Blue's Perspective Blog

  In the bigger picture of the story map, this page provides a look at the historical setting and awareness into the development of Excelsior as a working-class neighborhood with close attention on the role of European immigrants, city and federal level policies, and the impact of racial and ethnic make-up on its evaluation and segregation. It's important to have a foundation for understanding the neighborhood's socioeconomic framework and how it became a majority white and blue-collar.  What makes this page great is its straightforward and direct presentation of the historical aspects that molded Excelsior's identity. It effectively highlights the reasons why European immigrants settled there and the subsequent city and federal policies that further solidified its working-class character. The page also goes into detail on the discriminatory practices by the Federal Housing Authority (FHA), which led to the neighborhood becoming only white. In my opinion the author could ha...

  In the article Visualizing Mental Illness, the author makes use of visual and textual elements to fit the rhetorical situation by making the hidden effects of anxiety disorders, and also Obsessive-Compulsive Disorder (OCD), easier to access and more meaningful to people without mental health issues. The goal is to increase awareness, understanding, and empathy in both elected officials and the public when it comes to mental health problems. The genre here is an informative or persuasive essay, aiming to inform on personal experiences and research findings in a more effective fashion. The author uses data visualization in the form of a color-coded drawing with text used as a way to explain the complicated experiences of anxiety in a more understandable way. This enables readers to make a human connection with the data. The visual elements include drawings representing the number of checking incidences, the repetitive pattern of the checks, and the return to re-check things. The es...

 As I was working on the table chart for vacations, I noticed a pattern of solo travel over the last five years that has keeps bringing me back to the Midwest and to Las Vegas. It reminds me that I traveled a lot during the pandemic because of how cheap it was to travel. It was the most I’ve flown in my entire life in a matter of three years.  I noticed a major gap between the ages of eight and twenty-four which might explain why I love traveling so much now. That was around the time I started going to school, which gave me motivation to work harder so I could travel more. Getting my passport and being able to go to Canada is also the start of me being able to travel outside the United States. Looking at this it makes me realize that when using data to analyze yourself you can see patterns in your behavior and personality. For instance, from looking at my constant travel over a five-year period, I tend to be a pretty routine traveler as I like to go somewhere every one to thre...