Category: ENG110 (Page 2 of 3)

At first, I wasn’t very comfortable with using my own voice in academic writing. I wasn’t sure how to incorporate my voice into the writing, because my essential thought was that the essay had to be mostly summary and explanation and only a little bit of my thoughts. This lead me to only include my voice a little bit here and there.

When we got the prompt for the second essay, I was intrigued to see that it was a “personal-academic” essay. This specifically calls for a personal scenario that could relate to the themes and ideas in the texts that we were given to write about. I felt a lot more comfortable using my own voice in the writing, because it specifically asked me to. I had a little trouble figuring out what personal scenario to include that would relate specifically to the prompt, but once I did, I was golden. The personal scenario was actually the strongest part of my essay.

What I found interesting in this chapter from “They Say, I Say” is the use of actually translating a complicated sentence into your own everyday speech, by literally using the word “translation.” I had never thought to do this before, even though I had seen it done previously. This may be a new writing tool that I would like to try to use in my future while writing. I will most likely only be using it if I need to, because I normally don’t tend to make sentences too complicated for readers to comprehend.

1. My final thesis statement was, “I think humans naturally practice a sort of selfish behavior without even realizing it and changes can be made to that behavior if you really set your mind to it. Self-awareness, mindfulness, and critical thinking is important for your own mind’s sake.” I didn’t really sit down and think about exactly was my thesis statement would be. When I started writing my first draft, I just wrote out my introductory thoughts and kind of just pulled a thesis together from what I had already written.
2. My strength in this essay was my personal story. I think this is where my essay shines, it was really strong and powerful, and it felt real. I didn’t do much revision to my personal story part of my essay, because it didn’t need much work. The way I had written originally was strong enough. It was so strong that I was afraid if I revised it, I would ruin it. I did local revisions to my personal story, just spelling and grammar revisions.
3. I think most of the Global revisions I had made were the flow of my paragraphs. I had to rearrange some of them so that the themes would make more sense as a whole. Another area of global revisions I had to focus on was heightening and strengthening the rest of my paper to try and be as strong as my personal story. I used reading it aloud as my tool and the peer reviews and the edits my professor had made on my first draft. Also the one on one meeting with my professor helped me focus on exactly what I needed to revise.
4. One of my biggest challenges was where to begin. When I first sat down to write the rough draft, I didn’t know where to start or how exactly I wanted to have my essay set up. I didn’t know whether to put summaries first and then explanations and then my personal story or mix it up everywhere. Once I got started, I was on a roll. Another one of my biggest challenges was all the parts of my essay except for the personal story (especially the introduction paragraph.) The problem was that my personal part was so strong that it made the other parts of my essay seem a little weak, my introduction paragraph was the weakest and needed a lot of work. I also completely forgot my Barclay paragraph in my first draft. So, when I included in my final draft, I didn’t have any peer or professor reviews on it. I was scared that my Barclay paragraph seemed to be repetitive of the things I had already stated in my essay.
5. This essay is different from the last because this time I wasn’t as afraid to dig into my own voice. This essay was supposed to specifically include a personal narrative sort of, which is the strongest part of my essay. I think the order of my paragraphs in this essay is a little messier than the 1st, but that doesn’t necessarily mean the 1st essay was better.
6. I would say I need more class time work on introduction paragraphs, thesis statements, and maybe a little work on my conclusion. My conclusion wasn’t bad, it was actually pretty good. But after having to revise my introduction paragraph, I was afraid my conclusion and intro paragraphs wouldn’t connect or make sense. So because my introduction was so weak I felt like that may cause my conclusion paragraph to be weak, even if it wasn’t (that’s just how I felt.)

At this point I would like to raise some objections that have been inspired by the skeptic in me. She feels that I have been ignoring the complexities of the situation. Of course, many people will probably disagree on the grounds that anti-depressants are helpful for a lot of people. Yet, is it true that all anti-depressants are helpful for people? While it is true that some anti-depressants do help some people with their depression, it does not necessarily follow that all anti-depressants are helpful for all people. Some people may get addicted to a certain brand, which may lead them to other drugs, enhancing their addiction even further and putting their lives at risk.

This text was very interesting to me, and I really enjoyed it. It gave me a new perspective on how to think for myself and for others. I think with some analysis, this could easily connect to “Eating Jack Hooker’s Cow”.

In “This is Water”, the speaker discusses the phenomenon of choosing what to think. He explains that our default setting is to think about everything as surrounding ourselves. Essentially, our default setting is being self centered, mostly because it is easy, but also because the only way we’ve ever seen things or experienced things was through our own eyes and our own minds and our own bodies and our own worlds. He discusses the education should have taught them awareness and how to think and be attentive of all the others surrounding them, not just themselves. We don’t know what anybody else is going through, so assume they are going through the worst. Think of the most insane scenario you can think of and put that person in it. This will allow you to think of them, instead of just yourself and your needs. The scenario you think up is probably unlikely, but that doesn’t mean that it is impossible. I believe that this connects a bit with empathy and sympathy.

I think this could connect to “Eating Jack Hooker’s Cow” by the way that Jack thinks of Donna. He thinks in his default setting. He worries about him and his business and his life and how everyone else, especially Donna, is in HIS way. If he was more aware, more attentive, and tried to choose to think of Donna, I believe he could feel empathy and sympathy for her instead of just hating her for getting in HIS way, when in fact, she wasn’t. Donna wasn’t getting in Jack’s way, she was just trying to build her life and be successful for her children and family’s sake. I believe Donna chooses to think of others, but even while she chooses to think of others, the hate from Jack and Bev and probably many other people (including the people who stole everything from her) drove her to hate others, causing the chain reaction of hatred.

It was really interesting to me to read about omission. Before I had begun reading, I was unsure of what “omission” even was. What does it mean to omit something? I looked up the definition to better prepare myself for the reading. Omission is “someone or something that has been left out or excluded.” In writing, I had never even thought about omission before. I have trouble when it comes to exceeding the writing limit; if the paper due is supposed to be 5 pages, I’ll write 6. I don’t do this on purpose, I just have a bad sense of omission. I never know when to leave something out or what should be cut from my works of writing.

I do believe that omission is just as important as all the other strategies and factors that go into writing. In the article, the author discusses the power that the writer has. “Writing is selection. Just to start a piece of writing you have to choose one word and only one from more than a million in the language. Now keep going. What is your next word? Your next sentence, paragraph, section, chapter? Your next ball of fact. You select what goes in and you decide what stays out.” (Mcphee.) This shows that the writer chooses what he or she puts into the piece of writing and what he or she chooses to omit.

It is important that you are comfortable with the material that you are writing about. “Write on subjects in which you have enough interest on your own to see you through all the stops, starts, hesitations, and other impediments along the way.” (Mcphee.) The author explains that being more comfortable with your materials will help you get through any “writer’s block” you may have. This, I believe, will also benefit you in your decisions of what you omit from your writing.

The author focuses a bit on factual writing and makes a statement which I believe to be very true. “Factual writing is also a kind of treasure hunt, and when the nuggets come along you know what they are.” (Mcphee.) When writing an argument, debate, research paper, or persuasive essay which includes real facts, sometimes there’s certain facts that really stick out and those are the types of facts and statements that you don’t want to omit. Those are the types of material that will strengthen your work.

The writer begins to compare writing and omission to Michaelangelo and his works of art, which I found to be an interesting analogy. Michaelangelo explains that there is a statue that is waiting to be found in every block of stone. It is the sculptor that chooses what to pick away and omit and what to keep there in the work of art. He uses all his tools, such as a mallet and a pitching tool, to omit what does not belong. (Mchpee.) This was a spectacular analogy, in my opinion. I view all works of writing as art. The process of writing is the process of making a work of art, it takes patience, vision, skill, and knowledge of what to put in and what to keep out or omit.

1. My thesis/main argument was analyzing the benefits and downfalls of social media and the influence it can have on people and society, aka the negatives and positives. I saw both sides of the argument.
2. In my writing process, I like to just get the whole paper done in one sitting. Before, I had never really done more than one draft unless I was asked to. I would go back to just look for obvious spelling and grammar mistakes but I never really analyzed my whole writing piece and created an actual separate draft. I noticed that printing out my rough draft and making my own markings was more helpful than just rereading and editing as I go on my computer. I didn’t procrastinate, but I just made sure that I waited until I was comfortable with both readings and had a good understanding of the argument I was going to write about. Also, once I was finished I read my essay aloud. I read it aloud three times, not on purpose. I read it out loud the first time and edited things as I was reading, then I would read it again to make sure it was okay, but it still needs some work so I edited while I read it again. I followed that process until I could get through reading the entire essay without needing to make any changes.
3. For global revision, I mostly focused on how my paragraphs were formed. I found myself switching around paragraphs to make the story flow and sound better. I also found myself adding more of my own voice in the summaries of each text, which was a bit hard for me. How am I supposed to put my own voice into a summary? It had never occurred to me before so it took me some time, but I think I did an okay job. Some of the revision tools I used were looking at my peer reviews, looking at my Professors comments and edits, doing local revisions (spelling and grammar edits) in each of the paragraphs, printing out my essay and physically editing it with a pen, and the reading technique that I described in the paragraph above.
4. For my next paper, I think I will follow the same process because I felt extremely comfortable with my final draft when I handed it in. I might do a little more research on the texts that I use for my paper. I would try to focus a little more on global revision to make sure my thesis really stays true and is present throughout the ENTIRE essay. I will also use Rachel’s strategy of highlighting the different elements of my essay while I revise the rough draft. Doing multiple drafts will definitely be useful for me in the future, along with printing it out and editing, and reading it aloud several times until I feel it is complete.

Korin Griffin

Professor Brod

ENG110 Section F

September 30th, 2019

I believe that Lamott is saying that writing a first draft is more about the process than the product. Your first draft should just be anything and everything you can think of. It does not really matter if it makes complete sense, you can make it make sense, later on, in your second draft. It is just a starting point to what will turn out to be an amazing piece of writing, if you just follow the process. In regard to my own first drafts, I have not really followed the process as much as I should have. I do usually revise after I write my first draft, but usually only once and not too in depth. But, I want to become and even better writer, so I am going to work on following her process of doing three drafts. The first draft will consist of writing anything and everything I can think of down, just getting all of my thoughts out and into words. My second drafts will consist of building and fixing the big scheme of things a little bit more, just tidying things up. Lastly, my third draft will be inspecting things very closely, fixing EVERYTHING on a global AND local scale.

Korin Griffin

September 19th, 2019

ENG110 Section F

Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie Ted Talk

There is a technical difference between summarizing a story and paraphrasing a quote. Summarizing, in short, is an overview of a story. Summarizing a story captures the basic and key points and/or ideas of a reading, story, article, material, text, etc. It is a balanced, unbiased, shortview that explains material. This way the reader can understand the gist of whichever material you are writing, talking, or arguing about. Paraphrasing is putting a quote from a reading or text into your own words and ideas. This puts your own twist on the quote to explain it in a different way than it is explained in the text. It shows your own interpretation of the quote. Paraphrasing helps clarify, “dumb it down”, the meaning behind quotes. Paraphrasing should be used when you have already used a lot of quotes and when you want to infuse your own voice. Summarizing should be used to make the reader understand what the story or article, that you are talking about, is saying. Summarizing gives background information to the reader. 

Original quote #1:

“Power is the ability not just to tell the story of another person, but to make it the definitive story of that person.” 

Paraphrase #1:

Telling a story of another person isn’t powerful, what is powerful is making the story define the person. 

Original quote #2:

“The single story creates stereotypes, and the problem with stereotypes is not that they are untrue, but that they are incomplete. They make one story become the only story.”

Paraphrase #2:

The problem with stereotypes that are created in a single story is that they are not completed, not completely untrue. This makes it seem like the one story is the only story to tell.

Korin Griffin

September 17th, 2019

ENG110 Section F

Leslie Jamison’s “Devil’s Bait” is an interesting piece that explains what Morgellons disease is considered to be and digs deeper into the topic of empathy. What is empathy? How do we show empathy for others? What is Morgellons disease? What is it about Morgellons disease that coincides with empathy? These are the questions I had asked myself before reading this essay.

Morgellons disease is a condition that features a type of itching or “crawling” feeling coming from the skin and the extraction of strange “fibers’ from different areas of the skin all over the body. In the beginning of the piece on page 222, it explains a bit of what Morgellons is, “The sickness can start as blisters, or lesions, or itching, or simply a terrible fog settling over the mind, over the world… people said they had a strange disease, and no one –or hardly anyone– believed them.” There was said to be almost 12,000 that had self-diagnosed their Morgellons disease and still not many people believed that this was a real disease. People told them they were crazy, doctors would turn them away, nobody was willing to help find a cure for something they didn’t believe to be real. 

Jamison tells the stories of a couple of patients of Morgellons that she meets at a conference/support group. As she tells their stories, she also explains her reflections and feelings a bit. On page 238, she feels, “ I wanted to do nice things for everyone out of a sense of preemptive guilt that I couldn’t conceptualize this disease in the same way as those who suffered from it.” These emotions that she feels, the sympathetic acts that she longs to do for people, shows empathy. Empathy is when we try to understand how people are feeling. We put ourselves into their shoes and try to feel their emotions as best we can and share those feelings and emotions with others.