A Momentary Lapse of Reason

The reason for this title comes from my lapse of reason.  I once again decided to leave this project to the last minute.  Although this seems to be my MO which has worked seamlessly for the last few years, it does get me into trouble every now and then.  It is okay to leave one project to the last second but it is not okay to leave three projects to the last second.  This was a lesson I learned.  I left this project to its final seconds and boy did I cut it close.
This all started during the peer review process.  When we opened our laptops for the peer review, it came to my attention that I was the only one who posted blogs on the site.  Although we hadn't decided how many each member would post, I had nothing to do one night and decided to do a couple of posts.  I became nervous that the group we were paired with would tear apart our site, revealing the true lack of work put into it.  To my very pleasant surprise, the group had barely done any work themselves.  Coincidentally, my group had aspects that the other group lacked and vice versa.  This peer review process turned into a brain storming session.  Of course this group held the other popular topic in class, the Party Bus.  We brained stormed away and came off with a few good ideas.  We added them to our pages and then went our separate ways with the promise of a peer review in the very near future.
My group then started sorting out the work.  We agreed each member should complete 6 posts.  Others decided to add events, pictures and videos.
I added a couple videos and once again put the project on the back burner.  In leaving it to the last second, two of my other classes interfered.  I had left a grand total of three big projects due to the last milliseconds.  I had two papers, one which required me to analyze a very good yet confusing film Memento and one about the Dos Equis commercial.  I worked away Memento and moved onto Dos Equis.  I was distracted for a couple hours by the unplanned stop of a friend but I continued onwards shortly after their departure.  With Dos Equis completed, I slayed blog post after blog post until I was champion.  My happiness was short lived when I looked at my site and realized that only a couple people had done their work.  I then went on to finish my process blog.  We now converge with the present and I am currently hoping my group will get their work in.  I have no reason to doubt that they won't but what can I say I'm a worrier.  So lets hope that all the work gets done but at least mine is in so I've done all I can.  Goodnight and goodluck.  

Hunkering Down

So it was time to start doing some actual work.  My group got off to a bit of a slow start, almost missing the first deadline.  The first deadline was to come up with 12 sources in an annotated bibliography.  This was not a hard task which made it a very easy task to procrastinate.  I procrastinated right up until the the deadline, finishing it at around midnight.  To my unfortunate surprise, the task I had procrastinated so much that I almost had forgot about its existence, I was the first to post the bibliography onto Sakai.  This did not anger me at all but I was a little worried that this would become a common theme right up until the final due date.  I was happy to wake up and see that two others had posted and I realized we were going to be okay.
When I got to class that day, my group laughed at the fact that most of us forget about the assignment.  That since has been corrected.  With most of the sources inline and the group in place, it was finally time to make our page.  We found a very good background of green smoke and we picked a generic title "Legalization of Marijuana in Rhode Island."  Very much short and to the point.
The next task was to assign work for the project.  We decided on a few important points we wanted to cover.  Medical Marijuana, Hemp, Prohibition and a few others which currently slip the mind.  My assignment was hemp.  Due to the fact that I wrote a paper earlier this semester on the Legalization of Cannabis sativa, I was not worried about the up and coming work load.  I put this project on the back burner for a little bit and my groups discussions mainly turned into real life adaptations of our project.
The next due date will be the peer review.  I am not exactly sure what needs to be done for it but I am sure I have it written down somewhere.  I'll take a gander.   

Project 4: The Wonderful World of Weed

If the title didn't tell you enough, the next project in our class I did was about Marijuana.  The aim of this project was to create a social networking site for an issue in Rhode Island that we cared about.  The site we will be using is called SocialGo.net.  Although I have not been there yet, my professor assures me that it is easy to use.  I can only hope that he is right.  The first thing we had to do for this project was to come up with a list of 5 social issues we cared about in Rhode Island.  The first thing that came to mind was music.  I wanted to come up with a social issue sensitive to Rhode Island that had to do with music.  Music pretty much runs my life so I figured this would be a good and easy choice.  Unfortunately, as I looked for social issues having to do with music I was left empty handed.  In the shadow of defeat, I still trucked on.  Next I found issues having to do with recycling, global warming etc. the obvious choices.  I then found the perfect idea.  I was going to do my project on orange stickers in Narragansett.  If you don't know what this is then I will tell you.
Every year, the police in Narragansett ride around town on the weekends in search of parties.  They either wait for a noise complaint call or they ride around until they see what looks like a party.  Once one of these happens, they walk into the party and break it up.  Normal police procedure?? I think not!  The police will sometimes then break out their patented orange sticker destroying the tenants lease and giving them extremely large fines.  Most lose their security deposits and the sticker is placed on a visible part of the front door for all to see.  This house is now targeted by police and they will check it more often and if another violation occurs on the property, more fines follow.  It's a terrible discriminatory policy that needs to be changed.
Now you know how I feel about this and I strongly believed that this would be a good choice for me.  As I went into school with the hope of my idea would be picked for one of the groups, I saw a much more attractive option.  The prohibition of marijuana is an extremely important subject.  I have been very interested in these policies since high school.  I have very much about this to say but I will keep it short.  There is no good reason that marijuana should be illegal.
Another group ended up picking my orange sticker idea and I began the task of working in a very "marijuana-like group."  I don't mean this in any derogatory sense but when I say "marijuana-like group" that includes myself and I mean that we are shall we say slow workers.