"So by the way, it's due in a week." (yikes)

So about five minutes ago we learned that the junior theme is due next Friday, May 7th. This means that we have exactly seven days to put the final touches on our papers, annotate our bibliographies, and dream up creative titles. I am personally feeling a little bit pressed for time, but my intro revisions have finally fallen into place and I think that I am nearing the conclusion of my research.
      In the time that we had off of school yesterday I called Lenore Skenazy, my interview subject, but she was unfortunately not around. Hopefully I will be able to talk to her over the weekend. On a slightly more successful note, I just completed my "fellow scholar" interview with none other than Nick Steen. His topic is American cars and the auto industry, which may not sound very similar to the topic of internet privacy. But we did find a connection that served both of us well. Part of his topic has to do with bumper stickers and the tendency of Americans to broadcast themselves by means of their beloved automobiles. We talked about why Americans feel the need to do this, and the effect on interpersonal reactions. I have a few good quotes from him that I will be including in my paper. (Although it just occurred to me that I might want to give him a copy of the paragraph that his quotes will be included in, just to make sure that I am not putting words in his mouth.)
      The one other thing that I have to do is annotate my bibliography, which shouldn't take way too long. I do have to make sure that my annotations are not too generic and "cheesy" though, since that seemed to be the main concern of our teachers.
      I have quite a bit of work to do this weekend, which will be challenging, seeing as I am going to Grosse Point for a regatta. I am going to have to put in some serious work during the five hour car ride there and back.....and probably after racing on Saturday night. I am confident, however, that I can get it all done by Friday.
    

"There can be no success without failure" --The Junior Theme Story

A brief update on my junior theme progress:
    I have emailed Lenore Skenazy requesting an interview and she very kindly responded promptly and positively. I am in the process of narrowing down the actual questions that I am going to ask her. Doc Oc helped me with that during class today. Almost all of my questions were way too broad and therefore would not have helped me learn information specific to my topic. I also spent a long time today grappling with freeconfrerencepro.com, which is a service that is supposed to allow you to record an conversation (in this case, an interview) online. I am not sure that this will end up working, so I may have to resort to asking the questions over email or finding another way of recording the exchange.
     Today I also finished up my very, very rough first draft of my introduction. Since I will not be in class tomorrow, I am going to meet with Mr. Bolos second period to discuss the intro. Hopefully I will get some good tips and insight from the meeting. 
     All in all, the stress level regarding the paper is not way too high. Maybe I would call it about a code yellow.
    I wonder what our final due date will be?

Junior Theme Update

So it's a bit after three on a beautiful Friday afternoon. As might be expected, the old work ethic has been somewhat hard to find today. I am going to plan out my research via blog to direct myself and budget my time over the weekend.

     The first order of business is to lock in my interview subject. I think that I am going to try to get an interview with danah boyd, as I have been reading her blog and latest book, but according to Mr. Bolos and common sense, she will probably be a difficult person to get an interview with. One of my friends suggested the founder of the website Zillow.com, which is a site that helps the owners or prospective buyers of homes check how much the home is actually worth. This ties in to my theme of privacy very well. One other candidate is Jesse Schell, the speaker in a DICE conference video that I watched. The video had a lot to do with gaming, privacy, and the future of technology.
     The next thing is to finish reading my book and pick out the most important passages and sections to use in my paper. (This task takes much longer to complete than to type out in my list.)
     After that I am going to finalize my thesis and write my introductory paragraph. Neither of these will be in their final form, of course, but it will be good to finally get something written down on paper.

The Jr. Topic Search

After a few weeks of trying to pick junior theme topics, I think that I finally have narrowed it down to three general areas: ageism in America, the evolution of privacy in America, and the use of sex in American advertising. I am very interested in all three of these areas, so I am having a lot of trouble deciding which one to go with (the burden of choice).
      The topic of ageism is really a problem of whether or not I will be able to quantify it. I suppose that I could quantify a housing trend, such as if families welcome their grandparents into their homes or if they chose to send them to a retirement home. I might also be able to explore the value of youth in celebrity and in popular culture.
     In terms of privacy and the internet, I was thinking that I could explore the seemingly recent trend of Americans not caring about their personal privacy. This is very closely tied to online networking websites like Facebook and Twitter. Mark Zuckerburg, the founder/inventor of Facebook recently said "privacy is dead" in an interview about the changes in privacy settings on his website. In a rebuttal, danah boyd argued that privacy is in fact not dead. I think that this would be a particularly interesting topic because it very directly affects my daily life and is a raging debate in today's world. It would be cool to go back in history and see how Americans protected their privacy back then.
     My final option is the use of sex in advertising. I have actually already written a blog that is similar to this topic, but specifically about the Go Daddy commercials. (See the blog here: http://lizzyinamerica.blogspot.com/2010/02/superbowl-commercials-and-feminism.html) For this topic I can research the evolution of advertisements over the years. One question that this raises is whether this type of advertising is a result of our male-dominated society and culture, or if it is actually just a result of the way the human brain is wired. This subject could also be particularly hard to quantify and find some concrete evidence about.

Writing this all down has actually been surprisingly helpful. I am now leaning towards exploring the evolution of Americans' views of personal privacy.