Normally, I pick up your journal entries (3-ring binder paper), stapled with your name, each Wednesday and return them to you with comments the following Wednesday. But this one is due Monday, August 29.

Journal One - SL200 Section 02 - Fall 2005 - Kibak

 

For this first week I would like the following entries:

Who am I?

Start a section that tells me about the community you grew up in, where you went to high school, and what that was like.  Tell me something about the neighborhood right around your high school, and also about the neighborhood you grew up in.   As a high school student were you and your friends particularly into anything?  Music, surfing, computer games, etc...

Did you attend other colleges or have a job before coming here?

What kind of community service have you participated in?

Have you ever kept a journal or diary before?

How successful would you say you were in keeping it?

After reading the syllabus for this class, what do you think you will have the most trouble with?  What will you be best at?  Any questions or comments? 

Read and react to pages 9-32 of Jared Diamond's book, "Guns, Germs, and Steel." There are many controversial assertions in this prologue, for example that the average person in New Guinea is more intelligent than the average person in our complex western society.

  • Put Yali's question in your own words.
  • Have you ever thought about this question?  Did you come up with answers?
  • What are the three objections he lists to even discussing this question?
  • Diamond provides a sentence answering Yali's question and summarizing the book.  What is it?

"Homophobia in the Workplace" went on for 58 minutes covering many issues, definitions, and assumptions.

  • Did you feel it was a good training video?
  • Did you wonder why and how the speaker could do this, week after week, for a living?
  • What problems did you have with the video, good points, bad points, strong points, weak points? How did it define homophobia? Why do you think it went on so long? Did his final point, that you can be an ally in the fight against homophobia regardless of your moral outlook, make sense?
  • Why did Henrik show this video in this class?

This week’s coursework should take about three hours and result in at least four journal pages.