Metacognitive Analysis

Rachel Liang

Professor Pessin

Metacognitive Analysis

20 April 2013

Metacognitive Analysis

            After reading the three hybrid essays provided to us I was able to realize which style I most preferred. I was really drawn to Cabel’s “The Basement” because it wasn’t just an article about a cool basement he found, he was able to take us on an adventure without having us physically present. A majority of his post was pictures, if we were to put all his comments in one paragraph or paper I’m pretty sure that it wouldn’t of been more than a page and we wouldn’t have as much of an understanding as we do with the pictures than without them. When I started my blog I knew I wanted to incorporate a or some pictures but I just wasn’t sure how I’d go about it. Because we were asked to write about our experience on electronic writing I wasn’t really able to give the audience the feel of it because it’s more of a feeling of an experience than a physical one, for example if someone asked you to describe the word “love” you’d be able to show pictures of couples acting like they’re in love but the audience isn’t going to fully comprehend the meaning of that word unless they themselves have gone through it. Since there wasn’t anyone sitting next to me taking pictures of how I looked when I was experiencing writers block or when I got tired of sitting still for too long, I had to improvise.

I remembered watching the movie Julie and Julia there were scenes/pictures of Julie sitting at her desk either looking at her laptop or typing on her blog, I used one of the many pictures to illustrate what an average blogger looks like and I incorporated a summary of who she is and how that image related to how I felt about electronic writing and blogging. Another thing I liked about “The Basement” was how Cabel made us feel like he was talking to us not at us. When I read the hybrid essay about cleaning water and the Santa Cruz River, I don’t know if was because it was repeating the word WHEREAS at the beginning of every single “paragraph” but I felt like that author was yelling at me and I couldn’t even fully comprehend what they were talking about because there weren’t any clear ends to their sentence or thought. So I knew I didn’t want to come off like I was lecturing my audience on my experience with electronic writing. I made sure to put them in nice paragraphs with a clear sense of who I was and where I was coming from. Enduing that my hybrid essay was in first person because I feel like when I put my own thoughts and opinions in my work it feels more personal than just writing out whatever the prompt asks of me without my own interpretations.

            Therefore after reading the hybrid essays provided I had a clear path way of how I wanted to go about writing my essay. It wasn’t entirely like Cabel’s or like the one of cleaning water but it gave me a good guideline of what to do and of what not to do. 

TTFN: Ta Ta For Now

      I hope you all have enjoyed my blog as much as I've enjoyed writing it. My most favorite part was being able to share what my lovely chapter has been able to accomplish in the past 7 months of being initiated. We've all had our ups and downs with getting used to being in a sorority full of new friends but at the end of the day when we come together as a whole, we all feel love for one another. There were also some fun blogs that I've posted below that are either in favor of the Greek life or are against it, each post explains my opinion on their blogs, my favorite was Sorority Sugar, it's a pool of every sorority that's Panhellenic and they are able to show not only great memories from each chapter but they also have tips and questions open for everyone to answer. It's another great blog site to visit if you want to keep educating yourself of the Greek life, to see if you're interested in joining, but as I've said how movies and TV shows portray the Greek Life is false. 

    I'll be taking a break for a little bit because it's almost finals week/summer time! 

"The Help"

Did you guys know that the renowned book and movie "The Help" was written by a Phi Mu? No? Well it was, her name is Kathryn Stockett and she was apart of Phi Mu the Alpha Zeta Chapter at the University of Alabama. (UA) Kathryn was able to write this story using her own life as a guideline. Because her mother was absent most of the time she had an African-American maid that took care of her and raised her. Some of the main characters in her novel were other Phi Mu's from the University of Mississippi (Ole Miss for short) from the Chi Omega chapter.

    "The Help" is a novel about a white southern college girl who wants to become a big time New York City journalist but in order to do that she writes a small article for her local newspaper. The only article that was available for her to write was for housekeeping and since she had to idea how to be a housekeeper she asked her best friends maid to help her out.  Skeeter who is the aspiring journalist becomes close friends with her "best friends" maid Aibileen, what started out as just a simple housekeeping article it turned into an article that a potential New York publisher wants to publish about Skeeter educating the world on what real life domestic servants have to go through on an every day basis. Towards the end of the novel Skeeter was able to get 12 maids to willingly tell her what awful things they have gone through and at the end the NYC publisher published Skeeters stories into a book and everyone was astounded by how close Skeeter got to the "help" and what awful things people in the south were making their housekeepers do.

Sisterhood

Sisterhood: an organization of women with a common interest, as for social, charitable, business, or political purposes.
       When you join a sorority you naturally meet people that your have a stronger connection too, but your all apart of a sisterhood, where your common interest is at least 3 out of the 4 things listed above. I'm not saying that every single member of your sorority is going to have the same interests or goals as you but the chances of you running into a random person with as many common interests or goals I'd say is a lot lower than finding someone in your sorority with those same interests or goals. 
To bond more with your sisters every sorority has a sisterhood event, which isn't mandatory (you're not forced to go hang out with your sisters if you don't want to), they're normally fun events like going to get some fro-yo, going to the zoo, or even going to the beach! Because my school's now in their Spring Break my sorority had a beach sisterhood event this past Wednesday. We took advantage of living in California where the temperature in Malibu was a nice 75 degrees (F) and we all needed a nice relaxing day beach side. Because my school is the last one to have their spring break we saw a couple other Greek Houses at the beach and we all got to hang out, outside of Northridge. 
Being girls and being in a sorority we had to show off our sorority hand sign, if you can see how our hands each makes a quatrefoil, half from one sister and half from the other. Every sorority has a hand sign, some more complex than other (ours is pretty hard to figure out but once you're shown, it's not only easy but its pretty) 

Love Honor & Truth

Phi Mu was created by the Founding sisters; Mary Elizabeth Myrick (Daniel), Mary Ann DuPont (Lines) and Martha Bibb Hardaway (Redding). These ladies were only about 15-17 years old when they were in college are started Phi Mu! It was founded January 4th but they weren't able to fully establish Phi Mu until March 4th 1852, so March 4th is when we celebrate our Founders Day! If you were wondering what we do during Founders Day, it's basically like a brunch with any Phi Mu who's near your location, they don't have to be women in college, they are also alumnae. We don't do some cult like ritual on Founders day like some people make us out to be. 

Phi Pin

Badge 

  Over the years Charter members started adding to Phi Mu; Making our Phi Pin, Badge, Coat of Arms, Flower, Color, Mascot... 

Our Phi Pin and Badge are both in the shape of a quatrefoil the only difference is the Phi pins have a Greek letter of Phi on the front where as our badge has our shield. 



Phi Mu is really into trio's because we had three founders and ever since then we have things that match in threes like Love Honor and Truth. For every Phi Mu "Love Honor and Truth" resonates differently than the other.  For myself, I really hold myself to the "truth" portion of this saying because you can love someone and be honorable but you can't do either if your not truthful, not only with yourself but with others. 

Hopefully you all can say that you've been impacted at some point of your life and it changed your perspective on life.

How Phi Mu's give back!

    Phi Mu was the first Greek organization to donate money to the Children's Miracle Network Hospital. We've been donating money since 1986 and so far we have raised more than $8 million dollars! Phi Mu has made the Children's Miracle Network Hospital their national Philanthropy which means at least once a year each chapter will hold an event where 100% of the proceeds go towards the Children's Miracle Network Hospital. My chapter Eta Nu had our first ever philanthropy event last fall where we had a dance competition between all the panhellenic Greek organizations that wanted to participate and we were able to raise over $2,000! Our next philanthropy event will be next week on Thursday where, again, willing Greek chapters are going to be sitting in a "jail" and have to "bailed" out a minimum of $30.00, all the proceeds will be going to the hospital.
    A little history about the Children's Miracle Network Hospital; it was founded in 1983 (only 3 years later Phi Mu became a Fundraising Partner) by Marie Osmond. Her only two main goals were to 1. help as many children as she possibly could by raising money for actual children's hospitals 2. she wanted o keep the money raised in the community where they could help out local children. Over the course of 30 years the Children's Miracle Network Hospital has raised over $4.7 billion dollars! There are 170 hospitals nation wide where each hospital provides $3.4 billion dollars in charity car each year.
    For those of you who want to help out in your community go and find a local Children's Miracle Network Hospital and start raising money for a great cause!

Littles wearing our Letters

This is a picture of our lovely new Littes who were able to receive their letter, which are jackets with individualized phi mu letter designs. We got sixteen new littles this past Spring Recruitment, if you look back through my posts you will see a picture of our Spring Recruitment table. All the ladies standing in the back grow are Bigs, who mentor the littles who are essentially Big sisters to our new members. Throughout the past week the Little went through Inspiration Week or I-Week for short, where each day has a different themed event where they exchange gifts from Big to Little and Little to Big. The gifts consist of wooden Phi Mu Quatrefoil plaques that are decorated, memory boxes, scrap booking, and lastly their letters which the Bigs picked out the entire design for their new Little or Littles. Before the Little were able to receive they’re letters they had to be initiated into our sorority. The little already went through a pledging ceremony to the sorority which is more of a promise to Phi Mu where an initiation is more of a marriage. If you notice that some sister have the same colored jackets on, it’s not because they Bigs happened to have picked the same color, it’s because some of our new members have twins, so one Big will have two Littles to watch over and love for the rest of their entire Phi Mu experience and they're "family" will grow larger and larger throughout the years of Phi Mu being at CSUN. 

Not for everyone and that's okay

This article is about the "cons" of the Greek Community, but after reading it, it just sounds like an author presenting why they don't like the Greek Community, when in the titles seems to portray an article that isn't opinionated. The author talks about how difficult it would be to pay for dues because it's already hard for her to pay for her rent. She then talks about how difficult it would be for her to live in a house with a large amount of other females, she even feels nauseated thinking about it. That is entirely her own opinion about that living arrangement, which isn't necessarily a con. Then she goes on and talks about the "Greek lingo" and how she can't stand to be around the girly over enthusiastic texting way of talking, what she has to realize is that everyone does it, you don't have to be in the Greek system to talk like that and not everyone does it all the time. She then goes on an talks about the Greek's "top-secret" stories that they can't tel non-Greeks, which makes her almost want to join on just to see what they're talking about. Greek stories aren't top-secret the way she makes them out to be, they're just traditions that we can't talk about to people that aren't in our own Greek House, it's a family trade secret, every house has different ones. Don't take it personally. Lastly she states how living in a sorority house you have to many restrictions, every house has different rules, but she pointed out how sororities can't throw parties (which is true) then she talks about how guys aren't aloud to come up-stairs past a certain time, they probably only set this rule to keep their girls safe and to make sure they both genders aren't doing any suspicious activities in their own house because it would reflect badly on them as a whole.
   Again, I think that this article (below) was more opinionated in the matter of how they went about describing the "cons" of the Greek Life. Like I've said before my goal for this blog is just to educate people on Greek Life and not to criticize other people for their opinions or feelings. If you disagree with what I've said you can always let me know, I'm open to new ideas and opinions.


http://thebottomline.as.ucsb.edu/2011/05/cons-of-greek-life

The "cons" of joining a sorority

Unlike my previous blog post, this articles is written using comments from other people who decided not to rush a sorority and the author isn't ranting on about the negatives of being in a sorority, it not only talking about the costs of being in a sorority and how materialistic they come across, but the author also talks about how much time commitment it takes from an individual. This is a valid point because you do have to make sure you have enough time for school (which is the number one priority in the Greek Community) and work if you have a job. I wouldn't say that this is a con of being in a sorority, like any club or organization you have to make sure you have enough time not only for you organization but also for yourself.
   The other point that was brought up was hazing, which is a really big issue/controversy with people within the Greek Community and people outside of the Greek Community. The author commented on how one of her close friends was hazed when she joined a sorority. I'm not saying that hazing doesn't happen, sadly. It is an issue within the Greek Community, which is frowned upon, but there are a lot of fraternities and sorority's who take hazing very seriously, it also depends on the campus you're on. If its a common task during pledge week then you're more likely to get hazed than if you're on a campus who's hazing incidences are very low. Maybe I just got lucky, but my sorority (Phi Mu) is really against hazing, we even have an Anti-Hazing week and we all wear a pin that shows that we are against hazing. My campus is also one that doesn't have a lot of hazing issues within our Greek Community.
    Another point the author talks about is your ability or inability to socialize with non-Greeks. The author talks about how it's great to meet people and good looking fraternity boys, but she also states how not only are fraternity guys getting labeled as not "relationship" or "best-friend" material but sorority girls are also getting labeled this, which isn't true at all. When I read a comment like this, it doesn't get me angry or anything I just feel the need to correct them by showing how not every fraternity guy and sorority girl is a jerk and non-best friend material.
When you're trying to make friend in any situation you have to be able to read people well enough to see if they have pure intentions or if they're just being nice to "be nice". When you join a fraternity or sorority you're not going to be "best friends", brothers, or sisters with everyone in your house and in the Greek Community, you find who you fit best with and you build your best friend, brother, or sister bond that way.
http://www.hercampus.com/life/greek-life/think-you-rush-anything-cons-joining-sorority

"Greek Life: The Dark Side"

 This article is written in first person from a female who was in a sorority for two years out of her college experience. She’s reflecting back on what she experienced while rushing and joining her sorority. She claims that it was a waste of time and money and it wasn't an enriching experience.

      The author touches on bases that go against what my blogs about, like buying your friends. In a recent poll that I did majority of the public didn't think that you are buying your friends when you enter the Greek Community, where as the author disagrees with this statement after she’s been in her sorority for 2 years. Another major point that she talks about is how being in a sorority is materialistic and superficial, if you join any organization you’re going to have shirts and promotions for your organization, it just happens that being in a sorority your shirts and promotions are going to be a little overwhelmingly girly, which sometimes comes across to the general public as “superficial” and “materialistic”. What the author has to realize is that we live in a materialistic world, if companies and organizations didn't promote themselves by looking good and acting like they’re having the time of their life then no one will want to join their company or organization, people are naturally drawn to things that look better than things that are drabby.

       It’s a very emotional and argumentative piece in the way where if your reading it from the stand point of not being in the Greek Community, you realize that you're never going to want to join a Greek house and how movies/TV shows portray sororities/Greeks in general is true; how they’re fake and superficial. But if you’re coming from someone who’s in the Greek Community, you want to show the author that she just happened to have a negative experience and that being in the Greek community is so much more than how the movies portray us to be. I also feel like she's being a little hypocritical to the Greek Community because she was apart of a sorority for 2 years. That takes a lot of commitment to stay in an for 2 whole years and at the end of those 2 years realize that she didn't like it. She even stated how she joined, "just to see what it was all about" because she saw many upperclassmen girls wearing their letters, so she was even lured by their positive aura. 

http://www.usatodayeducate.com/staging/index.php/blog/greek-life-the-dark-side

Buying Our Friends?

Not Impressed?

If you love USA Gymnastics and Phi Mu Check out my MEME! http://qkme.me/3tfxp0

Phi Mu's Best Dance Crew: Philanthropy event

This is a picture of my sorority: Phi Mu, Eta Nu! This was at our first ever philanthropy event called Phi Mu's Best Dance Crew. A Philanthropy event is a fun fundraiser for our charity, Children's Miracle Network Hospital LA, we were able to raise over $2,000! Which is pretty darn good for being the newbies on campus! During this event we had both sororities and fraternities participating in this one day event, where each house had the opportunity to come up with a 3 minute dance as a group and perform it in front of a panel of judges, who were not chapter members. The houses also had to opportunity to give themselves more points by putting a dollar in their donation jar. ($1.00 = 1 extra point) At the end of the night we had a great turn out not only with the amount of participants but we exceeded our goal for our philanthropy. We can't wait for our next philanthropy event this semester!

Another positive blog regarding Sororities!

http://sororitysugar.tumblr.com/

      This blog is a page where other sororities can post their questions regarding their own chapter or questions that they have in general, and anyone can answer back. It's a great example of sister's helping out sister's even if we're not in the same chapter or sorority. We also have the opportunity to post our own photos, to share awareness of the amazing philanthropy events we've done and how much money we have raised for our charity and to just show pride in our sorority. It truly shows what it means to be in a sorority, without the stereotypical stigmas.

Hypothesis

    The main reason why I wanted to blog about sororities wasn't to brag about being in a sorority or being apart of the greek community. I want to educate people on the true meanings of being a Greek and being a Phi Mu. A lot of people are quick to say or think that your "buying" your friend when you first join, because you do have to pay dues but those dues doesn't go into "buying" your friends, it goes into helping out run your house more efficient and buy shirts that are good PR for upcoming events that go towards your fundraiser or philanthropy. Another thing people think of when they hear the word sorority or greek community is, trouble makers. What a lot of people don't realize is that the greek community volunteers a lot and donates all their proceeds to good charities, mine for example is Children's Miracle Network Hospital: Los Angeles. Lastly, people need to realize that being in a sorority or being apart of greek life isn't a all parties and no education, there is a lot of work that goes on underneath the surface and if you take the time to research or follow my blog you'll see that it's not a waste of money and our time.

"What Sorority Girls Do"

 

This picture is a perfect example of how differently people can perceive any sport, job, culture, greek affiliation, etc. Pictures like these can either educate people (like the last two pictures), but it mostly just reinforces people's preexisting thoughts on sorority life. As I've stated in my first blog post regarding Alexander Vervloet's article, being in a sorority or being apart of the greek community is so much more than "buying you friends", "partying", "being a cult like group"... the list goes on and on. What the fifth picture is portraying (2nd row, middle picture) is a sorority winning a game/championship at an inter-mural competition against another sorority, this is a way for greek life to interact with one another and have a friendly competition between everyone. The last picture is truly how my sorority acts around each other, not only with sisters but with everyone. We don't exclude anyone from being our friends, we're not perfect, and we definitely know when to ask for help when we need it. We're just a group of close friends/sisters, that share a common interest and can be ourselves around each other.

This is a picture of some of my sorority sisters and i at one of our volleyball IM's last semster! We're all there to not only cheer on our team but we're also there for support and to make sure everyone is having a good time, because IM's are just one of the many fun things that you get to be apart of when being in a sorority.

 

This photo was taken during our Spring recruitment 2013, how you see our table set up is how most sororities/fraternities decorate their tables. It's a inviting environment where you hope to make new connections with everyone in your community. 

How Greek life is Beneficial

  Most people believe that being in a Sorority or Fraternity is all about getting drunk, partying every weekend, and not caring about school. But it's not like that at all, as Alexander Vervloet has stated in his article, being in a fraternity was really beneficial to not only himself but to many other successful brothers.(ex. Presidents and people on the  Forbes 500 list) Some of the key things that people don't realize about greek life is that when you join a "house", that fraternity or sorority has a minimum GPA requirement and if you fail to meet that minimum requirement then you're supposed to go to some type of study session to help raise your GPA. Another fact that goes somewhat unnoticed is that every fraternity or sorority has a philanthropy (a charity that they raise money towards) and they hold an event once or twice a semester and all the proceeds go to that charity. For example I'm in Phi Mu: Eta Nu and our philanthropy is Children's Miracle Network Hospital LA since we're located near Los Angeles. Lastly majority of the people who are apart of the greek life community gains an enormous amount of social skills, leadership skills, and self confidence. Greek life makes you learn how to approach people and socialize with people that you normally might not get along with and this is an important life lesson because in order to succeed in any career of choice you're going to have to learn how to deal with people.

Being in greek life isn't meaning less and a waste of time, it's giving you the opportunity to branch out, explore who you really are, and what you're capable of achieving.

http://www.dailybarometer.com/greek-life-is-beneficial-1.3003420#.UT12rRy9auI