Nathaniel Rivers

Professor S. Ingram
UWRT 1102
February 23, 2015

Midterm
As a disclaimer(?) I might have come up with different definitions of the
concepts brought up throughout this piece.

To begin Ill start us off with Independent inquiry & Curiosity (maybe critical
thinking). For the early part of this course I sought out information and topics
relating to the Middle East.
Example
Blog Post 1 What are the causes of Middle Eastern Instability and are there any
good solutions. (my letter was effectively all this)
-why is the USA allied/friends with the nations that it is.
-should the USA stop supporting Israel
This line of topic searching came from my own curiosity of the Middle Eastern
Region. However as the days passed I felt like I was seeking an exact answer and
not actually to do much research on this. Not to mention the likely hood of finding
good supporting info was a bit difficult to find. Thus I switched my topic to Could
Utopias/Dystopias be real, and what would they be? after a discussion on why we
learn history occurred in class. This topic doesnt have a force dragging me to an
answer, and most importantly I am up for reading about it. For before this my
knowledge of both Utopia and Dstopia are non-academic.

Another concept that I believe Im doing at the least okay with is Intellectual
Growth and Maturity. Then again this definition could be a number of things.
Anyway for one I actually used the Atkins library (something I hadnt used
previously). Seeking out new info instead of doing something Im already an
expert(-ish) in. That coupled with the fact it is a philosophical topic; which may
make it a wee bit stranger than doing something material. As I have learned how to
use new resources of information my potential horizon grows. An interesting side
note is I learned how to use the Database at least one week before learning it in
UWRT 1102 as my PSYC lab required me to summarize a
peer-reviewed
article.

Now for the things that are posing a challenge for me. Due to its importance I
start off with Responsibility for own Knowledge. Simply said I have 3 different books
(another 1 if you count the Old English translation of Utopia by Thomas More) which
are unfortunately quite big. Thus Im starting to question if I will be able to read

through them, as I procrastinate and time moving oddly fast. A possible light in the
dark is that the third book goes over a number of other peoples works, as well as
attempted Utopias. That and I now have a feeling I want to read the book right now
after just flipping through it to make sure.

Another issue that will come up at some point is Multi-Modality. Though not a
problem yet it was however something lacking in my previous E-portfolio, and thus
may have important impact on my final grade. Even now my plain and simple ways
are showing on my current weebly site. Though I have tried to fiddle around with the
fonts on the blog with mediocre affect. I did however add a survey to give it
something more. The survey itself is rather pointless not to mention slightly difficult
to view other peoples results (I dont even know if the participants can even see
other people results, Im guessing no). Still it was an extra thing to make mine more
unique.

For the last paragraph I think this ends up being both a challenge and
possibly one Im doing well, providing and receiving feedback. This split is between
providing, which I do believe Im doing well at even if its just for bibliographies ,
and receiving, which its not that I cant take feedback but that the first time I didnt
have it with me and the second the forces of nature were attempting to freeze us
all. This shouldnt be too hard of a challenge as its just the bibliography, but
receiving comments does help ultimately. Heres hoping we dont miss a
provide/respond for the actual paper.

Currently reading all the resources Ive gather is the difficult part (I can find info,
reading it all is another matter).