Looking back

So the semester is pretty much done and i'ts there is no doubt that the class has picked up alot of new skills or improved their already existing skills in writing 101. My goals at the beginning of the semester were most likely to take whatever eloquence I already had and put it on some sort of steroids for writing so to emulate works like that of Christopher Hitchens and Carl Sagan. Also more specifically my goal was to be able to write at a level suitable for an article writer/author. I feel that I've made some progress with these goals and hopefully writing 2 will help out these aspirations. On the essays I've had returned to me I noticed a trend in how I make mistakes. Either they're small spelling errors or some larger error in my focus. In my 7th blog post I mentioned how I didn't feel like I'd grown much as a writer but with more time passed by I can say the semester as a whole give me new abilities and improved my skills.

Portfoliolioliolio

The essay I chose to revise and use for my portfolio is most likely going to be the argument analysis essay. Before I even begin revising that essay I'd need to figure out the details about what I should be editing. The strengths that came from that essay appear in the form of having good insight, awesome vocab, and probably great organization. My weaknesses came from not being as focused as i should be, i needed a better thesis and the paper was just whack in general. To effectively fix my paper i'm going to address each weakness and correct them individually and then take my strong points and put them on literary steroids so to make an A paper into an A+ paper. While I go over each paragraph of the essay i'll make sure that they keep focused and relevant to what the thesis dictated.

Analysis and Learning

I analyzed the article "Should the Obama Generation Drop Out?" by author Charles Murray who in this very article was using an informal tone to convey his message, which would most likely be an attempt at connecting to the reader or making them feel like they're on his level f class or intellect. This tone was very effective, especially being in the New York Times which has a majority of articles written in this manner, it served to help ultimately. The authoritative tone by now has been played out and is most commonly expected by that of a doctor someone who holds a public office or some kind of supervisor etc. This tone didn't really affect my writing of essay 4 because i'd been writing with an informal tone since before it was cool <_< (just putting it out there) What this article did do for me as a writer was give me a new look on using evidence to support claims by checking whether or not the strength and validity of the evidence were up to par with the claim. I really didn't want to have salty evidence like Charles Murray. Overall, i can say that I didn't really extract much from Murray and i'm sure we all know who the superior writer out of the two of us is because of that ;)

blawg 12

I'd be lying if i said that my evidence chart was done correctly or that my argument is completely picked, but i do have an idea on what it could be and what the weakest/strongest pieces of evidence could be. With the thesis probably ending up as "True body builders don't rely on the usage of steroids because of the physically destructive nature and lack of integrity it takes to resort to them."
The strongest evidence i have in this would most likely stem from some sort of science journal but not with data but more of a brief description of the negative reprocussions steroid use has. This would most likely be the strongest argument because nobody likes to challenge a good scientific journal quote. It'd be very hard to avoid any sort of second thought on steroid use after reading that first piece of evidence because there'd be little to no room for interpretation.
The weakest piece of evidence would probably come from my rebuttal touching on the ethical standpoint on steroid use where i go through how one would lack any sort of sportsmanship and integrity to resort to false gaining in the weight room. Some people even advocate the allowance of steroid use as a tool to go from great to greater. It'd be pretty weak because should someone already have resorted to using steroids, who's to say that they even have the capacity to feel guilt for their dishonesty as an athlete? I'm not one for guilt tripping people, but with an argument paper like this i needed to find something to fill up the paper with lol.

Patterns of error?

In my writing i tend to screw up on punctuation but only slightly. It's not as bad as someone in college not knowing the difference between You're and Your but it's pretty annoying. It takes away from how serious the reader can take me because of the thoughts that arise which in a nutshell can be described as " LOL THIS KIDS COMMA SPLICING AND FRAGMENTS ARE UNBEARABLE" I can fix this by taking the time to see a tutor for some assistance and practice. A second error i make in my papers is appearantly some kind of lacking of detail, but that doesn't really phase me too much because it's not something that I'd need to change my entire way of thinking as a writer to correct, just some self reminding here and there. A means by which i can fix this is by not rushing my papers and stopping to actually take into account whether or not the info I gave was sufficient or not. A third error I seem to take part in is bad organization because of the way I spread my subjects. If I were a stranger reading my papers i'd probly think something along the lines of "LOL this kid sucks at writing, i'd better make sure to send a virus to his computer which would corrupt microsoft word" If i were to correct this error i'd most likely get my paper reviewed by a peer and then a tutor or something. It's kind of hard describing how to correct your own errors when you know that if you did know how to correct them they wouldn't be there in the first place.

Peer Review

From what i've seen in this class, peer review is the cornerstone of all group work that takes place and is very effective in not only shedding light onto people's writing process and improving them but also letting classmates actually become peers/friends as opposed to "that kid i have class with". I'd be lying if i said i was entirely content with the effectiveness of peer review, if it were up to me to alter the process i'd make the group pairings or brackets if you will have a little more strategy with how they're grouped. What i'd do would be to group the stronger speakers and writers with other strong speakers and writers so to bring out the best in them and then halfway through class spread them about the class amongst the weaker writers so to pass on the skill that they would have most likely been flaunting 20 minutes before amongst their fellow writers.  To me, that would be the ideal process of peer review so to get an efficient blend of writing knowledge flowing about the class. If anyting i'd prefer large group peer review or even some sort of competition amongst groups so to really stir things up and get those intellectual thoughts flowing. Smaller groups to me always seem to leave that one strong fellow controlling all of the dialogue, and leaves others at a loss. With our amount of class time, peer review is at a perfect standing between 'too long' and 'too short'. I hope this blog post helps others with their opinions on peer review.

Oh, writing i such sweet sorrow. I come to you fine readers today with the topic of originality in social writing and what it means to me and should mean to you. Mind you that originality is not based on how provocative or against the grain your writing is, but more on the innovation and creativity incorporated into it. The idea for this topic stems from the emergence of the Kony2012 movement and its rapid growth via social networking. If you didn't know, the Kony2012 video is an astonishing piece of emotional porn who's goal is to expose Joseph Kony, a warlord in Uganda who's crimes should'nt go unpunished. Now, at first glance one would watch the video and think to themselves "Good lord, this man must be stopped" and they'd be right to think that, but the real culprit for the topic of this essay are the skeptics and provocative agitators of facebook/twitter/youtube/tumblr who subconsciously try to flaunt what they take as their own originality by pointing out what they feel is the obvious, in this case the notion that all Kony2012 supporters are a bunch of bandwagon riding idiots who fall for emotional garbage like Kony's story. Who are these people to point out who's kindness and compassion is genuine when the very characters they arbitrarily portray (the agitators) are a dime a dozen? The have yet to realize that the kindness of human beings needs no background check and that maybe their 'originality' only comes from their own vanity in attempt to reach a degree of self assurance. I'm not saying that there should be no opposition or an opposing opinions should be snuffed out, i'm saying that those who feel the nee to oppose the movement shouldn't refer to the numbers of supporters as a means to justify their opposition which is a juvenile attempt at staying original and nothing more. These folk should express their disdain for the movement with physical/literary evidence that they can site and refer to as a means of strengthening their point of view. I'm tired of writing, good evening.
 -Ferrrrnando