Lost in life (blog entry 1)

Hello everyone. Me llamo Nicholas McKellar, Nick is fine and I am from Phoenix, Arizona. I’m currently a super senior because many of my credits did not transfer from my last school in Florida. This is my third year at CU and I decided to study psychology; however, I am clueless as to what I am going to do with my degree once I graduate in December! I’d like to use it for sports psychology, but my plan is to travel around the world before I even consider sitting through lectures for another four years. I’m a certified bar tender and love to make people smile with my sense of humor. My only goal this year is to graduate which is a strong possibility if I ever get off the dreaded wait list.

I’m honestly taking this class because it fills my core requirement. I’m wait listed on all my classes so I figured I’d give this a shot and see where it takes me. I’m not sure what the exact definition of visual arts and rhetoric are, but what I can gather is probably very different from everyone else’s. Visual arts to me, are creations that we can see or imagine which provide a better insight on the meaning of beauty. I consider rhetoric a form of speech which conveys meanings and depth which carriers a confident attitude enabling a convincing manner. I hope to accomplish a better understanding writing in the field of visual arts!

Getting to know McKenna…

My full name is McKenna Eve Neises. I am names after both of my grandmothers. McKenna and Eve both being their maiden names. I am a Junior and I am currently studying Spanish with hopes to get accepted into the School of Education. I spend a lot of my time at an orphanage in Mexico and this has become my inspiration to open up a non-profit in Tijuana. At least thats the plan as of now, however it is always changing.

I am taking this class mainly because it is required. It also happened to be the topic that I found most interesting. I always enjoyed studying art and creating it so I like to take advantage of the opportunity to learn more. Visual art to me, in a general sense, is my surroundings. It can be found in nature, paintings, billboards or anything around me.

I do consider myself to be a rhetorican because it is used in my daily language and expression. I think this class will be interesting because I am interested in developing a better understanding of the correlation between visual art and rhetoric.

Thanks for reading!

A brief intro to me, Sabrina Galloway (Blog Entry 1)

Hello everyone!  My name is Sabrina, and that is what I go by. I was born and raised in Chicago, Illinois (more specifically, I grew up in Hawthorn Woods, but this suburb is so small that many have not heard of it). About two years ago, I was attending a community college and knew it was time to get out of town and look for a university from which I could receive a bachelor’s degree. I had no idea where I wanted to go, but I knew I wanted a drastic change of scenery, and that is what brought me from the flat Illinois corn fields to the beautiful mountainous region of Boulder. I had actually never even been to Colorado when I applied at CU, but from the moment I saw the campus during a spring break visit, I fell in love and knew this was where I wanted to be.

I came out to CU to study and receive a bachelor’s degree in the field of biochemistry. I have been very interested in science my whole life, and this area of study seemed to be an efficient way for me to encompass all of my passions in one. Despite the rigorous coursework and huge time commitment, I have loved every second of it, and wouldn’t change a thing about my decision to make such a big transition in my life. As for my career aspirations, that’s a tough one…When people ask me, “What do you want to be when you grow up?”, the best answer I can give them is, “scientist.” The field of biochemistry is so broad, I feel like I will never be able to decide on a designated path. As of right now, I am leaning towards graduate school, as it will give me a little more time to decide. Currently, I am working part time at a local wellness center in Boulder and have been for over a year and a half. I love the work I do, as I get to meet a lot of new and interesting people while supporting a cause that I am passionate about- wellness, holistic therapy, and natural medicine. Ideally, I would like to make this a focus of my research in graduate school.

To be completely honest about why I am taking this class, I needed another upper division elective to fulfill my degree requirements. However, when I stumbled across this class, I got pretty excited. I have always enjoyed writing, and although I have done plenty of it through the many lab reports I’ve had to compile, it has been mainly scientific. I am very interested to be exposed to and have more of a focus on the visual arts, as it is an area of study that I have not worked with much throughout my time in college. I believe “visual arts” has a very broad definition, encompassing anything one can see that evokes an emotional response. I think one of my most memorable experiences with “visual arts” was when I first watched Pink Floyd: The Wall. I have been a music fan my entire life and particularly enjoy classic rock, so this interest in music was a perfect bridge to the visual arts aspect that one can experience simultaneously with music. By taking this course, I hope to increase my exposure to visual arts and perhaps obtain a better understanding of all aspects of the subject.

Blogging Take 1 (Blog Entry 1)

Hello all! My name is Jared Shedrofsky and I generally prefer to go by Jared. However, a few of my good friends sometimes call me Jibaldo which is slightly unusual I think, but it comes from the Rockies pitcher Ubaldo Jimenez. I’d like to think its due to our athletic similarities ,but sadly I don’t think it’s the case. I am from Irvington, New York which is in Westchester County, about 40 minutes north of the city. I am currently studying Psychology in Boulder and will be entering my senior year this fall. My only real drive for majoring in psychology is my fascination for Bio and Neuro Psych. Currently I am working for my dad in New York buying and selling unique gems and minerals which really couldn’t be farther off from my major. I have really enjoyed the job and I am considering minoring in Geology and staying in school a little longer if necessary. I am also getting my scuba diving license this summer and I hope to be able to go on a few trips over the next year.

I would love to be able to say I am taking this class because I am a skilled writer and really enjoy writing. Unfortunately, that is not the case. I don’t think I want to start off my first blogging experience with lies. I primarily consider myself a science based student with very little intuition for writing. I am taking this class to fulfill my upper division writing credit and thought writing in the visual arts sounded like a very interesting option. I would define visual arts as a way for one to express themselves through different visual mediums. Personally, I have never really been able to accomplish this but I have definitely experienced it through others works. My grandmother is a very talented painter who teaches an art class and still leads tours to different museums and galleries all over NYC. Even though her talent in visual arts has not been passed down to me she has still made every attempt to educate me whenever possible. I hope through this course that I will gain a wider or different perspective for viewing the visual arts, as well as improve my skills as a writer.

A bit about Natalie (Blog post #1)

My name is Natalie Roberts and I am from Santa Barbara, California. I had lived there my entire life until I had moved to Boulder, Colorado two years ago. I encompass many stereotypes of a California girl, but I have also tried to keep my Peruvian heritage close to heart. I grew up hearing my Peruvian mother speak Spanish and have always been interested in the Latin American and Spanish cultures. The combination of wanting to be fluent in Spanish and needing to constantly interact with people led me to declare my major as Spanish for the Professions. So far, I am really happy with that choice and hope that the combination of a business degree and Spanish fluency will help me to get a job in Southern California after college. I am fortunate enough to be able to leave this August to study abroad in Alicante, Spain for the entire upcoming year. In Spain I will be able to take classes that will count toward my major and I also hope to get an internship working for a business.

           

            I am taking this class to fulfill the upper division writing requirement but it is one of the few CORE classes I am excited about taking. Visual arts, in my opinion, are any ideas, stories, or points that are expressed visually instead of spoken or written. On the other hand, rhetoric is the act of persuading or informing someone else through the act of speaking or writing. I believe I am a rhetorician along with anyone else who is literate. From small children to English professors, people speak or write with the intentions of enlightening someone else or persuading them to act or believe in a certain way. I hope after taking this course I will be able to watch a movie or look at a piece of artwork and see something deeper than what is blatantly expressed on the surface.  Because my major requires me to take business classes, I am excited to break away from strictly technical writing but also hope this class will help improve my technical writing abilities. 

Another Introduction (Blog Entry 1)

Hey there, my name is Lesley Perkins. I’m from Boulder, I was born and raised here. I’m double majoring in math and studio art. I know this is a strange combination but I just studied what I was interested in. Next year I’m going to be a senior, which is exciting but I’m also worried about it. I know I’ll start to loose motivation for school but I still have to take all of my hardest math classes next year! It’s also kind of amazing to me how fast the past three years have gone by, I almost want to take another year to graduate.  I plan on taking a year off after I graduate. I hope that I can travel during that year off, I’ve never been out of the country and I’ve spent too much of my life in Boulder. I plan on going to grad school eventually, though I’m not quite sure what I want to study at the moment.

I’m taking this class because I need it to graduate. I’ve never taken a college writing class before because I took AP tests in high school. So it’s been four years since I have been in a writing class. I started taking a technical writing class last semester and hated it so much I dropped it after the first week. I would define the visual arts as any visual object that was made for aesthetic purposes. I am an artist myself, so that’s my relation to the visual arts. I mostly paint and draw, but I’m also interested in design, architecture, fashion, animation and video games. I would define rhetoric as the components of an argument. I think everyone must be a rhetorician, even if they don’t know what rhetoric is. Even children know how to make convincing arguments, from a very young age. So I think this shows that rhetoric is something that is essential and natural to human communication. Since all visual art is a form of communication, I’m interested in how this course will change how I think about my own visual art.

Blogging from Boulder (Blog Entry 1)

Hi. My name is Christina Chandler and I go by Christina. For some reason, perhaps because my first name borders on the long side, most people ask me if I go by a shorter version (e.g. Tina, Chris, Christie, etc.) when they meet me.

I am from Boulder and am double majoring in English and Classical Art and Archaeology. I study English because I have always found communication and all its forms fascinating, and writing is a particular medium that I am at ease doing. I study antiquity because I love seeing how the world we know grew out of a much earlier one. This involves examining the art, rhetoric, political systems, architecture, and trash of the ancient world. My favorite geographic region of antiquity is the Near East and after CU I hope to attend graduate school to continue studying this area.

This summer, as in past summers, I am a nanny in Boulder for an almost five-year-old named Weston. We spend our days playing ball, visiting the zoo, reading at the library, and eating lots of snacks. It might be the best job in the world (at least for the time being).

As others are doing, I am taking this class to fulfill the upper division writing requirement, but I chose the visual arts section because I spend a lot of time looking at images (of ancient things mostly). It is always striking to me that I study things I have never seen in real life (e.g. artifacts in the British Museum), and yet looking at images of those things is my favorite things to do in the world. I myself am not an artist, but often I think art is the most powerful form of communication and I love trying to figure out why.

In addition to images, I study ancient texts. This is the most fascinating rhetoric to me because in antiquity rhetoric held so much influence, perhaps because so many people were illiterate; finding ancient texts raises many interesting questions about who wrote it, for whom it was written, how it was read or heard, and how and why it accompanied images. I do not consider myself a rhetorician, but I do consider myself someone who studies them.