Then middle school rolled around. Kids were learning about drugs and gangs and sex, and suddenly no outfit was appropriate. Every pair of shorts I wore was too short. I couldn’t wear red more than twice a week, and never in a row. Kids who tried to dye their hair would be suspended. I seem to remember, though, that the prettier girls never got called out for their short skirts. No one got called out for dying their hair platinum blonde. Only the kids who didn’t identify with the ‘popular’ kids… And God forbid anyone ever wear a hat to school…

While in high school, the rules slackened a little, the ever present fear of ‘gang-attire’ or ‘provocative-styles’ swelled to a breaking point. Gothic, Punk, Gangsta (not to be confused with actual gang members) kids were no longer targeted by the crackdowns on the dress code, but again, the preppy, popular kids always managed to get away with more than the kids who weren’t. I’m not really sure why.

I suppose one might argue that because the preppy, popular kids were active in their communities, acedemically superior, and socially cooperative, they were permitted the occasional slip up. But here’s the rub: at my high school, the preppy, popular kids were in the middle range, college prep track. The kids in the honors program, actively involved in the arts, sciences, or Advanced Placement, tended toward more unique sttyles of dress. For some, it was the Gothic style. For some, that artsy, hipster style. For others, a strange amalgome of what was coming into style and what had lost its appeal five years ago. This tended to include shirts that were too short and showed off the navel, black leather and latex, strange piercings, and oversized clothes. I imagine the gangsta kids who had neither popularity nor grades to save them experienced a living hell every time they got singled out by a teacher. There was no way to appeal any repremand that a teacher laid down.

I got a warning once for when one of my bra straps slid down my shoulder. Maybe it’s just me, but that tends to happen too often for me to be constantly shrugging or tugging at the damned things. Usually I ignore them, safe in the knowledge that a peice of fabric covered elastic isn’t very tittilating.

I know in part the fact that students are constantly swimming in hormones and social pressures to conform or be different can make designing dress codes difficult. Changing fashions also have a great deal to do with the complexities of designing a dress code. The shortening of hemlines on skirts and shorts exemplify this. For the most part, deciding that keeping hems to the end of one’s fingers is probably the safest way to go. The girls hate it, of course. God knows I did. Why? Was i trying to tittilate my male classmates or teachers and cause a distraction? Pfft. No. I hated the rule because nobody sold shorts or skirts for girls my age and size that went all the way to my finger tips.

All I’m trying to say is that teachers need to be a little bit more concious and a little less reactionary to students’ styles of dress. That, or they need to be universally reactionary. Kids shouldn’t get free passes on low necklines, high hemlines, or torn clothing for being more attractive or socially acceptable. An official warning was not neccessay to get me to adjust my bra strap; all the teacher needed to do was ask me to fix it. Had the teacher been a woman, she might have even been able to suggest I go to the bathroom and adjust the length of the strap so it was less likely to slip. I saw other girls wearing those practically see-through white cotton tees with bright pink or purple bras underneath, with not even a raised eyebrow of protest from teachers. I heard rumors of girls wearing white pants and black thongs and getting no repremand from male principals or teachers, even when female teachers protested.

I don’t like the double standard.

In any case, I think the best deterrent for kids, especially girls, who want to dress in such a way is to point out the double standard. Oh, not by telling anyone that preppy clothes can get away with shorter hemlines and showing off their underwear… No, by having the fatest, oldest, most unlikable male teacher say what one of my math teachers said to my class on the first day of eigth grade.

“You may think the only people looking at y’all’s legs and whatnot are your classmates. But you’re wrong. Think about it, ladies, some of y’all’s teachers are men. And men, as a rule, are gonna look. I’m gonna look. So when you get dressed in the morning, I want you to think to yourselves: do I really want Mr. S looking at me when I’m wearing this outfit? If the answer is “no,” I suggest you change clothes.”

None of the girls in my class ever got called out on account of the dress code that year, I can tell you that.

I deeply enjoy creative writing, but I often find myself scouring the Internet to find information to pepper my fiction with to make it feel more ‘realistic’ and more and more I have been leaning towards the idea of becoming a professional tutor. Sharing information, teaching people, and making difficult concepts easier for other people to grasp and make their own is very much a part of who I am, and I have found that my best and most effective pieces of writing are those that inform. One of the primary strengths of my informative writing I feel is my voice- I believe that I am easy to understand without being provincial. One of the weakness of this type of writing is that I depend very heavily on the linear structure of print text, thus limiting the ability for people to browse my writing in a scattershot fashion the new Web 2.0 way of reading is training modern audiences to consume information.

One might argue that this new scattershot type of reading is “making us stupid,” but I know that modern readers are exercising a very high degree of intellect in being able to skim through and pull out only the most relevant pieces of information.  I am pleased that my readers are able to take in information in such a way and I hope that in time I can further adapt my writing to better suit my readers. However, I fear that I may loose my distinct voice if I abbreviate my text to the point of only having bulleted lists that are only a sentence or a word long or if I only write my information as though each individual point exists solely on its own, exclusive of other information. It reminds me to a certain extent of the timelines my history teacher expected me to memorize in high school… He wanted me to know every date and person involved, even if he mixed them up in a pile, but more importantly he expected me to understand the significance of the sequence of the events. Knowing that the Civil War was fought in the 1860′s and the Revolutionary War was fought in the 1770′s does no good if one does not understand the significance of the Constitutional Convention, state’s rights, the lines about slavery in the Declaration of Independence and the Constitution, and the growing socio-economic tensions between the North and South that existed even back during the Revolutionary War. Even the most interactive Wikipedia entry cannot quite capture the scope of these issues the way a textbook can- though admittedly most laymen would rather the Wikipedia entry than the textbook.

At any rate, the revisions I plan on making will be increasing the interactivity of my blog posts so that rather than reading the whole post as one long list, readers can jump immediately to interesting or helpful parts and save the time on the other parts. I also plan on editing the specific words of the blog posts, Remediation project, and Multimedia project. The Multimedia project will actually be undergoing a complete structural overhaul, revising the arrangement of the content, omitting superfluous information, and making each “entry” more universal, and this, I hope, more informative. It comes off as rambling and more like an outline than like an informative piece. I know that the structure of the Prezi is the way it is in a failed attempt at making scattershot reading more possible, but since some sections contain too little information (such as the section on Odysseus) or too much or even unnecessary information (such as the segments on the developments of specific media that exist separate of the character entries) I need to stop thinking about how my readers might skim their way through it and focus on exactly what content my readers will be skimming through. Quality of content is always preferable to quantity- or as Lanham calls it, ‘fluff’.

One of the most crucial aspects of informative writing is establishing authority and credibility. Even before I began writing papers for classes that I intended to claim as “authoritative,” I was writing fiction with characters and settings that adhered to very specific rules and motivations, thus establishing authority within the fiction. In informative writing, one cannot ever throw out a fact and expect the audience to accept it, especially on the Internet. I have seen many forum posts that say “pics or it didn’t happen” or even “I don’t know, it looks ‘shopped”- showing the real reluctance from people online to believe everything they see. Considering how many “Ethiopian princes” are trying to deposit large sums of money in off shore bank accounts and will cut a person in for a share if the prince could only use that person’s bank account number, this reluctance is a little reassuring to me. It does present a significant challenge for informative writers to provide not only information, but a way for the reader to validate it. In my scholarly writing, this is easy enough simply by providing correct citations and a Works Cited page, but in situations where I am just offering advice about things I have experienced, I often find myself drawing not only on my personal experience but attempts to relate my advice to other people’s experiences. True, this leads to a certain degree of “I’m not a lawyer, but”‘ing, but I feel that detailed and accessible (to one’s personal experiences, not just accessible online) enough information will help me establish the credibility I need.

That said, I hope that my portfolio shows my skills and development as an informative writer.

The texts this course covers are numerous, but some you might recognize are:

• Sandman
• Watchmen
• Lone Wolf and Cub
• Persepolis
• The Dark Knight Returns

Think those sound cool? Just wait until you read the stuff you’ve probably never heard of. Some of the comics you’ll study in this class will stick with you for the rest of your life.

10. Not Having a Kitchen – As much as I love having my own space, I can NOT stand not being able to cook. Whether it’s a dinner for myself or dessert for a group, I like cooking. There’s something sad about only being able to microwave my meals. Yeah, the dorm has a kitchen downstairs, but really, it just isn’t the same.

9. Homework – Once I’m done with college, I’m never going to miss homework. God above, I know I’ll probably have work assignments that require me to finish them outside of the work hours, but I swear, if I have to analyze another poem or write another paper about ancient figures, I’m going to scream.

8. Dependency – I love my parents. Really, I do. I really don’t like being tied to their wallets, though. There’s a sense of obligation inherent in taking their money, in knowing they’re paying for my room, board, and books. While I’ll always owe my parents a great debt, it will be so nice when it isn’t a financial one.

7. Scarce Parking – Ugh. If there’s one thing I can’t stand about Athens, it’s how very little parking there is anywhere. Worse, on Gamedays, when my parking spaces are usurped by the alumni and high-paying rivals. I’m a student, right? Why can’t I keep my parking spot?!

6. The Over-Crowded Buses – In any other city in the world, it’s illegal to pack the buses as tight as the buses are packed here. It’s dangerous, especially when you’re standing next to the side door and the bus takes that hill on Sanford Dr. at 30 MPH. The most annoying thing about it is the fact that half the people cram onto the buses when they’re destination is a five minute walk away. Don’t these people know that with the stops and the time the buses have to wait to get on schedule it can take 15 minutes? Jeeze, they should get off their lazy butts and hoof it.

5. The Dining Hall – Every other week, the same food. And while it’s not as bad as my high-school’s lunches, it still isn’t exactly five star dining, if you know what I mean. Even the best meals can get tedious when you eat them every week.

4. Working Retail – I’ve sworn off it. Once I’m employed in any other venue, I’m never working retail again. EVER. I love the company I worked with, I like the people and the other folks who frequent the mall are generally nice. But retail… Ugh. No, never again.

3. The Hoards of Drunks on Gameday – Don’t get me started. The clogged up streets, the boisterous men, the women hanging all over fences and passers-by. You might think it’s funny at first, but when the smell of cheep beer and the wailing of a complete stranger assails your senses, you won’t be laughing.

2. Crowds of Students in the Streets – When you do drive around town, there’s nothing more terrifying then driving along and seeing a sea of students walking across the road even against the traffic laws. When the light is green, I shouldn’t have to stop and let the hoard pass. That’s dangerous for me and for them.

1. The Smell of East Campus – There’s few things more disgusting then that smell. Late at night when the wind is right, that aroma is impenetrable. There are even nights when the windows offer no shelter. I won’t miss that.

10. The Dorm- I love living on my own. My parents’ house is so crowded with me and three other people in it, and my bedroom has so much crap accumulated in it that it always feels cramped, even though it’s bigger than my dorm room (probably…) and I don’t share it with anyone else. Also, there’s the issue of my terms… I clean my dorm room when I feel like it, do my dishes when I feel like it, and take out the trash… when my roommate complains about the smell. Okay, okay, not really, but close enough. When I live back at home, I’ve got to go back to the chores being on my parents’ terms, and I’m not really looking forward to that.

9. Classes- I hate writing papers and doing projects. Who doesn’t? But that doesn’t mean that I hated learning all the new things, engaging in discussions, and reading new material. The whole academic world was my oyster for four years. I almost wish I was going to stick around longer… as long as I never have another 10 page paper again.

8. Freeloading – On campus, my tuition is paid for, I’m on the meal plan, I live in a dorm. and I don’t have to pay for utilities. When I live at my parents’ house, I won’t have to worry about rent and utilities, but when I get my own place, I’m on my own… For good. Yikes.

7. Walking – Everything on campus is within walking distance. Even Downtown Athens is close enough to make riding the bus an exercise in silliness on sunny days and temperate nights. It’s been great exercise, and it’s comforting to know that I can literally hop, skip, or jump wherever I need to go. I don’t much fancy walking around the streets of Atlanta… not at night anyway.

6. The Dining Halls – There’s a reason the Food Services have been trying to get us to call the Dining Halls “Dining Commons;” they’re wonderful places to sit with friends, eat, drink (soft drinks) and be merry. They have pretty decent and free internet, they are almost always open, and they cater to so many tastes that I never can claim to find nothing to eat. I’ve got so many fond memories of Snellebrations, lunches at Bolton and dinners at ECV… I really am going to miss those places…

5. The Mall – This one’s definitely personal… I worked at the mall for three out of my four years here. I know that place like the back of my hand and I’ve formed great relationships with plenty of the employees and store owners. I’ve had good times and bad there, but I know that in the future I’m going to look back with nostalgia.

4. Gameday – I don’t like football. I’ve only ever seen six Georgia games since I got here. But that doesn’t mean I don’t get a smile on my face every time I see that sea of red and black all over campus, hear the roar of the Stadium from inside my dorm, or think about the few games I actually went to. GOOOO DAAAAWGS!

3. Jittery Joes – I don’t really know if they have locations outside of Athens, but I haven’t seen any in the area I live. They make great Chai tea, which I will miss, but they also have a friendly, casual atmosphere that EVERYONE in town is familiar with and can say “Oh, yeah, Jittery Joes!” You don’t get the same feeling when someone says “Oh, yeah, Starbucks!” It just… isn’t the same.

2. My Haunts – Siri Thai. Ru Sans. The Bombay Cafe which has been closed for two years. Jittery Joes at the (S)MLC. The Borders on Alps Rd. The English Lounge at Park Hall. The Grill… So many places. Some I’ve frequented more than others, but all of them are dear to my heart. Whether I went there with my best friends, my boyfriends, or all alone, I came to make these places a part of me. I’m going to miss them. But not as much as…

1. My Friends – Some of us live in the Metro Atlanta area. Others are Athens locals. Some of my friends live way out in the middle of nowhere, and others live in other states. Some are moving across the country when they graduate and some are settling down where they are. Needless to say, it’s going to be pretty hard to gather everyone together as frequently as I’ve been able to while we were all here. I wish them all the best and know we each have to go on our own paths, but that doesn’t mean I won’t miss being able to chat in the halls between classes or at any of the local venues over a meal. Oh well… Here’s hoping that even though our lives take us in separate directions that we are never really parted. There’s always the Internet, am I right?

• Free printing – the <emma> lab in Park Hall as well as most of the computer labs in the major-specific buildings will let you print up to two pages in black and white for free… But really, unless your teacher is sitting over your shoulder, watching you, you can print a whole assignment or two there without anyone hollering at you. If you make a habit of printing lots of assignments in these labs, though, someone is bound to catch on. Be smart, but don’t rule these labs out.
• Printing at the Libraries, Dorms, or the MLC- This costs 6 cents a page. Due to the crappy economy, this price always seems to be going up, but since you can still print most assignments for less than a dollar, its not something to sneeze at. A word to the wise- always give yourself a half an hour to get your assignment printed, plus the time it takes you to get from your printer to your class. Why? Printer malfunction, lines, accidentally printing the wrong draft… Don’t take the chance, take the time.
• Color Printing- This is at Tate Print and Copy, the Libraries, and the MLC. This costs fifty cents a page. Make sure you tell the printer that you only want the pages with pictures done in color- text only pages should be in black and white- if only for the sake of your budget. I have it on good authority from my roommate, a graphic designer, that these are NOT printers for art majors. The quality just isn’t high enough for art projects, but for those of us who need to print pictures with our papers, it’s just the ticket. I can’t tell you what the prices at the art building are, and generally speaking, the art department probably doesn’t want the average student using their printers, anyway. Art students, I recommend you speak to your professor if you aren’t familiar with the printers in the art school.
• Tate Print and Copy- Do you need a resume printed? A banner? A poster? These services are all offered in the Tate Print and Copy center in Tate 2. They don’t have their prices offered on their website, but they’re reasonable and, unlike all the other printers on campus, they don’t require the use of Bulldog Bucks. Yes, that’s right, unlike all the other printers on campus, this place will take cash, credit, and debit. And if you’re like me, and annoyed with the Bulldog Bucks system, this is the place to go to bypass all that nonsense. Good luck!

However, their non-sushi dishes are much more approachable. Ramen noodle soup (not the kind you get for 88 cents at Kroger, either), yakisoba, udon, miso… you name it, they’ve got it. They even have a kind of pesto pasta thing that’s a bit too weird for my humble tongue to describe. Japanese style noodles with pesto… That’s weird. Cool, but weird. On the other side of the spectrum are fried rice dishes- simple and familiar. So whatever your tastes, you will find something.

The atmosphere is generally dark and loud. Blaring hip-hop pipes through the speakers every night and most nights Ru San’s is packed. When the weather is nice, you can enjoy the outdoor seating, which is usually less crowded and doesn’t get any of the music, so there’s peace and comparative quiet for those who don’t like modern music. Located in the Beechwood shopping center at the end of Baxter St., Ru San’s is both easy to locate and next to a theater and lots of shopping. Parking might be a bit of a trouble, since the parking lot is shared by about six shops and the theater, but if you circle the lot a few times, you’ll find something.

Either way, Ru San’s is an affordable alternative to Chinese food, and I highly recommend it. Enjoy!

They make great, authentic tasting Italian food from the freshest ingredients and with out the Americanized flavors that some other Italian places (cough*Olive-Garden*cough) are known for. They also have a wine list that’s half as long as the menu – no joke! I guess you could argue that the quality of the food makes up for the higher prices ($7 for a plate of pasta at lunch time, plus a few buck extra for drinks and no salad or soup to go with it), but when I walk downtown for a hardy lunch around $10, I can think of a few places that will fill me up, cheap. Okay, so they have a few dishes that are cheaper (a slice of pizza and salad come to mind), and water is free, but when I’m hankerin’ for Italian, I want my pasta and a Coke, you know what I mean?

That isn’t to say I don’t recommend DePalma’s- quite the contrary. I have had days where I CRAVE the pasta or the salads they serve, such that I’ve even been late to a class finishing up my meal there. The lights are low, the posters from old movies from like the 40′s are incredibly unique, and the music is always fitting. It’s a great restaurant for a date (esspecailly if your significant other is paying) and especially for groups. They have HUGE booths across from the bar, which is, by the way, a full bar- not just wine! This makes DePalma’s a great place for celebrations. And located at three convenient locations – on Broad St. downtown, on Jefferson Rd. on the west side of town or over on Barnett Shoals on the east side of town, it’s definitely a place to stop on your way out for a night on the town.

• Make sure you don’t have any flags: Check your student account for unpaid bills, the library for over due books, and OASIS for any other things you may get flagged for. Get those taken care of immediately.
• Schedule your advising appointment early: If you’re an upper level student, you get an earlier time slot than underclassmen. Freshmen can get earlier time slots by participating in the Blue Card events and programs around campus. Just because you aren’t involved with the Blue Card program doesn’t mean you can’t be one of the earliest people to register, though. The minute you CAN sign up, do so! And pick an early appointment (early in the schedule, not necessarily an early morning one).
• GO to your advising appointment: I accidentally forgot to go to mine my freshman year. Even if your adviser is as useless as mine was (they probably won’t be… I just had bad luck) they have to sign you off in the computer so you can get on OASIS and register for classes.
• Talk to your adviser: Like I said before, my adviser was pretty useless. She wasn’t used (I don’t think) to Freshmen knowing ahead of time what they wanted to do and how they wanted to do it. I knew what major I wanted and what classes I had to take to get that major long before I went into her office. If you aren’t like me, you adviser might have a lot more useful information than mine did. At the very least, they might be able to navigate you around the weed-out courses.
• Go ahead and get Permission of Major: Any time you want to take an upper level course and most of the time you want to take an art-specific lower level course (like 3d Art or Intro to Graphic Design) you will want to get permission of the department. On OASIS these courses are listed with POM. OASIS needs to be programed to let you take the course. Even if you have a late registration date, getting the POM early will save you a lot of trouble.
• Get “Mentored”: I don’t know what other departments call it, but in the English department, professors were assigned a group of students to tell them what kind of classes their fellows taught and help guide students to classes that would meet their requirements and possibly fill their areas of emphasis. If you are assigned to a professor in your department(s), take advantage of him or her. They know their colleagues well and they’ve had other students relay to them the kind of complaints and concerns that students may be voicing.
• Find out what courses are available and what requirements they meet before you register: Self explanatory, perhaps, but important nevertheless. Most departments have their major and minor requirements, as well as the requirements for areas of emphasis and certificates available on their websites. Many departments even have a list of the courses they will be offering in the next semester (and even in the summer) posted there as well, even including the professor’s course description and syllabus much of the time. It can be very helpful when you aren’t sure what courses you need or even want to take.
• Register on OASIS as soon as possible: The minute you can sign up for classes, get on OASIS. Now, granted, some people get weird registration times, like 4 AM or what have you. Okay, so you can wait until you usually wake up for those, but do it as soon as you roll out of bed. You would hate for that cool course you want to take to get filled up by the time you get back from your shower.

That’s all well and good, but what if you mess up one of these steps? What do you do when you have to register so late that you miss out on a class slot?

• Talk to the Professor: Many classes have “caps”- they aren’t designed to hold more than X students. Howeer, many professors are cool enough to let a student who really wants or needs to take their course do so, if they just ask. Be polite and make sure you take the extra effort in the class your teacher let you in to. Your teacher shouldn’t regret bending the rules for you.
• Keep an eye on OASIS: If the professor has a strict cap or a policy against letting students in after the course fills up, just keep an eye on OASIS until Drop-Add ends. Someone may drop the course, leaving you a chance to get in!
• Talk to the Department: Say you need to take a PE course or you need a Spanish class but you don’t know the professor who handles it (either because there are many or it’s listed on OASIS as STAFF). You may not get the luxury of picking a ‘good’ professor by going through the department, but you should be able to get into the class you need to meet your requirement.

That should help you get registration out of the way. Enjoy your next semester!