In Class: First Paragraph

Though there are many people shuffling around, the lobby of Harris Hospital Downtown is very cold. I was immediatley drawn to this space since I am a nursing student and it is the location of one of my clinicals. I had never noticed how large and somewhat dark the lobby seemed. The popcorn vendors and starbucks present in the lobby have been shown to me in a new light as I walk through as an observer rather than a worker. Hospitals are an ominous place for most, yet there are many things in the lobby (gift shop, popcorn venders, starbucks) that would make one think otherwise. In the public areas it does not seem as if this is a place where people are struggling to breathe every breath. It has more of a warm feel but it is easy to sense that these distractions, like the smell of the coffee brewing behind the starbucks counter, are just covering up what is happening only floors above.
People in this almost everyone. Kids, infants, teens, parents, and grandparents can be seen in just one quick scan of the room. There is a blend of all different types of ethnicities and everyone seems in somewhat of a calm panic. In the corner there resides a fireplace, unused, in the midst of the crowds of people walking through the lobby.

In Class blog: peer reviews

In my past experience, peer reviewing of essays has not be the most productive thing. In high school when we did this we did actually look at each others essays and review them but it was mostly for grammar and other things. It seems that in my experience the peer review process is never what the teacher intends for it to be and students do not typically recieve any input that can actually help them to better format their essay for the purpose of the specific assignment. Additionally, being put into random groups with people and reading their essays seems to make some people uncomfortable. It doesn't make me uncomfortable it just feels like somewhat of a waste of time and has never been something I have looked forward to.  I am not opposed to the idea of peer reviewing essays but it just has not been the best exercise in my past experience.

In Class blog: Peer Observations

After reading over the comments my peers made, there are a lot of new ideas I have gotten. I think I had been trying to be so objective that I neglected to include more of a personal view on what I was obersving. I think adding this will help me discover more clearly the appeals to logos, pathos, and ethos that my space is making.
Additionally, the peer reviews have helped me to see that I need to incorporate the visual aspects I have found in my space and connect them to various appeals they could be making. I need to look at why things are the way they are in this certain setting and what effect it has on the people in the setting. Also their comments put some ideas in my head that I had never thought about like how the staff responses might make an appeal to either logos or pathos.
Their reviews kind of helped me tie together the loose ends of certain observations that I wasn't sure fit with my public space. Now I see that they might not necessarily fit with the typical description of a hospital but that they are there and have some connection to the larger cultural framework that inhabits the hospital, not only in the lobby of hospitals but also in the patient rooms. I need to work on finding out how the rhetorical appeals of the hospital make sense in context with this paper and in regards to the people in the hospitals.

In Class Blog: Observation Process

I though the observation process was a little bit weird. In the hospital lobby, there were not too many people just sitting around and observing, so even though my presence was not really a big deal to most of the people in the space, it felt somewhat weird being there and just sitting, watching and writing. Additionally, It was surprising that I was paying attention more to the people in the space and their actions rather than what was medically going on. It was interesting to notice how much I dont notice in such a big space when I walk through there so much. I did not expect to become aware of so many more things by just taking some time and sitting and observing. I also was not aware of how busy and rapidly the people in the space, not just healthcare professionals, are moving. Everything seemed to be sort of out of control for everybody but they were all in a space that helped them contain it.
Contrastingly, on the patient unit, it felt more natural to be observing. Since there were many nurses and other people around me taking time to chart and write, I almost felt as if I were part of the setting rather than an observer. This made it even harder to keep and objective standpoint and remember that I was there as a third party observer and not as a nursing student. I observed lots of things physically on the unit that I do not notice when I am there otherwise. I did not think there was that much I had not previously picked up on but I found out that there was. Additonally, It was weird for me to be trying to see what the space offered to the people in it rather than being a part of the resources that are offered. I saw objectively the goals of the space and what people are looking for when they come there. This has been hard to observe and figure out since the hospital, from my observations, is not some place that the general population voluntarily goes to unless it is the last option.

Ethos, Pathos, and Logos of Public Spaces

     I think that my public space makes many types of appeals. Being that it is a reputable hospital and is in the medical are of Ft. Worth, Harris downtown makes an ethical appeal. It has a great reputation and is filled with many respected and trusted doctors. Additionally, the Harris hospitals have a system of networks so people feel comfortable and safe within the known walls of the Harris hospitals. I notice people are not wary about the staff or the setting which allows them to focus on whatever health issue they or their loved ones are facing. 

     As for emotional appeals, my public space makes many. Well the people and situation occuring in the hospital are really what make an appeal to emotion. In the hospital, loved ones are either joyful and hopeful, or devastated and filled with despair. I observed emotional expressions ranging from smiles to faces with eyes filled with tears. Additionally, it is interesting to note the different emotions in a place like the lobby versus a place like the individual patient rooms. There are alot of different emotions the hospital offers and it is somewhat difficult to get a grasp on them all. 

     The hospital also definitely appeals to logic. Procedures, data, and information are being collected by doctors depending on what information they know about the patient. Hospitals are centered in logic, fact, information, and data, without which they wouldn't operate. I get the impression people understand the logic upon which hospitals are grounded upon and this actually helps them feel more secure in the hospital.

     Nurse and staff members work in logical manners and procedures in order to perform their duties. I think its somewhat of a mix of what type of logical appeals the hospital makes to patients and families. On one hand they know they are in a hospital because they or someone is sick and something is wrong so it makes sense for them to be there. Contrastingly, many people there are in a period of a crisis or catastrophe and cannot make sense of anything. However, for some people, during the period of catastrophe or crisis, it seems like the logical nature of the hospital is the only thing that can ease their minds or that they can make sense of. 

     I never really was aware of all the different appeal the hospital made to the users of it. It has been more difficult than I thought to maintain an objective standpoint to try and figure out what larger cultural appeals the hospital makes to the public.

In class: Logos artifact

For my logos artifact, I brought in one of my nursing text books. It is a text book about foundations of mental health. It appeals to logos because it has a lot of credible facts that appeal to logic. Since it is specifically dealing with mental health, it appeals to logos in both the aspects of logic as hard facts and logic as reason since mental health is something that is a somewhat debatable topic. It presents good evidence back up with many sources to provide a factual argument about the text which the reader is reading. I think just the cover of the book is an appeal to logos as the book is called Foundations of Psychiatric Mental Health Nursing. It encompasses many aspects of logos, presenting evidence based on research, experiments, facts, logic, and other way. It is not just another text book that spits out information uniformly, but educates and convinces with the way the facts in the books are presented and appeals to the logos of the readers looking to find fact and reason to better guide their nursing care.

Unit 1 Proposal

    For my public space, I am thinking about choosing a hospital. More specifically, I would be choosing Harris Downtown. I find this space appealing because it is somewhere that I personally have spent alot of time for many various reasons. It has personal meaning to me because of past events that have occured in hospitals and because I am a nursing major. I have spent time there as a consumer and a bystander, but also as a student in a nursing position.  It particularly appeals to me because it is a place I am passionate about and a place where I get to do something that I like. 

     Upon observation, I expect to find some new aspects of the hospital that I have never observed. Typically, I have been in hospitals either with family members at a traumatic time, or for my clinicals, during which I have been focused on patients and patient care. I see this as an opportunity to take a step back and see the hospital as a public space and uncover some aspects and observations I have never taken the time to notice before. 

     Since I am a future employer of a hospital but also have been, and possibly will be a future customer of a hospital, I would say that in some ways I am a part of a target audience. Hospitals appeal to people in need of health care and people in dire emergency and help. It is sometimes hard to predict what kind of target audience hospitals will have. 

     There are many pre-concieved ideas that I may have that could influence my objective observation. Because past events involving my own family members have occured at this facility, I may have a negative connotation when thinking about my own prior experiences at this hospital. To overcome that, I will need to step back and view the hospital objectively on the basis of the target audience and what the space offers them instead of what it has offered me in the past. Additionally, since I am a nursing major and spend a lot of time there working during my clinicals, I will need to not lean on my own experiences as a nursing student there as basis for objectively observing the space. I need to objectively observe it from the standpoint of dealing with the target audience rather than from the standpoint of an employer type position. 

     I will need to step back from my past experiences of all kinds to be able to objectively survery the public space this hospital offers in order to effectively write this paper.