpful feedback you received at any stage – why was it helpful? 3) What was most difficult for you during the drafting process? Easiest? WHY? 4) Where does your final essay best show your ability as a writer?.

1)The most useful document that I found was the following journal article that I found on Jstor.

Walker, Tobi. “‘Make them pay attention to us’: young voters and the 2004 election.” National Civic Review 95.1 (2006): 26+. Academic OneFile. Web. 16 Feb. 2010.

< http://find.galegroup.com/gtx/infomark.do?&contentSet=IAC-Documents&type=retrieve&tabID=T002&prodId=AONE&docId=A145681506&source=gale&srcprod=AONE&userGroupName=indi68545&version=1.0

This article outlines the evolution in voter participation amongst young people and shows the impact that ‘get out the vote’ campaigns and voter registration drives on incerasing young voter participation. This is very relevatn to my research because it shows the national trend of an increasing portion of young people participating ans it served me when i was looking at the issues that young people care about the most.

2) The best feedback I recieved was from Professor Harrison when I decided that I didnt have aneough information to complete the project within the scope I had originally intended and he told me how to form the information and projec tthat I already had into and autoethnographical and case study to look at a smaller portion of the elctorate.

3)The most difficult thing during the drafting process was actually really simple, sitting down to get all of these sections done. expecially the lit review. I found that to be the worst. The easiest was the results/discussion section, as well as the conclusion.

4) My essay best show my ability as a writer in the introduction section because I think I did a really good job introducing the paper, the topics presented and the concept behind my paper.

Abstract!

This paper looks at the motivations behind young voter participation in the 8th congressional district of Pennsylvania. While there is a lot of national data about the trends of voting among young people, the only data that existed about the 8th district was in the form of statistics and public survey results. In and attempt to fill this void, I examined the participation habits are of two young males from the same town in the district who have very different ideas about politics and and social issues. The results of this study illustrate the challenges that campaigns and public voting drives face when trying to increase turnout, and it also highlights some if it’s successes.

#15 – Peer projects

Seeing my paper through someone else’s eyes always allows me to spot the kinds of flaws that I am usually oblivious to on my own, yet cringe at when pointed out by a peer. I had a couple of those kinds of issues when I met with Tajae about our projects. I thought that her comments indicated that my introduction was not strong enough and that I could do a better job outlining the issues around my topic. From reading her paper, I saw that there should be more emphasis on sources and that I should be very mindful about the flow of my paper. In general, I always find it interesting to know what others think about my work and pretty much just gain a different perspective that turns out to be helpful. I am currently working with Nikki on my second project so I will post the results of that when we finish.

# 13 – Combining papers

I have successfully completed 9 pages of work at this point. I have to say that the experience thus far has been much better than I thought it would be. I imagined myself sitting here being totally ready to leap out of a window from all the stress at this point but I have found that all three of my papers flow pretty nicely and have needed only minor corrections with regard to consistency and flow. I find that my project, as this point which consists of 11 pages including the works cited could really use som more references. I have only use 4 or 5 at this point and I think there will be plenty of room for at least 4 or 5 more. I will have to see how my next phase of writing goes, however, because I really could insert some additional information into my methodology section and spice up my intro and lit review a bit more. I am on the right track, but still need to do work, son!

# 12 – Methodology Research Methods

I will begin trying to find willing participants for my research by contacting some of the people I know at the congressional office and seeing what kind of resources they recommend. I already have the information for two people: The person at the Bucks County Democratic committee and the person in charge of Congressman Patrick Murphy’s campaign office.

I wouldn’t say that there are any risks to my potential participants because I am not asking them to make political statements or to take up specific policy issues. I am only going to be asking questions that relate to getting people to vote and finding out what campaigns and voter organizations do to get young people involved. I guess I will be creating pseudonyms or some sort of other way to place protection from naming explicitly who I am talking with. More research is needed about this though.

At this time I have the following questions, but will undoubtedly be finding new ones.

-How does your (organization/campaign) promote the participation oof young people in elections in district 8?

-Have you seen a rise in participation in the last few years?

-do you know if that rise is in line with national trends?

-What issues do you think young people cast their votes on?

-How will you be targeting you people in the upcoming mid term election?

#11 -Methodology

http://www.languages.ait.ac.th/el21meth.htm

The method section answers two main questions:

How was the data collected or generated

How was it analyzed

shows reader how results were obtained.

explanation must be offered to show that the methods are even handed and accurate ad also consistent with common research practices to ensure validity.

Do not include too much detail. There doesn’t have to be al explanation for all of the things in the research that are common to the field if the audience is going to be people who are familiar with practices already. Also do not disregard problems and explain how they were worked around.

Keep notes of what was done for the method section

remember that audience

do not use “I” (haha)

(secondary document)

http://www.essaytown.com/writing/write-methodology-chapter-dissertation-thesis

-methodology maps out the methods used while researching

-the methodology can be broken into four main sections

-the first will talk about the problems that are being considered with the topic

-it is not meant to provide so much detail that the reader could duplicate the research methods necessarily but enough to explain its accuracy and viability as data to be used for the project.

Essay Town. How the Write the Methodology Chapter of a Dissertation or Thesis. 2010. 14 Mar. 2010.

<http://www.essaytown.com/writing/write-methodology-chapter-dissertation-thesis>

#10 – Rubric

Below you will find the rubric for the New York Times article on shooting rampages from the syllabus that I worked on with Emily Brooks.

Rampages Rubric

#9 – Close Reading and Evaluation of 2 Journal Articles

Below are two journal sources that I have noted every single paragraph for.

(1)

Seagull, Louis M. “The Youth Vote and Change in American Politics.“ Annals of the American Academy of Political and Social Science 397 (1971): 88-96.

< http://www.jstor.org/stable/1039021>

The Youth Vote and Change in American Politics (1971)

-Extending the vote to 18 year olds will have an as yet unclear but clearly major impact on us politics.

-The extension of voting rights to young people may have a more significant impact than that of the civil rights movement or of the suffrage movement.

-To understand the impact that new voters will have, one must exclude irrelevant data, such as polling data from 1950’s.

-The study of the youth vote will be important to understand the direction the electorate is moving as a whole.

-The conventional wisdom is that young voters will have a marginal impact on elections because they either wont participate or they will vote along with their parents.

-How people vote changes based on different issues as they age.

-Rates of participation stem from larger life responsibilities; older people have a more grounded sense of responsibility and therefore feel more compelled to vote.

-The biggest impact can be felt when groups of people vote as a generation.

-It is possible that the disproportionate effect of vietnam on young people will cause a backlash against the democratic party.

-Whole generations have been permanently swayed by issues that affected them during their early 20’s

-younger people are becoming more and more educated.

-the most important difference between generations is the level of education recieved on average.

-It would be a mistake to consider all youth a part of this educated voter movement; rather they should be considered as two different groups likely to vote differently.

-Votership typically rises on average through the middle ages and slowly decline afterward.

-While voter turnout among younger people is a lot lower typically, if only half of them turned out to vote it would still significantly affect elections.

-Participation among college graduates is much higher than that of the rest of the population.

-The long run effect of more educated young people could be higher rates of participation among younger people.

-Among young people, in the 1960’s, independent party identification was on the rise.

-This independent identification could either mean that young people do not know which party they with whom they identify or that they aren’t politically conscious.

-It has been seen in recent years that identification with the republican party among college student has been declining while democratic affiliation has remained constant.

-In the late 1960s, young people moved toward the democratic party more so than ever before.

-Even though there is growth among independents, the real political battles in the future remain between democrats and republicans.

-Outlook among college students is increasingly liberal.

-It is important to consider that the majority or young people are not in college

-Non college grads vote in different numbers and for different reasons.

-The future of politics promises to be more passionate and volitile than ever before.

(2)

Walker, Tobi. “‘Make them pay attention to us’: young voters and the 2004 election.” National Civic Review 95.1 (2006): 26+. Academic OneFile. Web. 16 Feb. 2010.

< http://find.galegroup.com/gtx/infomark.do?&contentSet=IAC-Documents&type=retrieve&tabID=T002&prodId=AONE&docId=A145681506&source=gale&srcprod=AONE&userGroupName=indi68545&version=1.0>

<br>

“Make them Pay Attention to Us” (2006)

-Non partisan groups are using the feeling of disenfranchisement to drive youth voter registration efforts.

-Volunteers from the non-partisan New Voters project canvass areas like malls to conduct registration drives.

-These kinds of drives were very successful and in places like wisoncson, they were able to register 30 percent of eligible voters.

-young voters were encouraged during the 2004 campaign to vote by all sorts of organizations and by interests that had never been marketing to them before.

-Skeptical people asked if it would matter; young voter turnout had been declining steadily since the age was changed to 18 in 1972.

-The issue is not that young people are not participating or civically minded, polls indicate that they were just as likely to volunteer as older people.

-But young people are less likely to contribute to political campaigns and seem to separate civics from politics.

-This trend of non political participation is not an issue of motivation, but part of a cycle of neglect in the system.

-If young people don’t vote, they are less likely to be targeted and thus more likely to no participate.

-On election night in 2004, it was reported that the young voter turnout had been a bust and that there didn’t seem to be a significant improvement in turnout. But this reporting was based on the misreading of data.

-In fact, voter turnout had increased by 11 percentage points to 47 percent overall from 36 in the previous election.

-Younger voters across the board participated in record numbers across the board.

-In 2004, younger voters historically turned away from their parents party identification and voted in favor of Sen. Kerry by 13 percentage points above Bush.

-The turnout was hailed as a perfect storm by political science scholars because there had been a combination of issues behind the high turnout coupled with unprecedented exposure.

-Domestic and foreign issues played a role in deciding if young people would vote and polls showed that 80 percent of eligible voters were paying attention to the election.

-The economy, jobs, iraq war, tuition costs drove concerns in 2004.

-Non partisans group spent nearly 40 million dollars registering voters, more than ever before.

-While many different kind of efforts were employed, the most effective way to increase voter turnout was canvassing areas on foot and talking to people directly. this increased turnout by 8.5 points on average.

-Chuck Todd noted in the new york times that swing voters typically don’t move from party to part on issues, but rather move between voting and not voting. he argued that parties must first move their base to vote and then try to court as many of these swing voters as well as bring in to the picture a whole host of new voters.

-both political campaigns launched youth outreach programs as well.

-The DNC started marketing during popular shows like saturday night live and the Jon Stewart show.

-The youth turnout being a bust story is important reminder about the difficulty to with regard to overcoming stereotypes.

-The long term issues are that in local municipal elections, participation is not constant.

-In essence, there is no post election strategy in place for motivating younger people to participate. as a result, midterm election participation is a lot lower.

-In 2004, important lessons were learned with regard to voter mobilization. Entire organizations were built to promote turnout and these can be used as models for future campaigning efforts.

-There were great deal of new groups in 2004 joining the effort to promote votership among young people for the first time.

-Participation in democracy is necessary to have a healthy system. not voting is habitual and now is the time to fight against that.

-The way to get noticed, as a group of voters, is to either deliver votes or engaged in policy issues and public debates.

-Admittedly, the best way to know if youth voter efforts are working are to look at how much money and attention campaigns are spending on young people.

-Studies at GWU indicate that young people are not all that different than that of older voters. They vote on similar issues but need to have the debate reframed to show how policy decisions affect them.

-The issue at the top of the list of young voters is access to affordable education.

-Young people need to be at the center of grassroots campaigns to be most successful.

-Young voters have finally given organizations and campaigns an opportunity to cater to them and in future elections will be crucial in deciding outcomes. (as evidenced in 2008)

**Questions to answer about articles**

Article 1.

(I am a bit confused about the first prompt on the syllabus withe regard to the difference between the lit review and introduction and will seek clarification in class today)

The author of “The Youth Vote and Change in American Politics (1971)” clearly wanted to explore to newest political game changer of the time, whic was the supreme court decision that allowed people as young as 18 to vote for the first time. He hooks the readers interest by showing how the decision to allow young people into the electorate compared to movements like suffrage and the civil rights movement. He talks about the size of the new constituency politicians had to cater to and what the broad potential impact could be. The purpose of the writing is to explore the ways in which young people vote and to attempt to look at how their participation could change the political landscape. This kind of writing is important because, for my research, i can treat this as a starting point. I have this document from when young people were first allowed to participate and it gives me a historical point of reference to view voter turnout through. The main methodology in his writing was polling data and the analysis of statistics. Since he is only trying to forecast what the potential impact COULD be, he doesn’t need to have any historical trend information (nor would any be available for that electorate anyway). Using these metrics, he breaks down the voter potential into a few key scenarios and proposes the hypothetical impact of young people in elections. The results are that young people could have a major impact if even half of them participated. But they also need to overcome a historical precedent for non participation. With this said, the conclusion of the article is that the potential is great for large scale change in electorates based on young people participating but that there are significant obstacles to overcome. The items for these can be found throughout the outline and the conclusion is right at the end.

Article 2.

This article, ““Make them Pay Attention to Us” (2006)” was a bit more relevant to the current political landscape and was written in just 2006 about the impact that various types of marketing and outreach had on motivating younger voters to turnout on election day. The writer hook my interest in the first paragraph describing the landcape of a youth registration drive. it describes how motivated volunteers turned out to sign people up and show cased the excitement about the election that I know I felt during the 2008 presidential campaign. The purpose/objective of this article is to explore the ways that young people are exposed to political messaging and to talk about how they are most effectively motivated to register to vote. It describes how 2004 was the most successful campaign to do so since 1992 and that this kind of trend can continue in the future is similar methods are used to expose young people to the issues and to get them to register. This kind of thing is important because it helps to analyze what worked and didn’t work and thus, this information can be used in the future to drive participation among the age groups targeted. The main question could be summed up as “how were young people motivated to participate in the 2004 election.” Different methods in this article include polling data from exit polls, census information, historical voting trend analysis and a few different notable citations from prominent political analysts. Also, there were in examinations of the kinds of organizations that helped register voters and what their impact was. The results of the study were that young people voted 11 points higher on average than ever before and the registration campaigns were a stunning success. Knowing now that participation was even higher in 2008, I think it is a safe argument to say that 2004 may have been a turning point in the way young people are brought into the political process which was extended to 2008. The conclusion is that young people deserve most of the credit for turning out and volunteering in record numbers and for that they have been more important to target than ever in political campaigns. In the future, I will be looking at the results of polling data and voter turnout results for the 2008 campaign and I will try to understand how the trend of young voter turnout has changed and it can be better promoted in the future.