For me, writing is very situational. I have to feel like writing to actually produce anything of note. For essays like personal statements, I’ll need time to myself to sit down and reflect upon what I want to communicate to the reader. Once I settle upon an idea, if I feel like my thoughts are coming and going too fast for me to record using the traditional pen and paper, I’ll switch to my laptop because it is just faster to record my thoughts that way. Just coming up with an idea is not always enough for me however; to stay motivated on finishing a thought, I like to keep music on to add a sort of background soundtrack to what I’m thinking about. Right now in fact, I’m listening to “You Haven’t Told Me Anything” by Keane. It may seem distracting to others but I find that the music helps keep me constantly thinking.
Generally, I will start writing out the thoughts I have without any real order or grammatical correctness in a stream of consciousness fashion. Once I feel like I have several strong ideas, I’ll look over it and begin to reorganize what details connect to each other. I create a rough outline in this way and begin to rework sentences to be more coherent and fleshed out in concept. I compose better when I’m writing the real content of the paper first, that is, everything besides the traditional introduction and conclusion, which I typically save for last. I like the concept of a thesis because developing one helps me focus on the main points of the paper but I realize that having one is not applicable for every piece of writing.
After constructing some semblance of what the paper will be, I like to close it and not look at it for a few hours or a day even, if time permits. Leaving it alone and doing something else gives me a chance to clear my head so upon revisiting the paper, I can decide if I really want to keep a certain thought in the final paper. Reviewing my thoughts is especially important because I don’t want to have people read my writing if I don’t agree with it.
I’ve edited many papers for content as co-editor-in-chief of my high school yearbook and in other English classes. While things like grammar shouldn’t be overlooked, the copies for the yearbook needed to be reworked for content especially multiple times in order to represent and appeal to the student body, the ultimate audience of the staff’s writings. Other than that, peer review sessions have not been entirely helpful as many just look for easy fixes like grammatical mistakes. Also, when a peer reviewed a paper, the paper would be mostly complete; no one wants to be the killjoy to say that they should rethink a major portion of their paper.
Wednesday, January 28, 2009
Tuesday, January 27, 2009
Waking Life
For the past couple of days, I’ve been feverish. Because I felt like I couldn’t afford to get sick, I took a dose of Nyquil to help me get over it yesterday before I went to sleep. My roommate had been out and came back late and when I woke up, I felt like I was impaired, with a false sense of reality. I remembered a few details like getting up and looking for a midnight snack. I clumsily knocked over a cup of water while looking for my glasses.
When I really woke up this morning though, I felt like it had been a dream. There was no spilled water but I don’t remember cleaning it up. And did I really eat that S’mores Chewy bar? It may be the Nyquil talking but really, how can we tell the difference? Sometimes, I feel like when I’m awake, it is just a dream. I’m just going through the motions. When will I wake up?
When I really woke up this morning though, I felt like it had been a dream. There was no spilled water but I don’t remember cleaning it up. And did I really eat that S’mores Chewy bar? It may be the Nyquil talking but really, how can we tell the difference? Sometimes, I feel like when I’m awake, it is just a dream. I’m just going through the motions. When will I wake up?
"They say that dreams are only real as long as they last. Couldn't you say the same thing about life?"
- Waking Life, (2001)
Workshop Draft R
If the author intended for essay R to be a draft, it should, at the very least, give a rough outline of what they intend to cover. Drafts should give the writer a canvas upon which to show a level of organized thought after they have brainstormed and narrowed their focus. Its purpose should be deliberate; the writer should have clear intentions of telling their audience something about the topic. While in a draft it doesn’t have to be fully developed, the skeletal frame of a paper should appear. A thesis should be evident to state what the writer intends to examine and how they will go about doing it. Without knowing what the author wants to communicate to his audience, one cannot give constructive comments about how to improve the paper or even what to be looking for when reading it. For this essay in particular, the writer seems to want to target those casual fans of wrestling but overwhelms them with too many detail about too many things.
A suggestion I would make to this writer is to narrow their focus. They mention interesting topics such as women wrestlers breaking ground in the professional wrestling field and how wrestling is more of a show in present day. However, they seem to just to spitting out everything they know, with unnecessary details that deviate from their points. They should take some time to rethink how some points fit together well, like the business and show aspects of wrestling. They should also improve their comparison points for wrestling in the 1980s and present day by incorporating more supporting evidence that should be easily found, for instance, in the magazines that the writer points out are published. The most helpful point that I could suggest is to develop a thesis to help organize their thoughts. After writing a thesis, I for one, can focus on what I intend to discuss. The content of the paper is the most significant; in drafts, grammatical mistakes are acceptable and easily corrected once the paper has been laid out.
A suggestion I would make to this writer is to narrow their focus. They mention interesting topics such as women wrestlers breaking ground in the professional wrestling field and how wrestling is more of a show in present day. However, they seem to just to spitting out everything they know, with unnecessary details that deviate from their points. They should take some time to rethink how some points fit together well, like the business and show aspects of wrestling. They should also improve their comparison points for wrestling in the 1980s and present day by incorporating more supporting evidence that should be easily found, for instance, in the magazines that the writer points out are published. The most helpful point that I could suggest is to develop a thesis to help organize their thoughts. After writing a thesis, I for one, can focus on what I intend to discuss. The content of the paper is the most significant; in drafts, grammatical mistakes are acceptable and easily corrected once the paper has been laid out.
Friday, January 23, 2009
Grading Essay R
Grading Essay R
Grade: D+
While the author seems to know about wrestling and compare and contrast wrestling then and now, the author is largely ineffective at communicating his points due to lack of a thesis, textual evidence and well-expressed thought.
First off, the author fails to state a clear thesis, or even point out which facets of wrestling they will be examining. This shows, from the beginning, that the paper is not entirely focused. The writer tried to prove that they were knowledgeable about wrestling but could have structured their paper better to talk about the business, the wrestlers, and the show. Instead, they bounce back and forth between subjects and conclude the paper saying that “[they] think that all the changes that [they] have mentioned have been good.” They made gallant attempts to compare present and past but went off on so many tangents that I lost track of what they were actually supposed to be writing about. For example, did they need to mention the “faces” and “heels” of wrestling? This doesn’t seem to be a relevant point in a compare-contrast essay unless these figures were newly introduced when the spectacle of became more important than the wrestling. They try to instill some credibility in themselves by saying that they “have been there to watch it evolve into what it has become today” and that they “have seen or heard about every major superstar there has been in this industry.” While this may be true, the author mentions little about the specific wrestlers themselves, missing out on an opportunity to back up his statements.
The assignment required that the author “smoothly incorporate the use of some outside textual source material.” The author only uses one outside source in their paper, which is only cited for statistics pertaining to the market business of wrestling within the last few years with no data from the 1980’s. A quick Google search brought up that there were action figures made of 1980s wrestlers; marketing is not a new thing for sports and athletes but the author seemed desperate for a source, inserting sales figures from only the past few years. In order to better verify their statement that “all the superstars of today are considerably more built and have more strength,” they could have cited an interview or even a biography or autobiography from a pro wrestler about their fitness routine. Instead, they generalize and editorialize, saying that, for instance, the women are “some of the most beautiful women in the world.” There are surveys that they could have incorporated to back up this point but instead, the author seems enthralled with women in general and says how the women are “succeeding in a male dominated business.” If this were true, shouldn’t they have included, possibly, salaries that these professional athletes are paid in order to confirm their point?
They made several grammatical and spelling mistakes, and expressed very subjective opinions that weren’t cited. It was written very casually, giving the reader a much too cursory glance of the world of wrestling as they tried to touch base with everything. It also seemed rushed, as there is even a missing sentence that just begins with “then.” It might have been successful, had the author actually refined their points and vocabulary. The conclusion especially seemed loose, basically stating that despite the changes over the course of two decades, wrestling will continue to change as it always has but I’m not sure I see how. If the wrestlers already have to keep in “top cardiovascular shape,” how would the wrestlers improve on that? If the women have already posed for one of the most popular men’s magazines, how would that change in the foreseeable future? Will wrestling simply become a show and not an actual test of strength? Or has it already reached that level with the fireworks and taped promos?
From this essay, I got the sense that the sport of wrestling has changed to become more of a business, a campaign built upon celebrities who bulk up not for actually wrestling but rather for the show. Thus, what the fans of wrestling are now watching staged performances for the spectacle rather than the gritty realism of people sweating bullets locked in battle to avoid being thrown off their feet. Basically, they got their point across that yes, some things are different but they failed to prove it and present it in a clear-cut fashion.
Grade: D+
While the author seems to know about wrestling and compare and contrast wrestling then and now, the author is largely ineffective at communicating his points due to lack of a thesis, textual evidence and well-expressed thought.
First off, the author fails to state a clear thesis, or even point out which facets of wrestling they will be examining. This shows, from the beginning, that the paper is not entirely focused. The writer tried to prove that they were knowledgeable about wrestling but could have structured their paper better to talk about the business, the wrestlers, and the show. Instead, they bounce back and forth between subjects and conclude the paper saying that “[they] think that all the changes that [they] have mentioned have been good.” They made gallant attempts to compare present and past but went off on so many tangents that I lost track of what they were actually supposed to be writing about. For example, did they need to mention the “faces” and “heels” of wrestling? This doesn’t seem to be a relevant point in a compare-contrast essay unless these figures were newly introduced when the spectacle of became more important than the wrestling. They try to instill some credibility in themselves by saying that they “have been there to watch it evolve into what it has become today” and that they “have seen or heard about every major superstar there has been in this industry.” While this may be true, the author mentions little about the specific wrestlers themselves, missing out on an opportunity to back up his statements.
The assignment required that the author “smoothly incorporate the use of some outside textual source material.” The author only uses one outside source in their paper, which is only cited for statistics pertaining to the market business of wrestling within the last few years with no data from the 1980’s. A quick Google search brought up that there were action figures made of 1980s wrestlers; marketing is not a new thing for sports and athletes but the author seemed desperate for a source, inserting sales figures from only the past few years. In order to better verify their statement that “all the superstars of today are considerably more built and have more strength,” they could have cited an interview or even a biography or autobiography from a pro wrestler about their fitness routine. Instead, they generalize and editorialize, saying that, for instance, the women are “some of the most beautiful women in the world.” There are surveys that they could have incorporated to back up this point but instead, the author seems enthralled with women in general and says how the women are “succeeding in a male dominated business.” If this were true, shouldn’t they have included, possibly, salaries that these professional athletes are paid in order to confirm their point?
They made several grammatical and spelling mistakes, and expressed very subjective opinions that weren’t cited. It was written very casually, giving the reader a much too cursory glance of the world of wrestling as they tried to touch base with everything. It also seemed rushed, as there is even a missing sentence that just begins with “then.” It might have been successful, had the author actually refined their points and vocabulary. The conclusion especially seemed loose, basically stating that despite the changes over the course of two decades, wrestling will continue to change as it always has but I’m not sure I see how. If the wrestlers already have to keep in “top cardiovascular shape,” how would the wrestlers improve on that? If the women have already posed for one of the most popular men’s magazines, how would that change in the foreseeable future? Will wrestling simply become a show and not an actual test of strength? Or has it already reached that level with the fireworks and taped promos?
From this essay, I got the sense that the sport of wrestling has changed to become more of a business, a campaign built upon celebrities who bulk up not for actually wrestling but rather for the show. Thus, what the fans of wrestling are now watching staged performances for the spectacle rather than the gritty realism of people sweating bullets locked in battle to avoid being thrown off their feet. Basically, they got their point across that yes, some things are different but they failed to prove it and present it in a clear-cut fashion.
Thursday, January 22, 2009
2H: Rhetorical Analysis
Bryan West is responding to Gabriel McVey’s article on the Clinton administration, which from West’s essay, seems to be a political commentary that tried discredit the Clinton name in the election. West states clearly that his aim is to analyze the rhetoric of McVey, who penned an article clearly against any sort of “continuation of the previous Clinton tenure.” He intends to examine how McVey employed certain tactics to persuade the reader of McVey’s article, in order to inform the reader of his analysis that McVey was “unsuccessful at persuading his audience to believe what he wrote.” Though this seems to be directed at a professor, it could easily apply to anyone who may have wanted to search the credibility of authors and the logic behind their rhetoric, which was especially important in the time leading up to the election. When presidential candidates were running for nomination, it was vital that one who was unsure of whom to lend their support to gather information about candidates to hopefully make a well-read decision. It could also apply to McVey, who may have wanted to hear criticism about his editorial, though as West points out, “it is hard to persuade someone over such a divisive issue like politics.”
This seems to be an analytical piece, as West attempts to explain the processes that McVey used to tell readers of the highs and lows of the Clinton administration. Personally, I have written several analytical papers, picking apart the diction of works of fiction and nonfiction alike in order to discover the author’s underlying message. There is also a note of persuasion in this text as West attempts to explain to his audience that McVey was not successful in reaching his audience, who West believes have already made up their mind about the politics of the situation. I read persuasive texts regularly in the editorial sections of several publications like The Washington Post though I am not a master at it myself.
West could have written a more personal narrative to explain how he was personally affected by McVey’s piece so that his intended audience could better relate to him. However, many people do not adapt well to a personal narrative as it is more of a story that people have their own personal favorite forms of, while an analytical piece has a purpose clear and early on. Some however, may also grow tired of the formulaic style of analytical writing.
If he wanted to be really creative, West could have written some form of rap in order to appeal to younger audiences who tend to have shorter attention spans and less of an interest in politics. This would still serve a purpose to inform though he would need to use a more colloquial style of language.
Teachers, social workers and scientists are all required to have an eye for analyzing pieces and for writing their own statements. Teachers have to consider technical things, such as grammar and sentence structure, while also catering to their own personal voice and style of writing. They must also be persuasive if they are to prove a point to their students or colleagues. Social workers will probably attempt to find the reasoning behind certain actions, being analytical about cases to explain how events transpired. Scientists are apt to be more formal and factual in their writings, as they are more often than not, trying to prove something with hard evidence that affords little literary flexibility. When statistics come into play, being persuaded by the data is much simpler to grasp right away as opposed to figures of speech.
This seems to be an analytical piece, as West attempts to explain the processes that McVey used to tell readers of the highs and lows of the Clinton administration. Personally, I have written several analytical papers, picking apart the diction of works of fiction and nonfiction alike in order to discover the author’s underlying message. There is also a note of persuasion in this text as West attempts to explain to his audience that McVey was not successful in reaching his audience, who West believes have already made up their mind about the politics of the situation. I read persuasive texts regularly in the editorial sections of several publications like The Washington Post though I am not a master at it myself.
West could have written a more personal narrative to explain how he was personally affected by McVey’s piece so that his intended audience could better relate to him. However, many people do not adapt well to a personal narrative as it is more of a story that people have their own personal favorite forms of, while an analytical piece has a purpose clear and early on. Some however, may also grow tired of the formulaic style of analytical writing.
If he wanted to be really creative, West could have written some form of rap in order to appeal to younger audiences who tend to have shorter attention spans and less of an interest in politics. This would still serve a purpose to inform though he would need to use a more colloquial style of language.
Teachers, social workers and scientists are all required to have an eye for analyzing pieces and for writing their own statements. Teachers have to consider technical things, such as grammar and sentence structure, while also catering to their own personal voice and style of writing. They must also be persuasive if they are to prove a point to their students or colleagues. Social workers will probably attempt to find the reasoning behind certain actions, being analytical about cases to explain how events transpired. Scientists are apt to be more formal and factual in their writings, as they are more often than not, trying to prove something with hard evidence that affords little literary flexibility. When statistics come into play, being persuaded by the data is much simpler to grasp right away as opposed to figures of speech.
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