Month: November 2021

1. Writing I did this week:
   -This week I got to start my auto-ethnography rough draft and I’m not sure if this counts as writing but I did a lot of thinking/brainstorming about what to write about in my essay. Meaning I thought about who I want my audience to be as well as what to address and simply put, just a lot of thinking and planning on how to write this auto-ethnography. This paper was a paper that I was quite looking forward to writing, which is a huge contrast in comparison to my previous research paper.
2. What went well this week:
   -As I’ve previously mentioned, the planning phase of the auto-ethnography rough draft went really well. I just had so many thoughts I had wanted to write out and I’ve been planning to write this essay since I first started writing my research paper. I took this paper as a way to release stress but also as a help of sorts to future first-year writers.
3. What didn’t go so well this week:
   -Honestly I don’t think anything went bad for me this week. With the thanksgiving vacation this week I felt a lot more relaxed than ever and was able to do a lot of fun brainstorming on any work I had to do.
4. To-do list:
   -I have to do some quick last minute edits for my auto-ethnography rough draft. Not much to do.
   -I should re-read “Some People are Just Born Good Writers”.
5. Where I’m leaving off:
   -At the moment I’m leaving off with a somewhat finished auto-ethnography paper. I still want to make more edits but at the same time I don’t want to change too much. I just have too many ideas for such a short paper.
   -Besides that I should probably/definitely try to my best at revising and improving my research paper. I finally was able to get into a good mood enough to revise it for a polished draft but I still feel I could do better.
6. With my current writing progress I feel more proud and confident in my writing than before because I regained that initiative to genuinely want to write a paper. I say regain because prior to my research paper, I felt very proactive in wanting to write a paper. I enjoyed the topics/themes I written about for the writing prompts given and so I found myself deeply immersed in the writing. Or in other words I was having fun writing, and when I am able to have fun like in the first two writing projects I tend to write phenomenally better. Whereas in the more recent research paper I lacked enjoyment from the topic I had chosen so it felt very dull to write that paper. With this auto-ethnography paper I felt that enjoyment again and immersed myself in my writing.

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In the Auto-ethnography project you’ll be asked to do the kind of reflective writing Giles. Review the learning goals for this course and consider how you feel about them and your progress as a writer so far. Choose one or two learning goals as a jumping off point or frame for a brief reflection on your writing in this course. Do you think you’re meeting these learning goals? How do you know? What evidence do you have from your writing that you’ve worked on these goals?

In this writing course, I most definitely can’t say that I was able to successfully learn/accomplish all my writing goals because that would be a lie. However, although I wasn’t able to succeed in all the listed goals I am still proud of accomplished in particular goals. One of the more critical learning goal I accomplished was “Using conventions appropriate to audience, genre, and purpose.” I may have not been able to accomplish my learning in all of writing course’s learning goals however one shouldn’t focus on the goals they couldn’t accomplish but rather feel gratified for having succeeded on the goals you have accomplished.

In the “Using conventions appropriate to audience, genre, and purpose” learning goal, I found a lot of success. I like to visual this success by taking a look at one of the themes I had used in one of my papers. That theme was an incorporation of humor. It quite honestly left a deep impact onto my writing because after that essay I had begun to truly incorporate humor in some parts of my essay. Even in my abomination of a research paper, I had incorporated humor into my essay because I had wanted to appeal more towards my reader. In my analysis paper I had gone so far with humor, from it’s diction the tone of the paper, organization, and more. I had incorporated so many key elements into my paper to allow for a much smoother reading experience towards my reader. So as to attract their attention but continue to keep said attention through the use of humor. The analysis paper is probably the best paper, in my opinion, I had written because of how much fun I had writing it. It really went to show my efforts to brighten up my paper and bring along more humor to it’s dull life.

1. Writing and reading I did this week:
   -This week I went over my revisions for my research paper. I was able to improve the general structure of my essays. I was able to write an essay that was less on the vague side and much more clearer.
   -I did a lot of reading on American history for my Modern American history class.
   – I wrote a well due email to the dean of students regarding vaccination status and what not. I’d rather not get into the details because it’s a long story but I wrote a good essay to the dean of students email.
2. What worked or went well this week:
   -Honestly I don’t think I had any good things happen this week in regards to reading or writing. In regards to reading, it was pretty boring reads whether it was for my class or for my own entertainment. I didn’t find anything all that interesting in this week’s lesson plans. The reading on citations was probably interesting, but I’m honestly just sick of hearing about citations. I hear about in every class, and I know it’s important but it’s just too much. In some classes I’ve heard more about the how to’s of citing than the actual project or writing assignments I have to do.
   -Unrelated to writing, I’m happy that my first dose of Pfizer went well. I didn’t have any too severe reactions from the vaccine so that’s good. Although I had some muscle pain and felt fatigued for a couple days I was pretty happy no other symptoms cropped up.
3. What didn’t go so well this week:
   -This week I’d like to say my research paper went well but not really. I just can’t seem to become too deeply interested into the topic itself so it becomes a hassle to finish it well. As a comparison, I usually put in 100% of the amount of effort into any work I need to do. However, like 60%-90% of that effort comes from my interest in the topic. Usually I’m interested in any and all subjects even if they’re boring, but with this project I wasn’t interested in researching my topic at all. So the amount of effort I could put in went down significantly. Even with the MEAL strategies that made revisions much easier, it still didn’t help too much in boosting my interest in writing this paper.
4. To-do list:
   -I have to finish reviewing my paragraphs to improve them more because they are honestly not at the point where I would like to submit. Like it’s not grade worthy yet, and I need more time to think about how I could improve upon my paper. I’d like to say that I have to research more but I haven’t been enjoying the research part as much. I feel like I’ve focused far too much on the journal articles aspect of research and failed to look and normal websites for research. Meaning I placed too much focus on the academic part and lost the aspect that is more casual. Such a loss is really ironic because the last project I did was talking all about how important it was too incorporate humor into “academic papers.”
   -I guess now that I had written that I should look for research elsewhere, other places that appear less formal. That way it seems more down to Earth to my audience.
   -Besides that there isn’t much else to do besides reading my textbooks for other classes to study.
5. Where I’m leaving off:
   -I’m leaving off at a semi-unfinished research paper that I have to get down by tomorrow.
   -I should get to work on the Autoethnography on Tuesday or so just because of how easy such a project will be. I’ve written a lot of reflection on my thoughts whether it’s on this blog or elsewhere as well as just my own consistent opinions on the project to start my paper.
   -I don’t have any necessary readings left to do for English, besides any readings for other classes. Other than that should be all.
6. Honestly, I’m feeling a little more satisfied with my writing. I’m definitely not at all thrilled with this project because of the way I had approached this paper, but I’m slowly getting out of this hole I made for myself. Meaning, I had chosen this topic on a whim because I had been originally interested into the topic in the first place after reading the BIAW chapter. However those thoughts quickly changed when I got to researching the topic which just decreased my performance to write a satisfactory essay. I definitely have not improved by leaps and bounds, but at least now I just feel as though that this assignment is just one paper out of many more. I shouldn’t dwell on this paper for too long. I should learn what I can now and just move on because thinking more on this paper will do more harm than good to me. So in that regards I’m feeling more satisfied with my writing.

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• When you first read the assignment or realized we would be doing a Research project, what were your expectations? What were you concerned about? Excited about? What did you think it would be like?

  When I first read the assignment I got really excited because I had thought that the research project could be about any topic at all. With the lessons about writing that we’ve been learning about acted as just some of the options we could write about. So with this idea in mind I had wanted to write a paper that resembled the chapter I had read in BIAW about online school. However at the same time I didn’t want to make my writing seem as if I was copying that very chapter. So I tried to research and find information that resembled the structure found in that chapter from BIAW. Meaning I had wanted to write about a short history of online schooling, then talk about the stigma online schooling will tend to receive, unto the finisher about disproving those stigmas. I was honestly expecting this research to be really fun to look up and learn about this stigma that surrounds online learning.

• How were your expectations met or countered? Were your concerns or fears justified? How so?

My expectations were countered somewhat, I guess, in the way that I had tunnel vision. Meaning the way I had found all my research through one search. I had used my time to learn about researching my topic solely through the websites my professor had introduced to help learn and become accustomed to. However, because I had focused solely on using these search engines to find my research, I feel like I was left out of the many opinionated articles by people that could’ve swayed my argument more. Although taking research from journal articles increased my credibility, I also feel like it limited my choices as well because there was only so many articles about my topic available. Eventually I would run out, whereas online in the wild internet there are thousands of articles available to choose no matter the topic. So I definitely tunnel visioned myself for the worst there.

Another mistake I made was not reading the directions too well because I had thought I could write about any topic that I had wanted. I didn’t realize that there was a limit in that it must be a topic regarding writing. It was honestly really depressing for me at the time because I had found so many new ideas I had wanted to incorporate into my research paper only to realize that I couldn’t use any because of the topic constraints. Honestly this research project has got to be my least favorite project so far because of the amount of mistakes I had made in this process. Don’t get me wrong, I love mistakes because at least I can learn from them. It’s just that these mistakes I made happened to dampen my mood to write so I was left not wanting to ever write/complete my (current) research project.

At home, when I was preparing to write this paper I went through a rollercoaster of emotions because of how many times I had found information that flat-out contradicted my initial assumptions. Example: I wanted to prove why online schooling is secretly good. All for me to read 3,4,5… articles telling me how terrible online schooling is. Honestly it’s such a really terrible feeling that I just slowly lost in my own research question, but being the stubborn guy I am I chose to stick with it. Leading to a catastrophe of a research paper.

• How did you grow as a writer during the Research project? What did you learn to do, do for the first time, experiment with, etc.?

The way that I had learnt as a writer was to take a break and take a look at the bigger picture. I really spent too much tunnel visioning on the negatives of my research question which only led to my downfall. I also learned to try and use regular websites for my research as well. Instead of having tunnel vision, again, towards the kind of sources I should be using, I should just use any and all sources I can find. Of course I won’t use websites like wikipedia that are known for containing false information at times, but in general. My rough draft of my research paper contained not one single article that wasn’t found from one search.

At the very least, though, I’m happy I was able to learn to experiment with Zotero and One Search to both record my sources as well as find them. It was honestly really helpful. Besides all these articles being very professional in their endeavors, the information was very clear and easy to incorporate into my paper.

• How do you think you’ll feel about Research projects in the future? How do you think you’ll approach them after going through this process?

I definitely feel a lot more confident about going into future research projects. In addition, about a week ago I had to write a research paper for another class and I was happy to know that about some do’s and don’t’s of researching. I can’t say it was a perfect essay but I was able to avoid getting tunnel vision and incorporated different types of information into my research paper. I think for any future papers I’ll be able to approach them a lot more calmly now that I was able to gain more experience in my writing.

1. What I did this week:
   -This week I had watched some video lectures for some of my classes as well as read some articles required alongside those video lectures.
   -I tried going over other ideas on what to write for my research project since my rough draft wasn’t something I was all too proud of.
   -I did a lot of studying for my history class to get past the quiz early into the week.
   -I also got started on writing another paper I have due for another class.
2. What went well this week:
   -Besides my regular classes and the work I did for them nothing else besides that.
   -I still have yet to figure out how to improve my research paper to something more satisfying.
3. What was hard this week:
   -Hardest thing was definitely my rough draft. Even after having calmed down from being overstressed, I can’t seem to wrap my head around the topic itself. It feels boring to research about as well to write, so I’m stuck on how I can truly improve it without it feeling lackluster.
4. To-do list:
   -I have to read, even if I find it boring, up on more information on online classes. As well as adjust the thesis to state online writing classes, because I was definitely confused with the topic to write about in the early stages of writing my rough draft.
   -The next thing would be the obvious of just having to study for all my other classes that I have.
5. Where I left off:
   -Pretty much I haven’t really touched my rough draft yet(Meaning all my edits and changes that I attempted to make were immediately deleted because it made the essay worse).
   -Although, however, I’ve at least managed to understand how to better state my thesis. I hadn’t wanted to make my paper seem like a copy of one of the chapters from BIAW so I forcefully changed the main idea. Obviously that wasn’t a good idea so I think I should just follow in the footsteps of that one chapter in BIAW.
6. Honestly, I’m disappointed I haven’t been able to properly revise and edit my rough draft. Although I have a solid idea on what to write for my thesis to truly reorganize my mess of a paper, I haven’t been able to become absorbed in the topic itself. When I can’t allow myself to enjoy researching the topic, I tend to write worse meaning it’s better to not edit my writing than to actually edit it. I don’t trust myself to write something better until I can learn to enjoy the topic again.

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We all know how catastrophic the Covid-19 pandemic had been, whether it be economically or politically everyone around the world was impacted by this pandemic. Due to not having invented any vaccines for the virus, at the time, as well as the high infection rate, governments all around the world had ordered quarantine. Adults were forced to take their jobs home, keeping their outside adventures to a minimum. This quarantine brought many significant changes to a person’s daily life. One such change could be found with all the young people, young people about children that still had to go to school. While adults had to worry about their present daily lives, children were unlucky if their present lives and possibly futures could all be severely impacted. I was a high school student when the covid pandemic hit, and it shouldn’t be a surprise when I tell you how awful school had become because of the quarantine. Basically, schools shut down for a week or so and started back up with some homework for a couple of weeks. I think it was only after a month did teachers finally figure out that they should record their lessons and send them to their students to at least try and have their students learn. However, that story is now a story of the past. Quarantine has passed, teachers have adjusted, students have adjusted, the school has transformed to a normalcy of sorts. So how bad are online classes now? Are they as bad as they were in the beginning? Have they improved from the beginning of the pandemic, or even from before the pandemic? If so, can this be a new option for learning?

To begin, we first have to understand how online learning was like before the quarantine caused by Covid-19. Online learning would usually take on an approach where they would gather many students and stuff them all into one class, such classes were called Massive Open Online Courses or otherwise known as MOOCs. MOOC classes could entail thousands of students tuning in simultaneously. These MOOCs, of course, come with their own downsides and advantages. In a book called To MOOC or Not to MOOC : How Can Online Learning Help to Build the Future of Higher Education? Sarah Porter, she explains how MOOCs can be seen as beneficial to the learning field because it encourages “active learners.” “…the University of Edinburgh had over 300,000 students registered for the six Edinburgh MOOCs that were run in 2013.” Out of these 300,000 students that had registered to join at first, only about 10% of those registered had actually attended. Such an occurrence has filtered out the students that own the initiative to stand up and learn from the other students that have no such initiative. Meaning these MOOCs can help distinguish and offer opportunities to students that can be classified as “active learners.”

• Consider your thesis Does it make a clear claim based on evidence?
  -No, it does not. Honestly I think this paragraph doesn’t have a solid thesis that states the main idea in one clear and concise sentence. Instead the introduction seems to slowly meld the entire paragraph to introduce the thesis and yet even then nothing solid is stated.
• How can you revise the thesis to respond to your Research Question and make a claim?
  (This paragraph is in regards to the Introduction)
  -To revise the thesis, I’d have to start with my research question to change it something more relative and specific. Something more similar to the chapter I had based my paper on from BIAW. The topic is way too broad, which allowed for ramblings to appear in my writing that strayed completely from the true main idea of the essay. Originally the orange/red near the end of the paragraph was meant to be the research question as well as the thesis however the entire introduction doesn’t state that. Meaning I have shrink the scale of my research to something smaller. What I would change it to would be to discuss online writing classes. Discard the Covid-19 situation, discard online schooling, and discard the majority of my sources. All of these ideas were unnecessary in the way that it wasn’t required at all to be mentioned. Missing the objective of a research paper.
• What do you notice about the distribution of content?
  -What I notice about the distribution of content in my writing is that there seems to be no significant problems with mainly the E and A parts of the MEAL strategy. I provide evidence, and I back it up with a sufficient explanation. The M portion of the strategy appears in the beginning of my second paragraph however it isn’t strong because of the lack of thesis statement. Thus, of course, because of the lack of the thesis the L portion of the MEAL strategy doesn’t even exist. It’s hard to link back to the thesis when the thesis doesn’t even exist to begin with.
• Are there paragraphs where you’re missing one of the components?
  -As stated previously, the second paragraph shown above is definitely missing the L portion while the M portion exists however lacks a thesis to use as its structure.
• Are there paragraphs where you have unbalanced components (e.g. six sources but one sentence of analysis?)
  If that excludes the issues I had previously discussed then no. The E and A portions of the MEAL strategy are fine, in my opinion. The true problem lies in the thesis itself. It doesn’t really exist in this paper leaving the rest of the paragraphs to ramble on about some vague and irrelevant topic.
• Simply put, my plan to revise M-E-A-L in this paragraph would be to just delete it and restart. The thesis isn’t visible enough to be able to support the body paragraphs sufficiently to create a balanced MEAL.
  If I couldn’t take this approach then I would start with the first sentence. Instead of beginning with the M I would state the thesis immediately. Afterwards, would I lead into the main idea of this new paragraph. Once that is finished, I would end my paragraph with the L portion of MEAL.
  PS: The introduction is honestly a lost cause in my opinion. I’d rather restart from scratch than try fix bits and pieces of it at a time.

1. What I did this week:
   -I did some studying for my Pre-Calculus class.
   -I did a lot of brainstorming about what I should be doing next and how I should organize my future tasks.
   -Wrote my rough draft of my research paper during the one week extension.
2. What went well this week:
   -Honestly this week was filled with a lot of stress. The things that did go well this week were quite low. I didn’t have any tests that I had to worry about. I did have one for FYS that I did decent on however that wasn’t much of a concern.
3. What was hard this week:
   -Basically just having to organize everything. It was a very stressful process because there were just too many things to keep track of that I’ve been burning out for a while now. I had two nearly three papers I was thinking about simultaneously. While also thinking about an email I have to send to the dean regarding the vaccination policy. While also having to keep track of the materials I have to go over for an incoming quiz on the 8th. Oh, and not to forget some more assignments due on the 8th as well. Pretty much this week I was overwhelmed with too many things to plan out that I just burned out completely. So I had to take some time to just re-organize myself completely.
4. To-do list:
   -Finish reviewing all the material I missed for Modern American History.
   -Start writing a paper for my Art History class.
   -Finish Pre-calculus homework.
   -Research a lot more information in regard to my research project.
5. Where I left off:
   -I’m leaving off at pretty much what I wrote on my to-do list except that I haven’t done so yet. Meaning that I’m leaving at having written what I believe to be one of my worst essays yet that I’ve submitted to English.
   -Research some notes on what to write for my paper in Art History.
   -Did a couple questions on 1 part of my Pre-Calculus homework.
   -Research more thoroughly on the negatives of my research question.
6. Honestly I feel really tired with this week. There was just so much to think about and do that had just burned myself out with the stress. I hadn’t even realized I was burned out until I realized the little and effortless work I was creating. Although I’m disappointed, I’d rather just take a rest to calm down. I can think about what next assignment I should work on after I’ve had time to gather my thoughts, release any pent up emotions, and just relax some more.

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Due to my indecisive personality, I tend to usually organize my options of whatever it may be into pros and cons. Like if I would go to the store to buy water, then I would take my time to gather information. I would look at the prices for all the different sized bottles. Look at the volume per bottle. Convert the prices of the bottles of water with the volume they hold into ratios and then compare. Notice which one offers more water for a lower price and just buy many of those options. Similar situations occur if I happen to have extra cash left over and I happen to be shopping for something. I’ll think about what I’m trying to buy and measure how beneficial this purchase will be to me in contrast to simply saving the money. If I’m buying junk food then 9 times out of 10 I’ll save the money. I’ve already resolved in my head that buying junk food may grant me gratification, it’s only temporary. Whereas I can save the money one more day to then buy something I that brings more gratification and lasts longer.

When I had gathered my sources, I had originally done so to use connect minute details with each other as if proving my point. Meaning I would take an article that could be strongly opposed to the point I’m trying to make, however use a particular quote found in that article to further emphasize my point. By using such an article that could easily be interpreted as against my argument, it can be seen as if even this person that is so strongly opposed has surrendered to this “truth.” What I mean is that I tend to search for sources to use in my rebuttal to further convince my reader of my “truth.”