Month: March 2021

I believe the outcome I have improved the most on would be the third outcome, “Employ techniques of active reading, critical reading, and informal reading response for inquiry, learning, and thinking”. I personally feel as if I improved on this outcome by closely reading and rereading the assigned texts, highlighting words or phrases that stood out to me, and making annotations and notes in the margins helping me analyze the text on a further level. By doing this, I feel like I have become a better active reader, helping me find clarity and interpret the text for future discussions or assignments. An outcome that could use more work before the end of the semester would be the second outcome, “Be able to integrate their ideas with those of others using summary, paraphrase, quotation, analysis, and synthesis of relevant sources”. I feel as if I could work on this outcome because of the lack of analysis I have in some of my essays. I feel like I am very good at explaining things, but connecting those explanations back to my thesis and looking at it from a deeper level could be integrated more in my writing. I can improve this by using resources like my peers and SASC to look at the analysis and find out how I can connect it back to my thesis on with a strong level of understanding.

My second peer review experience was much more comfortable than the first one. I knew what specifically I needed to look at, and what comments to leave my partner. Because of this comfortability, my confidence within my ability to peer review definitely increased due to having experience with it. I feel like I was able to leave sharper feedback because of previous examples. Comments left on my papers in the past, and comments I have left on peoples papers both gave me the confidence to write sharper comments, allowing my partner to be able to pinpoint exactly what they needed to work on.

[C1] Although the New York Jets have one of the worst franchise’s in NFL history, the Dallas Cowboys have arguably a worse team. [I] Without good starting players, an NFL team is bound to have no leadership and a rough season. [Q] Popular sports fan website Fansided article written by Reid Hanson claims, “Prescott had a way of propping the team up and disguising mistakes/ineptitude elsewhere” (Hanson). [E] Without starting quarterback Dak Prescott leading the Cowboys, the team was exposed without their leading quarterback. [T] While the Jets have notoriously been known for having one of the worst teams in the NFL, they have been known to beat the Cowboys in the past. [Q2] Patrick Walker from CBS states, “The Jets, widely considered the worst team in the NFL this year, are the last winless team in the league this season. But a case can be made even they are better than Dallas at this point. Over the last 20 games the Jets and Cowboys are both 7-13. But the Jets beat Dallas last season, owning the tiebreaker of terrible” (Walker). [Ce] Although the Jets and the Cowboys did have a tie season this year, it has been previously noted that the Jets have beaten the Cowboys in the past, proving that the Jets are in fact a better team than the Cowboys.

Conversely, Phelps-Roper’s story contradicts what Konnikova says about how social media cannot form interpersonal relationships. Phelps-Roper began preaching her Westboro Baptist Church ideals on a Twitter account which soon grew a large following due to its deranged ideas. Ultimately, she would converse with people who messaged her, eventually becoming close with some of the users. She met one of the users, C.G., on Twitter, and soon began to argue in a friendly way about Westboro’s beliefs. Naturally, they grew a close relationship, and she started believing his arguments against Westboro, which rebelled against the Church. Phelps-Roper herself states, “And the fact that I dreamed about him, and the strong feeling of wanting that relationship, represented huge danger to me” (Chen 12). Although they had not met in person, it was enough of a connection for Phelps-Roper’s beliefs to be changed and ultimately cause her to leave the church. 

Phelps-Roper benefited from strong messages between C.G. that caused her to realize her hurtful actions and ultimately leave the church. Twitter only allows users to have a maximum use of 140 characters, meaning many of Phelps-Ropers and C.G. ‘s messages were brief. In short having this limitation on the length of messages, it prompted Phelps-Roper and C.G. to write concise messages, making strong justifications for every message they sent to each other. By including this level of strength within their messages, it made it easier for C.G. to illustrate why Westboro was hurting people, leading to a convinced Phelps-Roper. Furthermore having C.G. advocate for decent human beings, Phelps-Roper admitted, “He seemed to genuinely like people and care about people, and that resonated with me” (Chen 11). This type of conversation really resonated with Phelps-Roper because she now viewed him as a respectful and caring person. In short, it made it much easier for her to develop a relationship with C.G. because he depicted characteristics that piqued her interest. 

I did not have many connections within my paragraphs so I had to add some. When I was adding connections into mine, I saw that I used patterns within ultimate and in short used more often than others. Adding a connection statement to my second paragraph analysis allowed my analysis to have a better flow than what it originally did. This made the paragraph a little easier to follow, and helped it have more understanding and guidance for the next portion of writing.

Throughout the commencement speech “This is Water” by David Foster Wallace, Wallace discusses the importance of education and how it genuinely affects one’s adult life. He introduces the idea that education allows you to be aware of your surroundings. He goes on to discuss a story about two fish swimming by when an older fish swims past them and asks how the water is. One of the smaller fish then asks what water is. Wallace claims “the point of the fish story is merely that the most obvious, important realities are often the ones that are hardest to see and talk about” (Wallace 2). Education, especially in high school truly is beneficial to your adult years as it allows you to think in a more critical and abstract way. Wallace states, “a liberal arts education is not so much about filling you up with knowledge as it is about “teaching you how to think””(Wallace 2). Within this statement, you learn how to think, but most importantly you have the choice of what to think about. This allows your education to reflect how you thik and the choices you will make later in the future. Lastly, Wallace hints at the idea of empathy and that you have the choice to choose what you think about, and you can become an empath with this choice. Later in the article he says, “… you get to decide how you’re gonna try to see it”(Wallace 6). He gave the idea that someone could be having a worse day than you, but because you are the center of all your experiences and realities you learn to prioritize yourself. Within education, you can learn to make the choice to put others in front of you and ultimately you get to decide your own reality.

I do not agree with Wallace’s main arguments, but I can understand the point he is trying to make. I believe that his argument that education allows you to learn how to think and allows one to create their own reality and make their own choices, but I also believe there is more to education and that other aspects of life csn filter into education, for example shared experience. Experience cannot be taught, but instead is learned through making mistakes and then learning from those mistakes. Education does teach one how to think for themselves, but is education all about making choices within life? The ability to choose what you think of, in my opinion, is not what education is, it cannot be learned, but is a reflection of your surroundings and past experiences that have shaped the way you think.

Although Wallace does not use the word empathy at all within his speech, I believe to an extent that he is hinting at empathy. He uses examples within his speech as other people being in more of a rush than he is and giving them excuses as to why they are having bad days and how this reflects his attitude towards them and his surroundings. I do think that this idea hints at empathy, but I believe there can be a deeper meaning than his entire speech being about how we have the choice to be an empath. I believe if he wanted to hint at the idea of empathy he would have just used the word empathy to get the point across rather than going through roundabout ways to understand the idea. If he is hinting at empathy, I believe the majority of his essay is about the affects of education rather than empathy, although he does relate empathy as an effect of education, it is not the major focal point of the speech.

Wallace creates the idea that learning how to think allows you to learn how to make choices. He claims, “learning how to think really means learning how to exercise some control over how and what you think. It means being conscious and aware enough to choose what you pay attention to and choose how you construct meaning from experience” (Wallace 4). I agree with this statement that the more you learn the easier it is to filter out what is important and what is not. You can create that choice by learning through experience and learning from those mistakes and the ability to think for yourself and your surroundings.

Within the article “is Empathy Overrated?” written by psychology professor Paul Bloom, the idea that empathy can have a negative connotation is discussed. Bloom introduces the idea that empathy is seen as a negative rather than a positive, and that it can be “narrow, biased and surprisingly insensitive” (Bloom 1). He uses ideas such as explaining  how empathy is a spotlight and is limiting towards others and uses the Sandy Hook shooting as an example. He also goes on to discuss how everyone deserves empathy, but not everyone can receive empathy because not everyone can empathize with each other. We cannot empathize with everyone because we only empathize with the people we are close with, but we also cannot empathize with more than two people at a time, it is emotionally exhausting.

Although I do not agree with Bloom’s main arguments that empathy is negative, I do see where he is coming from and how it cannot be beneficial if used improperly. Bloom claims that empathy is insensitive and excludes people, causing it to trigger others that have been misused or have been excluded. He goes on to use the example of the Sandy Hook shooting where the town was receiving millions of gifts to show their sorrow for the tragedy. Gifting towns thought they were being generous and helping uplift those affected by the Sandy Hook shooting, but in reality they were just being reminded of the tragedy that has occurred. He also goes on to explain that the Sandy Hook shooting was just a small population of shootings, and that if everyone had empathy for Sandy Hook, other mass shootings should have the same empathy. I agree with Bloom here as he claims that not everyone can empathize with everyone, creating a negative connotation towards empathy, but I still believe it can be seen as a positive. Empathy is a positive in moderation, and within the case of Sandy Hook, it was not in moderation, but taken to extremes, showing why Bloom thinks it is seen as negative. Later in the article, Bloom goes on to state, “…I don’t deny that it can sometimes have good results”(Bloom 5). Here he claims that empathy is in fact necessary, but he views it as the negatives outweigh the positives, and in his opinion, makes it a negative factor. 

Bloom challenges my initial understanding regarding empathy because I always saw it as a positive, for example cheering someone up when they are upset. Bloom goes on explaining how he finds empathy to be a negative because of the fact that it excludes people, it can be seen as insensitive, it focuses all attention on one particular person or subject, and that it is limited. These ideas contradict my initial understanding of empathy because they go on to discuss the negative aspects of them and how they can separately affect people. Empathy can be insensitive and exclusive due to the fact that it only allows you to empathize with people you are close with or similar to, despite everyone needing empathy. Sometimes people like to be left alone and deal with situations on their own, but empathy causes a direct spotlight to be shined on the situation. This can sometimes not be beneficial to the people who are trying to heal, causing it to be seen as a negative. Lastly, it is limited as not everyone can have empathy for everyone, but only for one or two people. Having to put yourself in the shoes of someone else and focus all your emotions and energy into  how they are feeling can be exhausting and can be difficult, but having to do it for multiple people physically is not possible. These thoughts challenge my initial understanding because of the fact that I only considered empathy as a positive in regards to making people feel better after a situation has occurred, but after reading Bloom’s article, I do not fully agree that empathy is negative, but I can understand the points he is trying to make and I can agree that empathy can be viewed as a negative, it is just needed in moderation.

From what Lamott says, the first draft is about the process not the product. Every author has their own writing process in which they get their ideas on the paper, and then revise them in order to achieve a strong final draft. Within this article, she writes “… the first draft is the down draft — you just get it down. The second draft is the up draft — you fix it up”(Lamott 8). Here, she introduces her writing process, and the steps she takes in order to achieve her final drafts. She goes through the idea that within her first draft she writes what comes to mind, no matter how poor the writing is. From there, she then writes a second draft in which she crosses out unwanted details, and only focuses her energy on the important aspects of the writing. I agree with Lamott in regards to writing a poor first draft to get her ideas on the paper. From my first essay, my first draft was a mess of different ideas, lack of organization and not a clear thought process, but with working with it and revising it, I created a stronger more clear and concise piece of writing that my audience has an understanding of. My first drafts never include my best ideas either, sometimes I have to write multiple paragraphs in order to come to the conclusion of what I want to focus my essay on, and then in my second draft use that idea to really enhance my essay and involve the details I thought of while writing my first draft.

1. “Although I agree with Konnikova up to a point, I cannot accept her overriding assumption that interpersonal relationships cannot be developed over a virtual platform as Chen argues”. This revised thesis provides strength as it includes both Konnikova and Chen’s points of argument. This creates a clear idea and understanding of what the rest of my essay will entail and the points I will further make. Although this is a strong claim, it could be made even stronger if I went more in depth into the ideas that both Chen and Konnikova are arguing instead of just listing that they have opposing views. This would have allowed for a stronger understanding of the essay as a whole and further dive into details.
2. I learned that writing my thesis before I start writing my rough draft, but during the outline may not be beneficial to my writing. Usually when writing essays, I create my thesis before I start writing, but throughout this essay I realized that sometimes I need to get my thoughts on the paper before I can pinpoint where I want to focus my energy within the essay. I did, however still create an outline, but just focused on key details I wanted to include in my paragraphs, for example including the Dunbar number in one paragraph and personal experience in another. This reminded me of my own writing process because I do create outlines before I write so I can have a clear organized thought process and make sure I include the details I want within my essay.
3. I used global revision to further deepen my understanding of the texts and to ensure that every point that I have made is strong and clear. By doing this, I really deepened my analysis of the texts and provided clarity to the topic. I also brought in personal experience to help relate this to real-world situations and create a stronger understanding of what I am trying to convey to the audience. Changes or adjustments I made to my essay included further analysis and expanding my ideas within a specific topic. I feel as though I covered mainly surface details, but in order to maximize my full potential, I had to carefully look at each individual thought and expand my ideas from those thoughts.
4. I would approach essay #2 in a similar way as I did essay #1 as far as annotating the text and creating an outline and a rough draft. I feel as though I could have spent more time revising and further analyzing my details within essay #1, and I want to apply this to essay #2. I think focusing more on revisions within essay #2 and maybe meeting with Elena again to go over multiple revisions of my essay would be beneficial. I like the way I approach the assignment by really taking my time and analyzing the texts, and then from there reading the prompt and creating an outline of what I want to write about, and certain details each paragraph can include. Something else I can use to my advantage is going to SASC and having tutors there look over my essay and help me expand my ideas and revise my essay for a strong final draft.