I am writing about this topic because in my CTW class, we have done a lot of peer reviews and I LOVE them.  Peer review is so incredibly helpful because it gets a fresh set of eyes on my paper, so that people can catch mistakes that I’ve made or tell me when some parts of my paper don’t make any sense.  For example, last quarter I brought my paper to peer review, and realized that I wrote it completely differently than anyone else, and that my way was wrong.

At the same time though, it can be a little intimidating to have your classmates look at your paper and critique it.  I remember that my first time partaking in peer review in this class was nerve wracking.  I had never really done peer review in high school and was not used to people other than my teacher look at my work.  During my first peer review session, one person was a little too nice to my paper and did not really give me constructive feedback, but the other person really ripped my paper to shreds.  This made me feel sad and embarrassed by my paper, because I did not even think that the things that he critiqued were problems.

However, as time went on, I like to think that my class got really good at peer review.  They were no longer “too nice” or “too mean”, but rather, just right.  They really were able to provide me with constructive criticism, while still complimenting me on what I did well.  This allowed me to feel really good about my paper, which then motivated me to do even better and work on correcting it.  Even more than that, these peer review days force me to really sit down and have other people evaluate my work.  Like I’ve mentioned before, having other people look over my paper is really beneficial, but would probably not happened unless days like these peer review ones happened.  I normally feel bad asking my friends to read over my papers because they’re usually relatively long and no one wants to read a long paper, so I like that my teacher forces them to do so.

I found an article that explains how to effectively peer review another person’s paper that I found very helpful.  It is important to always remember that when peer reviewing, you are looking at a paper that someone probably spent hours on, so it is important to be respectful yet helpful when giving them feedback.  Peer review is an extremely helpful practice, as long as it is done correctly, and can be the difference between an “okay” paper and a GREAT paper.

Image: 

Image 1: https://www.clickworker.com/wp-content/uploads/2013/04/peer.jpg

Image 2: http://jasonya.com/wp/wp-content/uploads/2014/02/Reviewer3Attack.jpg

Image 3: http://mybioscience.org/files/2013/05/peer-review-matters-e1392488210398.png

In this post I am going to respond to my classmate, Taylor’s post about her writing process.  She explained that her writing process is like “avocado hunting”.  Essentially, this means that it can be very overwhelming at first and she might not find a tasty avocado, but eventually she will find the perfect, ripe avocado (aka finding an essay topic that she will enjoy writing about).  I thought that this was a funny article, and got me thinking about what my writing style is.  And so…I feel as though my writing process is similar to a blooming flower.

As you can tell from this gif, even though it is very much sped up, a flower completely blooming is a long process.  Below, I have a picture of the sequence of a flower blooming, which really illustrates my point.

I tend to start writing papers with little idea of what I’m actually going to be talking about.  That would be the part of the blooming process where the flower is still completely closed.  Then, I finally decide what my essay topic/thesis is going to be which allows for the flower to open up a little bit more.  However, it would be impossible for this flower to bloom if it was not in good soil, had no sunlight, or had no water.  This directly relates to how much time I dedicate on the paper (good soil), the research I do/peer review (sunlight), and the multiple drafts (water) I write.  If all of these things happen, then I will have a great paper!  However, if even one of these things are missing, then my flower will wilt and die, and I will have a terrible paper.

Although my writing process might sound relatively easy, it is anything but.  It usually takes me a while to get in the swing of things, so I am usually sitting around the part where the flower has just barely opened up for a long time.  It is only when I am feeling truly inspired when the juices really start flowing and my flower can bloom.  Once I really start writing, I am usually able to finish my paper, it’s just trying to start that is time consuming.  This was especially applicable to my last writing assignment.  My research paper was very time consuming, especially when looking for research, and it left me a little discouraged.  However, I found this quote which really turned things around for me.

This quote made me realize that the flowers that bloom in adversity, just like papers that are hard to write and take a lot of time, are the ones that are the most beautiful (and well-written) of them all.

Image: 

Image 1: http://giphy.com/gifs/flower-interestinggifs-dahlia-95xRbt5dxppWE

Image 2: http://www.personal.psu.edu/scs15/Reading/images/grow.jpg

Image 3: https://chrystalizabeth.files.wordpress.com/2015/04/mulanquote.jpg

I recently read a very interesting post by my classmate Beverlyn that I wanted to respond to.  In it, she talked about the word, “smart”, and how it means different things to different people.  However, she specifically focused on the question,

Do you think one’s intelligence can be linked with one’s physical appearance?

Obviously, I completely disagree with this statement.  What a person looks like has absolutely nothing to do with what they look like.

There can be a sort of stigma that comes with being smart.  Sometimes, people equate “smartness” with “nerdiness”, which can caused people to be embarrassed by how smart they are.  People who are smart can be seen as “try hards” and have other negative terms thrown at them.  For this reason, some people do not want others to know that they are smart, or will even dumb themselves down to be considered more “normal”.

The problem is though, that society has created this sort of “ideal smart person”.  This person is usually male, has glasses, and looks “nerdy”.  So I decided to google the phrase, “smart person”, to see what would come up.  Of the first 10 pictures that popped up, they were all male, 5 were wearing glasses, and 4 were of Albert Einstein.  This made me start to think…

Why is it only men that are thought to be smart?

This might have to do with that “nerd” social stigma that I mentioned earlier.  Women especially are very concerned with their image, and did not want to be associated with the “ugly, nerd” stereotype.  There is also the stereotype of women being mostly seen as the house maker; as a person who stays at home and takes care of the kids.  Although this stereotype is now changing so that it becoming more and more normal for women to be working high-paying, high-power, and well-respected jobs, many times women did not want to be seen as “too smart” so as to not scare off potential suitors.  This ties along perfectly with what I have been researching all quarter; gender inequality.  However, with the work of women standing up for themselves and continuing to prove that women are truly equal to men, this stigma is changing.  Now, a woman can be as girly and fashionable as she wants while still being the smartest person in the room.  One does not need glasses, a plaid button down, and especially does not need to be a male to be considered “smart”.

Image: 

Image 1: http://giphy.com/gifs/smart-brilliant-amanda-bynes-O54ccAi0NWcW4

Image 2: http://giphy.com/gifs/larry-stylinson-naya-rivera-michelle-obama-NBCSqfONIzCEM

Well, it’s official.  I am a researcher!! (And no, not the scientist kind).

Me doing all my research

I was able to conduct my own research through a survey that I talked about in a past post.  My survey was about women’s inequality on college campuses.  Through this research, I wanted to discover how other people felt about the inequality between genders on college campuses and to get their ideas for ways that women could stand up for themselves and their rights.  I made the survey online so that many people could answer it, and made sure that the survey was fast and easy to answer so that people would actually take it.  The questions that I asked were…

1. How do you identify?
   1. [Male / Female / Other]
2. There is inequality for women on college campuses
   1. [Strongly Disagree / Disagree / Agree / Strongly Agree]
3. When coeducation was first introduced, there was inequality for women on college campuses
   1. [Strongly Disagree / Disagree / Agree / Strongly Agree]
4. What are some ways that women can stand up for themselves and their rights?
5. What are some examples, if any, that you’ve seen of gender inequality on campus?
6. Should colleges be coeducational? Why or why not?

All of my responses were from Santa Clara University (SCU) students which made me able to see how people in my immediate community were reacting to these issues of inequality so that they could potentially be solved one day.  From these responses, I collected data and quantified it.  For example, most people agree that there is inequality for women on college campuses.

TABLE 1: There is inequality for women on college campuses

It wasn’t that surprising to me that most people did not strongly agree or strongly disagree because, since times are changing, there are less and less very obvious examples of female inequality, especially on college campuses in California.  However, what did surprise me was that one person strongly disagreed.  As I investigated that answer, I found that the person who strongly disagreed was a male.  However, in Graph 1 this same person responded that he had seen an example of gender inequality on campus.  This could be very indicative of a larger trend of people seeing inequality, but perhaps dismissing it as not important enough to prove that a whole campus has gender inequality.

While many people stated in Graph 1 that they have seen inequality, a significant number of people (23% of respondents – the orange part) stated that they had never seen examples of gender inequality on campus.  Now I am not sure if this is true, or if the people just did not want to fill out another short answer question…

This graph and data relates to Table 1 because although 37.5% of people did not agree that there was inequality on college campuses, only 23% reported that they had never seen examples of gender inequality.  So, why is it that 4.5% of those people thought that inequality did not exist when they have seen it firsthand?  It is possible that they thought this specific question was geared towards men, but since my survey is titled Women Inequality on College Campuses, that seems unlikely.  Therefore, this data seems contradictory.  After all, these respondents said that they did not think that there is inequality for women on college campuses, even though they have seen it firsthand.

After collecting this data, I found that people really needed to be educated on what women really go through, because although times are changing, there is still a lot of inequality and change that needs to happen.  However, I really only surveyed 24 people, so my data will be more conclusive the more people that take it.  It was fun to get answers and different opinions from my research questions though, because I liked the fact that I was actually getting real answers from my peers and people that I knew; not just random facts that I found in scholarly articles and the internet.  This little research project actually turned out to be very interesting, so…

Image:

Image 1: http://i.giphy.com/Yiw4aLjpxldhC.gif

Image 2: https://stepenterprise.files.wordpress.com/2014/01/tumblr_mycbt1wm8k1slteg1o1_250.gif

For my next assignment for my CTW, I have to create an effective multimodal piece that helps to further illustrate the point that I am trying to make in my research paper.  So, I decided that I would do a picture in the form of those striking anti-abuse advertisements.  So, I took to the internet to find two that really spoke to me, and whose emotion I would try to invoke.

The first one I found was…

This is a really powerful picture because you see here a beautiful woman posing in a pretty dress with bruises all over her body.  The caption of this photo also refers to this dress, which became a phenomenon on social media because although some people saw it as gold and white, other people saw the dress as black and blue.  Therefore, not only is this image striking, but the caption and premise is making it extremely relevant to audiences right now.  It also gives the alarming statistic that 1 in 6 women are abused, which along with the picture of this beaten woman, bring about very intense emotions.

The second picture that I found was…

This ad was also very striking because while it is seemingly simple, there is a lot of thought behind it.  From an adult’s perspective it is just a picture of a boy’s face with the caption, “Sometimes child abuse is only visible to the child”.

The adult’s perspective

From the child’s perspective however (because they are much shorter than adults), the image looks much different…

In this image, the same child has a bruised face and a bloody lip, and although the caption stays the same on top, there appears another caption that only the children can see.  It says, “If someone hurts you, call us and we can help you” and then provides a telephone number to call.  This was an ingenious strategy, and got a lot of the global media’s attention (as this is an advertisement from Spain).

I am inspired by these two different sets of images, and they bring a very important point across to their audience in an intense and interesting way.  Hopefully, I will be able to do the same with my project.

Image: 

Image 1: http://d3819ii77zvwic.cloudfront.net/wp-content/uploads/2015/03/dress-salvation-army-01c-2015.jpg

Image 2: http://images.lamusica.com/wp-content/uploads/sites/13/2013/05/fundacionanar.jpg

Image 3: http://intentblog.com/wp-content/uploads/2013/05/Visual-ANAR-SOLO-NI„OS-693×1024.jpg

Image 4: http://www.theblaze.com/wp-content/uploads/2013/05/anti-abuse-ad_4-620×337.jpg

*I forgot to press publish on this post, so it may seem a bit dated, but it’s still interesting I promise*

One of our assignments in English is to do an annotated bibliography.  I honestly had no idea what an annotated bibliography was, so I did not really know what to expect.  All I knew was that it was going to be more work.

Our assignment was to do 10-15 annotated bibliographies to which I responded, “What?!?!”

That seemed like an enormous amount writing to do especially considering there was a specific set of topics that I needed to cover.  Included need to be…

• Summary
  • including the author’s thesis, his main points, and his conclusion
• Author’s purpose and intended audience
• Synthesis
  • how this source aligns with, adds to, complicates, overlaps with, or contradicts one or more other sources on your list
• Rhetorical differences
  • the rhetorical differences you see between this article and others you’ve read
• What it does for you
  • a sentence (or more) detailing what this source might offer to your own argument

To be honest, I first I thought that this was dumb.  I truly thought that this was going to be a waste of my time, and an assignment that took more time to do than it was worth.  However, these annotated bibliographies really challenged me to read all of the articles that I found thoroughly.  I needed to critically read them in order to include everything that I needed to.  I found that this was a huge help when I was writing my research paper, because I had the main idea of each article all written out for me already.  So, although the annotated bibliographies were a huge pain to write at first, they ended up being extremely beneficial.  (I am finding that is how most assignments in my CTW class tend to be).

Image:

Image 1: http://i.giphy.com/Wq7xqylQsSVhK.gif

Oh surveys….I’m pretty sure I’ve seen a million of them at this point.  I’ve seen surveys in almost all of my Facebook groups, my newsfeed, and with people knocking on my door asking me to answer theirs.  I’m kind of over surveys to be honest.  I’ve answered a couple of them, only because my friends made me, but otherwise I am not interested.  Here are two of the many that I have seen just in the past week:

Honestly, I did not answer either of these and I find them annoying.  So when I found out that I had to do a survey, I was very worried.  I know that I am not the only one who does not like these surveys, so I knew it was going to be challenging for me to get a significant amount of people to take my survey.  I also knew that it would be important for me to make it short and sweet so that people would not get bored while taking the survey.

After talking about surveys in class though, I got a bunch of great ideas!  I had always thought of these surveys of boring, but I realized that they can actually help a lot.  These surveys are to gather data so that the collectors of the data can better their research.  This data might also raise new questions to research, which could better the paper.

I know that these surveys will help me to better my paper and my research.

I realized that these surveys are not stupid.

They are extremely helpful, and although the amount of them posted can be annoying, they are necessary.  I even found some ideas of how to make good questions that people will answer:

• make them clear
• ask ONLY one thing
• don’t ask questions that the respondent can’t answer
• short questions are best
• start with demographic and neutral questions
• put “controversial” questions at the end

Hopefully people will respond to my surveys, and if not, I’ll just force my friends to do it.

My classmate Alex recently wrote a blog post about how school can kill one’s ability to be creative.  This for me, is incredibly important.  I am a huge proponent of the arts, both in and out of school.  I have sung, acted, danced, and done musical theater basically since I was born, and I know just how much the arts have positively impacted my life.  While it is obviously important to have that (sometimes boring) structure of math, science, history classes, and more, I believe that it is just as important to have art and theater classes.

Some teachers and school curriculum tend to force students into a box.  They need to write papers in a very specific way, complete projects according to only the teacher’s guidelines with no room for creativity, and more.  Students can have very different ways of learning, and to try to squeeze them all into one category and one learning style is really not plausible.  This actually happened to me in my AP biology class in high school.  My teacher was terrible and only liked things when they were done her specific way, and that caused me to hate that class.  I hated that class so much that I never wanted to go the homework for it and didn’t even want to attend.

                                      Me everyday in that class

I think that this is why some people do not like school.  They are not inspired to learn, and are instead taught to just do well on standardized testing so that the school can look good.  This stressed importance of grades also does not foster a healthy learning atmosphere.  People will only study for a test because they want a good grade, not because they actually want to learn the material.  This can stress students out, because the pressure is too great.

So with all of this in mind, let’s get back to this issue at hand.

I believe that the arts can fix all of this.

That’s right.  I know that is a bold claim, but I really believe in it!  There is an article that lists several reasons as to why the arts are so incredibly important to education and just life skills in general.  Obviously, one learns to be creative, which transfers over into all assignments and even the way that students view learning.  It also helps one with public speaking and confidence.  Through musical theater, I have learned how to have stage presence and command a room when giving a presentation and be confident enough to do so.

PBS even says that a report by Americans for the Arts stated that young people who participate regularly in the arts (three hours a day on three days each week through one full year) are four times more likely to be recognized for academic achievement, to participate in a math and science fair or to win an award for writing an essay or poem than children who do not participate.  That is an incredible statistic!  If the education system were to make an arts class a requirement every year, then students would excel.

Images

Image 1: http://giphy.com/gifs/overwhelmed-joseph-gordon-levit-PPW6LRDNhegRG

Image 2: http://giphy.com/gifs/school-ZPXB41fw27ZVm

Sources and I have an interesting relationship.  I’m still not really sure how I feel about all the work that I put into finding them, but they definitely do help me on my papers.  For class, we had to read the article, Helping Students Use Textual Sources Persuasively, by Margaret Kantz that was all about sources.  As a result, I did not really enjoy reading this article, but my professor got me a little bit more excited about it!  She stressed at the beginning of class that this was one of her favorite articles ever, which immediately caught my interest and made rethink its importance.

This article helped me realize that when first researching, the first article that I find is probably not going to be the best one.

Not everything on the internet credible, so I can’t believe the first thing that I see/first article that I read.  However, I can probably use these kinds of articles as background information, but I probably shouldn’t include it in my paper as my main source.

The article also explains how easy it is to replicate what we read, and that is very true.  I tend to adopt the voice or form of whatever I am getting my sources from because that is what I am basing my paper on.  As a result, almost all of my papers are in a narrative form.  My my final research paper however, will not be in narrative form.  This is because the background of my research process does not matter to the reader, so there is no need for me to narrate a story of that to them.  So, I need to turn away from this sort of copycat form, and start to be little more original and formal.

Going off of the theme of originality, Kantz encouraged us to be creative.  Even though finding sources and writing research papers can seem to be very formal and structured with no room for creativity, this is not the case.  It is up to me as a writer to find a way to build original arguments based on the resources that I find, and do so in an interesting way.  I have to think of this paper as not as a rehash of the available material, but rather, as an opportunity to teach someone, to solve someone’s problem, or to answer someone’s question.  This is what I am going to think of when I write my paper and analyze my sources.  When analyzing my sources, some questions I may ask myself when I am choosing these sources for my paper are…

• Who was the original audience?
• What is your question or problem with this topic?
• How can I use these materials to answer questions/solve problems?

All in all, researching, finding good sources, and writing is a lot of work.  However, I am confident that with all of these good ideas and help in mind, I will be able to pull off a great paper!

Image:

Image 1: http://www.lhvlc.com/uploads/4/2/7/9/4279570/4415393.png?1315704717

Image 2: http://giphy.com/gifs/hipster-alice-in-wonderland-originality-isW4sLhHD8PzG

Whenever I hear the word “beam”, I always think of Star Trek.  All it would take was one person to utter the phrase, “Beam me up, Scotty”, and then they would be off to wherever they wanted to go to!

In this context, “beam” does not mean that I will be whisked away to another spatial dimension, but it can mean that it will whisk me away to a dimension in which I will be able to fully immerse myself into the research process.

According to Joseph Bizup, a professor at Columbia University, the terms “primary, secondary, and tertiary sources” are too “rigid, disciplinary, and a-rhetroical” to be used to describe research sources.  To be honest, I did not even know what a-rhetorical meant, so I am glad that he instead came up with the term BEAM.

In Bizup’s article, BEAM: A Rhetorical Vocabulary for Teaching Research Based Teaching,he states that BEAM is…

Background

Exhibits

Arguments

Methods

Background

Background is composed of general knowledge or, background, information.  An example of background info would be using google or wikipedia.  These background sources are treated as common knowledge, so I mean…

The problem that I have is that sometimes, I don’t even know what this supposedly simple “background” knowledge is.  Most writers, including myself, assume that what they hold to be common sense is what their readers hold to be common sense.  However, this is obviously not always the case.  This is why many readers, also including myself, go to the internet to get help that is immediate and easy to understand.

Exhibit

Exhibits can be thought of as examples, as they are materials that the writer uses to strengthen their point.  However, Bizup makes sure to stress that these two terms are not interchangeable.  As he explains, “evidence…designates data offered in support of a claim. Exhibits lend support to claims, but they can also provide occasions for claims” (Bizup 4).

If this sounds confusing, don’t worry because I was confused too.  Essentially though, evidence is used to support already made claims while exhibits are more malleable and help the writers through to develop their own claims.

Argument

Arguments can be two people, or two little ponies, arguing over silly things, but in this case arguments are claims that a writer uses to enter into a conversation with its reader.  The writer can refute, refine, or extend these claims in some way to further their argument and make the reader agree with them.

Every day, I use an argument.  Whether it is in a discussion in class, a conversation with friends, or with whatever paper I am writing.  It is important for me to have a good argument so that I may be able to truly get my point across.

Method

Methods are “materials from which a writer derives a governing concept or a manner of working”.  Writers use the perspectives/lens of other writers, scholars, and more to help them to better focus and back up their own claims.  They acknowledge their important method to include a recognizable source that way they can be affiliated with that “school of thought”.

In one of my last posts, I had to look through the lens of other scholars to help me to form my own point, and some “they say” points.  I did not completely agree with what some of the scholars had to say because it was in opposition to what I was arguing, so it was helpful to look at the issue from their prospective to help me write.

So…

I think that BEAM is actually really helpful!  It will be able to help me to better write and be more focused while writing my upcoming research papers.  I definitely have not mastered it yet, but with help, I’m sure that I will be able to soon.

Images

Image 1: https://www.occupycorporatism.com/wp-content/uploads/2014/05/Orig.src_.Susanne.Posel_.Daily_.News-star.trek_.transporter.quantum_occupycorporatism.jpg

Image 2: https://media.licdn.com/mpr/mpr/AAEAAQAAAAAAAAQNAAAAJDNkOWU1ODI1LWYwNDQtNDViMS1hZmRkLTFhMGM0YjBkNDlhNw.jpg

Image 3: http://giphy.com/gifs/reaction-little-pony-3VKWZ7KqIfD5C