Self Evaluation

What was the most difficult paper for you to write, and which was the easiest for you to write? Why?

The most difficult paper for me to write was probably the problem paper on a movie of our choice. I think the hardest part of writing it was finding the direction I wanted to take in analyzing the movie and how to organize those thoughts and ideas into a coherent point. I also found that the themes and other aspects were pretty straight forward but trying to pin-point a more in depth analysis was challenging. The easiest paper to write was definitely the first paper. It was easy to draw on past experiences and write about them and I have also written about that specific event before. Because of that I found it easy to pick apart the event and even tell it in a different way.

In what areas can you see improvements in your writing, from the first paper to the third paper, or from your first blog post to your most recent?

In my writing I think I have been able to distinguish from when I don’t have enough detail to when I have too much. I know in my first paper I included a lot of details about some events and not enough about others to finding the balance between summary and analysis in my last paper. I think, more than anything, this class has allowed me to figure out a good balance between information I provide and analyzing it or keeping a consistant amount of detail throughout a paper.

Skim your own blog posts from this semester? What is your impression of your own blog writing? Are you analytical, formal, humorous, some combination of these things, or something else entirely?

I enjoy reading my blog writing. I think I am very analytical in almost everything that I posted on my blog as well as formal. I tend to take all my class assignments seriously and I think I tend to write about more serious topics than most people, which I don’t think is a bad thing. I hope that my writings on my blog open peoples eyes to some things that may go unnoticed, like evaluating the poem we read in class or the theme I picked out in Stranger Than Fiction. I like to inform people and I think my strong opinions come across in the way I write.

Skim your freewriting/other journal exercises from this semester. What is your impression of your own journal writing? Were you able to generate ideas that later found their way into one of your papers in some form?

I think most of my journal writing is pretty scatter brained. My most helpful journal entry was one of the first ones we did for the personal narratives. That was where we had our topic and wrote a little bit about a color or time of year association we could make with the personal experience that we chose. My group helped me pick out the peach association and I was able to tie that into my personal narrative easily.  The other journal entry that I thought was helpful was for the second paper and we wrote down our general points that we wanted to use for our topics. That journal helped me plan out a format and organization for my entire paper. So both of those really helped me get my thoughts in order.

Is your writing “themed?” Meaning, are there certain words, ideas, images, approaches, fields of study, or other commonalities, that come up frequently in your writing?

I don’t think that there is a single theme in my writing. I try to draw from a bunch of different themes and ideas to get my points and information across. I tend to write with three body paragraphs because it helps with my organization/

Evaluate your own “writing journey,” from the start of the semester until now. Ideas for how to evaluate your journey include: How are your journal, your blog, and your papers connected? Did one kind of writing inform or help you with another kind of writing? How do you feel about having produced SO MUCH writing throughout this semester?

I enjoy writing. I think I had a good variety among almost everything I produced in this class. I really liked writing my position paper on drug courts because it is strongly connected with my major and I like that specific topic. I don’t think that my writings are connected except my analysis of the movie Stranger than Fiction is related to my analysis of the movie Crash. The first analysis helped me plan how I wanted to write my second movie analysis. Other than that, I think all of writing was very separate.

Crash The Movie Analysis

 

The world, however seemingly big, can feel like a small place. People constantly bump into others from their past or seeing the same student all over campus. The movie Crash reflects how people affect one another despite how different people seem. These people, who have nothing in common on the surface, are all related from their interactions with other people. The movie also shows how interactions with one type of person can cause a negative schema about a more general crowd. It addresses how biases are formed and confirmed through life and the conflicts these crashes can create. One thing that shapes the interactions throughout the movie is racial stereotypes.

One interaction is between a rich white couple and boy African American boys walking down the sidewalk at night. When the boys pass the couple, the woman pulls her purse toward her and leans into her husband. Her stereotype of the two black teenagers is that they all steal and commit crimes. One of the black young men notices the woman’s reaction which angers him because he did nothing to provoke such a flagrant response from the woman. He decides that is she is going to act scared, he should give her something to be scared of. Then the teen steals the woman’s purse and proceeds to take the couple’s car as well. What happened in this situation is that the two young boys are sick of being stereotyped as troublemakers and are tired of being labeled as such throughout their lives. There is a theory about labeling young teens and that is the more society or the people around them label the teens as something, the more likely the teen is to act in that manner. For example, if society repeatedly labels a child as lazy, the child will soon begin to think of himself as such. I think that is the case in this scene. It is also unfortunate for the rich couple because now the woman’s biased against young black teens is confirmed and she will go on to be even more apprehensive in future situations.

Another character of importance is the head of a Persian family that recently moved to the city and opened up his own convenience store. The store isn’t in the nicest condition and the man is worried because all the money he had when coming to America went into buy that store. The man, also worried about the safety of his family, decides to buy a gun. While he is in the gun store, the owner makes several racial slurs about 9/11 and the twin towers. The Persian man is insulted because the shopkeeper didn’t even bother to differentiate between Persian and Arab. For extra safety, the Persian man hires a locksmith to redo the locks for his store so that it wouldn’t be burglarized. Well the Persian man has some bias of his own and thinks the Mexican locksmith is trying to rip him off when he says that the Persian man should replace the entire back door to prevent robberies. The Persian man gets angry and acts with ignorance as he ignores the genuine advice from the locksmith. This convenience store owner thought that the locksmith was trying to insult him, like most other Americans, because people see him as a terrorist threat. Because he believes he is being stereotyped he resorts to biased feelings about the locksmith and refuses to take his advice. This ended up with the convenience store getting robbed after all.

The locksmith in this movie is seen with the wealthy white couple as well as with the Persian store owner. Because the white woman’s purse and keys get stolen she wants all of the locks replaced at her house, for the fear of being burglarized further. Once she sees the Mexican fixing her locks she openly accuses him of being a gang banger who is probably going to sell the extra keys to his “home boys” so they can break in to her house. The locksmith is merely trying to get work so he can support his wife and little girl but the well off woman doesn’t even think before jumping to a harsh conclusion. Additionally, the locksmith tried to help the Persian shopkeeper by suggesting to put in a new door so the shop wouldn’t be vandalized. The shop owner had a similar reaction and thought he was being taken advantage of because of his race and thought it was a ploy so the Mexican and his boys could ransack the store themselves. Both the white woman and Persian man react to this locksmith in such a racist way because of the previous encounters they had with other races. It is no excuse but both experiences that the people had before encountering the locksmith were very negative and created a bias that carried across races.

The Burning of Books Instead of Children

1. At one point, Rich uses incredible vocabulary to describe Joan of Arc burning at the stake. The way she describes the blue dress that Joan wears and how it is a suitable color for her almost mock how the hottest blue flame engulfed her. That envokes a powerful image of burning in almost a twisted sort of way. The other time I think of burning is at the end of her poem. Rich is almost summerizing the entire thing when she refers to napalm in Catonsville, Maryland. She is referring to when Daniel Berrigan burned files containing draft card information and virtually blew it all up. I think that is powerful because she starts and ends the poem with the same reference to Berrigan.

3. I think the oppressors vary in this poem. I think Rich looks at the humanity of people rather than just how they burn things on the outside. There is a contrast that defines the oppressors and the liberators. Hitler and the people who burnt Joan of Arc can all be considered oppressors. They are also the people that burnt more people and human flesh than they did literature. But, on the other hand, the little boys and Daniel Berrigan are liberators. There are the people who are burning books and paper. They are also the people that are setting others free because they are unbinded from a piece of literature. The little boys are making a statement that they are free from math now and it is something to celebrate. Berrigan was burning the draft files to liberate young men everywhere from being forced into the draft, which set them free. Berrigan was also making a statement. I think these differences are key to understanding the roots of this poem and why the people being oppressed feel the need to burn such literature.

Stranger Than Fiction

While watching the movie, Stranger Than Fiction there were a lot of filming aspects the caught my attention. One thing that I thought was very interesting visually was the use of multiple doorways throughout the film. This seemed to be a recurring theme no matter where the characters were. I thought there has to be a bigger purpose for having a tunnel effect in so many scenes so I though to investigate it further. I believe the multiple doorways in succession signify the cross between barriers whether they be personal or the medium into a fictional world.

One place where I thought that the multiple doorways made an impression was when Harold was over the girls house and he starts playing the guitar. There is a point when you can see Harold two rooms away and can still see the girl standing in the kitchen. While Harold’s eyes are closed she moves into the open door frame of the kitchen then the open door frame of the dining room until she is listening on the couch beside him. I think this particular scene uses these doorways as the girl crossing a personal barrier. She is making her way from disliking this IRS agent to being in love with him and I think that is the moment she realizes it. She crossed the barrier of hate that took her to sleeping with him and that was a significant part of the film.

Another area that I thought the multiple doorways were extremely noticeable was in the authors white-washed office. She must have five different rooms that are all connected by an open doorway in the same position. Even though the doorways existed throughout the entire film they become notable when Harold comes to her office. The author is sitting in the farthest room and watches as the character in her book crosses through each doorway before standing, a real person, in front of her. I think in this instance the doorways represent the story crossing over from seemingly fiction to reality. In the authors mind, Harold did not really exist before crossing through the doorways to stand in front of her. Their meeting was also a pivotal part of the movie. The question the author had to ask herself is that does Harold go back to being just a fictional character after recrossing through those doorways to leave the office. In the end, we find that Harold made such an impact on the author that she spared him his life.

The last time I noticed the appearance of multiple doorways was when Harold was coming to terms with his death. Harold had the English teacher read over his life story and the ending to tell him if his death could be avoided but the teacher tells him that it cannot be. When Harold hears this news the camera takes a position outside of the office, looking in through the window. In the window you see the repeating reflection of the office door. This symbolizes yet another barrier that Harold needs to cross and this is the barrier between life and death. By walking out of the door he chooses to die because it is inevitable and poetic the way the author had written it.

The theme of multiple succession of doorways was not a coincidence on the part of the set design team. These precise doorways all symbolized  a barrier that someone in the movie had to cross to further the plot either for their personal gain or for the sake or the story the author was trying to write. Either way, I think the theme was used beautifully and made each plot development more significant, even if viewers did not innately pick up on it.

Hills Like White Elephants

Honestly, I do not enjoy any of Ernest Hemingway’s writing that I have ever read. I believe the two people in this story are in a relationship and maybe partners of some sort. I don’t like that Hemingway doesn’t use tag lines a lot and I found the story hard to follow. There is one instance when I think both of the characters speak and he puts their dialogue in the same paragraph so then after I am not entirely sure which one of them is speaking. I think I am not very fond of this story also because it’s very vague and bland. I’m not entirely sure if there is a narrative arc. It seems to me that there is no real point of him writing this little dialouge and the story itself feels rushed. It’s like hes writing really vaguely and quickly to get to a point but then I feel like he never arrives at the big point or climax that I would expect with such a rapid build up to the story. It annoyed me. I also felt like I got no sense of the characters which made distinguishing between their dialouge even more challenging and added to my confusion even more.

This was the first time I’ve ever seen hypertext in a short story like this. I think it helped clarify some things about the story like whats in Spanish and what is not but I still am not a fan of the story even with little snippets of information.

 

with the book

For Morgan Cesari

Bikson, Marom, Peter Bulow, John Stiller, Abhishek Datta, Fortunato Battaglia, Sergi Karnup, and Teodor Postolache. “Transcranial Direct Current Stimulation for Major Depression: A General System for Quantifying Transcranial Electrotherapy Dosage.” Current Treatment Options in Neurology 10.5 (2008): 377-85. EBSCOhost. 2008. Web. 24 Feb. 2012. <http://ehis.ebscohost.com.ezproxy.strose.edu/eds/detail?vid=6&hid=1&sid=deb05c9b-1328-4f6a-a8bf-90b4ad27e189%40sessionmgr12&bdata=JnNpdGU9ZWRzLWxpdmU%3d#db=eda&AN=ejs17438862&gt;. This source is about the depth of depression and the authors characterize different aspects of depression to then correlate it to how much electrotherapy should be prescribed to a people with different degrees of depression. This would be good scientific research to provide for your paper because it shows that there is real science that is backing the amount and frequency involved in the electrotherapy.

Gilman, Sander L. “Electrotherapy and Mental Illness: Then and Now.” History of Psychiatry 19.3 (2008): 339-57. EBSCOhost. Sept. 2008. Web. 24 Feb. 2012. <http://ehis.ebscohost.com.ezproxy.strose.edu/eds/detail?vid=6&hid=1&sid=deb05c9b-1328-4f6a-a8bf-90b4ad27e189%40sessionmgr12&bdata=JnNpdGU9ZWRzLWxpdmU%3d#db=aph&AN=34128250&gt;. This article shows the real progression that has been made in the field of electrotherapy and how it has developed into a real treatment course. This would be a good source for the beginning of your paper in that, you could examine the flaws of old forms of electrotherapy and how those flaws have been fixed. The fixed flaws have produced a great new way to treat depression.

Gunther, Mary, and Kenneth D. Phillips. “Cranial Electrotherapy Stimulation for the Treatment of Depression.” Journal of Psychosocial Nursing and Mental Health Services 48.11 (2010): 37-42. EBSCOhost. US: SLACK., Apr. 2010. Web. 24 Feb. 2012. <http://ehis.ebscohost.com.ezproxy.strose.edu/eds/detail?vid=6&hid=1&sid=deb05c9b-1328-4f6a-a8bf-90b4ad27e189%40sessionmgr12&bdata=JnNpdGU9ZWRzLWxpdmU%3d#db=psyh&AN=2010-24327-006&gt;. This article discussed depression a little bit but also points out different methods of treating it other than electrotherapy. But the article discuses electrotherapy as a real option for people who do not feel relieved of their depression after other courses of treatment. This would be good in your paper because it has nice statistics you could use concerning depression as well as other relative data. 

Blogging

Honestly, I think that blogging is a very new and innovative way for English teachers to try and teach students writing. I think that blogging lets students enter a world of give-and-take with other people in the world in which opinions can be shared and exchanged for an ultimate learning experience. Blogging connects people all around the world and being able to properly write one’s feelings and thoughts in a conscientious way in which others can relate to is an important skill for dealing with things outside of the classroom. My favorite example of the tightness of a blogging community is when I use StumbleUpon on my computer and it takes me to different food blogs. At one point, every food blog that I stumbled on had a recipe for peanut butter pie. I was intrigued and wondered why until I found a blog with an explanation. One of the food bloggers had lost her Husband to cancer and his favorite thing to eat was the peanut butter pie that his wife used to make. After his death she asked all the members of the food blogging community to post their favorite peanut butter pie recipe in honor of her husband. The number of posts I saw online was moving and just shows how greatly one blog can impact so many other people in this world.

Position Paper- Rough Ideas

What: Specialized drug courts for all jurisdictions nation wide

Who: Drug offenders who can be rehabilitated rather than put into jail, only to be released and committ more drug related offenses

When: 21^st century and how drug courts will impact the future

Where: Looking nationwide, but referring to New York State as a reference

Why: Rehabilitating drug offenders is more cost efficient to the state and can make an overall bigger impact on the war against drugs

 

According to the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services, Substance Abuse and Mental Health Services Administration’s 1999 National Household Survey on Drug Abuse, an estimated 14.8 million Americans were current drug users, meaning that they had used an illicit drug in the month prior to the survey (Substance Abuse and Mental Health Services Administration, 2000).

 

I believe that drug courts should be mandatory for every court’s jurisdiction nationwide.

Support: The rates of reoffending for drug crimes after offenders go through drug court are substantially lower than those who just went to prison or just drug treatment alone.

Drug courts save the state money but keeping these offenders out of prison.

It benefits the offender by keeping them out of prison and allowing them to continue to work and have the support of their families so they can grow to be an active member of society.

Boolean Searches

1. This search revealed some results that were me but a lot that weren’t. Most of the posts that were actually me had to do with soccer or goalkeeping. One of the results was my twitter but my facebook account did not come up because of my privacy settings. On the first page there were only two results that were not me. The first was about a Rebecca Minkoff who is a handbag designer and the other was a Lauren Minkoff who graduated from a Kew- Forest High School in 1997.

2. This search yeilded a lot of results from different sport rosters I am on. The rosters tend to list things like my name and where I’m from, especially because many of the club soccer teams I played on were outside of my township. Other results were mentions that I had in playing in various games and were giving me recognition. This seemed to be a pretty accurate search and the only result that wasn’t me in those pages was Rebecca Minkoff again. The third page did start to stray and include more Rebecca Minkoff results and less of me.

3. This search interested me the most. I expected to see pages and pages of results from playing soccer with The College of Saint Rose Women’s Soccer Team but I was surprised that on the first page of results, there were 3 posts about my mother. My mom had made a speech after orientation and the school decided to use it on the website. I figured that a result like that would come up but I was surprised that it appeared on the first page of results so many times. But after the first page up until the fifth page, all the results were me and had to do with me playing soccer for the school. There were a few results about when I committed to the college and there was one result linking me to this class blog!

4. For my last boolean search I googled ‘Lauren Minkoff and soccer’. I found that all of the results were me up until the fifth page when there were two results about Rebecca Minkoff the designer. There was a wide variety of results with soccer in this search. There were some results about my high school team from my junior and senior year, there was some results about me from the exclusive goalie camp I attend in North Carolina every summer, there were a lot of results on my club soccer team who was number one in the country before we all left for college and there was a ton of results about me playing for Saint Rose. 

Doing these searches was fun for me. During the season I try not to pay attention to the things newspapers and other publications may write because you never know if they will be negative or not which may impact how you play your next game. I never really understood the depth of information that is out there on me playing. I think its funny because my search results make me seem like such a one dimensional person, like I don’t do anything outside of soccer (which is only partially true). I wish some results of me volunteering or something would come up but I did things for such small organizations I figured they don’t have a lot of publicity involved.