"The Secret Garden" or Better Known as Wolfe Garden

When first paired up with fellow classmates and handed the assignment of University Class scavenger hunt, I thought it was like other assignments in my UC190 class: busy work and a waste of my time. My opinion did not change until I came across a question I did not know. Where is and what is the name of the garden in the shape of the state of Ohio? I came to find out that the garden the scavenger hunt was talking about was Wolfe Garden located directly behind Alden Library on college green. Upon personally visiting the garden, something about it drawled me in and I felt an instant connection with the art, quotes, and naturalistic setting that provided a seeming escape from the academic world of Ohio University. So when prompted to pick a place for this project I could not think of a better area that I would like to learn more about then Wolfe Garden. After all it was one of the first places I felt a personal relationship with my surroundings on this campus. Although I felt an instant connection it was not an easy task to represent the garden in a promotional piece and make decisions that not only drawled my audience in, but also represented the garden in the light I wanted, with the history I wanted. I feel I did this adequately by producing a series of flyers.

When deciding what kind of promotional piece that would adequately represent the history of Wolfe garden, but at the same time bring across a message of tranquility and escape, I could not think of anything else but a series of flyers. I choose to do flyers because it aloud me to organize my thoughts and ideas into two separate entities. The first flyer I used to get across the history about the garden. For instance the name and significance behind the things in the garden itself. The second flyer I used to get across the history Wolfe Garden has within Ohio University and why it was named a meaningful place in the 2009 book Ohio University: A Campus of Meaningful Places. Overall I believe the flyers represent Wolfe Garden in two separate lights but together it helps my audience understand its significance as a whole.

When making decisions on who and how I wanted to appeal to my audience I started thinking about myself and why I’m so attracted to Wolfe Garden. Like I stated before it provides a naturalistic escape from the academic world and the day in and day out routine of school. So I aimed my second promotional piece titled the “The Secret Garden” at students who are like myself. The first flyer or promotional piece titled “Wolfe Garden” I aimed more at people that have either already been to the garden or just have a curiosity about the history of certain places on Ohio University’s campus. These people include prospective students, current students, past students and of course teachers and faculty advisers.

The purpose of my series of flyers was to represent the history of Wolfe Garden and why it is a significant place on campus. To carry out this purpose I deployed multiple design techniques. The first one I used was the attraction of pictures ranging from the time it was first open to modern day. This solidified the fact that Wolfe Garden does, in fact, through a visual sense, hold a history behind it. Along with pictures I used large font titles with green color. I used the large abnormal fonts to obviously catch the audience’s attention and inform them on what they are reading about. As for the color, along with green being the dominant color that represents Ohio University, it is also a color often associated with nature, fertility, and life. These things are also associated with gardens. Finally I used short writings to fill the audience in on the history of Wolfe Garden. I felt it was very important to be brief and direct with what ever was written on the flyers as to not drag down the audience member with words. After all when one receives a flyer they expect it to be brief and strait forward. If I failed to do this I risk the possibility off the flyer ending up in the trash.

My piece falls short of this purpose somewhat in the artistic aspect. If I were more artistic or even capable with using design programs on the computer I would have been able to incorporate the details and purpose of my flyers in more visually pleasing and artistic manner. For example, since I used Microsoft Word to make the flyer I wasn’t able to place some of the text next to the picture I wanted. I eventually found that I could wrap the text and move it around, but it distorted the color and print so some of the text has different shades then the other text. Also I was unable to add a creative border of flowers or something visually pleasing to make the flyers look more like a finished product.

My main goal of the information and history I chose to share in my piece was to give the audience a brief history behind the garden and why this history makes this place a significant one at Ohio University. I did this by providing in my first flyer the basic history of the people and things that the garden is really centered around. This information included a short description of Thomas M. Wolfe and that he was valedictorian of the graduating class of 1919 from OU, along with how he returned as a Professor of Economics. Other information I choose to be part of the first flyer was things on the different significance of the things in the garden from pieces of artwork, quotes, and even the shape itself. The information in the first flyer helped me lay a foundation for the information being presented in the second flyer titled “The Secret Garden.” It did this by helping the audience understand why in 2009 Wolfe Garden was named a significant place on campus, and how the various history and the history of the things in the garden help shape it and make it what it is today. That being said I intentionally left out some history, for example some information on Thomas M. Wolfe because it didn’t hold direct significance to the garden or at least the features I was choosing to highlight in the garden. I also left out tedious details about the plants and quotes located across the garden because while it makes the garden visually pleasing it would have been to wordy to try incorporate all that information on series of two flyers, plus like I stated before if I became to lengthy with the amount of words used in the flyer I risked loosing my audiences attention.

Overall after my discovery of Wolfe Garden in early fall quarter I found myself not only visiting the area on a weekly base, but also sharing it with fellow students that I thought might enjoy and appreciate the naturalistic tranquility it provides. Even though I found it difficult to represent the garden in the light I wanted to, I feel I did acceptable job and I attracted not only the audience I wanted, but was able to share the history I wanted. I feel that while my connection with this garden is strong it will continue to grow as I discover and strive to learn more about it,, and what truly makes it a significant place on campus.

2010 Average Tempature

With the beginning of another year comes New Years resolution, bigger and better plans for the new year, and yes even old information from the past year. This information normally includes statistics from the past year on averages. This article posted on NPR discusses the recently released statistics that proclaimed on average the earth was the warmest it has been on record since 188o. When reading this i had no initial emotions. The lack of emotion produced by this article i do not believe was do to the fact that the information was not important, instead not surprising. Not surprising because we have grown accustom to reading reports that constantly tell us the earth is warming. Upon further review of not really the article, but my own emotional response to the article i couldn't help but think that if an environmentally conscience person like myself feels uneffected by this how do others feel and treat this information? And if we as a society are becoming emotionally dull to statistics that very much effect us and our planet do we no longer care about what happens from a environmental stand point or our we just tired of hearing about it? The last question raised by my emotional response is have we just accepted the idea that our world is warming and there is nothing we can do to prolong the process?

Oil Drilling Reform

Click here to listen or read about new oil drilling standards that are being implicated by the federal oil spill commission to ensure safer drilling in light of the BP disaster in the Gulf last year. The article raised interesting points in my mind on environmental safety when it comes to oil drilling. Although i acknowledge that oil is a valuable resource to the world and it may be hard to reduce the risk to zero i believe we must try to reduce the risk to zero before we continue to drill for oil in new places. For example the article discusses possible regulations that could be put into effect once oil companies start drilling in the Arctic, but my personal opinion is we must reduce all risk of harm to wild life to zero before we can make a moral and conscience decision to carry out with these actions. Finally although this article does not directly discuss BP and there actions it further fueled my hatred for them post the gulf disaster and led me to think about should we put restriction on companies who can drill and sell oil in our country who have made such harmful and disaster's mistakes like BP did?

Relationship and Having a Sense of "Place"

As humans our relationship with place can be analyzed and viewed in multiple ways. First through how our surroundings meaning from the people we’re surrounded by to the environment and ecosystem in which we live in effects us. Through analyzes people often use common quotes to describe the places there in. For instance “home is where the heart is.” A simple yet meaningful quote that sums up that our hearts will always belong to place we considered home. While some may view place as a physical entity other see it as a more metaphoric none physical thing. For example people often sum there life existence up in the idea that they are finding there place in the world, whether it may be through a profession, how they treat others, or even taking care of there family. Although people hold different meanings for their place and surroundings one thing is for sure we all have a relationship with place and weather we like it or not it is always important to hold a sense of place if not a physical place a metaphoric and spiritual place within the world.

My personal relationship to place is very similar to what I believe my classmates relationships our, and when I say place I mean both physical and metaphoric place. Right now my physical place being Athens, Ohio I view as a location to flourish and grow. First of all I do this through the education I’m receiving at Ohio University. Secondly I do this through meeting new people and experiencing new things, and while at school I do both of these things on a daily bases. As for my sense of place in a metaphoric manner, I believe this is directly linked to my physical place. I hold this to be true because as many young adults I am working on defining my place in the world and trying to understand where I want my place to be. This links ups with my physical location because like many others I hold to be true that college is one of the key moments in life where we decide what we hold to be truly important and how will we find our place in that. For example after my first quarter I still find myself feeling that I will only find my place in service to others, hence I continue to pursue a major in Social Work.

Knowing your relationship with place is just as critical as knowing it is important to have a sense of place. Having a sense of physical place allows you to understand why you are somewhere and what maintenance needs to be done to ensure that your location can still carry out it’s purpose. For example by understanding I am here in Athens to flourish and grow I can assume others are here to do the same. By making this assumption I can respect Athens and help maintain an environment that is conducive to do this. As for why it’s important to have a sense of place in a metaphoric manner, is because it allows us to build goals and yes even define our own success in life. Having a sense of place allows us to maintain and add purpose to our lives.

As long as humans exist there relationship with place and having a sense of place will always be important. We see place as a physical entity meaning our environment and surroundings, along with being a metaphoric entity meaning purpose in life. My relationship with place in both a physical and metaphoric manner is a developing one, similar to how I am developing as a human. The importance of having a sense of place is to provide us with goals and guidelines on how to proceed in our everyday lives to shape the image we eventual want to represent ourselves. Over all without place both physical and metaphoric we as humans lose a sense of purpose.