~The End of the Third Wave~

I decided on this entry title because I was thinking about my final paper for my history of women in the U.S. class and how on Thursday the prof was talking about the different waves of the women's rights movement, and I think that I also have similar waves of progress with regards to my writing. My senior year of high school was the first where I improved a lot and really started to put more weight in the practice of writing and my abilities. Then last year at PLU was the second wave where I learned a lot about writing and what's expected at the college level and just a lot of skills that I gained. And now academic writing for fall quarter 2010 is coming to an end-- the end of the third wave. I don't think I could say which were more valuable since the waves build off of each other. But if you disregard the fact that the third wave wouldn't have been as successful without the first two, I would have to say that so far I have gained the most upper level skills in the third wave.

I have really enjoyed the approach that Professor Thompson takes to writing and it's changed a lot of how I look at texts. The areas I probably made the most improvements in are disciplinary awareness and synthesis. So basically looking at the bigger picture is what I have made the biggest strides in. I definitely spent the most time revising papers this quarter than I ever have in the past. I remember all through junior high and most of high school I hated the idea of rough drafts and I thought they were pointless because I was intelligent enough to spit out something good enough on the first try. This was usually true, reinforcing my skewed notion, but now in academic writing I really see the value of drafts and editing. I found it helpful to have different due dates for drafts to make sure that I got each done and gave the appropriate amount of time to each stage of the writing process. I actually have my dad reading over a final paper right now on presidential accountability for torture (whoa, right?) because I know the value of a separate pair of eyes reading it over to judge cohesiveness and find errors.

All in all I have enjoyed writing this quarter a lot and I look forward to next quarter! :)

~Critical Thinking and Writing Skills~

Hmm... critical thinking. I love critical thinking and I'm pretty sure I do it almost 24/7. Except for about now where it's the end of the quarter and my brain feels tense and fried, so hopefully I can manage to spit out three awesome papers and then I will be good to go. I know that I can't give up now after all of the effort I've put into my classes this quarter. Anyways, critical thinking. I would say I am very comfortable doing this when reading texts. I can look at something in class, whether it be a book passage or a peer's essay and almost immediately form an opinion about the content and how effective it is in doing certain things. I can also look at texts in relation to each other and see connections and differences. I was able to use these skills a lot in class when we looked at essays as a group, as well as doing readers reviews. I was actually often surprised at how quickly I was able to do (what I think was) a comprehensive readers review on a peer's essay. I just read it through and then went back and made notes about specific things in the paper and was able to write a few paragraphs about overall themes and ideas that were hits or misses. I think this is a very good skill to have because analyzing texts are important and being able to do it quickly also enabled to me to take on extra credit reviews without having to worry about adding too much to my workload.

As for writing, I really have improved a lot in this area during my senior year of high school as well as last year. I was lucky enough to have some really smart teachers/professors who helped me a lot. I have always been a good reader and not a bad writer but probably not as good as I could have been. More advanced than my age level expectations certainly, but that's not how I judge myself. If I know I can do better or I know there's something better out there I'm not going to stop until I'm at the best I know how to do even if it's above what's expected of me. I expect more of myself. It's like when Professor Thompson and I had a conversation about my last paper and I had all these changes to make and the draft was due the next morning and I was like ahh how am I going to make all these changes? And she said don't worry it's just a draft I'm not even going to see it until the next time you turn it in, but I knew I couldn't turn it in without making those changes because I knew they had to be made.

~Close Reading and Research Skills~

I have always considered myself to be a critical reader when it comes to reading texts and analyzing things. So I think I came into this class with the skills to do close readings, but I definitely think I made strides in learning how to further synthesize sources and make connections that speak to the larger academic conversation. That's definitely what I would say I am taking away from this class the most is a larger understanding of disciplinary awareness and how to make arguments relevant and connected with the bigger picture. I sometimes found it difficult to balance close readings with skimming and just general reading when it came to managing all of my readings for all my classes. My other courses are higher level and had a lot of reading to do for every class and I ended up actually reading all of it. This is a little amazing to me looking back at how I managed to read that much, but it was probably allowed by my extreme focus all quarter on school, which, like most things, comes with good and bad ramifications.

Researching and using articles to fuel my own argument is another skill I feel like I developed in this class during the quarter. I feel much more confident in my abilities to take completely different articles and draw connections between them and use them to fuel my own argument. I have found that doing this requires careful reading as well as thinking outside of the box to be able to see the broader scope of how very different arguments can fit together and speak to a shared concept. I have also found that time is essential to this process in being able to take time away to think about how different aspects work together. I find that many of my ideas come to me when I'm laying in bed trying to fall asleep and thinking about a paper or an idea will surface randomly in my head when I'm having a conversation with someone about something completely different. Allowing my brain to "percolate" and work on my ideas is really key to being able to dictate a fully formed argument. It really ties back to what I wrote in a blog at the beginning of the quarter that a professor last year in my Four by Shakespeare class shared with us about writers block. When you sit down and try to write a paper and force it out you can experience a "block" where you can't write because your ideas aren't formed yet. This block, our prof told us, is really just your brain thinking and forming your argument even if you feel like you have writers block and can't think of anything to write in your paper. But when you allow your mind to take time to think and develop ideas you can fully form your thoughts. Recognizing this phenomenon has allowed me to recognize when I'm doing this and how it fits into my writing process so that when I am randomly thinking about something in relation to my paper or have an epiphany in a random conversation I get out of bed and write it down or find a piece of scrap paper and make a note to myself so that I can use it for my paper.

~When Inspiration Strikes~

It always amazes me what connections exist between totally different things in the world and I love it! The correlation between natural selection and revision totally makes sense to me. In both the strongest most attractive attributes get carried on and that's how people and writing improves itself. If you find something in your essay that doesn't work you're not likely to include it again because you already know that it's not functional, just like how natural selection eliminates attributes that don't function so that we are left with the best end products possible. Of course there's always mutations or mistakes but without them life would become boring and monotone.

When I revise my essay I plan to listen/read what the professor has to say about my paper and think about it for a day or so before I begin to revise my paper/pick which one I want to revise. (Although I am fairly certain I'm going to pick my second essay to revise and submit for a final grade.) It is of course useful to sit in front of my computer and work at my paper to edit and improve it, but I find that the time away from papers thinking about it and scribbling down random thoughts and improvements on scrap paper shoved in pockets is the most useful. I also find it helpful to print out a copy of my paper and edit it the old fashioned way with pen.

~Writers Memo for Essay 2~

Thankfully, I'm currently very happy with where my essay is at right now. It's a relief to know that my paper is in a good place and to be able to move on from it and concentrate on other school work. I put a lot of work and thought into it, but really what helped me develop it further than I was able to is discussing it with Professor Thompson. Seriously, if you are in our class and reading this, or in any other class, take advantage of office hours because (generally) your professors want to help you. I know it's kind of scary to do because there's the fear that you won't know what to say or will embarrass yourself but she is really good at never making you feel stupid about what you wrote and just working with you to pin point what you want to say and it's really helpful.

For my readers when you're looking at my essay keep in mind that I am under option 1, but I didn't really follow the prompt. I have my own thesis and use my blog along with different articles to support my thesis. The type of feedback I'm really looking for is general concepts of how cohesive the paper is as a whole and what kind of impressions you have about my argument and how effective it is in making you understand the paper. Maybe if after you read it through write a summary without looking at the paper of what you got from the reading. I also want feedback about how effectively I used my different sources. And finally, feedback about any areas where there is wording or phrasing that doesn't make sense or you think needs to be added to in order to clarify my intended meaning. Thanks and good luck!

~Progressing With Essay 2~

I have been so focused on essay 2 that for the first time, I completely forgot to do my blog entry :(. I'm really mad at myself for forgetting since I haven't missed any others. I forgot to put it on my whiteboard for homework and I only thought of it because I'm working on my essay right now and I was thinking about my blog and about to look at it and then I realized I should have made an entry for this morning. Dang it. Anyways, better late than never right? I will compensate by commenting on everyone blogs I am following instead of just two.
I am working out my essay right now... sitting in starbucks... listening to paramore. So far I have written my intro and I just worked out how to organize the rest of the essay. I am planning on first discussing West's argument of how blogs showed different social languages and such and then I'm going to incorporate evidence from my blog to show how I did the same thing and it allowed for deeper learning. Then I'm going to discuss my third article and also incorporate it with my blog which is really where my argument will be articulated, so I might end up switching the order. I really don't know, I'm just going to wait and see how it plays out as I write it. I'm struggling with getting my ideas out of my head and clearly articulated, but it's the good kind of struggle where I'm working through ideas vs having to come up with ideas. The hardest part is making this into an essay, because in my head my paper should be layed out like the articles we have been reading. So I'm having issues making all of my thoughts and different parts of my argument form a cohesive paper. That will probably be the biggest problem for me besides the actual argument, hah.

~Examining The Article To Be Used In Essay 2~

The article I found to use in conjunction with West's is "Blogging: Self Presentation and Privacy" by Karen McCullagh. I found this article through the UW article search using the boolean terms we discussed in class.

Summary: The article focuses on examining how much bloggers value online privacy and how safe they expect information posted online to be. McCullagh concludes that her findings support the idea that bloggers either accept privacy risks or "employ mechanisms to protect [their] privacy" in order to "work on their self-identity."

How the author supports the argument: McCullagh uses the findings of an international online survey of bloggers that she facilitated to support her argument. She employs the use of tables showing percentages of responses to certain questions to prove consensual agreement (at least through the people surveyed) of what she is arguing.

Connections between the reading and my research: The aspect of privacy per se is not exactly central to the argument I am planning for the second essay, but parts of this article I think will be very helpful information. Mostly relevant is the argument McCullagh makes that since self-identity can only be developed through social interaction with others, expressive privacy and reflexive formations of self-identity are connected. This can be applied to classrooms vs blogs where the amount of assumed privacy differs because of my argument that there is a cognitive disconnect between academic material done and submitted in class and online blogs used to write or evaluate academic material. And, further, that this disconnect allows freedom of expression which (as evidenced in my blog) facilitates deeper learning.

BTW, what I just wrote is a perfect example of my argument because through just sitting here typing out my thoughts without fear of immediate evaluation, I expressed my argument in the most clear way I think I've been able to so far.