Week 5 Thlog

          Going over Zack’s comments on my WP1 was somewhat crushing but at the same time very helpful.  I think a lot of teachers in the past have either not really cared or just didn’t look too much into my writing. They’ve given minimal advice so that I could make my work satisfactory, but I can tell Zack really wants to make us good writers. The comments were extremely honest, and necessary for me to ever be able to improve on my skills. He made many good points, like when he told me to get rid of all the “fluff” surrounding the important parts of the paper. I have always been that kid that just goes off on a tangent until I get to a point where the information isn’t relevant anymore. I knew that about myself, but his comments made me realize that keeping to the point is extremely important for argumentation and rhetoric.

         I enjoyed the activity that we did on Monday regarding the different disciplines and how they would analyze romantic relationships. It’s cool to see how many questions can be asked about one topic just based off of what your field is. The field I chose was biological anthropology and it questioned how monogamy has become evolutionary advantageous to humans. It sucks though because after doing that activity I realize that “romantic relationships” is a topic I would love to write on. It’s so hard for me to come up with ideas that are 1) easy to write about and 2) interesting to me. Whatever topic I choose, I’ll probably analyze biology and some other discipline, because biology is always my go-to and it’s fun to talk about.

         The “Moves” exercise on Wednesday was very informative because we really had to think about every step that Michael Jordan and The Rock made in order to fully understand the entirety of their famous “moves”. It’s harder to understand author’s moves in writing because they’re a little less visual: you have to dissect it out of the writing. It’s still kind of difficult for me to understand that anything a writer does in his writing can be considered a move, because that leaves EVERYTHING subject to being labeled a move, even the way the writer uses semicolons or pronouns. I think the PB2B will help.

PB2A: Deconstructing Biological Research Publications

   I decided to analyze biological research papers.

              Though academic biological research papers share features in common with other hard sciences, the subject pertains specifically to some aspect of biology: it can range from a physiological perspective such as the effects of multiple sclerosis on the central nervous system to an evolutionary look at the phylogenic relationship between the genomes of two organisms. The general organization of every paper, however, is the same. The language is scientific and may be difficult for the general public to comprehend, but that is because these works are written to provide research for other researchers. The paper serves to reveal findings from a study or experiment and provide evidence to support or reject a hypothesis. The title is very specific and indicates these findings. The title of the example I found was “Sex Differences in the Cerebellum and Frontal Cortex: Roles of Estrogen Receptor Alpha and Sex Chromosome Genes”, which discusses the association between chromosomal sex differences and neurobehavioral diseases. It informs the reader of what the paper will be focusing on. It is to the point and does not contain any unnecessary information. Unlike titles in academic writing, empirical research papers do not emphasize creativity. After the title comes the abstract. An abstract is a short paragraph that briefly summarized the key points of the study: why the researchers conducted the experiment, their hypothesis, what they found, and what that means for science. Not every biological research paper has an abstract, but it lets a person know if the paper will be of good use to him/her. The introduction comes next. It usually poses some kind of problem that needs to be addressed; it provides general information about a subject and then introduces an area of that topic that should be further explored. It also explains how this scientific exploration could lead to valuable knowledge or offer solutions to a current biological issue.. The introduction also states the main hypothesis at the end.

              The next main segment of the paper contains the methodology and results sections. These sections could be combined, but they are usually separated if there is a large amount of information. The methods section describes the equipment and approaches used to perform the experiment; it explains the procedure, what was used to do it, for how long, at what temperatures, and why. The purpose of the methods section is to provide the reader with the information needed to be able to repeat the experiment exactly. It is essential to conduct a repeatable, reliable experiment so people can make more evidence to support or refute a scientific claim. The results section states quantitative and qualitative findings. It does not analyze the results. It simply states facts of what happened and includes visual evidence, including graphs and tables, to get the information across.

              The discussion section is where the researcher implements statistical analysis to interpret his results. He explains why or why not he expected these results, what they mean, and whether he must reject or can accept the null hypothesis. This section again ties the experiment to the “big picture”, how it is provides a new finding and contributes to valuable biological knowledge. The researcher also includes potential experimental errors, how his experiment could be improved, and what other areas of the topic could be explored. The conclusion is somewhat like the abstract in that it briefly explains the results and the significance behind them. Acknowledgements compose a small but important section of the paper that gives credit and thanks to those that helped the research with the experiment in some way, whether via funding, providing resources, or assisting with the project. The references section comes last and provides citations of all the online or textual resources the researcher used to find outside information on the topic, including other scholarly articles.

              The specific article I chose aimed to answer the question of whether the Calb calcium-binding protein is dimorphic outside the hypothalamus, meaning it is expressed at different concentrations in men and women. They also conducted a study to see if deletion of a specific estrogen receptor would reduce the functionality of the Calb gene in females. The broader purpose of the study was to develop a deeper understanding of the links between physiological sex differences and the different prevalence of neurobehavioral diseases among each sex. For me personally, I believe the abstract and introduction are the most important components of the piece as well as for all other biological research essays. It allows someone who is not necessarily an expert in the field to understand the key points and findings of the study. This way, scientific knowledge can be spread across all audiences and not just people in the field.

Week 4 Thlog

Week 4 Thlog

              I had never heard of the “reverse outline” before Monday’s class. The concept has never been discussed by any high school or college professors. But I find it to be a very helpful tool. Being someone who tends to go off on a tangent when writing, the reverse outline will be very useful in future writing. I am one of those writers that accidentally adds way too much unnecessary information, which is usually one of the things that causes points to be docked off my assignments. But the reverse outline can help me easily pick out the unnecessary tidbits in my papers. Being able to use it to see if your paper matches up with your thesis statement is also really helpful so you can see if you need to adjust your thesis to your paper or vice versa.

              When we did the short activity on Wednesday where we were asked to think of questions about the “melted bottle” scenario, I had no idea what its purpose was at first. But when Zack then asked us to come up with certain disciplines that would ask these specific questions, the lesson started to make sense. I thought it was fascinating when we talked about how every discipline asks a different question about a specific situation For example, imagine a murder scene in which someone robbed a store and then shot the cashier. A psychologist might ask why the robber felt compelled to kill the victim even after he got all the money. An anthropologist might use this situation to ask a bigger question as to why murders have seemed to have increased in the United States. The perspective that all disciplines take on a situation are completely different, and their questions help to find different solutions, all of which are relevant to society. I am kind of excited about Writing Project Two because I am interested in analyzing these different perspectives.

Week 3 Thlog

Week 3 Thlog

I thought Wednesday’s Writing Tips were very useful. Tip #1 was especially insightful: for “high-stake” pieces, it is important not to rush through it in one sitting. Even if you think you’re finished and have done everything you can, you should leave it temporarily and come back to it later. Often times, coming back to your work after a period of time will allow you to recognize obvious or subtle changes that should be made and wouldn’t have been recognizable before. I also like the advice of not only coming back to your work at a later time to make your work better but also just to give yourself a break. I believe that giving yourself time to relax can make you a better writer, because it gives you a chance to clear your mind and prevents you from going insane.

              Wednesday’s student/peer review workshop was extremely helpful. I found that when I would critique my classmates’ work, I would recognize the same errors in my own. For instance, when I made suggestions on many of their introductions and thesis statements in particular, I went back to my intro and noticed the same errors.

              Constructing my Writing Project has been fairly difficult for me. I have my topic down and a rough draft, but it’s hard to talk about how The Beatles lyrics are a genre without incorporating their musical style. But I’m glad Zack reminded me of this so I can make corrections and focus more on the lyrics themselves. Also, applying my topic to the general significance of genre awareness is still something I’m working on. This ties into Monday’s reading we talked about—Birkenstein’s and Graff’s essay addressing the “so what, who cares” issue. I need to think of a concept of genre and apply it to “the bigger picture”. Maybe I can explain how decoding genre can allow us to analyze the social/cultural components of a specific time period; understanding the rhetoric in The Beatles lyrics can provide clues to what it was like to live in the 60’s and what happened during that decade.

Week 2 Thlog

              Analyzing Caroll’s “Steps Toward Rhetorical Analysis”, I realized that we analyze rhetorical situations subconsciously. Also, almost any situation involving other people is a rhetorical one. When my two partners and I had to come up with examples of everyday rhetorical analysis in Monday’s class, countless examples just flowed into my mind. One of the most relatable examples was the typical guy-girl Isla Vista party encounter.

 It’s a trivial event that some people may say doesn’t deserve much thought. Yet the Isla Vista party scene and opposite-sex interactions within it constitute the biggest aspect of Isla Vista culture and reputation. Although these interactions are known to occur between intoxicated people, rhetorical analysis between guy and girl is being performed instantaneously. The girl’s outfit is the first piece of visual rhetoric. When going out, most girls dress to look good, whether it’s to outdo other girls or to win a guy’s attention. The second rhetorical event is when a man approaches a woman (responds to her rhetoric) and uses his persuasive skills to get him to like her. The initial first few seconds of the interaction are crucial; the man needs to make a great first impression through his word choice, his confidence level (confident but not cocky), his style of clothing, etc. in order to win the girl over. This is a risky encounter because the man does not know his audience; he doesn’t know for sure which “tools” will be persuasive and which will be offensive. The overall purpose of the encounter is usually to get the girl’s number or even go home with her (as shallow as that may be).

              Just stopping to think about the unconscious effort that goes into such a spontaneous and uncertain event is quite fascinating. It really tells you a lot about the town we live in. Of course, not everybody lives that shallow and sexually-unsafe lifestyle, but enough people do to make Isla Vista one of the major know college towns known for its alcohol use, sex, and STD’s.

Generators: No Effort at No Cost

PB1B

Generators: No Effort at No Cost

The automatic computer science research paper generator creates essays that are meant to be submitted as assignments with “low submission standards” (as stated by the website), meaning that the work will not  be subject to harsh grading or scrutiny because no one will look too much into it. All that is required is an author name, and the website will generate a seemingly legitimate paper. I tried to regenerate more than one paper, but the one that kept coming up in class—“Decoupling Sensor Networks from Rasterization in Congestion Control”—was the one that continuously came up for me. The example posted on the website was titled “The Influence of Probabilistic Methodologies on Networking” and was very similar in format. The papers used extremely colloquial, scientific jargon while simultaneously implementing vague words with the intent of causing ambiguity and the inability of the reader to truly understand the subject. Both essays contained the basic essential features of a legitimate research paper: an introduction, methodologies section, results section, a conclusion, and references. The website example went further to include an abstract, but both were structured properly. Both included figures to illustrate their points. The true author of these works is unknown, and the applicability of the graphs is questionable.

Pandyland is different from the paper generator in that you can generate a randomly created comic strip. The website gives the viewer the option to generate the comic or get a new one. Like the CS paper generator, the real author of the cartoons is unknown. These comics average six boxes in length, but some are much longer. All of the comic strips included inappropriate subjects such as sex or violence and explicit language. Both of these components contributed to the humor of the piece. All comics served to be funny; some were highly sarcastic where others required more thought. Occasionally some included popular characters or movies like Garfield and The Little Mermaid. When I was scrolling through comics generated by other people, I noticed there was a series comic called “Fluffington” that told a different story each time. Some of the comics use humor to illustrate current social issues. For example, the strip titled “Social Media Man” showed that being too involved in social media can interfere with ones priorities by portraying a super hero that was so obsessed with his blog that he failed to save people.

The meme generator was similar to Pandyland in the context posted but different in the options given. With the meme generator, you are given the option to either use a picture provided by the website and come up with a caption or submit your own image and caption. Most of the provided images are either of a contorted cartoon face, a celebrity’s face, a child’s face, or an animal. The captions are usually short and simple: There is a phrase at the top of the image that continues on the bottom so as not to cover the face in the middle. The caption is always humorous, sometimes outwardly so, sometimes a little more dry. Like the comic strip generator, many of the memes are very sarcastic. The face on the meme can often give a tiny hint as to what kind of humor will be portrayed and. It also fits the caption well.

It was difficult to search for another type of generator in which you can generate new information for free or in little time. At first I looked for more essay generators, but most only gave advice on how to construct a better essay or required a fee. I found a thesis generator, but I had to insert all the information of my “essay” for the site to come up with something I could have thought of in seconds. Instead, I typed in “fake ID generator” and found fakenamegenerator.com. It is a website that allows you to put in little information and generate a whole new, although illegitimate, identity. I don’t know what the purpose of this website is, because I doubt using this information would work anywhere. All you have to do is select a gender, nationality, and country that you want to apply to you and the website will construct a whole profile based on those criteria. The profile contains so much information: Full name, partial social security number (you can log on to receive a full one), full address (with geographic coordinates), phone number, birth date and zodiac sign, email address with username and password, occupation, physical characteristics (height, weight, blood type), what kind of car you drive, and more. Overall, it seems like a pretty illegitimate website that’s covered with advertisements and wants to trick you into “signing up” so they can scam you.

PB1A:

 Convincing People to Like You in 140 Characters or less

Twitter has become a media sensation that has recently branched out to a much larger personelle, particularly young adults, teens, and celebrities and political figures, within the last five years. Other social media networks are just as popular, like Facebook, Instagram, and Snapchat for example, but they all have more restrictive qualities: Facebook posts are likely to be seen by relatives since it is more popular with older generations, Instagram requires posting a photo in order to express words, and a Snapchat story lasts 24 hours with a word capacity even less than Twitter’s. The ability to quickly express one’s feelings to a more relatable audience and keep up with celebrities’ daily activities has caused its global rise in popularity.

A tweet in itself is such a specific genre, but there are underlying subgenres that determine the purpose, the context, and the tone. The subtweet is a tweet made regarding a follower on twitter with the intention of that person seeing it. A subtweet usually has a negative connotation; most of the time it is made out of anger or disrespect. One might subtweet about how a friend betrayed her, or the fact that one of her followers “gets around”. The name of the “victim” is never displayed, but the typer knows that the recipient will get the message once he/she sees it. In other words, a subtweet is basically an immature tactic for starting conflicts. The intended audience is one, unfortunate or possibly deserving person, and the purpose is not to exploit this person’s actions but to provoke a desired reaction out of him/her.

A similar subgenre is the ornery “life-lesson” style. This kind of tweet is usually made on a bad day, when someone is going through a rough patch, either long- or short-term. Sometimes one has just had an Epiphone, a realization about life. Other times it is just a result of deep reflection of a certain experience. Not all “life-lesson” tweets are negative. Some are motivating, encouraging its readers to work harder in school, work, or relationships in order to meet goals and find happiness. Others are warnings, telling one’s readers not to fall in love or not to trust people because they will always let you down in the end. Essentially a life-lesson tweet is not really offering advice to other people but actually a subconscious reminder to the maker himself. These tweets are usually longer than other subgenres and more descriptive.

Arguably the most widely-used style is the funny tweet. These tweets are the most simple and usually short in length. People make these tweets just to get a laugh out of people and increase their chances of getting likes. Many involve severe sarcasm, as sarcastic humor has become a huge trend in recent years. They also usually have something to do with the writer himself; it might tell of a funny event that happened to him today or a humorous observation he has made. Unfortunately, younger-generation humor has become politically or sexually offensive to many people, but the inappropriateness is supposedly why it’s funny. Either way, most funny tweets are light-hearted with no intention of deliberately hurting anyone’s feelings but simply to make the writer more likeable.

The last subgenre is the purely promotional tweet, which is mainly used by celebrities—up-and coming or already established—and important political figures. Often times artists will tweet about their recently released albums and presidential candidates will promote their campaigns. This tweet style is mostly informational, with some possible emotional aspects to increase the fanbase.

As diverse as these tweet styles may be, they all have the same basic underlying features and limitations. Most tweets of all styles make use of the hashtag, which was originally made to connect people interested in certain current trends but is too often abused and overused. All tweets use pathos to captivate its followers, whether it encourages anger, laughter, or happiness. One hundred percent of people’s tweets are just highly edited versions of themselves. People try to seem cooler, funnier, wiser than they actually are so they can seem more likeable or to increase their follower fanbase. Essentially, all tweets face the same constraints. Every thought that one wants to jot down must be expressed in 140 characters or less, which usually leads to a much more edited, controlled thought than the one that emerged in his/her mind. But the biggest limitation is the peer pressure imposed by one’s audience. The main intention behind a tweet is to get likes, so the writer will be motivated to write something that appeals to his/her readers and to avoid a subject that is publicly frowned upon. A tweet is only a fraction of one’s thoughts.

Week 1 Thlog

              The rhetorical analysis essay by Laura B. Carroll was a huge refresher for me. I haven’t taken a serious writing class since my senior year of high school. None of my other General Ed. writing classes ever used the word “rhetoric”, so I had pretty much forgotten what the concept meant until Carroll so thoroughly explained how to analyze its parts in a text. I appreciate that she provided more than one method for rhetorical analysis; she provided multiple options—such as the pathos-ethos-logos approach, the “rhetorical situation”, and the “rhetorical triangle”—just in case one was more helpful than the other. I can honestly say that I partly enjoyed reading this essay, because she gave so many relatable analogies and, like the kids’ art education essay, used humor to keep her audience’s attention. The aspect that stood out to me the most was when she discussed pathos and how it is used over ethos and logos to win people’s attention in a short amount of time. Facts and credibility are important in persuasive writing, but now I believe that pathos may be the most important aspect of the piece. One can sound really smart and sensible, but he can’t truly persuade an audience unless he can tap into their emotions.

              Peter Elbow’s “Two Kinds of Thinking” was unique in the way that he emphasized that intuitive, uncensored thinking is just as important for good writing as critical thinking. I have seen previous writers discuss the importance of freewriting before structuring an essay, but never has one made it such a critical point. First-order thinking has actually always been difficult for me. In elementary and high school I was mainly trained to focus on the organization and structure of my writing that I think I forgot how to not think when writing. Even in daily life, I’ve realized that I overthink EVERYTHING, and it’s exhausting. In class this past week, when De Piero would tell us to pull out our journals and write down the first things that came to mind when introducing a topic, I found myself stuck; I had to force my thoughts to jumpstart, to switch out of “careful thinking” mode.  For instance, when we put in our journal entries for different types of genres and were asked to just jot down what types we've encountered in school and outside of it, people listed so many examples and I could barely think of any. I didn't even think of poetry, personal statements, and diary entries as genres. I think I'm incapable of thinking outside the box, and the box that I think inside of is awfully narrow. Hopefully as this course progresses I can teach myself how to let my thoughts flow.