Journal #21
This entire time spent revising my paper since the peer review session on Wednesday has been on reworking my first introductory paragraph. Initially, I had two intro paragraphs. Both of them were unnecessarily long, especially the first of the two. This paragraph had a lot of potential, however broken up body paragraphs, not as an introductory paragraph where it was at the time. Therefore, I have spent a significant amount of time on this piece of my essay. First I broke up the paragraph, grouping together all the similar ideas and separating the differing ones to find the bases for new body paragraphs. Following this, I expanded on each topic adding in additional points to each argument. Further, I added in useful quotes from my various sources to support and strengthen each argument.
Journal #19
My writing process for this paper has been very similar to that of previous papers in both this class and other classes I have taken in college so far. Generally I just sit down on my bed every once in awhile to spend sometime writing the essay. My roommate and I spend quite a bit of time doing homework so we both understand the need for quite study and work time. Because of this, I generally do not go to the library or commons to write where I am more likely to just get distracted. I have definitely had a hard time figuring out what exactly I want to say both in my own words and in the words of other writers from outside sources. Further, I generally do a better job writer under pressure. When I spread out my writing periods to whenever is convenient, I am more likely to forget what I want to say and lose my thought process flow.
My writing process for this piece has been somewhat similar to paper one. I have, in some ways, taken some of the things I have learned from our initial process in paper one, along with what we discussed during paper two, and included them into my process for paper three. However, my process of writing paper two was very different mainly because I was sick through the majority of the duration of the project and therefore most of the paper was written in one or two sittings. Therefore, this writing period seems more similar to our first.
Journal #18
Some of the happiest memories can involve eating a meal. This is what Foer describes in the paragraph beginning with “Some of my happiest childhood memories are of sushi…”. These memories would not be the memories they were if the food, the meat, was less than special. Foer remembers having turkey burgers with his father or sushi dates with his mom. These memories are an important part of his life, but, in his decision to give up meat, he also gave up this part of his life. Even more, he will give up the taste he used to love of these meats, tastes that likely brought back these memories in the first place. However, in giving up meat, Foer also gains a new and better sense of his values that he had formed in his childhood. He was finally able to hold up that animals should not be harmed, giving himself a better sense of peace.
Foes asks an interesting question in his paragraphs beginning with “While cultural uses of meat can be replaced…”. As humans, we place ourselves miles above any animals. To us, they are inferior, something we can eat. Humans clearly do not eat other humans. Instead, it is universally wrong to eat people and those who do are shunned out of society. Anyone admitting to have raped an animal would like also be shunned. However, in contrast, those who rape people or eat animals are not outcast. People are someone objects of pleasure while animals are free for eating.
Journal #17
In the book “They Say/I Say”, chapter six spends its time discussing the counterarguments and how to introduce them into in essay. Adding counterarguments can really strengthen a piece of work. By adding them, you can then spend time addressing them with your own argument, therefore improving the support of your argument. Often, the strongest pieces are ones with not even just one counterargument, but many throughout the paper. I found it very helpful to include templates in this chapter as way of showing exactly how to integrate these opposing arguments. I find that the best way to discover counterarguments you can discuss in a piece is by reading your work so far and finding the weaknesses. By finding these holes, or weaker parts, and incorporating specific counterarguments, you can find more material to strength your points.
Journal #16
Even after spending the time going back and rereading both David Foster Wallace’s article “Consider the Lobster” and my very first journal entry that focused on this piece, I have found that my opinions, in general, seem to have remained the same since the first time I read through the article. Clearly, many animals generally need meat to survive, including us humans. I would not say people should or should not eat meat, but the common approach of boiling a lobster alive is really a type of torture. Whether they can fully feel that pain or not, studies have proven that they clearly at least are very uncomfortable in this situation for any amount of time. We currently have no true way of knowing whether they feel pain in the same we do or in any way for that matter. Until we can find a true sense of others’ feelings, thoughts and emotions we do not have the right kill these animals in such a torturous fashion to eat. There are a number of other less extreme ways of getting to the meat inside, even if it is slightly less convenient.
Journal #15
Page 2, Paragraph 2
This passage talks about Jim Thompson, a 25-year-old man who worked at a poultry research laboratory where he dispatched baby chicks after experiments. However, after reading a magazine advocating for animal rights, he turned his life around when it came to animals. Not only did he never eat meat again, but he also set his pet bird, who had previously been living in a cage in his house, free. Like Herzog discusses in his article, Thompson’s relationship with animals changed. In this case, he increases his knowledge about animals. In doing this, the quality of his relationship with animals greatened, having increasingly more respect for them.
Page 2, Paragraph 5
This passage talks about a woman named Carolyn who got a job at a natural history museum in central Florida caring for the sea cow, Snooty. Immediately, Carolyn was entranced by this giant animal, caring for him for over two decades. With this new-found relationship with an animal, like Herzog explains, her life changed to revolve around it. She created an incredible relationship with Snooty, but in exchange, another large part of her life changed. She and her husband stopped going on vacations as Snooty would become upset when Carolyn left and soon, her husband believed she loved Snooty more than she loved him.
Page 5, Paragraph 4
This passage talks about Ron Neibor, a scientist who studied the the brain’s recognition of itself after injury. In doing this, he used the best subject for what he was study: cats. A part of his research process included killing these cats and dissecting their brains. However, in the beginning of his study, Neibor spent a great deal of time with his subjects while they were still alive and playful. During this time he, unfortunately, built relationships with these cats, therefore making it even harder to follow through with this crucial yet thoroughly upsetting step. As Herzog discusses, Neibor’s relationship with animals, specifically these cats, improved, increasing his attachment to them, explaining the main reason the scientist was so upset during this process.
Journal #14
I though this article, What the Crow Knows was really interesting. We do not usually spend much time actually thinking about consciousness. Although we know plenty about the human body, and specifically the brain, we still do not understand what creates consciousness or how to detect it. Because of all of this complexity regarding consciousness in humans, rarely have I ever even thought about the subject applying to other living things. I understand that they are living, breathing creatures, but I never really consider how similar or different they really are from us. Having now thought about it, I guess I have just assumed that, at least for the common and more commonly thought about animals such as cats, dogs, cows, or horses, animals are conscious. Although we cannot communicate with them and are very far from being able to, let alone find out if they are indeed conscious, they seem to still be able to use all the five sense and react to their surroundings. Therefore, personally, I believe many animals are in fact conscious. Something further to consider though, is the potential consciousness of smaller living things like bugs or even bacteria. This is something I have never considered and would not even know where to start thinking about. That is definitely something I will leave to the scientists.
One thing I found particularly interesting about this article was the different viewpoints they discussed. Not only did they speak from a scientific aspect, but they also explained the beliefs of those in the ancient Eastern religion of Jainism. By doing this, I found that I was not just trying to read the facts and conform to the results of the studies. We were able to also understand the opinions of a belief that has been around for centuries. This could potentially cause us to question what scientists have told us to believe and not to believe and begin to form our own theories and opinions.
Journal #13
After going through, spending time highlighting the sources I used in my Meal Analysis essay, Out of the Kitchen, Onto the Couch and four separate Favorite Meal essays, I realized that my sources where clearly not used evenly. It seems like, when writing my paper, I considered Pollan’s piece to be one source and the Favorite Meal essays to be another combined source. From Out of the Kitchen, Onto the Couch, I have pulled and incorporated four quotes. In contrast, it seems that, aside from one exception where I used two, I used only one quote per student essay. I think this was one of the hardest parts for me, considering and using the Favorite Meal essays as published pieces and not just thinking of them as short essays written by my peers for a class assignment.
Along with the quotes, I had some difficulty keeping up with this essay. After spending an entire weekend in bed with mono, my first “draft” that I published on my UNE Portfolio page and shared with my peers was closer to a bunch of random ideas thrown up onto a page with no real rhyme or reason. Because of this, it was slightly difficult for me to catch up from there. I was eventually able to view the ideas as more of an outline and more forward from there, but the structure of the full essay was still a challenge I continued to run into.
Journal #12b
I thought this podcast was very interesting and brought up quite a few interesting points. It was very strange at first to listen to Caitlin Doughty, a mortician, discuss her job so casually. In our society today, it is uncommon for people to feel comfortable partaking in any conversation surrounding death. Doughty address the fact that, quite often, families have little interest in the body post-mortem. They will make the decision of a burial or cremation, but few have are involved greatly involved in either process. Despite this, many countries, besides the United States, are much more willing to talk on this subject. Further, they are often much more involved in movement of the body after death, being there for each step. I agree with her in that we should try to be more open to the concept of death and what happens with the body afterward. We do not need to be scared about talking about this topic. A stigma has been set in place that we should work to get rid of. I believe that having people Doughty openly addressing this topic, along with the many good and bad ideas that come with it, can help us move in the direction of being more comfortable with the idea of it, discussing it, and dealing directly with death.
Journal #12
My experiences of peer reviewing for project one and project 2 were certainly different. The first time around, I went into the process excited and interested to try this new approach to the editing process. For each paper I left lengthy comments hoping to get my points across, making my suggestions very clear for the author to later understand and hopefully at least take into consideration when editing their paper. Because these papers were generally at least two pages longer, I also left significantly more comments, ensuring I met at least the minimum requirement of three comments per page. Doing this, I was able to get a fairly good variety of comment types, from local to organization to ideas. While the paper I coded did not have any evidence comments, I distinctly remember making them in the other papers I reviewed. To contrast this, project two peer review was approached with significantly less enthusiasm and instead a mono-consumed brain. I put as much brain as I could muster up into commenting on these papers, but I still found my comments to be significantly shorter. My hope is that they were still to the point, helpful, and clear for the author to understand when going back to review. Even with less concentration and fewer pages to work with, I was still able to leave, what I believe to be a good selection of comments on my peers’ papers. Though fewer, I still coded a selection of idea, local, organization, and evidence comments. While skimming the two other papers I also worked with, I found a similar trend of each of these global and local comments. Though we are trying to move more toward global comments over local comments, I believe that, in both project one and project two, my local comments were, generally, more significant than a simple word choice. They often were more focused on full sentences for fluidity and connecting basic ideas between sentences.
Journal #11
This chapter was super helpful in really understanding the purpose behind a piece of writing. Often, we question the motivation or reason behind why the author discussed what they did. This can be difficult to break down and understand. Therefore, the approach suggested in They Say/I Say makes it much simpler to understand than one might initially think. Simply put, look at the writing as a conversation. Imagine the author is having a multisided conversation where everyone is trying to support their argument and persuade others. When you look at it in this way, it can be much easier to separate the different opinions. When finding the “They Say”, we also want to look for certain words that indicate a change, such as “but” or “although”. Though these terms certainly do not guarantee a change is occurring, they often can. By presenting this new approach to reading a piece of writing, I feel more confident in reading new works. I look forward trying this new way of looking at a piece and hopefully being able to better understand the conversation the author is having.
Journal #10
1. Page 8-9, Paragraph 4/1 – Agree
When beginning to read this passage, I immediately doubted the concept behind it. There is no way you can compare “Iron Chef”, one of the Food Network’s most popular shows, to a football game, can you? However, as I continued to read further, it became clear that you could, and quite easily in fact. Even simply adding a timer pushes it one step closer to the competitive nature of a football game. It does not, however, stop there. There are play by play commentaries by the hosts, “as the iron chefs and their team of iron sous-chefs race the clock to peer, chop, slice, dice, mince, Cuisinart, mandoline, boil, double-boil, pan-sear, sauté, sous vide, deep-fry, pressure-cook, grill, deglaze, reduce, and plate.” This is much like the quarterback and his teammates racing against the clock to run, throw, jump, and tackle to push through the opposite team, get to the end zone and score a touchdown. Clearly cooking and football in their basic definitions are extremely different, but the way each of them are produced for television makes them undoubtable similar to watch.
2. Page 10, Paragraph 2 – Complicated
This passage discusses what Pollen believes we can learn from the cooking shows on Food Network. Here she lists ideas such as culinary fashion along with how to both taste and talk about food. None of this I can deny. They are certainly a large part of the show. The contestants have to not only make a great tasting dish, but it also must be presented impeccably. Additionally, nearly all of these shows have judges tasting the food and giving their reviews to the contestants. However, I do disagree in that this is not all that we can learn from these shows. True, many of them are extremely fasted passed and difficult to following along with. Despite this, a great number of the contestants in any show discuss what they are doing as they do it. Because of this, we also have the ability to learn about how to inspire and come up with a dish based on theme, ingredients, and many other beginning factors. Additionally, though we often do not get the full recipe, we can still learn cooking techniques that the contestants might share as they cook each of their meals.
3. Page 14, Paragraph 2 – Agree
Much of this article spends time discussing the idea that we, as Americans, simply do not want to spend the time getting up and cooking for ourselves. Instead we would rather go out to a restaurant and have an entire meal prepared for use or at least have premade food at home for dinner. This is not something I can argue with some number of the population. It is definite that this is one of the reasons cooking has declined in our society. However, as this passage discusses, it is more often that people do not have the time to cook anymore. As Pollen states, “Since 1967, we’ve added 167 hours – the equivalent of a month’s full-time labor.” In this case, we have significantly less time to spend on cooking each of our meals from scratch, but often more money to spend on other people preparing our food for us. So, aside from a few additional causes, I certainly agree that cooking at home, in our modern society, has significantly decreased due to our continuously decreasing available time.
Journal #9
For me, the most beneficial part of the revision process was the peer review. Firstly, having others read my paper allowed me to see it in a new way. My peers were able to read through it with no prior knowledge and, therefore, could find the errors that I skipped over. These could be sentence structure issues where the sentence kind of made sense in my head, but when you read it out load, it actually makes little sense at all. However, these were also larger ideas like the transitions between paragraphs or even recognizing how crowded with information a paragraph was. Along with receiving some very helpful comments, reading other papers on the similar topic allowed me better to understand different ideas. I was able to see the viewpoints of three other people, causing me to constantly question parts of my paper, either regarding a structural error they made or a good point they presented.
This whole process was very different to any I have done in the past. Generally, my “revision process” consisted of skimming over my paper a time or two looking for spelling or grammatical errors. This allowed me to go into much greater depth and definitely strengthened the end product of my paper overall. Because of this new approach, I likely spent most of my revision time on larger structural issues. Many of paragraphs did not have great transitional sentences so I had to spend time trying to make the entire piece flow better. Additionally, I had a couple large, clunky paragraphs filled with many ideas. I spent quite a bit of time splitting these up into their separate ideas, which seemed to help make each one more prominent and understandable. Even if I do not continue to always have a peer review session with each of my papers, I believe I have a better understanding of what to look for that I would often previously ignore or skip over. Overall, I thought the entire review process was extremely helpful and educational and I definitely plan to continue to use the ideas behind it in my future work.
Journal #8
Reading through Chapter 1 of They Say/I Say, there were a number of connections to discussion we have had in class surrounding Project 1. Often in our high school English classes we were taught to never use the word, “I”, meaning we were not to use the first person. You find the side of the argument that you agree with and, therefore, finding the evidence that supports this opinion. However, you never present this as your own opinion. Instead, it often felt like we were simply told to ‘throw up’ onto the page as many facts that support your argument as humanely possible. This chapter goes against this idea, instead telling you to explore both sides of an argument. It also emphasizes the idea of discussing both the ideas and arguments of others along with your own opinions. This is more in line with the papers we just wrote, which were mainly surrounding our own opinions, though we also included the opinions of others, both supporting and opposing our viewpoint. Additionally, the templates are extremely helpful. Even when we understand the concepts we are supposed to following in our writing, it is often difficult to appropriately apply the concept. The templates allow us to get over these boundaries. For example, in this chapter, they provide templates on how to transition from the view to which you are responding to introducing your own ideas. As a whole, although the chapter was very relevant to what we are currently finishing up, it can also be helpful for our future projects.
Journal #7
Journal #6
Journal #5
The main concept I took from this chapter is quite literally “why”. Why are we writing about what we write about. That is, other than the fact that, generally, we have been assigned to by a professor. As explained in the first chapter of They Say/I Say, we cannot write an academic, or better understood as an argumentative essay without something to respond to. We are not writing our essays as just random thoughts, they are generally arguments of support, opposition, or of a stance somewhere in between to a statement or statements of another person. You are responding to their stance, entering into a larger conversation, and therefore must start with what “they say”. I have never really thought of writing in this way. It has always been, read the prompt, write the argument, back it with evidence, generally from other sources, and support your claim. However, this chapter is able to better explain that we must first discuss what we are responding to before we may introduce our own ideas, what “I say”, but only as a response to what “they say,” summarizing what they say as soon as you can. These ideas should be briefly discussed in the beginning of the text, while elaborated details are delayed for later so as not to drown in the reader in them right away. Simply give a preview of what is motivating you to write.
Journal #4
Initially, reading the title “The End of Food” maybe me assume we were about to read on some a radical idea that a random person came up with that failed massively. However, only a few paragraphs in and I fully understood the concept and the genius behind the idea. One of the biggest concepts that stuck out to me in the article was the intent behind Soylent. Rob Rhinehart had no intention of entirely replacing all food products, saying it is not a “recreational food” (Widdicombe 6). He instead advertised it as an efficient meal as an alternative to his previous cheesy quesadillas. On of the main reasons this jumped out at me was the line, “The college student fridge of the future,” describing a fridge containing nothing but Soylent and a bag of baby carrots as a fun snack along with the section discussing Caltech students who were described as not having time for anything, let alone sitting down for three full meals a day to nourish themselves (Widdicombe 6). Often I have difficulty either finding time to sit down and eat a full meal with the amount of work I have or, in other cases, I simply cannot find anything that interests me enough to be worth eating. Because of this, the concept and intent behind Soylent really interested me. It clearly is not just for adults in a 9-5 job, rushing around trying to save money on their meals and time during their day. It can me extremely helpful for the cheap college kids who do not have enough time for a sit down meal or even just simply too lazy to walk to the dining hall. Even more, the immensely creative ideas produced by the DIYers allow everyone to have more than just the pale initial recipe. Though Rhinehart seems to enjoy this yeasty blandness, he his hope had been achieved as his posting the recipe online had allowed it to expand, be altered, improved upon and enjoyed by so many. Though it is hard to even begin to imagine replacing even just a few of your meals in a day way a sort of smoothie that will likely be better for you than any alternative you could come up with, the concept behind it is ingenious and I would be very open and even excited to try it out some time.
Journal #3
Over the four years spent in high school, I have learned and built an understanding of most of what was discussed in Chapter three, “The Art of Quoting”, in They Say/I Say regarding the integration of quotes into pieces of work. When first starting to use quotes, I often made many of the common mistakes of quoting discussed in the chapter. However, through the years I was able to grasp a better understanding of the purpose of using quotes in a piece of work. Initially, I only saw them as an obnoxious requirement made by my teachers that I need to integrate into all of my papers to get full points. Once I gained a better understanding I was able to better see the importance of using quotes in my work so they became more of a tool to strengthen my paper and less of a task to check off the list off to do’s. Even still, reading this chapter and being reassured of these skills of integrating quotes, using explanatory introductions before along with thoughtful explanations and analyses following, I am more confident with using quotation in my work. The analogies, such as the sandwich analogy, where the introduction and the explanation of the quote are the buns while the quote is the meat in the middle, provided to better understand how to correctly use and incorporate quotes were extremely helpful. Overall, though I did not learn much more specific detail regarding how to appropriately integrate quotes into a piece of work, I still do believe that I have a better understand of the importance of quotation as well as the fundamentals of how to properly quoting.
Journal #2
Average would probably be the best word to describe my writing. There clearly is loads of room for improvement in all aspects of my work, including anything from vocabulary, to sentence structures, to the entire structuring of the paper. However, I fully believe that I can better not only my writing, but drafting process as well. I am classic procrastinator. Often, in the beginning of the school year, my productivity is nearly impeccable.
Yet, as the school year drags on, they significantly begin to decline until I am consistently doing all of my homework the night previous to the due date of each piece of work, generally including essays. Due to these eventual last minute writing sessions, likely, the first draft is also the final draft. Often I would try to remember to edit each sentence throughout the process, but by the end of the piece, “checking” because skimming for only completely obvious errors. Unfortunately for me, this became my permanent approach throughout the remainder of the school year, mainly because the process tended to produce successful papers significantly more often than not. I never got a grade below a B+ on an essay throughout high school. Because of this, despite the load of stress that each late night writing session was associated with, I continued to and still continue to use this method.
The times when I started earlier to work on a paper, maybe the day before or even just earlier in the day, I would construct what looked at least similar to an outline, if not just bullet points of topics I wanted to cover and points I wanted to hit. However, most days I just started right in from the beginning, chugging through the introduction, onto the body paragraphs, and finishing off with a conclusion. Often I would revisit the introductory paragraph after completing the paper to ensure I was consistent throughout the paper. Many times, mid-essay, I would turn the paper in an entirely different direction or at least revise the main idea, so naturally I had to edit the opening statements to make the consistent once again.
After years of practice, I have convinced myself that this is the best approach for me. Often, I write my best under the pressure of time, knowing that the paper has to be finished soon. If I start my papers too early, I often find myself only sitting and staring at a blank word document, or, if I am lucky, up to a paragraph or two, because, in my mind, I know that I still have “plenty” of time to work on it, even if it is due in only two days or so. However, after using this method for years, y goal for by May is to change, or at least, improve upon my writing habits, for the sake of my work and my stress levels.
