1. In Unit I this semester I had a lot of trouble trying to working with a few articles at the same time. Trying to incorporate Food Inc., Consumer Reports, Organic Illusions, etc was very difficult to me. Trying to synthesize different texts was the hardest thing we did this semester. If the “Sort it Out” assignment was not given, I would have been extremely lost. Also learning about the writers project helped in all units. We had to find the projects of each food article and see what each author was trying to say but also when we were researching our topic for the next units, we again had to determine what each article was trying to achieve. I really enjoyed the second and third unit projects because it was about something that I was interested in. Unit I was by far the most difficult because of having to synthesis texts.

I thought a highlight of the semester was a few assignments that helped me immensely for each project. I sometimes would be extremely confused on what we were writing about or what we were doing for our final draft and there were a few assignments that made everything clear to me. The “Sort it Out” assignment for unit 1 helped me organize my thoughts. I was able to clearly determine what each project was, find similar topics being discussed in each article, and then find quotes that agreed or contradicted with the same topics.

The “web” document for unit II helped me write out everything I wanted to address in my TED talk.

Lastly, for unit III the last assignment we did in class. When we had to write list out all of your sources and label them as a secondary, primary, or scholarly source. I’m sure I was not the only one but I was very disorganized with all my sources, I had a ton of paperwork from a lot of research and never really put it down on paper the sources I was going to use so this really helped organize me.

The challenges I faced this semester were solved a lot by organization. Organizing my thoughts and putting them down on paper especially helped me when synthesizing texts and helped me in unit I, II, and III.

2. I had a term paper due two weeks ago in my sports psychology class. We needed three journal sources. My paper was on athletic injuries and MPFL reconstruction surgery. I went on the library database and almost all of my sources were from ProQuest to find scholarly journals about my topic. Without doing the research I had done in this class, I would not of even thought to use the library’s databases. The research we did in writing was different from other research I have done for classes because I would normally just have to get any source for assignments, never a specific source, a primary or secondary source. I didn’t even know the difference between the different types of sources. In writing I had to go onto databases, find databases that had my topic, select key words that would give me the information I needed, but also eliminate the articles I didn’t want. For other classes, I just go on Google and normally use the first few results.   However, because of the research done in writing, I used the databases to find journal sources for my psychology paper.

The main difference I’ve seen for different research writing situation deals with genre. This was shown with the unit II and III assignments. I used some of the same research but it was composed very differently. For my TED talk I took my research and tried to find pictures that best represented the quotes or information I was taking from a source. For unit III, I was able to keep the quotes but also have pictures if I thought it would help get the point across to readers. There was one picture of Brazilian officials spraying mosquitos in my TED talk and it was the only picture I could find. I thought it was easier to describe the picture in a TED talk versus the unit III article. In the TED talk I was able to say, “this picture shows…” and just talk like a normal conversation. In unit III, I placed the picture where I was talking about what Brazilian official are doing about Zika but it still could be unclear as to what’s happening in it.

3. I was not as interested in Food Politics as I was with my social controversy. When we were in Unit I, I believe that we were given all the research and articles we needed to read and watch to come up with our article. Everything that needed to be included was handed to us so no research was really needed. It was completely different in Unit II and III. It was definitely a lot harder and time consuming having to get our own information but it did enhance my engagement on the topic. I would see different opinions and new information coming out about Zika that would I would find very interesting and want to learn more about. Especially being able to pick our own topic, I assume most of us picked a topic we wanted to learn about so that made us engaged when we were doing things for our topic. For unit II when we needed to complete the “Sources that matter” worksheet I was getting very annoyed of research. Having to find six different databases got very tedious. I would find a few articles from two or three databases and think those articles would good enough but having to keep looking was very annoying. Especially because I had trouble finding some databases, it was very time consuming.

I thought the first unit was the longest. It dragged on for so long and not being that interested in food politics compared to the other unit assignments, I was bored with the first unit. It was interesting at first but I got less engaged as the unit continued and got creeped out from food politics and never cooked the raw chicken I had in my freezer.

4. I would continue with my Unit III NYT article. I can see why its weird that I want to continue working with a article that I wrote two days before the final draft was due, but I really think I could add a lot more information if I had time. I would first want to take it to the writing center but I would want to add more insight from athletes. I looked very hard for athletes from other countries opinions on the Zika crisis but I think maybe if I tried going onto websites that other countries use to see other opinions on Zika. My first draft of the essay was about how it’s not fair to women athletes because they are the ones mainly affected by Zika and question if it affects athletes from underdeveloped countries. I think if I had more time I could work that into my final idea that the public can’t try and pressure athletes or backlash them if they choose to not compete in the games. I could incorporate the idea that the public just can’t pressure female athletes to compete. Maybe if I could find fans reactions to Solo’s quote because she is very well known in America and a key component to the defending Olympic champion soccer team. I could tie their reactions into how the public can’t decide if the virus is actually dangerous or not because it’s the athletes that are sacrificing themselves and putting themselves at risk.

5. I would want to show my mom my Unit III NYT magazine article. I would want to show my mom because she is a nurse in the wound care center of her hospital. My mom being a nurse and having the maternal instinct, is very careful when it comes to health issues and being protective as a mom. That’s why I want to show her this article because I want to know what she should think athletes should do. My mom loves sports and has always been a huge fan of soccer because I’ve played it all my life. I want to know her reaction after reading the quote form Solo and Musnicki. I know a part of her would be worried for their kids if they contract the virus, but the other part of her wants to see a competitive Olympic games. Because I have played soccer all my life, I would imagine my mom putting myself in one of the female athletes shoes. I would hope my mom would say to go to the Olympics because if I had the chance to compete in the Olympics for the soccer team, I would go no matter what. I respect my parent’s opinion a lot and would need full support from them to compete. I’m curious to see what my mom thinks about competing or not for a daughter of hers, an athlete she doesn’t know personally, or if it was herself. I would want my mom to say yes to all situations. Take in the information we know about Zika and what we can do to prevent it and try as best as you can to try and not contract the disease.

Harrison Hope

Unit 4 Reflection

5/2/2016

Have you ever had a subject that you could cover in your sleep and still get an A? I have, and that subject was not and is still not writing. In high school, my 9^th grade English teacher, Ms. Scoggins, was the most supportive teacher to walk the halls of Chamblee High School. Even though I struggle with articulating my thoughts and attempting to put them down on paper, you could do no wrong in the eyes of Ms. Scoggins. Ever since then I have been able to keep my head up through shitty teacher after shitty teacher until I took writing 105 last year, my first semester of my freshmen year. I barely passed the class due to earning a C minus on multiple papers. Even after visits to the writing center I could not end up on the same page as my teacher in terms of understanding the expectations I needed to meet in order to be more successful in the class. Did this leave me excited to take another writing class my sophomore year? Absolutely not. However, through successful teaching methods, fantastic workshops, and strong support this year, I have begun to look forward to doing research and putting my thoughts and work into words again.

From the get go with Unit 1, I was enthusiastic about researching food politics and watching food Inc. Although I had a strong start and participated in the workshops, the latter end of the unit was a struggle for me; not because of the class but because of poor allocation of time and resources on my end. My favorite portion of unit 1 was watching Food Inc., naturally, but not because we just got to watch TV in class but due to the fact that we had to write down expert quotes and statistics. I am an avid fan of fun facts and random knowledge so having the opportunity to expand my understanding of farming and the food industry’s effect on my everyday life was intriguing. I highly suggest doing that again from a teaching standpoint in the future if given the chance. When it came to the final paper, I rushed to get it done at the last minute which was not only a waste of my time and education but an insult to the teacher as well. In the end though I was able to both identify and apply the art of Pathos, Kairos, Logos, and Ethos along with being able to properly research and cite outside sources.

I consider myself to be a fairly sociable and outgoing so after just squeezing by in Unit 1, Unit 2 was more my piece of cake– Ted Talk Presentations. Contrary to Unit 1, I started off shaky for this unit. When we worked on the Post-It Easel Pads jotting down our topic for discussion I was clueless on what I wanted to research. Although I appreciated the workshop, it was much more helpful for me to just sit at my laptop and start researching on my own, scrolling through pages and pages of potential topics. With categories ranging from domestic violence in the NFL to political campaigns, I was finally able to settle on the topic of Bill H.R. 1013, the bill that decriminalizes marijuana. Once my issue was decided I was able to make a killer PowerPoint presentation to compliment my rehearsed Ted Talk. By mixing in some jokes with factual information, I was able to get back on track in the class by hitting the project out of the park.

Coming off of a hot streak in unit 2, I feel confident that I was able to complete unit 3 to the best of my abilities. For me, the best workshop in this unit was the Scramble draft activity. By having an unbiased proofreader put my paper in order based on how she felt it would flow best, I was able to consider different ways to piece my paragraphs together. In the end I chose to switch up the course that portions of my paper followed making it better than ever.

I have never been too confident in my writing but by the end of this class I am now much more open to constructive criticism and the perspectives of others. I enjoy the challenges brought on by this course and I hope to continue bettering my writing techniques during writing 307 next fall.

Final Reflection

Before coming enrolling in this class, I considered myself a good researcher when it came to finding and breaking down sources to use them in projects. I was surprised to realize that I wasn’t going deep enough into the actual meanings of my sources and so I was missing some crucial details. Learning about the writer’s project and then learning how to find it helped me tremendously to better evaluate sources. I was able to read a little bit of each source, then I was able to find the writer’s project and then I would determine if it was useful or not. Initially it was difficult to do if I didn’t have any background knowledge on the topic. For example, in the first unit, it was hard for me to figure out what some of the writers were arguing because I wasn’t aware of the background of the topic and so I wasn’t able to specifically identify the problem at hand. This made it tougher for me to synthesize articles. Once I got used to identifying the claims, I was able to get more out of my sources. Accurately identifying the claims also gave me more terms and keywords that also aided me in my research. I thought that the “Quick-n-Dirty heuristic” was especially helpful with regard to finding new keywords and terms because it forced me to search for different things. I even tried researching things that didn’t seem important initially and I obtained a few good sources based off of those key words. I had the realization that if I can’t find any major key terms, I could still be just as successful using seemingly less important words. I no longer needed ten sources to write an article or an essay; I only needed like four of five because I could now extract more necessary and useful details. I also cut down the time it took to conduct research because I was able to cut out the time that it would normally take me to think of things to research.

When I learned about the unit two and three assignments, I already knew what I wanted to research and talk about because I already had a strong interest in the subject. I knew a lot about the topic already and I already had a stance on the issue without doing any research. In my research, my goal was to find sources that were interesting, that identified the controversy, and that backed or opposed my claim. I already liked the topic so reading about it and learning more about it was joyful to me but I knew that not everyone shared the same passion as me. The group work where we had to briefly explain our topic, and take a stance, and then have my partners share their view helped me put myself in the mind of my audience. I was also fond of the posters that we made where we put our controversy on it and then the entire class critiqued it for the same reason. I learned a lot more through research than I shared because it wasn’t as important as some of the other information. My topic was very complex so I know that there is still a lot to learn and I want to still learn about it. I want to continue to research about the future of the nuclear energy, specifically in the case of power plant designs, and I also would like to delve a little deeper into the history surrounding nuclear energy that created the misconceptions that most people mistakenly believe in today.

I would share my unit 3 piece with really anybody that was willing to listen to me. I would choose this piece because I care very deeply about the topic that I chose to write about. I put a lot of research and a lot of effort into understanding and conveying that information in a way that would make sense and be convincing to whoever was reading it. I provided several specific claims and I also provided evidence to support my claims. I would hope that after reading it, the reader would have a different outlook on nuclear energy. I strongly believe that nuclear energy is the energy of the future and I did my best to share this belief to my audience. My goal was to just encourage my audience to maintain an open mind with regard to nuclear energy because with the ongoing energy crisis that is among us today, no options should be ruled out without proper research being done first.

InAe Lee

WRT 205

The first assignment in WRT 205, which was writing the Huffington Post Blog Article, was the assignment that gave me some confidence in writing. I think there was some luck for me that my major is public health and the topic was about the food safety. In my other public health classes, the major topic during this time was food safety and nutrition, so the first assignment drew my attention. However, I have never written a blog or an article, so I had to look at some blog articles and compare what differences they have with essays for classes. I personally was not a fan or writing a research paper since high school, because it requires lots of time and resources. Especially, researching on a topic that I do not have any interest on was a painful experience. However, just having a fun and personally important topic to research about was a great start for me. Also, the workshop for writing a strong ‘lead’ helped me writing a strong claim for the article. “Would you still be able to buy the product, if the company includes the image of cows being fed with parts of downer cows and thousands of chickens packed over their manures on their advertisement?” The most challenging part of researching was to find the right sources that will help me in giving information and evidence. By inviting the guest speaker, it was great to know other databases other than Google to find the sources. I found LexisNexis and Scopus pretty helpful, in terms of how organized their websites were and easier to find the sources with decent information.

Practicing how to do a good research and write a good research paper would not much affect on my career, but in terms of remaining school year and other courses, I think it would be a great skill to use. We did many workshops as a class over the semester and the most helpful workshop for me was how to write a good ‘lead’ and Evaluating Sources. As I said before, in researching, finding the appropriate sources was the most challenging part. After talking doing the Evaluating Sources workshop in class, I learned how to choose helpful sources by finding the writer’s project, Kairos, Logos, Ethos and Pathos. Just looking for those could give me if the source has enough evidence for me to use or not. Using this skill will help me a lot in the future writing and also save me up some time.

Researching on Food Politics and Political Controversies has increased my interest and understanding. Food Politic was a pretty familiar topic due to other class. However, I only watched the clip ‘Food, Inc.’ in other class but not researching and get deeper information about Food Politics. Because food is the most important requirement to stay healthy and happy, when I realized there are some dark secrets in the food industries, I was not happy. I know that my argument will not do much change to our food system, but just researching and writing about the truth made me feel like I did something. On the other hand, political controversies started out as a pretty boring topic for me, because I do not know much about politic. However, the topic I chose matter much to me since it is pretty serious in South Korea and I actually wanted to know more about North Korea by researching. This topic also made me engage a lot but more seriously than the Food Politics.

If I continue one of the topics, I would continue with the North Korea, because it is on going and most relatable topic for me. Whether they are threat or not, whether or not we are divided or united, North Korea would be the biggest concern in South Korea. Also, while I was researching I learned more information that I did not hear or read from the news.

I would like to share the UNIT II with someone outside the class, because the five minutes TED Talk is a great way to share information in a short time with key arguments. Since, I chose the topic, North Korea to hope that people in US could also learn some information about them that they did not know and possibly have some more attention, telling someone about my neighboring country will mean something to me.

Going into this class, I was a little hesitant, not because it was a writing class, but because it was a research course. I have done a couple of research papers between high school and freshman year but I have never taken a course entirely dedicated to it. I thought that it was going to be a lot of work and I was a little nervous because I never properly learned how to research. When we started Unit I, I was ready to jump in and give it a try. I thought that the topic of Food Politics was very interesting and unlike most classes, it would be something I would not mind writing and learning about. I enjoyed watching Food Inc. in class and reading the other sources that we used in our final articles. I thought it was cool to use different mediums as research. A major thing I learned from this was that you have to take who the author is into consideration. You have to determine whether they are a credible source and if they are biased in any way. I remember coming to class one day, after our homework was to read and annotate Blake Hurst’s article, Organic Illusions. I read the article, took notes, and came to class feeling confident on my take of his article. In class, when Amy asked for our opinions of the article, all of the people she had called on had said something that was the complete opposite of what I thought. They said that he was very sarcastic and that there was no evidence to support the claims he was making. Hearing all of these things, I sank in my seat and hoped to not get called on. That class made me realize that I just read the article and believed every word he said. I did not once question where he got his information from, who he was, and whether he was a credible source or not. This, to me, is a very important lesson you need to learn when you are doing research, and I am happy that it happened in the beginning of the semester.

Next, came taking pieces from each source and trying to connect them in a clear and cohesive manner. If you think that you can just do this on your first try you are wrong. This takes a couple of tries and it helps if you are very organized with your sources. The Sorting It Out Workshop was a helpful activity that allowed us to identify the project of each piece we read/watched and pick out pieces of information that connect with each other and support the claim we are trying to make. Doing multiple drafts and peer editing really made my final post so much better and made me feel more confident about it.

Multiple challenges arose for me in Unit II. Public speaking is definitely not something I like to do or think I am good at. Also the fact that we had to pick our own topic and start our research from scratch was a little intimidating. The good part about picking our own controversies was that we each got to pick something that we are interested in and eager to learn about. The topic that I chose was heroin and addiction. This topic was a little difficult because there are many problems that are fairly recent. This made finding information from databases a little bit difficult. The class where we learned about the different databases and which ones are useful for each topic is something that is super beneficial for future research and a great thing to know in general. Learning how to specify your topic and using different phrases and keywords really helped narrow the results and led to some really good findings for my Ted Talk and NYT article. Presenting my Ted Talk was probably the biggest challenge I faced in this course. I hate talking in front of people and presenting things, but I know that each time I do it makes it easier for the future. What also helped me give my talk was that I was really confident with the research I found and the claim I was making.

I truly learned a lot about heroin and addiction between Units II and III. Heroin is an up and coming issue for society today and some of the information I came across was frightening. The fact that there was a 286 percent increase in heroin-overdose related deaths from 2002-20013 was mind blowing to me. It was also very interesting to learn about the background behind heroin addiction and how it is so popular because people are initially addicted to prescription painkillers but then make the shift to heroin because it is a cheaper and very similar high. What I learned from these assignments made me want to continue learning about the topic and share what that knowledge with others. I am very proud of my NYT Article for Unit III and would choose to share that with people outside of class. Not only was this article a highlight of the semester, but also it made me realize how important it is to educate people on serious topics going on today. If enough people know about the dangers of heroin and addiction, it is possible for society to find a way to control and hopefully put a stop to it.

Each unit of this course presented some challenges I had to overcome, but in the end I think I was really happy and actually surprised with my final pieces. I learned a lot from this course about how and where to look for research and how to write for a specific genre and audience. I will take away many things from WRT 205 that will make my future assignments much easier.

From the very beginning of the semester I was curious to see what direction the class would take. I think the most memorable unit of the semester would have to be unit I. I noticed that Unit II took a more personal turn for me and this is what made me more interested in the class. I always find that personal topics lead me to be more engaged. A highlight for me was definitely the Ted Talk. I felt like it was important to give my Ted Talk on mass incarceration because it is something that is often overlooked. Most people trust the judicial systems ruling of “criminals” but I do not especially when it comes to sentencings that involve African-Americans. I don’t want to sound like a conspiracy theorist, but I do believe that the government does sometimes associate negative depictions with African Americans. We see this with the basic stereotypes of the brute, Aunt Jemima, and the infamous welfare queen, a term started by former president Ronald Reagan. That escalated into associating African Americans and Latino’s, but mostly African American with crack-cocaine in America. We often see in the media that African Americans are not granted justice. Let’s not forget Trayvon Martin, Eric Garner, Sean Bell and even Emmett Till (1941).

Choosing to research mass incarceration was challenging and shocking at the same time. Most of the primary research I found was statistics. One stat that really struck me was “African Americans now constitute nearly 1 million of the total 2.3 million incarcerated population.” How could this even be possible, but I believe I found the answer to that question when I learned that former Nixon domestic policy chief, John Ehrlichman, said that “the war on drugs was created as a political tool to fight blacks and hippies”. How is our government to be trusted?

The only other class that I am required to do research for at the moment is my English Textual Studies class for our final paper. He is not requiring us to do as much research as we did for this class, but overall the class has helped refresh some of my research skills. Everything I have been required to do in the class as far as research is something I have done before.

The food politics unit definitely opened my eyes to plenty of things. It has affected me so much that I even threw away the Tyson frozen chicken breasts I had in my freezer. I realized that the taste was artificial and I just could not fight it anymore. I find myself always examining the color, size, taste, and smell of my foods especially from the specific industries that were discussed in the movie. Looking at certain foods now even make me nauseous because of the thoughts that run in the back of my mind. I was also shocked to learn how many of the owners of these companies have some sort of relation to the government. Again, how is our government to be trusted? I am sure they are aware of what these producers are doing, how they are recruiting illegal immigrants and how dangerous working in slaughter houses is. As long as they receive a percentage of the profit they will continue to turn a blind eye. My social controversy justified my thoughts about the United States government, this institution is not designed to protect people of color, especially African Americans. There will always be a law or institution put into place to limit the opportunities and freedom of blacks. Some succeed don’t get me wrong, but that number does not compare to the many successful whites. It was also shocking to learn that more whites are using illicit drugs, while more blacks are arrested on drug charges. I think too many ignored to comments made my former Nixon aide John Ehrlichman. If he admits that the war on drugs was a tool to target minorities, why isn’t anyone listening?

If I could continue to work on any piece, it would definitely be my mass incarceration piece because everyone needs to be aware of the society we live in. We live in a country where Presidents can openly target specific groups of people. We live in a country where African Americans are less likely to finish high school, go to college or even succeed in life overall. We live in a country where Presidents fund prisons, which creates the space for more people to be behind bars. Many of these politicians we vote for own private prisons and make money off of working citizens and criminals being in there. I’m not entirely sure what I would do with the piece this topic requires a lot of research and I only focused on certain things there is way more to be found. One option would be to turn it into a book, but who would read it? I can’t think of a creative way to get the message across.

If I could share any piece it would be my TED Talk on mass incarceration because it is something of interest to me and I am curious to see how others would react. Based off of the comments that I received after I presented the TED Talk many were unaware of the issue so I am sure that others are unaware of this as well. I would expect outsiders to be shocked because I was even shocked at what I discovered. I would not just want to share it with one person I guess I would share it with a group of my friends first because those are the people I am usually around. I’m sure they would feel the same way that I do we are all socially conscious and stay up to date on current issues especially those surrounding people of color.