Reflection on Essay #3

I really found the final project a challenge to do in the beginning. However, as I was editing and transcribing, I was really happy that in the future, I could look back and see who I was then. Starting this project, I had planned all the people I would interview, the clubs, activities and other programs that I was really passionate about. I think I had problems with finding the time to do some of my interviews because of other responsibilities I had. The interview with my mentor was really important to me but finding the time to travel there after my classes was the hardest. However, I finally made it there after thanksgiving. I filmed some of the robotics projects we did. I also interviewed some of my former teammates. I had to edit them out because, in the end I realized I had too many interviews. All the interviews were important to telling my story, but some of them portrayed more of what I who I was respects to my career decision. In choosing what different media to use, I definitely taught of the newspapers and magazines that I had been published in as a great way to tell others where my career began.

 Two weeks before the project was due, I noticed there were two important people who I had to interview who were not there, my dad and one of my best friend. I planned to tell the story from my parents view of how I had changed but in the end I had to use others to tell my story. I think I will definitely do a future project like this probably next semester to see how I'm doing. For my best friend, she had moved back abroad, so I used her voice in my video to tell my story. I guess the reason why she was important to my story was because she's seen me at my best and worst academically. Her words about me will mean a lot in the future. I did not write a script or even plan to do a voice over. Every part of my video was a one take shot. Whatever everyone said and did was a one take thing, especially for my interview. I wanted my story to be real and a true reflection of how I really felt not rehearsed. I had great help from my friend who helped me in choosing what questions to ask . I think the hardest part was editing my video, I did not realize the software I was using was more complex than it looked. Triming clips and transitioning were the easiest to do. However, when I had to sync the voices and put the background music, the software crashed and I had to do most of my work again (the extension really helped). In the end, being behind the camera (used a dslr camera for most of the interviews) was really exciting and fun. I was the director of my story and I loved it! I learned a lot about who I am, where I need improvement as person and in my career goals. I think in the end,  I hope my the video and will tell others of who I was in my first semester and a little before that.

Review of Roger Ebert's Review of The Up Documentaries

Roger Ebert was a movie critic born in Urbana, Illinois. His reviews were widely recognizable, one reason being his use of metaphors. In his review of The Up Documentaries, he shows how the lives of these kids tell us about who we are and who we are becoming. The Up Documentaries is a series created by Michael Apted in 1977. The series followed the lives of British kids from different classes from 7 to 56 years old. Ebert in his analysis of Neil, character in the series, says Neil's story is the most encouraging of all the episodes in "42 Up." When you follow the lives of these kids you either find a drastic change in their personalities as in the case of Susan. Ebert quotes Wordsworth's metaphor, "The child is father of the man," to explain how you can predict who these individuals will become by looking at their younger personality. In most cases that not, this claim was true, but the series did have a few surprising characters. 

Since the documentary was looking at the lives of kids from different classes, Ebert concludes an obvious truth, "

class counts for more in Britain than in America." Ebert concludes his review by saying that as a kid he wanted to be a newspaperman and he did become one. His review causes one to want to watch the series just to self examine themselves - find out where they are and where they are going. The questions, "why am I me and why not you? Why am I here and why not there?," is one that tells our story. The answer is found only in our roots, our culture, our family, our likes and dislikes as children and our perception growing up.

Academic Integrity and Student Plagiarism: a Question of Education, Not Ethics by Susan D. Plum
The academic codes that deals with plagiarism has been widely unsuccessful in most educational institutions. Susan D. Plum, an associate professor addresses this topic in her article. She gives reasons why students fail to follow these standards set in stone. She says, "although some students may embrace rules governing academic integrity, others are likely to see them as akin to other regulations or laws that they follow reluctantly or ignore." The administration set academic rules in way that makes plagiarism seem like breaking a rule. Students who view these codes as another law or rule will most likely ignore them. Yet, the main factor is because students do not fully understand academic integrity. It is a challenge for all students to figure out the value in citing sources. Not only is it hard to figure out the original source of a piece but it is almost unnecessary. 


Why? Since, there are no original ideas, faculty and administration should realize that, everything a student writes is all a chain or network of what she has read, believed and lived. Since our "writing goes into a vacuum, usually unread by anyone but a single instructor, cannot be expected to understand the pragmatic reasons for which citations are demanded."We are all products of basic ideas. Thus, nothing we say or do is original. Our writings are highly plagiarized. The whole purpose of determining the originality of papers is redundant. Yet, since we live in an imperfect world where "plagiarism" will always be an issue for school administrations, we might as well find a solution to the "problem." Plum says, "that means teaching students what academic integrity involves, why professors value it, and how exactly to carry it out." Students have to be fully educated on the significance of citing their sources in a paper though it might seem difficult, it is very valuable to the author of an idea, the reader and, of course, the admin.

They said, "find a creative solution to this". I replied ,"that's the only way I know and was taught".#schoolkilledmycreativity#AskKenRobinson

Alma Guillermoprieto "Telling the Story, Telling the Truth"

Guillermoprieto writes about her career as a reporter and a newspaper writer in this essay. She begins with an account of a report she made about Salvadoran soldiers and their massacring of 800 men, women and children. She wrote an article for the Washington Post about the very repulsive act done by the soldiers to a small ten-elevator country. After, been among the only two reporters to write an article on this story, she was labelled by the Reagan administration as a person who cannot be trusted. 
Eventually, Central America became unrecognized on the U.S. media map. It dropped of it. She says, "it was as if I had dropped into that void as well." It seems that the media had ignored Central's America's history, strives, pains and its existence in the world. However, her desire is to make it impossible for "the U.S. reader to ignore Latin America." As such, she writes stories not hard news like that of the U.S. media. The hard news contains fact and to her has no connection to reality. When she writes, she blends information, analysis and her reactions. She makes the reader focus on Latin America not the U.S. To ensure that, she does not mention the U.S. in her writings. She does not interview ambassadors or any U.S. official in order to keep the reader's focus on Latin America. She does research or spends a month in the locality she will be reporting on. To get the U.S. readers to savor Latin America, she is specific about her writings. She wants the reader to feel, see and experience what she did. She says she places the reader in a discomforting zone by using the word "I."  She plans out a choreography in which she casts the major and minor characters. She figures out how t use the characters in order to portray the truth to the reader. One main idea is that she balances her strengths and weaknesses in writing the stories. in the end the advise is to give yourself the "freedom to fail." 
I liked reading Alma Guillermoprieto essay because she shows how to tell a story and make your readers focus on what you want them to not what they want to. I think this article will help me in writing telling my story to my classmates. So that they do not focus on what they expect me to be or tell them, but they see my story from my perspective.

"Transforming 100 Notebooks into Thirty-five Thousand Words" by Sonia Nazario

Sonia Nazario writes about a fourteen year old boy's journey from Mexico to United States in search of his mother. Nazario reports the life of the boy after he is in the States. After a series of interviews, research and retracing Enrique's steps, she says, "I had a hundred and ten notebooks, hundred of hours of taped interviews, and typed notes from more than one hundred phone interviews." Looking at such a superfluous amount of information, she says,"I was overcome with a feeling of paralysis."

She knew she had reduce the information somehow.

The first step of the process was what her editor, Rick Meyer, insisted on: the transcribing stage. Nazario used six full weeks to write out all the reports she had collected using MS Word. This made everything organized and easier to keep track of. This is an important step especially since we have to sort of a report for our final project. Transcribing all our reports will organize them and make it easier to know what to use.

This leads to the next stage which is "garbaging it down." Nazario compresses all the information she has into the first rough draft. In this stage, Nazario ignores the left side of her brain. She only cares about the chronology of the records. She says," Chapter 1 began the day Enrique's mother stepped of her mother's porch, leaving her five-year-old son behind. It ended the day Enrique decided to step of the same porch and find her." I think this stage is really important for us because we have to tell our story. We don't want it to start with something that should have been placed at the end of our video. Nazarro said the draft had to through 10 more drafts before it was reduced to 35000 words.

Nazarro narrates how in getting to her goal she reduced the draft by taking out all the unnecessary characters and accounts. She realized that it was okay to leave some information out and skip some of them. Some details did not take away or add any meaning to the story of Enrique. However, some trivial information in the beginning was valuable in the end. For example, Enrique wearing two left shoes was evidence to the mother that she was really speaking to her so.

In the end, Nazaro says she is on the eleventh draft. It is not easy to cut down more information at this stage. However by asking her self questions like: "Is it  really necessary?," If I keep it, how can I make it better, shorter?" will help her. 

In the initial stages of my final project, I have taken a lot of advise from Nazaro's essay. I plan to make sure the account I present is very important and necessary in telling my story.

Reflection on Essay 2

I think the essay was a very interesting topic to research and write about. The topic of originality is a very complex subject. I loved writing about it. I think I did a great job with my claims and argument. The peer review gave me a chance to see things I could change and make better. My partner told me to  take each of the technological advancement and talk independently about them. I think the reason I did generalize the t.v., telephone and radio was because I was trying to show that all three were as a result of the need to communicate. Also, it was a little difficult finding resources to show the history of these three. I think I will definitely expound on the three inventions further in my revision. So far I have not seen anything I want to delete. However, I think my idea of the plagiarism was not clarified in my essay. Devices like "turn it in" that picks up ideas that are "original" should not exist. There is no such thing as stealing ideas, just researching. Of course, that is a really controversial claim to make. However, everything we think and those we research are not our own, but that of someone else. Thus, all papers written today are not original. They cannot be. To take Barthes advise, there should be no name on a students essay except the original writer of that idea. I hope that will clarify my point about plagiarism.

"If Black English Isn't a Language,Then Tell Me, What Is?" by James Baldwin

This week's reading is James Baldwin's essay "If Black English Isn't a Language Then Tell Me What Is." Baldwin explains the meaning of language as a "temporal identity," that "divorces one from the communal community." As he expounds on this point, Baldwin's explanation of language is indisputable. Perhaps, the most powerful phrase that I saw in Baldwin's essay is:

                                    A language comes into existence by means                   of brutal necessity, and the rules of the                 language are dictated by what the language                     must convey"

No honest truth have been spoken than this quote from Baldwin. It also does not fall from what we have been discussing in class and what my narrative essay tried to convey. Language is a great tool. It is an indelible mark between people that makes it plausible for them to express their ideas, thoughts and concepts to each other. For a person outside the language "umbrella"-so as to speak- to understand this language, will be a "smash" to them. Why? Baldwin suggests that "language reveals too much about oneself." He gives an example: "to open your mouth in England...you have confessed your parents, your youth, your salary, your self-esteem and, alas, your future." Watching the documentary 7 up makes this claim more potent than not. I don't know if these children lived in England, but some lived in parts of London. You could predict-by looking at the lives they had as kids -whether with regards to school, or interests- then, you could tell what their future was like - a claim that might not always be true. However, the general picture is that the way a person speaks can tell you their whole story-if only you can understand their language.

Baldwin continues with another great quote, "It is not the black child's language that is in question, it is not his language that is despised: it is his experience." Baldwin says a child cannot be taught to let go of his experiences. It cannot be forced to enter a "limbo" in which she is not black or white. What Baldwin says here goes in line with his quote, "language is a proof of power." Language is an attribute that shows the world how distinct a particular group is. For whites who could not or might not still understand black English, power is taken away from them in this regards. For when every person or group develops a language, they tell the world they are independent, strong and capable. Probably, another scary fact is having a language shows ownership. However, that scares people. For those who are used the status quo, that idea is a great grief on their minds.
For us who speak a different language, we should not view it as a way of assimilating into a new culture, but as a "new language" of our own culture that we have the privilege to understand and own when most people around us don't.
                                    

Bonus blog

"The Boston Photographs" by Nora Ephron

This is a make-up for last week's blog post 3 which was a reflection of our narrative essay. This post will evaluate Ephron's style of wrting in the article "The Boston Photographs." This sensationalized real life account describes the horrifying images of a woman and a child as they are rescued by a firefighter from a fire escape. Ephron begins the article with the words of the Boston Photographer. He describes how he took that photo in that instant: the scene surrounding the heartbreaking photo of a woman, a child and a firefighter. Ephron continues with a highly descriptive paragraph of what the photos looked like. A description that creates a visual image that is hard to contend with. In our minds, we see the image of the three victims on the fire escape, then we see the fireman holding up the ladder, then we see the the the fire escape and the child slipping. We see a woman holding tho the child as she holds on to the firefighter. The next disturbing picture is the woman falling in mid sky with the child, succumbed to gravity we might say. Ephron tells us that the woman dies while the child survives.

Ephron says the pictures were a great example of photojournalism, a type of journalism she argues is powerful than written journalism. By looking at these photographs, one will unreluctantly agree.
The Boston Photographs received a negative reaction from the public who felt that these were sensationalized photos meant to look like "sideshow act." However, Ephron and some journalist will disagree with the public's reaction and find the importance of publishing such photos however graphic and disturbing it might be. Some journalists thought it was an important issue for the public to know about the deterioration  of the fire escapes. Was that their true intention?

Ephron who feels that the the Boston Photographs is just like any accident or war photos thinks that they should be published. She questions why the last picture, that shows the woman and the child lying on the ground, was not released. She says that death is part of life; that photos that has been released in the past about automobile accidents were focused on death not the mangled cars. She concludes that photojounalism is meant to disturb readers. 

I do not agree with Ephron's argument. Just because photos have been taking does not mean they should be released. The readers are the main deciders of what should or should not be published, not the editors. At the end of the day, you have to get paid and that only depends on the consumer rate. You might not care about the paycheck, then I guess that will be a different issue. However, every journalist and editor should consider the benefit of photos or any article when been published. Is it really worth it? How will I react to these photos if I was the consumer? In the end, we have to live with these decisions, can I live with it? Journalist sand editors may find that, by considering such questions, it might be useful to exclude some information, that in the long run has no benefit to them or the reader.

"Free Writing Exercises" by Peter Elbow

My blog post today is on Peter Elbow's "Free Writing Exercise."  Elbow's essay offers us one main tip-to freewrite. He says it is the only way to write a powerful piece. "Freewritings help you by providing no feedback at all," he says. Elbow compares the concept of freewriting to writing something and putting it in a bottle in the sea. You are never getting that bottle back from anyone. Likewise, in freewriting, one can write knowing no one has to read the 10 minute rambling of the same words.

He continues to expatiate the difference between writing and freewriting when he says, "Writing....[permits] more editing. But that's its downfall too." Elbow says that when writing we are inherently focused on the grammar and the spelling of our words. However, that constant need to edit when writing is what makes writing not not only hard but as Elbow says, "dead." For us to write great pieces we have to to freewrite. When we develop the habit of freewriting, we will produce writing that is not forced but reflects our voice. A voice that speaks to us when we are writing-"our source of power."

Moreover, by freewriting our minds to not become blocked as we try hard to write our first paragraph and get it right. Elbow says that is the "formula for faluire." Write anything that comes to mind and after that you can correct them and come up with new ones. The idea that you willl get everything right the first time is unlikely and "a secret way to give up writing."

I find Elbow's essay more like Lamott's essay which we read last week. Both essays have the idea of not getting it right the first time, not even great writers do. However, there is a contrast between what Lamott says in his essay about the voice in our heads. He gives us a formula - a writing process. However, Elbow tells us to freewrite. This is a habit we have been practicing in class-not as freely as Elbow tells us to since we are given prompts to write about, yet it is a great way to start the morning. I plan to start freewriting especially for my essays. I have noticed that there is always a great line in the rambling I make on a page.

"Shitty First Drafts" by Anne Lamott 

This is my second blog post. My post is about Lamott's essay "Shitty First Drafts." As the name implies, the essay focuses on how terrible first drafts are, which they should be. Lamott's essay addresses a misconception I have about great writers; that somehow, they sit down " and dive in, typing fully formed passages as fast as a court reporter." Lammott says that idea is a "fantasy."

She refers to the first draft as a "child's draft," where creativity runs wild. You can write anything you feel or want "knowing no one is going to see it." When you revisit this draft later, you will find an idea or sentence that will steer you in the right direction. Lamott discusses the writing process he uses when he has to write food reviews. Clearly, it is a very frustrating state. She talks about how his first draft will contain "descriptions of the food,one dish at a time." She knew it was horrible but he would "trust the process." She will go back to the writing again and find a second idea or concept. She will then write the second draft which he says will turn out "fine." Of course, this writing process will continue every time she had to write.

In the last few paragraphs, Lamott's advice proves useful especially for me. He says, "All good writing begins with terrible first efforts." I like her essay because she offers the perspective of writing from great writers. Writing is an arduous task. You can only get what you put in it. We as humans are bombarded with different ideas and ways of thinking because we are all from distinct backgrounds, cultures and nationalities. As such, we all greatly influenced by these factors. I know I am. Lamotts's decision to shut up all these voices is one I plan to take. Not that I don't think my writings should not be influenced by the voices of the "vinegar-lipped Reader lady" or "the emaciated German male" or even my "parents." Yet, these voices sometimes hinder the best and explicit ideas.

I love to write first drafts but they are really daunting to initiate. However when I begin, I find that there has been these great ideas bottling inside of me. It might not always be the best ideas but as Lamott said "the first draft is the down draft - you just get it down."

The Joy of Reading and Writing: Superman and me

My first reading in my College writing class is an essay written by Sherman Alexie. He writes about himself;about his experiences as a child growing up in a reservation. My blog post answers the first question: What is Superman doing in the comic book panel Alexie remembers? Why is it important to remember this detail at the very end of the essay?

The answer to the first part of the question is pretty straightforward. Superman is breaking down the door.

The significance of this detail is seen at the end of the last paragraph when Alexie says, "I throw my weight against their locked doors."  Alexie compares himself to Superman. As he tries his best to embolden the "sullen and already defeated Indian kids," he becomes in a sense their superhero, the hero to break them out of their plight. What's their response? They refuse to be reasoned with, rather "the door" -the hurdle that blocks their logic- "holds." Unlike Superman who breaks the literal door, Alexie cannot break the figurative door. His goal to save the "sullen" childrens' lives is shattered by their pertinence satisfaction with the status quo.

Reading this article made me think about my experiences with reading and writing growing up. Learning to read saved Alexie's life. I do not know if it was a life changing event for me, but I do know, for the most part, it made me who I am today. The value I placed in education, and still do, is the reason for my achievements. Just like Alexie and Superman, it is important for me to break the doors for other people to see the value of a learning and education. Forget about a college education, if you want to, learning is key. Do not misinterpret my advice, as perhaps to say, I am against a college education. I am in college. Yet, I do know growth is more than been in a college setting. You have to learn in college to succeed. Just because you go to college does not make you any more mature or knowledgeable than the other person. It is about making use of what you are given, through formal education or informal education. Thus, I have to show the generation behind me the satisfaction of being yourself and trying your best to improve yourself in all aspects of life be it spiritual, moral or intellectual. I may not "break the door," at least not for all, but I can definitely say I tried.