Attie Pearsall

I have been attempting to get more crafty with take photos. Now I will admit I do not have a camera so once again the pictures you will see are from my Iphone 4. I do like to take pictures of landscapes though, and I also pride myself on Instagramming pictures. The most important thing that I learned was that it takes multiple tries to get a good picture. Try multiple times and make sure that you change the angles up if needed.

Throughout the semester we learned many different things about research and one of them was about doing research in the library. Joy Suh took time to show our class how to do research from GMU’s library website. She showed us all of the essential databases that we will need fr research and writing papers. I knew about most of the websites the Mrs. Suh pointed out, but I was unfamiliar with how to get to the databases. I hear about them all the time from teachers, but I rarely use them unless I absolutely have too. I am glad we had this class because now I feel as though I know more about the databases.

Kevin Goldberg came and spoke to class, and we learned all about what he considers the 7 deadly sins of journalism. It is interesting because I actually took Kevin Goldberg for Journalism Law. He knew a lot about the laws that journalist must write by.

Wrath- Not everything is fair game in journalism

Envy- Ask for permission first

Pride- Make sure you are right about what you write about, or do not write about it

Lust- the copyright of the content belongs to whoever created the content

Sloth- It is not always about getting it first, it is about getting it right

Greed- If they want to make money then we shouldn’t use their stuff to make money

Gluttony- Fair Use Defense Act is not an excuse for whatever is it that you use that isn’t your own conent

Attie Pearsall
Asya Rojas
Katie Pappas
Jennifer Garcia

Ever wonder what happens to all of the pastries at Starbucks at the end of the night? Up until 2010 Starbucks would just throw all of the pastries out. As an employee of Starbucks for two years, I can safely say that is a lot of food that gets wasted. So Starbucks decided to enact a plan to set up every local Starbucks, including the one I worked at in Fairfax, with a local church to donate all of the leftover pastries too. This allows the churches to give the pastries to homeless and hungry people that come to the church looking for food.
The Starbucks I spoke with told me that every night when they close they package up all of the pastries into large green plastic tubs, and then the next morning church employees come by to pick up the numerous tubs of pastries. They are given out in the morning and throughout the day to the homeless and hungry. According to my friend Tim they just have so much food that would go to waste, they decided that had to do something about it.
Starbucks has decided to make it easier for their stores to donate all of their pastries by collaborating with a company called Food Donation Connection. By collaborating with Food Donation Connection, Starbucks is able to increase the number of stores that can donate food, and stop all of the waste. It also makes it easier for the individual Starbucks stores to arrange pick ups with the churches.
When I talked to my friend Tim that works at a Fairfax Starbucks he said “I am not sure of the exact church that we donate to every week because sometimes it changes depending on needs”.
Upon further research I learned that the Starbucks I used to work at donates a majority to their pastries to Church of Jesus Christ of Latter Day Saints.

Once a year at George Mason University they have International Week. I think that it is great chance for George Mason students to see some of the countries that all of Mason’s student body is made up of. It is an opportunity for students to see different cultures on the pavilion by the clock tower. There are also many different types of food that are served to Mason students. During International week Mason hangs flags all throughout the Johnson Center. Some of the things that I saw throughout the week included speakers and dancing. There was dancing and speakers in the Johnson Center as well as Dewberry Hall.

When attempting to come up with events that I could attend to blog about it hit me, why don’t I blog about a political event I have attended. Politics is one of my favorite things in the world. I love to argue it, read about it, talk about it and much more. So as I headed out to an event called Shad Planking in Wakefield, VA, I realized this is the perfect opportunity. Shad Planking is an annual event put on every year by the Ruritan Club in Southeast Virginia. This year since I am working for a candidate that is running for the Lieutenant Governor nomination, I was lucky enough to be able to attend. Much of the event for me took place before the Shad Planking actually began. I had to put up signs all over the area of Wakefield, VA. We, as a campaign, wanted our candidate to stand out above all of the others. Once the event started I talked to make people that were in attendance at the event. I talked to people about my candidate, and explained to them why they should vote for him about all other candidates. I even ran into some people that did not want to hear about my candidate, but at the end of the day everyone is entitled to their own opinion. I made sure to take lots of pictures of the event, so that I could upload them to my blog, and show people just what the Shad Planking is all about.

I think I would be better off saying that I have no video blogging talents. In class we talked about audio and video techniques and learned how to use garage band. I wish that I had more to offer when it comes to video blogging. That is part of the reason I feel as though I struggle with this class. I feel as though I am better off blogging online by writing and not uploading videos. I used garage band for the first time in class today. I learned that I can record sound on the IPhone, and then upload that directly onto my computer through email. I recorded some sounds with my IPhone today. The sounds are literally just natural sounds of noises, and coughing.
Memo

Editor: Jennifer Garcia

Multimedia: Katie Pappas

Community Manager: Attie Pearsall

Data Journalist: Asya Rojas

Food and Students

Have you very wondered if your grades in school had anything to do with your

hunger? These statistics can start to from very young, as early as one’s childhood. In

Fairfax County there is a youth survey that is conducted annually for all of the students

in sixth, eighth, tenth and twelfth grade. The survey includes questions that asked

students questions such as, “How many times has one gone hungry in the past 30 days?”.

According to the youth survey itself it reports, “One out of five students reported going

hungry at least some of the time in the past 30 days.”

Most of these teens affected in these Fairfax schools are Hispanic and/or African

American, and live in single-parent homes. Kids not getting the necessary nutrition is

only part of the problem. According to capitalareafoodbank.org, the U.S. Census ACS

2006-2008 found that about 13 percent of people in Northern Virginia are at risk of

hunger, and 1 in 6 children in Northern Virginia were at risk of hunger.

The bigger problem that we are faced with when looking at hunger is that it is an

issue that directly affects education. A student’s hunger has been correlated with skipping

school and lower grades. According to the Nutrition Cognition Initiative, continuous low

nutritional intake affects factors such as motivation and attentiveness, which can have

a negative effect on developmental processes such as learning and students attain lower

scores on standardized achievement tests. The Fairfax County Youth Survey not only

asks the question of if they have gone hungry in the past 30 days, but it also surveys the

grades that they have gotten and how many days of school they have missed or skipped.

When looking at the surveys conducted in the past few years, there is no question

about whether food is important not only for our daily consumption, but also for that push

needed to succeed and experience education to the fullest.

Charlie White a six-year-old second grader at Oakton Elementary School enjoys

his lunchtime. “I really think lunchtime is my favorite! Sometimes my mom makes my

lunch and sometimes if I am good I can pizza on some school days.”

Charlie doesn’t like his vegetables as much he says, “ I don’t really eat all my

vegetables. I do like the apples my mom packs though.”

References

“Fairfax County Youth Survey.” Fairfax County Youth Survey. N.p., n.d. Web. 25 Feb.
2013. .

http://www.capitalareafoodbank.org/wp-content/uploads/2010/05/2010-CAFB-hunger-
fact-sheet-update.pdf

http://suite101.com/article/link-between-nutrition-and-academic-performance-
a278743#sthash.VUuF2Net.dpuf

The Nutrition-Cognition Initiative. Medford, MA: Center on Hunger, Poverty and
Nutrition. (ERIC Document Reproduction Service No. ED 374903) 1994.

I have never really had a good eye for photography, but that does not mean that I do not love it. My younger sister has always been the better photographer. She has a way of having people and animals move in a certain way for her to take their picture. She knows exactly what angles to have the pictures taken. I wish that I had more skills when it comes to taking pictures. I have never known how to get the best lighting to shots for pictures. I hope that one day I can learn more about photography. It has never been something that I was ever good at, but I want to learn more. My photography skills extend to about Instagram. I am not sure if you have heard of Instagram, but you can add all different types of filters to your pictures.
These pictures are my sister’s photographs. I have always looked up to her for her ability to capture pictures at the exact right moment.

These are my attempts at photography, one picture is a beach in Florida and the other is the Tidal Basin in Washington DC.