Journal Entry 9

Nate Kenny

                Regarding our Project 4’s I think it’s definitely important to be able to assess problems within a community you’re apart of mainly because you’re the members of the community. You’re the ones it’s actually affecting so you can give the most relevant feedback. In our project regarding the meal swipe situation, we did a couple big compare and contrasts with other public Indiana schools to see how they worked around this obvious problem. In just interviewing a couple friends who went to IU and IUPUI, there’s no feeling of stress or even anger when you miss a meal swipe. Whereas I know people here who revolve their schedule around making sure they can use their meal swipe each and every day, just so they aren’t losing money, which is obviously ridiculous. So, we kind of learned what we already assumed, there’s a general feeling of dissatisfaction with the meal-swipe situation here, whereas at other similar universities, it’s a non-issue.

                As far as actually implementing a change, nobody is really sure why it’s like this. It has to be revolved around making money of course, but we’re not really sure if it’s that simple, because clearly the administration has gone out of the way to develop a system that’s only efficient in helping student lose money on food. I know it sounds harsh but the more we looked into this, the more it’s sort of obvious. It wouldn’t take much to change it to a more efficient, student-friendly system, but that starts with the president and they know where the universities income is coming from so, I honestly doubt it will be changed drastically any time soon.

                In my major (marketing), I think multi-modal research will be huge in just assessing a lot of things within a community. One of the main ways to identify where certain markets are is by doing demographic research regarding income, culture, and other primary factors. I’m not sure if I’d be writing research papers by definition, I doubt it at least from a traditional perspective, but putting together presentations or reports about target market segments could be something I’m tasked with doing even in a future internship so, It’s beneficial in that regard. Because of course a lot of the same components go into both.

                I’m at least excited for next semester where I’ll be living off campus in an apartment with some friends so I won’t have to worry about meal swipes anymore. Also, it will be my first semester taking all major-related business and marketing courses as I have all my core classes out of the way so that’s somewhat as sigh of relief. I do have another English or writing class to take, not exactly sure what but that will be farther into the future so.