Day 7: Thesis and Review [Tristen Chau]

What’s the Point Summary and Response

To fully understand a text, you must analyze it. The best kinds of analysis often have a thesis to summarize your opinions and thoughts. When creating a thesis, the easiest perspective is to see it as a question of inquiry first. Having a macro-question for your thesis and a micro-question for your arguments is important for maintaining organization throughout your essay. The tricky part with coming up with a main question is whether it is too simplistic, too broad, or unrelated to your essay. Once the question is created, it is time to create a draft for your thesis. It has to be clear, concise, and answer the question, “so what”. After completing the essay, it is essential to go back through the paper to make sure that every paragraph connects back to the thesis. I think it is extremely important to continually ask hypothetical questions throughout your essay to make sure you stay on track and keep organized. I like use the question, “so what” to craft my own thesis, which helps me get more analytical and specific on what I am writing about.

Responding – Really Responding – To Other Students’ Writing Summary and Response

A good peer editor is straightforward and gives constructive criticism to the writer. It would not be helpful to tell the writer what he/she just wants to hear. However, it is important to not be too harsh with edits. After all, you are not an editor nor the original writer, just give suggestions that the writer may or may not accept. As peer editors, you should write comments based on what type of assignment it is, the writer’s own interests, the type of work studied in class, and the stage of drafting. Again, it is important not to sound like a teacher or critic, just act as a colleague and a helper. You also should to write some compliments to balance out the comments. After reading this text, I genuinely learned more about peer editing. I now know to tie my comments in with the writer’s own goals and what the writer is learning in class, instead of just writing random comments. I also learned how to phrase my comments so they do not sound too harsh, and more like something I would like to hear more about.

Day 6: Project Pitch [Tristen Chau]

My top choice for the Rhetorical Analysis paper is the ‘We Will Rock You’ 2004 Pepsi Commercial. This was the first “text” that I thought of when I learned that we would have to analyze something. Even though it may be considered an outdated commercial, thinking about it always makes me feel excited and ready to yell out the famous words, “we will rock you”. One of the many pros is that the Pepsi utilizes a lot of ethos in the commercial by connecting the popular “We Will Rock You” song with well-known celebrities such as Britney Spears, Beyonce, and Pink. Another pro is that I talk about how the commercial resists the stereotype that women are weak and inferior to men. A con is that I am afraid I will not have enough to fill out a 6-7 page paper.

My second choice is Radiohead’s ‘All I Need’ MTV Music Video. I chose this because it shows tons of pathos by using a split screen to compare a white, British boy and an Asian boy. After watching it, I felt sympathy and guilty about the problems I consider to be “terrible” or “hard”. The pro is that the message of the music video is very clear: to raise awareness and end the exploitation of child labor in countries like China. A con is that I don’t know the band Radiohead that well and am not familiar with their type of music. Are they known to create music videos with an important message, or is it just this music video? I don’t know.

My third choice is to analyze an episode of the now-cancelled ABC show, “Perception”. I am currently watching re-runs of the show. It is about a brilliant neuroscience college professor who uses his vast knowledge on how the brain works to help the FBI solve cases. He is also a paranoid schizophrenic, so when he does not take his medicine (which is most of the time), he acts irrationally. A pro is that the purpose of the show is to raise awareness about schizophrenia and to show the side effects of it. The mental health movement started gain ground around 2012 when this show began so it may not be a coincidence that the show is adding to the movement. A con is that there is not much else to write about the show.

Day 6: Writing as a Process [Tristen Chau]

“Introduction to Composing as a Process” Summary

Pulitzer-winning writing professor Donald Murray once stated that “Writing is a process, not a product”. This is completely true; no one can achieve their finished work without getting help from others and revising it. The writing process starts with exploring, planning, drafting, and then revising. This cycle is repeated over and over again until writers are satisfied with the end product.

“Freewriting” Summary

Freewriting sounds as carefree as it seems. It is a time where you can write about anything and not have to think twice about your word choices or grammar. What you write may not necessarily make sense, but that is the whole point of freewriting. It may serve as a stress reliever or just an exercise to improve your writing. When you freewrite, you are not supposed to edit your work, just continue to write. Over time, the freewriting exercise will make your writing more cohesive.

“Shitty First Drafts” Summary

Writing bad drafts are a must in order to create the perfect writing piece. This is the beginning stage to get out all your ideas onto the page without anyone judging you. Sometimes it is hard to accept that after the first one or two drafts, you still have no idea what direction you want to take your writing. It is okay to feel frustrated because that exactly what drafts are: something to perfect over and over again.

Response

I agree that freewriting and writing drafts are an important first step to creating a fantastic writing piece. You are not expected to bang out a perfect essay in one sitting. It has been very helpful to me in the past to get a different perspective on what I am writing about through peer edits. For me, I jumble a good amount of my words when writing an essay, so I like experimenting with different words and ideas at in the draft-writing stage.

Intersectionality [Tristen Chau]

Dancing Around Objectification Summary

This article talks about the objectification of women in terms of race in the 1950s. One woman is a black dancer from Harlem and the other is a white dancer. They are both dehumanized because of the general sexism during the mid-twentieth century, but there is a vast difference between how the two dancers are treated. The Harlem dancer is appreciated more for her “perfect” body than her singing talents and has no authority over her audience. The Harlem dancer is noted to have a “sound of blended flutes…”, while men and women only see her as a sex symbol. The white dancer is considered to be in a higher social class than the Harlem dancer, but is still objectified in another way. The white dancer is used as an object that black teenagers can’t ever obtain. The white dancer can refuse the touch of black men, but have little to no power over white men, who are a social class above her. Both dancers are objectified, but go through a different kind of torture because of racism.

Intersectionality 101 Summary

Intersectionality is the study of how the different types of discrimination are actually interrelated, instead of being independent of each other. The intersectionality theory was not a term until Kimberle Williams Crenshaw coined it when she described an instance where there were multiple types of discrimination occurring as an intersection. The types of discrimination include sexism, racism, homophobia, and religion-based bigotry. The theory of intersectionality focuses on how minorities are being seen as troublesome or inferior in western traditions and cultures. Patricia Hill Collins’ paper also makes a good point that men are also discriminated against. She states that it is important to look at the whole context of a person before making claims. Powell may be black, but he was also an upper class male who had a better social standing than many people during that time. Lastly, the Standpoint Theory is based on the fact that every person in an ethnic group goes through different life experiences, which may cause them to achieve higher economic standing, which have a large impact on their social status.

The Urgency of Intersectionality Summary

Intersectionality is extremely important to identify in today’s society. TED Talk speaker Kimberle Crenshaw started her speech with a game, which at the end, demonstrated the issue of police violence toward black people and violence toward women; more specifically, the little recognition that black women receive compared to black men when they die of police violence. This shows that women are being discriminated on sex and race, creating multiple levels of social injustice. Crenshaw created the term intersectionality in order to make her message to law makers loud and clear: that something needs to be done to get black women who were killed, more media attention like black men who have been killed.

The Bechdel Test Summary

The Bechdel test is the way women are portrayed in fiction. The test needs to meet the requirements that 2 women in the movie talk about something other than men. At first, the test was taken as a joke in a comic. Later on in 2010, the saying became more of a common phrase and a “standard for which feminist critics judge television, movies, books, and other media”. The test made up for something that was missing in movie culture: giving female characters more depth and a backstory. Since then, there have been additions to the Bechdel test, such as females must talk for at least 60 seconds. The Bechdel test brought awareness to feminism in the movie industry since its introduction in 1985.

Respond/Connect

Reading these articles and watching the TED Talk really opened my eyes to real life intersectionality. I agree with Kimberle Crenshaw that the news that only black men have been killed are talked about and many black women are not mentioned. I was surprised while I was learning about intersectionality from Crenshaw because I thought I was pretty caught up with the major news these days. This made me more interested in learning about the forgotten stories of black women who have been killed. The theory of intersectionality is similar to the Egg and Sperm reading from last week. Both bring up the point that males have always been seen as superior to women and action needs to be taken to fix this issue.

Question

Can intersectionality ever be stopped in a way that makes everyone happy?

Metaphors [Tristen Chau]

Summary and Response to Metaphors We Live By:

The Layoff and Johnson piece introduces the idea of metaphors. Metaphors are known for being slightly dramatic to emphasize a point. However, what we do not realize is that metaphorical expressions are used in everyday language. For example, many people say that time is money. Time is not physically money, but conceptually, time is valuable, like money, that is usually wasted. If you spend your time doing something unsuccessfully, it is not possible to get the the time back. In today’s society, there is a monetary value placed on time (hours working), which shows the relationship between the two. Michael Reddy acknowledges that ideas are usually referred to as objects. For example, some people say “show him the idea”, conveying that the item is some type of physical object. I learned that the structure of language is particularly important when talking with other people because some may take your words seriously, like if someone says, “Hit me with your best shot” in an argument. This person may actually hit you if you do not convey yourself correctly. Reading this piece made me realize how often we actually use these conceptual phrases and how we do not always notice it.

Summary and Response to The Egg and the Sperm:

People often stereotype gender roles. Starting from menstruation in females, there is always a negative connotation associated with a woman receiving her period. Words such as “scarred and battered”, “degeneration”, and “old” used to describe a woman’s ovaries compared to the words “remarkable”, “produce”, “breathless” to describe a male’s process in health books to create sperm show that people are taught at a younger age that men are superior to women. The language used to egg and sperm, femininely and masculinely, convey the first idea of gender stereotyping. In many menstruation videos, the eggs are described as “drifting along the fallopian tube”, while the sperm is more active when they are described as “delivering their genes to the egg…with energy and fuel“. Commonly, the egg is portrayed as the damsel in distress and the sperm as the heroic warrior. This is all just conceptional metaphor, going back to the Layoff and Johnson piece. The egg and sperm do not physically represent those traits, but that is how they are perceived by the public. The way that tRecently, the researchers at John Hopkins University found that the egg and the sperm stick together and equally need each other. This has not stopped the papers written by those same researchers stating that the sperm was still the main party that attacks and penetrates the egg. Another recent theory gave the egg more of an active role in the penetration process, but also created a new stereotype: “that the woman’s eggs were a dangerous and aggressive threat”. This puts yet another negative connotation on women even though the eggs are less passive. Overall, I was surprised by the depth of this article. It did not even cross my mind that females were seen as inferior right from the start of menstruation, even after watching all those health videos in middle and high school.

Hashtags! [Tristen Chau]

I saw this advertisement on the downtown 6 train. It is kind of hard to see the words (bad lighting), but what initially caught my eye was the phrase “All it takes is a hashtag”. As a marketing major, I totally agree with this. In today’s society, people are always on social media and using hashtags to get their message across. There are trending hashtags on Twitter and Instagram that show that hashtags are popular to use. The fact that this company is referencing/using hashtags to promote their brand shows that they adapt well to the growing tech industry. I was also drawn to the vibrant colors that the women are wearing. This ad addresses two types of people: the visual and the logical people. This is a nice ad to look at and the wording of it is very attractive too.

Tools for Analyzing Texts [Tristen Chau]

Summary

Analysis, much like rhetoric, is something you do everyday. Whether it is looking at sets of numbers or at billboards on the highway, analysis let you grow as a person. Analysis is significant because it allows you to look at situations in a new perspective. One way of analyzing something is asking yourself how it made you feel. Angry, sad, happy, or frustrated? Identifying your feelings lets you think more clearly and thoughtfully on the situation. In the classroom, we will be analyzing the work of professional writers and if their evidence/argument is credible. A few important things to consider when analyzing a text is the audience (who is the author aiming to get through to), genre (does the type of writing affect the message of the text), purpose (why is the author writing this text) and the media (whether the time period in which it was written affects the texts message and effect).

Response

I thought that this article was very interesting because I always associated analysis with education, with some type of finance related field or an english research paper. What I did not realize is that we use analysis for everything. To problem solve, you need to take a step back and analyze the situation to try to gain new insight. Even after watching a movie, you must analyze all the parts to see if you liked it.

Question

How do we as readers know if a writer’s source is correct so we can start analyzing?

What is Rhetoric? [Tristen Chau]

Something New

One new thing that I learned about was all of the resources that the Baruch writing center provides, in particular, the weekly workshop to improve your writing and professional skills. I am curious to see what kinds of tips the professors teach every week. I did hear that the writing center taught you how to organize ideas and structure paragraphs, but what I did not know was that this center also gives you advice and techniques on how to write to potential employers. This is exactly what I need to move on with my internship search. I do not know how to write a cover letter and I am hoping that the Baruch writing center can help me out.

What is Rhetoric?

In summary, rhetoric shows how language can be used to be knowledgeable of others’ choices and how we can in turn make our own choices to communicate more effectively. We can do this by addressing the audience in different ways: logos, pathos, and ethos. Each type of language will have a different outcome for the audience and we can use rhetoric to determine which is the best choice for the situation. From reading these short passages, I learned a lot more about rhetoric than I thought I would. Rhetoric is in everyday life, like ads on Youtube or how we communicate with our friends. Understanding the purpose behind things you do everyday can help me become a better critical thinker and a marketer in my future.

A New Baruch Adventurer! [Tristen Chau]

About Me

Hi! I love to meet new people and dive right into new experiences. One of my favorite things to do is travel so I get to immerse myself in so many different cultures and traditions. I find it so cool that someone can speak a completely different language, but can still find things we like to do in common [like shopping for clothes at Gap during my time with the Cancun natives or falling down an Youtube rabbit hole with my Chinese relatives]. All that separates us is a language barrier! One of the reasons I like Baruch is because the diversity is like no other college and I am so excited to begin this new journey of learning and exploring!

My Writing

In regards to my writing abilities, I am a decent. I feel that my writing has definitely gotten better and can honestly say that I started to enjoy writing witty personal narratives by writing quirky college supplement essays. I learned how to structure my thoughts more, and not just let them float around in a paragraph. I would rather write more informally, because it conveys a more personal and relatable message to my reader. I do occasionally like to write research papers too because I like seeing both sides of an issue and learning about current problems in society. There is room for improvement in my writing; I hope that this class can increase my vocabulary and transition skills.