kylelisk's Space http://kylelisk.posterous.com Most recent posts at kylelisk's Space posterous.com Mon, 19 Mar 2012 19:50:00 -0700 March Madness http://kylelisk.posterous.com/march-madness http://kylelisk.posterous.com/march-madness

March Madness started this past weekend and our very own Michigan State University was a number one seed.  They earned this number one seed after beating the number seven ranked Ohio State University in the Big Ten Championship game.  They won with a score of 72-70 in a very close game.  In the first game of “The Big Dance” they played the Long Island University Brooklyn Blackbirds.  Despite struggling in the first half they won convincingly with a score of 89-67.  Draymond Green played particularly well and had a triple double while scoring 24 points, pulling down 12 rebounds, and racking up 12 assists. 

                The next round, MSU played the Saint Louis Billikens.  It was a bit of a struggle but they won with a score of 65-61.  Draymond Green recorded a double double while scoring 16 points and pulling down 13 rebounds.  He also added 6 assists.  Keith Appling also played decently well and he scored 19 points.  He also added 3 assists and 3 rebounds.  MSU didn’t play incredibly well but they still came out with a win.  At times they struggled and they had 11 turnovers throughout the game.  They also recorded 19 personal fouls although in my opinion the refs were not very good and were a bit one sided on their calls.

                Next round Michigan State plays Louisville.  Louisville is a number four seed.   They got the four seed after finishing in the Big East with a record of 28-9 and a conference record of 10-8.  Louisville’s top scorer is Kyle Kuric who averages 13.1 points per game.  Their top rebounder is Gorgui Dieng.  He averages 9.1 rebounds per game.  He also adds 9.4 points per game.  It should be a very tough game but I think that we can win.  If we do win, we will play either Marquette or Florida.  Both of those teams are pretty good and should be very tough wins.   After we beat them we’ll be in the Final Four.  This would be another Final Four for Tom Izzo. 

                One another note, this March Madness had plenty of surprised. Two of the biggest were two number fifteen seeded teams in Lehigh and Norfolk State beating Duke and Missouri respectively.   UNC Asheville also almost beat Syracuse and would have been the first sixteen seed to beat a one seed.  They probably should have won but the refs gave the game to Syracuse would a bunch of bad calls

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Mon, 19 Mar 2012 18:51:00 -0700 Spring Break http://kylelisk.posterous.com/spring-break http://kylelisk.posterous.com/spring-break

The websites were pretty interesting.  Using Spring Break to help others seems like a very good cause.  It is more helpful than just going to Florida or Cancun.  Plus the trip is also pretty cheap compared to a trip to Florida or a trip to Cancun.  Plus it’s a chance to get away from home and to go somewhere interesting.  It is also the chance to meet a bunch of new people.  You get the chance to help out people who have disabilities or people who have gone through natural disasters.  People who need help.

My Spring Break was a boring one.  I didn’t really do anything.  I just went home and hung out with people there.  The first weekend I spent mostly at home.  I also went and saw my old basketball team play in their state tournament.  They came in third.  I also went to see Project x with a friend.  It was a pretty funny movie. 

During the week I went to visit my old high school.  I visited old friends, teachers, and I worked out in the gym.  One of the teachers I saw was Dale Clyde.  He was the person I interviewed for my Cultural Artifact paper.  I also saw a few of my old football coaches while I was working out.  It was a fun time and I got to see a bunch of old friends and some people I haven’t seen in forever.

There were a couple of questions I was supposed to answer for this blog post.  The first was, "What are the stories I can tell about my spring break?"  I have already answered this question.  I typed what I did over my boring break.  The next question was, "what could be the better use of my spring break for me being an MSU student, a writer, & an undergraduate researcher?"  One answer to this question would to be go on Alternative Spring Break so I could help others.  Another answer would be to do more interesting things so I’d having something more interesting to post about.  That would make this post more readable.  I could also study stuff I will e writing about in the future.  That would make the papers all that much easier to write.  The next blog post however will be more interesting because I get to write about whatever I feel like writing.  That is all.

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Mon, 20 Feb 2012 20:59:00 -0800 Untitled http://kylelisk.posterous.com/103783842 http://kylelisk.posterous.com/103783842

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Mon, 20 Feb 2012 12:54:00 -0800 Music Article http://kylelisk.posterous.com/music-article http://kylelisk.posterous.com/music-article

I found the article about music to be very interesting.  I like to listen to music.  I'm pretty sure most people do.  Music is just fun to listen to.  Most people listen to it for many different reasons.  Some people listen to it for fun, some people listen to it when they are sad, other people listen to music for it's deeper meaning, and probably almost everyone listens to it while they study.  The article states that there are three different planes of listening to music.  Those planes being, "the sensuous plane, the expressive plane, and the sheerly musical plane."  Music is obviously used for many different purposes.   The author of the article, Aaron Coplan, states however that many people abuse the plane in listening.  I don’t know if I really agree with this.  I mean, it’s music man.  People can listen to whatever they want for whatever reason they want.  It’s not up to me or anyone else to decide what people listen to and why they listen to it.  So I would not necessarily say that people abuse the plane that they listen to music in. 

Music has structure; it’s arranged in certain ways for specific reasons.  Even if a composer will not admit that a song is arranged and about something, it is. Basically the author is lying.  They wrote their songs to have meaning whether they know it or not.  Many musicians however will admit that their music has a deeper meaning.  A song written with the intent to have a deeper meaning will have a bigger impact than song which is written without that intent.  They also tend to be the more popular songs because people get the deeper meaning whether they know it or not.  Even classical music had deep messages.  It often did actually.  Just look at songs by Elvis and Johnny Cash.   Most, if not all of their songs had deep messages.  I personally like Johnny Cash. He’s the only country artist I can listen to. Personally, I think country music is terrible and depressing. (Except for Cash).  I just cannot stand it. (Except for Cash)  It’s just too whiny and cry baby-ish.  I would almost rather listen to screamo music and I hate screamo.  I just do not see why people are so in love with country music.  Anyway, that’s the end of my tangent about country music, and by my word count, it’s also the end of my post.

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Sun, 12 Feb 2012 22:06:00 -0800 Video Game talk. http://kylelisk.posterous.com/video-game-talk http://kylelisk.posterous.com/video-game-talk

I found Jane McGonigal's talk about video gaming and saving the work to be very interesting.  Although I don't necessarily agree with everything she says.  Mainly that we need like 21 billion hours playing video games to save the world.  I do however believe that some life problems can't be solved in video games.  Video games give us multiple chances unlike real life in which, for the most part, we only have have one chance.  I do find her points about time to be very interesting.  People spend an incredible amount of time playing video games.  If we also used that time to solve problems, we would figure a lot of stuff out.  I also do agree with her points about it bringing people together from all over the world to work out problems. Now, I'm not sure how much using video games to solve real world problems would help, but I wouldn't be surprised if it did atleast a little.  I don't know if I agree with her saying that people immediately like each other more by playing a video game against them, I can think of a few personal experiences in which I didn't necessarily care for who I was playing against.

I also found the fact that she made games about world problems interesting.  In a way, those games could help people solve real world problems.  They could also help people be prepared for what they would do if those problems were never solved.  It helps either way, whether the problem is solved or not.  Now, I don't know how much it will help either way in reality, but I'm sure there is some effect.  Now, you can't make realistic games for every world problem, but you can for many of them and you can make them very realistic. 

What I am basically saying is, video games could help, but they could also harm our efforts.  If people spend too much time not focusing on a good task, they are wasting their time.  I wouldn't be surprised if people became unfocused on their true purpose because they were playing a game.  They may forget that they're trying to solve a real problem.  This would just ruin any true problem solving efforts.  If you could some how find a way to keep people focused on the task at hand video games may be a very good way to solve real world problems.

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Mon, 30 Jan 2012 14:48:10 -0800 Review of the first month http://kylelisk.posterous.com/96999647 http://kylelisk.posterous.com/96999647

My first month in WRA 150 section 11 has been an interesting one.  We have already been assigned several papers.  Each assignment has been fairly unique with only a couple of assignments that were similar. One of the assignments we had to do was a five page paper over a personal literacy.  I did my paper on football because it's what I know best. It was an interesting paper to write.  Another thing we've had to do for WRA 150 is write a blog, this blog.  It's something I haven't done in a writing class before.  The class is definitely a lot different than what I've been through before.  High school class was also a little more relaxed and structured.  We had a schedule of when we were supposed to do certain things and when we were supposed to turn certain things in.  the teacher had structure for the class  In this class it's up to us.  It's up to us when we do parts of the paper and when we finish it. It's not as structured.  It's all kinda just up to us and what we want to do.

I do feel like my writing ability has increased slightly, maybe not by a lot, but atleast a little.  College writing is very different from high school writing.  The writing I've done for this class so far has made me pick my brain for information a lot more than any high school class ever did.  Also, the papers have been different in how they were formatted.  High school papers have the same basic formatting throughout the paper and just drone on and on.  The papers and blog posts I have done so far have been a tad different.  They are more of a free writing form than my high school papers. I've also had a little more freedom to write about what I want.  The freedom to write is pretty nice and makes things less stressful then what I went through for high school papers.  The paper about football was actually fairly easy because I was writing about what I know best.  I mean, a paper can't get much easier when you know plenty of what you're talking about.  Even with a short time to write it.  Don't get me wrong, writing is still a pain, but that paper wasn't too horrible.  But yea, that's pretty much been my experience with the class so far.

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Mon, 23 Jan 2012 19:05:52 -0800 Response to "HS to College Writing" http://kylelisk.posterous.com/95796786 http://kylelisk.posterous.com/95796786

 I found this article to be a very interesting one.  It was written by Patty Strong and she wrote about the difference between writing in high school and writing in college.  She states that, "writing is thinking."  I can agree with that.  You can't write a good paper without a good thought process to work with. If you have no thought process, you'll end up rambling on and on about nothing.  A perfect example would be me bringing up the fact that she mentions "The Scarlet Letter" in her writing and having me state that I hate that book.  It has nothing to do with what this blog post is about.  This post is about the transition from writing in high school to writing in college. It's not that abomination of a book called "The Scarlet Letter."  Anyway, I digress.  

Patty Strong goes on to state that college writing is different because it "goes beyond the limited conception that writing is writing."  I also agree with this. although I haven't had to write many papers in college yet seeing as this is my first writing class as a college student, the writings I have done have been completely different.  The thought process for college papers is completely different from that of high school papers.  She also states that writing should produce thought.  This is also true. While writing papers you often have to consider what you just wrote and what you're going to write next.

Another thing Patty Strong states is that we are responsible for our own education.  I agree for the most part.  It's up to us to get to class and make sure we are on time.  It's also our responsibility to make sure we get all of our homework on time. We're paying to go to college, we have to make it worth our money.

A final thing that Patty Strong states is that we will want to write well in college. I agree completely.  We have to want to write well to write a good paper. We all want a good grade and you need a good paper for one.  I also agree when she says that the illiterate of this century will be those who have problems with learning.  Pretty much everyone can read nowadays so the status of "illiterate" kind of shifts.  For the most part, I agree with her article about the transition from high school papers to college papers.

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Tue, 17 Jan 2012 14:52:00 -0800 WRA 150 Section 11 email assignment. http://kylelisk.posterous.com/wra-150-section-11-email-assignment http://kylelisk.posterous.com/wra-150-section-11-email-assignment

I

  • In the article we had to read for WRA 150 I was kinda surprised by some of the things that people actually said to their professors in their emails. To me, it seems incredibly stuck up and selfish to complain about your professor helping someone else.
  • The article makes me think of some of the emails I have sent.  I never really considered my grammar and writing style in any of my other emails. I wonder what the people who got my emails thought.

II

  • The advice I found the most helpful was about putting my class in the subject of my email.  I also found the advice about not saying "I don't mean to be rude" helpful.
  • there isn't really any advice that I don't see as useful is some way, shape, or form

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