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!

Advertisement