Browse Exhibits (104 total)

The goal of this exhibit is to showcase the everyday writing of a community, specifically, FSU's student lead theatre group, White Mouse Theatre Productions. The writing shown in this exhibit ranges from internal rehearsal reports, emails, and other miscellaneous writing created by the members of White Mouse.

White Mouse Theatre Productions is a theatre troupe with a focus on social change. Much of their work focuses on centering stories about minorities or discussing social issues through the art form of theatre. 

Even in the very technical field of software design, communication matters. Code comments are snippets of "human text" that programmers use to talk to themselves and each other. They explain how a piece of code works, form to-do lists, or express frustration, joy, or surprise.

Comments are interspersed within code documents themselves and set off by special characters, which tell the system to ignore what follows because it's for the human programmer to read. Different programming languages use different conventions. For example,

<!-- this is a comment in HTML, -->

// this is a comment in C++,

# and this is a comment in Python.

Regardless of programming language, comments tend to fall into a few categories: documentation, or explaining how the code works (often required in college assignments); communication, especially important in collaborative environments; and simple expression, not serving any technical purpose.

This exhibit uses code comments written by college students to see a snapshot of how they felt when they wrote them. Software is like a machine; there is very little room for error in its design. But code comments, invisible to computers, are an unfiltered trove of information about people's experiences. They are the rare human fingerprint on an otherwise cold, mechanical system.

When most people think about Greek Life on college campuses, they think about the Panhellenics and Interfraternities. A lot of people don't know about the National Panhellenic Council or the Multicultural Greek Council. The National Panhellenic Council is also known as the Divine Nine and they are the historically Black sororities and fraternities. The Multicultural Greek Council, sometimes called the Diversified Greek Council, is made up of numerous sororities and fraternities that celebrate different cultures and ethnicities. The Multicultural greeks tend to be small, yet strong and proud in their tight-knit community. Each organization is filled with different events, fundraisers, and service projects that are impactful to the campus and community.

So why would someone be interested in a Multicultural organization? Sororities and fraternities are based on scholarship and community. For some people, the standard Panhellenic and Interfraternity ones wouldn't have the same sense of community that a multicultural one might have. In a multicultural sorority or fraternity, someone can be around others of similar ethnic identities and bond out of their experiences. They throw cultural events, help the communities they're close to, and become a home away from home.

Imagine sharing your mom's empanada recipes with a sorority sister from a different Latin American country, and she in turn teaches you how to make some savory arepas. Imagine sharing the music that your dad played in the car with your line brother, and he expresses that he listened to the same songs growing up. The experiences of those who grew up with different or multiple cultures are different than that of people whose families have been in the United States for generations. Going to a university that may be hours away for most people can feel isolating, and finding a sorority or fraternity that feels like home is exactly why the Multicultural Greeks exist.

Everyday writing is present and necessary to keep the community going and communicating. All organizations keep track of and post things on their pages for events, fundraisers, and service. The artifacts in this exhibit demonstrate the multiple ways that everyday writing is used to keep the Multicultural Greek community alive and thriving today.

In a traditional sense, we usually think of notes as handwritten texts from a class lecture. This point of view stems from the experience of primary/secondary education, where students attend class to learn about a certain topic, then go home to practice the different versions of the knowledge they have obtained. However, when they move on to higher education, the student’s biggest challenge stems from encountering self-teaching and the necessity to develop a personal system for notetaking. Gone are the days of schoolwide required Cornell notes with required “upper-level questions” and a concise summary, and an abrupt welcome into a self-sufficient academic environment.

How do students fare when the knowledge to be recorded isn’t preemptively selected for them? How does one decipher what is important and necessary to be recorded? When students aren’t given a point of focus, how do they retain, review, and analyze information?

To begin with, what constitutes notetaking? Notetaking is a way to create a record of an academic lecture/discussion to recall knowledge and improve the retention of the acquired information. College classes can be visually or orally focused, meaning students have to be active listeners and participants when it comes to learning. Every day they write new information that needs to be stored for either short-term or long-term usage.

As I interviewed different students on FSU’s campus, I realized there is a divide in notetaking methodology. There are two methods, longhand notes, and electronic notes, and both have positive and negative effects on educational outcomes. Longhand allows students to actively participate in their notetaking, as it requires more concentration and doesn’t include the distractions presented in electronics. However, they can be easily misplaced and can’t be edited as thoroughly as digital notes. Electronic notes allow students to efficiently store/categorize their notes, including pictures, videos, and hyperlinks, allowing the student to edit their notes later and are sharable. However, it also places the student in a situation where they can be easily distracted by other digital applications and notifications. There is also the combination of both with iPads and paper tablets, giving students the advantages of both methods.

This exhibit will illustrate the different methods students from different majors use to take notes. Different majors require different skills, so this exhibit provided an outlook into how students fluidly move between the two methods to adapt to their personal and academic needs.

This is an investigation into the relatively new appearances of FSU gimmick accounts, the people that inhabit the spaces of the gimmick accounts, the motivations of those people, and how an underground community of hobby accounts and passion projects on Instagram, appear and reflect the identities of queer folks, folx, and people that I have come to respect and show solidarity to. This is an inquiry designed to educate FSU students that are both aware and unaware of gimmick accounts and their history at FSU, as well as provide a digital time capsule and base investigation of this phenomena to future students and frequenters of the museum.