Journal 2
Describe your experiences drafting writing projects. And what about revision? What did that look like? What was your process? How did it work for you?
My previous writing experiences with drafting essays included writing a rough draft and then having at least one other student read over the essay to edit it. I usually would not change much beside grammar or spelling that they said to because they wouldn’t really help with what to change because they wouldn’t want to be mean. This was not helpful but that is the way people edited papers in my high school, no one would really help each other improve because they didn’t want to seem rude. To start writing a draft I would read the prompt and if anything came to me right away then I would start writing right then. If it needed quotes or evidence I would outline what I was going to write by finding the quotes first and then go back and write the paper around those quotes and ideas. I struggle with where to start while writing an essay and writing a good topic sentence. I personally would rather write a research paper then write a creative piece, I am not a very creative person when it comes to writing so I rather write about facts and use evidence found in the text. I have never been a strong writer, so most of the time I would quickly write a paper and hope that I would get a good grade on it. If they were smaller writing assignments sometimes I wouldn’t even read over them, because I knew I would get by in class without trying. I know that is not the case in college at all so I will definitely be changing the ways I write and rewrite essays.
Journal 3
Roadkill. Almost every person has had some experience with roadkill, some worse than others, but netherless it is flat out gross. Driving behind another car that swerves out of nowhere often means one of three things, 1. They just hit an animal (most often a squirrel) 2.) there was already something dead in the road, or 3.) they were just lucky enough not to hit the animal that jumped in front of the car. Most animals you can’t smell right away while driving by, it usually takes a while for them to start smelling like a bloody, decaying animal. Unless it was a skunk where the smell lingers and can be spotted from blocks away, the smell that if you are in a car with others at least one person will point out how terrible it smells. Even if you were not the one to hit the animal but drives in the same tracks of the person who did, out of instentic you would most likely avoid the deceased animal. Because who would want to get continue to flatten a once living animal over and over again like a pancake, with the risk of getting blood or animal matter on your car. As you drive by the smell could cause you to hold your breath or even react in disgust to those with you. Little animals oven make a small popping sound or you can feel a little bump in your driving. I always look back in my rearview mirror to see if I really did just murder that animal as my heart skips a beat as it jumps in front of my car with little time for me to react making me feel guilty about taking their life. Luckily I have never experienced hitting a larger animal but these could crack windows or damage cars with the force of the impact, expecting them to make a larger bang against the front of the hood as the car comes to a screeching stop. It saddens me to see animals squished, lifeless, and ripped opened by scavenging birds as I drive by knowing that their was nothing for me to do to help them.
Jounral 4 “They say, I say”
I am really interested in the whole, they say, I say idea. From experience I think these types of essays the the most intriguing, the essays that are debating a point that someone has made or that make you think about something in a different way, the ones that really make your mind think. I have only really have had experience with the basic five paragraph essays that are structure and boring in most cases. I think the “they say, I say” format really brings more life and ideas to the surface of the topics being written about. I think it is a smart idea to point out what critics have said and what they might have said to bring your point more to relevance. The “they” does not need to be someone famous it just means in general a group of people. Boring essays are those that can’t be agreed with or argued, to keep the reader intrigued a side would be chosen to give the reader the ability to have their own thoughts related to your writing. I definitely didn’t know how to do a lot of this stuff before reading this, it is a lot of things that I think would be helpful to learn in high school rather than college. I can see where most people say that temples take away from originally and creativity because I think that is true too. I don’t really understand plagiarism, isn’t there a chance that you think the same thing as someone else without being aware that they thought that too? If you rephrase the idea is that still considered plagiarism or is that a new idea of mine own? Our world is built with interactions and conversations so our writing should be based off of that too.
Journal 5
In Chapter three of They Say, I Say, it talks about the art of quoting. On page 42, it says that quoting gives credibility to what you are talking about and proves that you did not make it up, in that case is direct quoting better than paraphrasing with a citation? Also on this page it talks about under quoting and over quoting, under quoting due to laziness or due to thinking they can say the author’s ideas without using evidence from the text. Over quoting is due to not understanding what the author is talking about that they are unable to explain it themselves, so they quote everything. The art of quoting is tricky and should be a perfect amount of quoting to be a strong essay. I really enjoy the idea of quotes being orphans as described on page 43, that a quote is taken from its original text and placed into a new one and needs to be surrounded by supporting sentences around it to make since. Quotes may change as you are in the process of your writing, page 44. I have always picked out which quotes I will use and lay them out in a format before starting to put them together, which worked for me, but now with editing these ideas might shift or change causing the quotes to become less relevant and will need to change, making sure the quotes still make sense is very important. On page 46, the authors talk about a quotation sandwich, i think this is a clever way to remember to give details and an explanation about the quote, give some background and explain why you are putting it in your writing. Page 49 explains how over explaining a quote would be better than not explaining enough and leaving the reader confused. If the quote is complex and confusing to begin with than the explanation should be more detailed and longer to get the point across.
Journal 6
Kyle English DRAFT Favorite Meal
Favorite Meal Essay – Alexandra Kennie English 110
Journal 7
What global comments/suggestions did you find the best from your peers? why?
I thought that all three of my peer editors had great advice for me. Kyle and Maddie really focused on my grammar and spelling, which helped a lot because reading back over it I did have a lot of mistakes in this area and it was a big help to have another set of eyes to look at the paper also. Alex helped a lot of where to put more description and where to place quotes throughout the paper. I was struggling with where to add quotes so her suggestions of where to put them and being able to talk to her and the others about what information I got in my interview helped me a lot with suggestions of where to weave these into my paper.
What were the best global comments/suggestions you offered your peers? why?
The best global comments I gave to my peers were sentences that sounded awkward, I read all of their papers out loud to help me with this. Each of them had a couple spots where it did sound awkward or they had run on sentences, my comments make the paper sound smoother. I also pointed out parts in each their papers where they could add more details. This was easier to point out in their papers than my own because I already knew what I was talking about but while reading their papers I did so I would want more details to understand things at certain parts.
What important feedback weren’t captured on the page but came up in discussion? reference your peers and their papers.
Some feedback that wasn’t written on the page but came up during conversation were things like how to insert quotes. We talked about this generally about all of our papers, me and Maddie were struggling with quotes and didn’t add any yet. Alex and Kyle helped up with how to introduce a quote and where the best parts would be to put them. Also what information would add positively to the writing and what would be unneeded.
What did you wish had come up looking back over your peer review comments?
I wish I asked more questions about my thesis, each of them said that they didn’t think I had a thesis and to work on that. But I wish I asked them where to put the thesis and what it should include, such as should it say my meal or should it be more about the tradition that was taking place. Also with the conclusion where to restate the thesis and how to end the essay so that it wasn’t just an all of the sudden stop but a gradually ending that brought everything together.
PODCAST:
https://drive.google.com/open?id=0B4o_cl2qLG9udUg3VWJBOERsWVU
Journal 8
TS/IS: “Starting with what others say” page 19-29
An important statement that was said is that a writing piece has a certain order to it, if the pieces are out of order it will not make sense to the reader. Also to keep the reader engaged, the writer needs to explain why he/she is say what they are saying, can’t just assume they will know what is being talked about. The more the explanation is delayed the more likely it is that the reader will stop reading or lose interest because it is confusing to them. At the beginning you should summarize what “they say” and then move into what you say. Instead of starting with what other people say you could also start with illustrative quote, a fact/statistic, or even a relative anecdote. There are many different templets for this type of writing, one is not more correct than the other. Some examples of these temples are, “they say”, “standard views”, something implied or assumed, an ongoing debate, and something you say. Throughout the reading keep returning to what the motive of the piece is about, readers will forget what the topic is if it is not clearly stated and repeated throughout.
Journal 9
Reflection of writing:
What did you spend the most time revising? What would you change? How much is the drafting/revising process different from your past drafting/revising approaches? How did your approach to this project fit with the expectations for this class?
I spent the most time revising my main body paragraph where I talk about how we made the meal. I had to spend a lot of time revising this because at first I did not add too much detail and description about the meal and how we were making it. I would change the way I approached this essay, I just started writing from the beginning but I should have planned out what I was going to say and set up and outline. This is very different from my past experiences because I have never really done a peer review or a conference with a teacher about my essays. I felt uncomfortable during both of these new processes, just because they were new to me. These made me actually work on my paper multiple time where as I used to just write one draft and hand it in. I have never edited another persons like this, I actually enjoyed doing this. I made me think to improve my essay in different ways and helped me work on my writing skills. My final draft is very different from my first draft. Being assigned peer editing helped because it allowed people to be honest and improved my work this way.
Journal 10
What values does Carver bring forward in this story though experiences with food? Be detailed and specific with your response and use the text for support
Carver brings forward values in this story through experience with food. One examples of these values are that you don’t know what other people are going through so treat everyone kindly. This is shown throughout the story because the wife had a tragic thing happen to her and she forgot about the cake. The baker thought that she just didn’t want to pay for the cake so he called her house multiple times harassing her about scotty. This was the name she put on the cake because it was for her sons birthday and her son was the one who passed away. Once the women confronted him he apologized and felt terrible about what he had done because he didn’t know the real reasoning behind her not picking up the cake, this is on pages 217 and 218. Another example of values throughout this story is how unpredictable life can be. First off Scotty started his birthday off normally and didn’t realized that he was going to die that day, on page 204 he was just thinking about what presents he was going to get while he got hit by a car that just drove away. Also the doctor kept saying that Scotty was going to be alright and that there was nothing to worry about, but scotty ended up dying. Another value is that you don’t always know why someone is acting “strange”. On pages 203 and 204, Ann talks about how the baker is awkward and isn’t friendly with her as she is trying to be with him. We later find out this is because he is lonely and has no children and is sick of his job. He says how he makes so many cakes for weddings and children’s birthdays but he has never experienced those himself. All of these values relate to not knowing something that one usually makes judgements about, such as personality or the future.
Journal 11
TS/IS “The Art of Summarizing” pp. 30-41
This chapter in “They say, I say” discusses summarizing. To summarize is to take others ideas and put them into your own words, also known as paraphrasing. To summarize a piece of writing correctly and effectively one needs to find the right amount of summarizing what the article is about and what them as the reader has to say about the article. Some people focus too much on the summarizing and lack to use their own ideas and relate the piece of writing back to their topic. Others don’t summarize the piece of writing at all and this could lead to confusion of what they are talking about in their writing piece. Make sure a summery of another persons work is always true, never change their ideas to fit what you are writing about. Always state the persons name that you are summarizing. Also make sure to relate why you are using this piece from someone else’s work in your own, how is it helping to get your point across? On page 33, the author says, “it is extremely important that you go back to what those have said, that you study it very closely, and that you not confuse it with something you already believe”. If you fail to do this, you are not taking in the ideas of other but just stating your own ideas as theirs. It is important to make sure that you are always using relevant summaries not just to fill up space in your writing. Irrelevant summaries lead to poor writing and often makes the reader confused and lose interest. Make sure it is clear in your writing who says what, use “they say” and “I say” clearly. Try to stay away from using “and then”, “also” and “in addition” these often cause people to lose interest and during speeches often fall asleep. Use other was to relay the information do stick to a script.
Journal 12
Jessica Mitford “The story of service”
Throughout Jessica Mitford’s short story called “The story of service” she mentioned many different parts that explain the significants of her argument about embalming and funerals. She starts off by mentioning how much it cost for someone to be embalmed, she mentions all the prices that the processes takes. She talks about how “spokesmen for the funeral industry tend to become so carried away by their own enthusiasm, so positively lyrical and copious in their declarations, that the outsider may have a little trouble understanding it all”(pg 41). She was talking about how expensive it is now when someone dies. People have become accustomed to making a funeral a big final celebration that cost a lot and takes a long time. She mentioned on page 42 how long it takes to set up a funeral now a days, “it would be necessary for one man to work two fort-hour weeks to complete a funeral service. This is coupled with an additional forty hours of service required by members of other local allied professions”. Also goes on to say “Just how insurance, taxes, licenses, and depreciation are figured in as part of the 120 man-hours of service is hard to tell” (pg 42). Now a days funerals places are working 24 hours a day. It has become less of burying the person and more of the process to bury them. People spend a lot of money on burying their loved ones. One main reason funerals used to cost less is because they were done In the home of the dead person, the family would gather there and it would not be this fancy long mass it. Know all funerals are mostly done in a funeral places and take a while of time. The person is prepared, speeches are given, the room is decorated, often some time of gathering with food after. Death has become a excuse to miss work and a very expensive cost for those paying for it.
Journal 13
Mapping Thoughts- Jessica Mitford
Jessica Mitford wrote a story called The Story of Service which was about the funeral process and embalming. She wrote about how funeral directors put everything in place so that the family doesn’t have to worry about it. They take care of the body and make it look more “lively” to be shown at the funeral and organize the whole thing so that it runs smoothly. She mentions how much time and effort going into a single funeral and how much they cost.
Mitford claims that the cost of any funeral always seems to be a problem, they tend to charge for things that did not seem to be part of the plan at the beginning. “Evidently, there is confusion here between items that properly belong in a cost-accounting system and items of actual service rendered in any given funeral” (Mitford 42). I agree that this is a problem and that the final price should be told upfront before anything is done to the body so that they have the option to switch. The families are in emotional states when loved ones die and funeral places often take advantage of that.
Mitford talks about how the morgue differs from the way the average person sees embalming. Not many people really know how embalming happens they just see the final produce. “Embalming is indeed a most extraordinary procedure, and one must wonder at the docility of Americans who each year pay hundreds of millions of dollars for its perpetuation, blissfully ignorant of what it is all about, what is done, and how it is done” (Mitford 44). I agree because we do pay a lot of money for these people have stuff done to them that most people don’t even know about such as pumped with chemicals.
Mitford also claims that embalming has become a normal thing for the funeral establishments to do. “The author concludes that unless the family specifies otherwise, the act of entrusting the body to the care of a funeral establishment carries with it an implied permission to go ahead and embalm” (Mitford 44). They seem to embalm every body that comes into their funeral establishments that sometimes the families aren’t even asked. I don’t think many people know any different than this so they wouldn’t know if they had a chose or not anyways. I think a funeral director should talk with the family and tell them all of their options before they decide not just do what is easier/ would make the most money for them.
She also claims that funeral directors become grief therapist for the families through this time. “It is in the function of directing the participants though this maze of gadgetry that the funeral director has assigned to himself his relatively new role of “grief therapist” He has to relieved the family go every detail” (Mitford 51) I agree that this is true because they are right there though it all and it is easy to talk to them because they deal with grieving families everyday.
Journal 14
Dealing with the Living/Dead
1.) How would you feel being directly involved in the death process of a family member? Would you be able to push the button to send your loved ones “off to their final disposition” as Doughty says.
I don’t think I would personally be able to press the button just because I would be so upset during the process. But I think I could be there with family member and have someone else actually press the button. I never realized that this was even an option to be in the room while a cremation was happening. I have only been to one funeral in my life time so I don’t have much experience with this. So I don’t know how I actually would react if I was asked to press the button for a family member. Last year I had an experience with a situation with my great grandma dying and for the day that she die we were able to go to the house and see her in her bed before she got taken away and prepared for the funeral. This experience was very strange for me because I haven’t been back to this house since then, every time I drive by this house now I think of this day. I feel as though it ruined the way I picture my great grandma by going to see her like this.
2.)Why does Caitlyn Doughty feel like it is so important to humanize the industrial crematorium?
Caitlyn talks about how she would be the only one there most of the time when putting the body into the fire and she feels as though this is because our culture does not want to be the one to be responsible for doing this. She said at a witness cremation the family would push the button to move the body into the fire and that would show her a sense of humanization because when she was all alone and didn’t even know the person and was responsible for this is was though no one cared about the person. She would like to see crematories more in the direction of being more designed to have the family come and do this process more of an emotional place.
3.) Has your opinion changed regarding these commonly accepted practices? Reflect on the Pollan, Mitford, and Doughty interview and isolate a passage from each text that did not surprise you and one that did.
Pollan:
1.) One thing that surprised me was food products contain corn products. “If where you stand is in agricultural, processing cheap corn into forty-five different McDonal’s items is an impressive accomplishment”(Pollan 3).
2.) What didn’t surprise me was that “these days 19 percent of American meals are eaten in the car”( Pollan 2). This didn’t surprise me because I used to eat a lot of my meals in the car, not always fast food but often food on the go. I would just grab food from the house and eat it on the way to something.
Mitford:
1.) The number of hours for one funeral service surprised me ” It would be necessary for one man to work two forty-hour weeks to complete a funeral service”(Mitford 42). This surprised me because I had no idea it would take this long to prepare a funeral.
2.) One thing that didn’t surprise me was that the work of the cemetery “means the opening and closing of a grave”(Mitford 42). I knew that this was all that the cemetery did, they just dug up the spots for the caskets.
Doughty:
1.) I didn’t know that you could have a witness cremation. She says between 5 and 10 minutes that a everyone has the right to a witness cremation where the family actually presses the button to have the person be put into the fire.
2.) It didn’t surprise me that she said in the first two minutes that the dust that she got on her was actually parts from the human remains. I have always imagined this job would involve being dirty like this.
Journal 15
Reconsider the Lobster
Has your thinking changed since you last read the essay? What seems more obvious to you now in a second reading? what ideas remain murky or unreachable?
I wouldn’t say my thinking has changed since last reading it but rereading it had made my thoughts about this writing stronger. I say stronger because I feel more confused/helpless in a way, I would like to know the answers to a lot of these questions that I have previously brought up and questions that came up while reading it again. Some new questions that emerged while reading it again were things such as do we really need meet to survive as a population? Could we survive off of other sources of food? These questions also came up because of reading the article about fast food. This talked a lot about how we as humans depend on food so much, towards the end of this the author also pointed out two sides that people could take. David Foster Wallace did this at the end about the lobsters and about if it was humane or not. I have thought about meat in this way because it was once a living animal and many people are vegetarians or even vegan. But it is not common to hear people to not eat corn for a reason like this so I have never thought of it. Both authors brought up such interesting points and made me really think about what I was eating and how things were made and the whole picture of life and the way we as humans go about it. Humans have changed the way the world is just by the way we produce food. I feel as though people could make two sides about almost any subject and thats what he did. He chose something as simple as a lobster and make a statement that could have two sides to it and make you think about it. The way he left it makes me feel helpless because I am a type of person that likes answers.
Journal 16
Animals Like Us by Herzog
1.) Why is it so difficult to resolve the mortal/ethical quandaries that Herzog writes about? what is it like to live in the “troubled middle?”
I think it is so difficult to resolve the mortal/ethical quandaries that Herzog writes about because I am too a “middler”. Some days I truly consider becoming a vegan/vegetarian because ill think about or see something that makes me realize how terrible it is for the animals before they are turned into pieces of meat for us to eat. But on the other hand it taste really good and can be a good source of my protein intake. I am an animal lover but I wouldn’t say I am an activist or anything like that, I kind of mind my own business and have pets. I think it is difficult to live in the “troubled middle” because I feel as though I am conflicted with what is right and wrong a lot of the time. Sometimes when I feed my dogs meet I think it is strange that they love it so much because they are animals eating another animal but on the other hand we are also just an animal in basic terms.
2.) What does it mean to be human? What can we learn about ourselves by looking at our relationships with animals? What do we have in common? use Herzog and Wallace to support your position.
I think being human means that you have the desire to have relationships with other humans. I think you can learn a lot about someone by the way they interact with animals. I feel as though if people are mean to animals (unless there is a reason, such as they were previously bitten by a dog then they would be scared of dogs) then they then to be mean, cold, not welcoming/friendly people. Also I think if people think its funny to torcher animals in anyway they are cruel and could have bigger psychological problems in the future, animals could just be an easy way for them to take their anger out on something other than a person. I think we have a lot in common with animals, I feel as though animals can think and understand things, not as much as humans obviously but I feel like some animals have the ability to know what is happening. As Herzog said “both birds and fish are vertebrates, have brains, and lead social lives”(Herzog 1), all animals interact with each other as humans do too. Every species has a desire for interaction. You can learn more about yourself by the way you think about animals, such as if you think boiling lobster in your home is cruel, “The lobster will sometimes try to cling to the container’s sides or even to hook its claws over the kettle’s rim like a person trying to keep from going over the edge of the roof” (Wallace 506). Interactions with animals can show a lot about a persons personality.
3.) Where do you see agreement between the ideas of DFW and Herzog? Where are they in conflict? use quotes
I see agreements between these two authors ideas by not knowing exactly what is morally right or not. Both authors go back and forth between two ideas being unsure if one side is more morally correct than the other. Both have to do with animals and eating animals. The idea of humans not eating meat comes up in both of these and this really makes me think about becoming a vegetarian. At the beginning of Herzog article he talks about how one lady thinks “of herself as a vegetarian”(Herzog 1) but she eats fish because she does not consider then an animal. This could relate to DFW piece because he is unsure if boiling lobsters is cruel because he is unsure if they can feel pain. But if you put lobsters in the same category as fish and just say they are not animals does this make it okay to do this? These two articles are different because Herzog talks about pets, “moral implications of keeping a predator for a pet” (Herzog 3), and DFW talks about the industry of the lobster businesses, “tourism and lobster are the midcoast region’s two main industries, and they’re both warm-weather enterprises” (Wallace 498). Both relate to animals but in different terms/industries.
Journal 17
TS/IS pp 78-91 “Playing the Naysayer in Your Text”
1.) No matter your writing level it is always beneficial to have negative feed back. You should allow yourself to read or hear the critisum because that will make your writing better and stronger. Others thoughts can be used to strengthen your writing piece not change your ideas. pg 78-79
2.) Make the naysayer unidentifiable, but not without a label. Don’t refer to them by name or by group just say general descriptions but make sure you point them out. But the ideas that motivate arguments and objections can be stated, such as ideology and school of thought. Use what they say to support your ideas and thoughts even more. pg 82
3.) To overcome a objection the best thing to do is to not completely take one side. Agree with it slightly but also give a reasoning to why you do not completely agree with it. A “yes… , but… ” statement this way you see both sides, the objection and your original view point. pg 88
