Day 28: Project prez + meme (Julia Green)

My research paper was about gender stereotypes in the toy industry and how they effect early childhood development. I took 2 studies and analyzed them in detail to show how they prove my thesis. My thesis was that gender stereotypes used to target a specific gender in the toy industry negatively affect early childhood development.

I found this paper to be the easiest to write. There was a more clear guideline to follow and clear decisions that had to be made. I didnt find it that difficult to come up with 4 pages because the paper kind of writes itself. The hardest thing for me was the conclusion. I couldnt figure out how to summarize all of my research and relate it to my thesis in a small paragraph.

Day 26: Style Imitation (Julia Green)

You learn that not everyone wants to love you. After weeks spent talking for hours, there is no obligation to continue the conversation. Often, people are just bored, bored with their meaningless lives, and bored with their time. But they found you, a glimmer of light in their dark lives, and they thought this could be fun. So you spend all your time together, hoping it will never end. But then it ends, and you are left with a hole the size of them. Their words meant nothing, they were just bored. They’re gone, and you’re left alone to pick up the pieces. And this is how you learn, not everyone wants to love you, some people are just bored.

______________________________

Style Imitation: Rupi Kaur

you were a dragon long before

he came in and

said you could fly

you will continue to be

long after he is gone

Day 19: Research Process – Julia Green

Finding Evidence

This article gave the reader a basic understanding of everything you need to know to collect informative evidence for a research paper. In the beginning of the article, the writer mentions how the rhetorical situation is very important to collecting effective data. If the evidence found doesn’t have any connections to the circumstances of the question being asked then it isn’t useful. The rest of the article talks about finding data and collecting your own data. I think this article is very useful for someone who is stuck and has no idea how to start research for a paper. It is very informative and basically gives step by step instructions on how to collect the best data.

Under My Thumb

This piece is about a girls experience growing up loving music and dealing with the industry. First, the writer mentions an event that many girls can relate to, which brings the reader to the main idea of this piece. The writer talks about sexism in the music industry and how she believes it can be changed. I can relate to this piece a lot because I have also had the same things happen to me when I am wearing a band tee shirt or when I attended a music festival over the summer. I agree that something needs to change in the music industry to let women feel more welcomed and I believe, like the writer that we are making the change that needs to occur.

Day 18: Maifesto-Julia Green

Saying

Saunders uses this piece to explain who and what “People Reluctant to Kill for an Abstraction,” is. He states everything the member do, and don’t do, such as “during phase III, zero planes were flown into buildings.” Saunders continues this piece almost like a list saying what the members of PRKA have and haven’t done. AT the end of the piece Saunders addresses the people who might oppose this organization. He concludes this piece with a very powerful sentence that sums up the major point, “Resistance is futile.”

Doing

I think Saunders purpose for writing this piece was to make people realize how insane some of the events are that happen in society. For example he says, “… we set… in every nation of the world, a total of zero roadside bombs which, not being there, did not explode.” I believe he wanted to show the world that there are more good people than bad, saying everyone in this organization outnumber the people who oppose them, including people who don’t think they’re in the organization. The purpose of this piece is to show the people that disagree with Saunders and PRKA that they are the minority and that they will be beat. In resistance there is strength, which can change the world.

Day 15: Revision -Julia Green

When Dethier writes, “… For most of us revision is the only road to success,” I think hes saying that no ones first draft is ever perfect. Everyone has to revise their writings or the text wouldnt be good. There are very few people who can write one draft and have it be perfect, and I believe this is what Dethier is trying to say. I find this to be very true. I know from my own experiences that my first drafts are usually terrible. I usually end up scratching the whole text and rewriting it entirely. To have a successful piece, there must be a revision process.
I can compare revision to practicing for a sport. For example, once you learn a new play in football you have to practice it over and over to make it the best it can be. Players dont run through a play once and say, “alright, thats good, see you guys at the game,” they have to rehearse it over and over until there are no mistakes, making sure everyone takes the best routes possible. This is similar to revising. You need to look over your work again and again to make sure everything is written to the best of your abilities.
Donald Murray writes, “Good writing is essentially rewriting.” I think what he means by this is that a piece is truly never done, you can always go back and edit it more to make it better. To have a successful piece you must revise and rewrite many times. This relates to what Dethier says, “revision is the only road to success”. No ones first draft is ever perfect, you must look back and take apart the text to find stronger words to use and to throw away anything that isnt needed.

Alexie and Tan- Julia Green

Summary and Response: Superman and Me

This short story is about an Indian man who taught himself to read at a very young age. HE realized that reading would be a way to save himself from the typical Indian stereotype that was floating around in his school. He became the best reader in his class, but was still looked over. In his later life he became a writer, and now he visits schools and teaches kids the importance of reading books. I found this passage inspiring. It shows the reader that you dont have to follow societies standards, you can be and do whatever you want. It also showed you the importance of reading throughout your whole life.

Summary and Response: Mother Tongue

This short story is about a woman’s experience growing up with a mother that couldnt speak english well. With this, the author learned to speak up and help her mother. Then the author became a writer, she wanted to write a book that anyone could understand, even her mother. She felt great accomplishment when after reading her book, her mother told her it was, “very easy to read.” This short story shows you how the challenges you face as a child can shape your entire life. You arent limited to what your parents can do, or what they cant do.

Day 11: Literacy Narrative – Julia Green

A stereotype people might associate with me is that I’m not smart because I was a cheerleader. Often in movies, cheerleaders are portrayed as the dumb girls, but that isn’t true.

Summary and response: Introduction to (re)making Language

This text talks about how language can open up your world to greater knowledge, but also greater sorrow. The example of Frankenstein and his monster was used. The author talked about how the monster didn’t question his being until he overheard a fellow human talking. I think its very interesting to look at education and language as a positive and negative.

Summary and response: Language, Discourse, and Literacy

This text focused on the different types of language and discourse communities. A discourse community as mentioned is a group of people that have a common set of language use practices. AN example of this would be a group of people with the same profession, like a biologist. The text then goes into talking about literacy and how it is shaped by what we believe is possible. The most interesting part of this text I think was when the author was talking about how language doesn’t have to be verbal. Language can be a gesture, code, or an emoji.

What the point of writing (Julia Green)

Summary and Response to “Whats the Point”

This text starts off explaining to the reader what a thesis is. The author states that it is the answer to a question youve raised about the topic. The thesis is the controlling idea of your paper. Its like the question you want to answer about your entire topic. The author then goes into explaining how he starts thinking about a thesis: where do you start? This article is beneficial to students who are having difficultly starting a paper, focusing on which specific question to ask. The most interesting part of this text was when he explained a thesis as a “macro-question.” Then he said all the little questions you use to help answer this were the “micro-questions.” I thought this was an extremely beneficial way of looking at a thesis because it doesnt make it too scary, it no longer becoming the make or break of your paper. With this ideology you can take a micro-question that you found extremely helpful and expand on it.

Summary and Response to “Responding…”

This text basically raises a bunch of questions about how to respond to a peers writing when editing it. The types of ideas that are talked about are “how you get started, how much to comment, how much criticism,” and many more. This text gives a quick look to students who actually want to help there peers and give them good feedback that they can use to better their paper. My favorite part of this text was the section titled, “How much should you be influenced by what you know about the writer?” I found this section extremely interesting because it said if the writer was being arrogant you should challenge the person ideas even more to make them have questions about the paper.

Writing As a Process (Julia Green)

Composing as a Process

The main idea of this text is that writing never stops. You continuously edit drafts to make better drafts. Its recursive, meaning writers repeat the cycles the use while writing. Writing is like a cycle from exploring to revising, and then starting again. Researchers have found that the best way to increase your writing ability is to just continue writing.

Freewriting

This text states that the best way to improve your writing skills is to constantly freewrite. This means sitting down for 10 minutes and just writing anything that comes into your head; you cant stop. The author says that editing isn’t a problem itself, but editing while writing is still occurring shouldn’t be done. The author says this makes the writers work less coherent and nervous.

Shitty First Drafts

The author of this text wants the reader to know that the first draft should be terrible. It is just a way to get some words on the page that vaguely represent what you’re trying to say. The author includes how he edits his first draft, by basically taking everything out he possibly could and finding a different place to start.

Response

I actually enjoyed reading these text a lot, because as someone who doesnt like writing, its nice to know that it doesnt have to be perfect on your first try. I specifically like the “Shitty First Drafts,” article because I’ve always tried to make my first draft the best it possibly could be, and then move from there. Theres a connection between the idea that drafts never stop and a shitty first draft, being that you just have to get your thoughts out on the page, then edit from there.

Day 6: Project Pitch (Julia Green)

My top pick for this paper is a music video by Childish Gambino called, “This Is America.” I want to do this topic because it is very controversial and brings up many issues in today’s society. There are easily many lenses I could use on this music video, for example audience or kairos.

The next option I came up with for this paper is the music video for “Wrecking Ball,” by Miley Cyrus. A lens I could use for this video would be exigence. It would be harder to analyze this video because there arent many lenses that apply, maybe only one or two that are relevant, so I might not be able to write a whole paper about this option.

The final option I came up with was the music video for “Do What You Want,” by Lady Gaga. This would be a good music video to use because it circles heavily around gender, which is a lens. Once again, it might not have enough valid lenses to use which would make it hard to write a whole paper on the video.