Writing as a recursive process:
This was probably the biggest problem with my entire piece. My rough draft barely had any content whatsoever. I had about a page. https://docs.google.com/document/d/1tTSJJHXTPw4K-4GSO5pu6y6QIGaAEbtlGle8miQxhhU/edit?usp=sharing In this piece I had about a page of written work, if that. It was an absolute mess, but with the help of my Professor and a friend of mine, we were able to work through what I had to be able to construct a clearer thought which allowed me to be able to write more. The hardest part of writing for me is to get my idea clearly, and once I was able to fully understand what I was writing about it became ten times easier. https://docs.google.com/document/d/1WuNP8n-nPHe6tH3CeCxRecEF-ZzdC6JBF2VqNyIjsp8/edit?usp=sharing
That is my final draft, and when you view it you will see a drastic difference between the first and second. First off, I have enough pages to warrant a read, but secondly, my thesis actually makes sense. It is not just some random pile of crap, it is well thought out. That to me is the writing process, you go from a lump of crap to something well finished, and being able to get help from my friends and professors really made things so much easier.
Integrating your ideas with those of others:
I find this allows for me to write and write away. I find that when I can use quotes I can talk about it forever. For example this Quote I used in my final draft ““[T]here’s a natural instinct embedded in friendship, a sympathy that makes us willing to fight for someone we like when they are treated unjustly” And I was able to type a whole page about why that can be used in a negative sense. I got a whole page out of one quote! And I feel like it was a constructive paragraph that added a strong argument to my thesis. I was able to connect Duhigg’s quote to the rise of Adolf Hitler, and although that may seem like a stretch but with all the work we have done I felt like I could express my opinion. Using quotes has made my writing for incomplete and poorly done to being able to express. When I talk about David Duke and how he used weak ties I used two of Duhigg’s quotes to strengthen my ideas, to show that more than one piece of evidence I could use to backup my claim, and it made it feel like my claim was stronger because of it.
Active Critical Reading:
I thought I read and understood the text relatively well. I used so many more quotes than I normally do, and I feel like I used them in the correct context and was able to portray what their true meanings were. For example, when I used the quote “But the reason is because the things that we don’t talk about actually begin to get associated with shame, they begin to make us feel as if we were bad” I linked it to how hate groups do not feel ashamed when it comes to their beliefs, when they clearly should because it is hate, but everyone else does feel ashamed to try and fight it because they are worried what is going to happen, and that allowed hate groups to control. I think that that was not the original meaning but it definitely makes sense and works.
Critiquing your own and others’ work:
The critiquing process for me was very different, receiving wise anyways. I critiqued my classmate Zach https://docs.google.com/document/d/19hcVQJZwYXqDYS6OZodE4YiTrrZjCRYmXEPnAeTDbw4/edit
In this I was able to suggest some global changes such as supporting his thesis with quotes more than just his opinion. I also told him to give proper formatting to his quote he had so people would be able to find it much easier in the reading we based our papers on.
As seen above my first draft was absolute rubbish, but I was able to get a decent amount of content into my final copy. My proffesor and friend were able to help me out and get a much better working thesis statement but based on my grade I would say I did a horrible job explaining it still. I wish I had done more with my first draft because it would have been ten times easier to explain my points and make it clear without all the junk I jammed into it. I should have asked more questions on how to develop a clear and well working paper. For our last paper I am going to hammer out a first draft no matter how lost I am so I can get constructive feedback.
MLA Citation-
This was not something I really struggled with in the beginning, or at least I think so because my English teacher from highschool really fretted on proper citation so it is kind of hammered in my head. The problem with my first essay was that I only used one quote for the entire thing, and I got the MLA formatting right but I really did not have much to show off in this sense.
https://docs.google.com/document/d/1bBGr594cI17ukhf96iGYN-pz_5wuf_Nwc7erh4dPEHo/edit
https://docs.google.com/document/d/1WuNP8n-nPHe6tH3CeCxRecEF-ZzdC6JBF2VqNyIjsp8/edit
My second essay I had multiple quotes that were followed up with correct page numbers and such, and my MLA citation list was in alphabetical order and was correctly cited. It helped that our professor was so kind to give us the sources we used along with the MLA proper citations for the pieces and it made it super convenient to use. I would have been able to do it on my own as I know of a good source that documents how to build a proper citations list.
Managing individual error patterns
One of the big problems I have seems to be with adding of the punctuation for the MLA formatting, everything else for it I have done. One sentence I screw up the punctuation for is “But the reason is because the things that we don’t talk about actually begin to get associated with shame, they begin to make us feel as if we were bad”(1:05) There is no punctuation to end the quote, I need to be able to do this more effectively so I can so clear endings to my quotes and not turn everything into a jumbled mess. I also missed it in this line “[T]here’s a natural instinct embedded in friendship, a sympathy that makes us willing to fight for someone we like when they are treated unjustly”(90) and again it looks like a jumbled mess because there is not a clear ending point.
