A Great Quarter

                Writing 2 has easily been one of my favorite classes here at UCSB. I have genuinely liked this class as much as I ever thought I could enjoy a writing class. The aspects that I most enjoyed about this class have been the positive atmosphere, the freedom of topics and the way that everything that we did in this class will help us in the future.

                In order to open up about my writing, I must be in a comfortable environment. To me, revealing my writing to others is a usually hard to do, but as the class progressed I became much more comfortable doing so. My comfort level rose mainly because of the positive and friendly nature felt by the Professor and the other students. The nature of the class in general helped make the 2 hour class much more fun to attend and ultimately made it a much more productive class.

                Throughout my educational years, I have never had this much freedom to choose topics that I wanted to write about. Writing about specific ideas is sometimes necessary for certain classes, but writing about topics that I had a strong feelings towards made it much easier and fun to write about. Not only did the freedom of writing make it more fun, it also showed me that writing does not always have to be feared and dreaded.

                The most important aspect of this class was how it was based to help us succeed in the future. Whether it was a simple grammatical activity or creating a podcast, I feel that I can take these newly learned skills and apply them in both my later years at UCSB and the years to follow.

                All in all, this class has been a great learning experience that has greatly improved my writing abilities. 

Podcast: Not as scary as they sounded

                In the tutorial “How to Create a Tutorial - a Step by Step Tutorial”, Corey Deitz summarizes what a podcast is, and how to create one.

When I originally heard that we had to do a podcast in class, I had no idea what it was; quite frankly, it sounded intimidating. In the first section, Deitz summarizes a podcast with a very gently and positive spin by simply saying that it is a “chunk of audio” that can be accessed by just a single click. With modern technology of computers and speed of the internet, these audio files are easily accessed. Reading this summary made me feel more comfortable and confident about this upcoming assignment.

Even though I now knew what a podcast was, I still had no clue how to create one. But Deitz, also stated that creating a podcast can as easy or as complicated as the creator wishes. A podcast can be as simple as a recording of audio, but can also be as complicated as an intricate mix of business, information and advertisements. In our current project, we will be creating a podcast with a medium difficulty by combining music files along with voice recordings.

 “How to Create a Tutorial – a Step by Step Tutorial” by Corey Deitz was an extremely useful article that showed me how simple yet useful a podcast is. Along with this, Deitz also showed that making a podcast is not as difficult or intimidating as it seems. Reading this article completely changed my perception of a podcast.

Analysis of Sources for Podcast

                 One of the most important things that go into a podcast is the research that complements the argument. Good outside sources create a more well-rounded argument while giving the project more validity. In my podcast, I am going to analyze the perceptions of who truly is the most hated Major League Baseball team. As a whole, all of the sources that I have come across have been either surveys or an expert’s personal opinion.

                 The first source that I came across was a 2004 Sports Illustrated article by Bill Skyen that listed the top 5 most hated teams in all of sports. Skyen’s research was conducted by a nationwide poll. The results from his poll showed that the Yankees are by far the most hated team in all of sports. But they are also voted to be the most liked team in all of sports. This data shows that the Yankees are the most popular team in all of sports regardless of whether they are loved or hated. I am planning on using this overall data to show the degree of how much the Yankees are hated, not only are they the most hated team in baseball but they are also the most hated team in all of sports.

                Similarly, I found another article by Neil Bulson that summarized the 12 most hated teams in all of sports. Again the Yankees were the first, but in this article the Red Sox were also ranked #7.

                Another source that I found was an article by Matt Sheehan. In this article he ranked the 5 most hated teams going into the 2011 season.  I am going to use these five teams, and relate the results to the other surveys and opinions found on my podcast. (Yankees, again, were the most hated team)

                Lastly, an article by David Biderman was found. In his statistics, he took into consideration both how much they are loved and hated. In his results he found the top 10 hated teams; surprisingly the Yankees were only the fifth most hated team.

                In my pod cast I am going to incorporate these sources with the live opinions that are brought to light.

Sources for Paper #2

Research is a primary component in the upcoming paper. Because of this I am choosing to use this week’s blog to summarize each of my potential research sources and to try and grasp a way that I can incorporate each into my paper.

                My first source is from Psych net research, tested to see if listening to familiar music was while working out lead to a more vigorous thus productive workout. Their results yielded that listening to music not only made the exercise more productive but it also made it more enjoyable. I plan to use this document as driving force to prove either that music has an influence on exercise or not. I feel like this document has very good potential to enhance my paper

                The second source is a research to see if listening to familiar music while doing light workouts (such as walking) is more productive or acts as a distraction. The results showed that the music actually distracted the participants. They said that it most likely because the subjects focused more on the music than the actual exercising. I believe that this piece will be a good argument in my paper because I can relate it to a question “How hard to you work out” and see if my results match what they had.

                The third document that I am using is very similar to the first one, and in fact it yields the same results. I am planning on using this piece parallel to the first source to show either emphasis in my results or that my results may be skewed from the general consensus.

                I am looking forward to finding the results of my survey to see if the results match up with these documents. 

Music and Personality

          In “Accounting for Taste” by Erik Gardner he connects people’s taste of music to the “inner emotion needs that are fundamental to our personalities”. Gardner backs up this statement by stating how different people are affected by music in many different ways. I agree with his stance that music has a huge effect on which a person truly is but at the same time every individual’s personality is much too complex to be generalized into one simple category. 

        To me, Gardner’s research shows much more validity because he not only states the more obvious assumptions such as extroverts are much more apt to be found at rock concerts and dance clubs and neurotics are much more apt to choose music that will regulate their mood. But he also accepts the fact that the line drawn between introverts, extroverts, dependents and neurotics is just too grey; everyone’s personalities are a unique recipe that are impossible to completely understand. Although each individual has a distinct personality, his research makes it clear that the generalization of each person has a clear correlation with the music that they choose to listen to.

           People usually tend to always gravitate towards things that best molds to who they are.  It would not make sense for people to listen to music that they completely disagreed with- it is simply illogical. Music is more than just a beat with words; it is a culture, a story and a way of life. Nothing else can have such strong correlations to who someone truly is. This makes music a prime, and possibly the only, topic that can draw from such general attributes that define something as complicated as someone’s personality. Although knowing what kind of music that someone listens to cannot tell you everything about a person, there are definitely correlations that can be determined.   

Music's Influence

In the study Exposure to Degrading Versus Non degrading Music Lyrics and Sexual Behavior Among Youth, Martino, Collins, Elliott, Strachman, Kanouse and Berry tested to see whether or not degrading music influenced teenagers to engage in intercourse at a younger age.  As the survey concluded, they found that teenagers were constantly exposed to the degrading sexual are “Related to advances in a range of sexual activities among adolescents, including intercourse”.

                To me, the term, ‘correlation does not imply causation’ could not be more fitting for this study. Although I strongly believe that allowing the younger generations to listen to disturbing lyrics has unthinkable effects on a teenager’s views about sexual activities, I don’t think such statistics can be calculated by an uncontrolled study. There are just too many outside factors that can influence a teen’s perspective.  Music, television, peer and family all have their impacts on the ‘sponge’ like brains of the adolescent teen that seems to absorb everything in its surrounding; blaming music entirely for making teens more sex prone would simply be unfair.

                Music, television, peer and family all have distinct impacts on teens, but in most cases all of these impact factors work together to convey similar concepts. For instance if a person’s enjoys degrading music they will most likely watch television and make friends that all share this common interest. So even though music may not directly and solely impact a person’s decisions, it makes a definite impact.

                In my opinion the decisions that we make in life cannot be blamed because someone is exposed to a type of music. Instead, I believe that it is more the choice of accepting and allowing the culture portrayed in the music that truly influences an individual.  

Week Two: "Last Days of Brother Ray"

David Ritz, "The Last Days of Brother Ray"


The "Last Days of Brother Ray" is the story of a man writing about the experience he had about writing a biography about the great Ray Charles. Throughout the piece we saw the transformation of Ray from a person who 'had no fears' and was one of the most accomplished musicians to walk the face of the earth to a man who was too weak to speak.



In the years of Ray's prime he was cocky, arrogant and could seemingly look death in the eyes and show no fear. This strong and fearless mentality is what Ray credited his life's success to. As said in the piece, "If Mama gave me religion, the religion said, 'Believe in yourself.' "  This relentless self centered mentality came about because he knew that no body would help him except himself, and due to his success he held very strongly to this belief. As soon he was diagnosed with cancer, and the disease was clearly breaking down his body, it also broke his mentality; making even the great Ray Charles vulnerable.

Seeing such a great and prominent figure such as Ray Charles show remorse and guilt for the things he did leads me to believe...