In my opinion, the Democratic Writing Project was not very helpful. I can see where they were going but it was poorly executed. Because we did all the annotations online, there wasn't any real discussion of the ideas and annotations people made on the report. Instead of discussion, most of us just wrote our annotations and replies and then we were done. We didn't bother to read more annotations than we had to. I think an alternative way to this project would be for us to still annotate online, but then after we made annotations, we all came to class with our annotations to discuss them with the rest of the class. The whole discussion section could go through the annotated report and make comments as a whole class on annotations that we found particularly intriguing. So in addition to our own annotations and replies, we would create some class replies on annotations.

Thomas Jefferson and the founders of the University all meant for the Lawn to be the main focus and central to the university. They talk about the pavilions and annexations for dormitories that are all characteristics of the Lawn that we see today. The "future observatory" refers to what we all know now as observatory hill or o'hill. It's refreshing to see that even after 200 years, Thomas Jefferson's vision for how the University is arranged and represented hasn't faltered too much from his vision of what the University could be.

The Board of Commissioners for the University of Virginia only meet twice a year to discuss how the university should run and in which ways. I find this interesting because they only have 2 meetings a year to discuss everything within the university. Similar to how Congress is only scheduled to meet once a year. It's hard to think that they can discuss everything necessary to run an institution in such few amounts of meetings.

*knowledge

When I first heard about this report, I thought it was something about fishing cause I had never heard about it nor knew what Rockfish Gap was. Upon further research, I learned that the commissioners of UVA had written this report in a tavern on the top of Rockfish Gap, located in the Blue Ridge Mountains. The name becomes more meaningful since it is named after a beautiful site in Virginia. When I read other people's comments and annotations, I had thought that they named it after a tavern, but the truth to the matter is that they named it after the area in which the tavern was located. A part of Virginia, which as stated later in the report, the central place for the University. The University was created for the people of Virginia so what better than to name the report after a beautiful place within Virginia.