Posted on by Greyson Young

New Audience, New Problems

When Mrs. Forgette told our class that we were going to be making a website about our research paper I knew that there was a catch. Unfortunately for me, I was right. The research paper was ten pages of sophisticated writing directed toward an academic audience but our website was supposed to be aimed at 18 year olds. You wouldn’t think that this would be that big of a problem, but boy would you be wrong. By simply changing the audience I had to rethink my entire paper. I could not simply transfer references, rhetoric, or language from my research paper over to the website. Well, I could but I’m pretty sure that I would have failed the assignment. The real problem with this change wasn’t the age difference, it was the fine print of the audience which I don’t think a lot of the other students noticed. Our research paper was supposed to be an academic audience who was somewhat familiar with the topic at hand. The college students didn’t have a clue about our subjects. This meant that I had to explain more basics in my website than I did in my research paper. I went in with the mindset of teaching chemistry to a toddler; explain the basics in the simplest way you can, and include pictures.

As I started thinking of my new audience, I wondered how I was going to discuss failing schools in a way that not only intrigued them, but made them want to read more. My first draft was AWFUL. I wrote it and it made me bored to read it. I realized that I needed a complete overhaul. I rewrote my articles a couple more times and saw a drastic improvement. I had included anecdotes and several pop cultural references. I do hope that I never have to mention the Kardashians in a college paper again. I felt confident, but when I looked at the site as a whole it was still very bland. It was just text, good text, but nothing else. The first article that I started on was the racial inclusion piece. This text was not great compared to the others and I was having a lot of trouble finding anything to make this particular subject POP to a college audience. While I was watching TV one night, TNT played a commercial for “The Help” and a million ideas came to head. After finding what I believe to be the most perfect gifs for that text, I felt on top of the world. I finished the racial inclusion article around 9 at night and continued working until my entire homepage was done. I used that one idea throughout the whole homepage and was shocked at how great it came together. Now, I might have gotten a little gif heavy, but I doubt that I will ever do something so academically-creative again so I decided to go all out.

I really thought that I would despise this multimodal, maybe because of Powtoon’s looming presence, but I thoroughly enjoyed it.

Posted on by Greyson Young

Weekly Artifact

This week’s artifact is definitely the cause and effect research paper. I have worked on this paper so much this week! I can honestly say that I have never worked harder on any paper than I have on this one. This paper has showed me a new sense of dedication that was required to finished this paper. First off, I had put off starting my paper until last weekend because I assumed that 2000 wouldn’t take me too longer to write. Then, after I had two body paragraphs written, I accidentally deleted my paper and all of my work. So, after a brief moment of aggravation and several minutes yelling into a pillow, I began working again. I set a goal on Sunday that each day of this week I would write a minimum of 400 words a day. I can say that I bested that goal everyday by a pretty good bit. I had 7 pretty good sources from the annotated bibliographies and could have probably gotten by with just using those, but I pushed through the awfulness of citations and added about of dozen more sources. This paper literally made me scream. I wanted to quit this paper more than I have ever wanted to quit before. I have learned a lot about education in Mississippi as well as the writing process. I also learned a few more reasons not to procrastinate including that once you finally get started, you might have to start all over again due to an act of God, so start early in case that happens.

Posted on by Greyson Young

Annotated Bibliographies Unit Reflection

The research that I have done this semester has really changed the way that I think of things. I had really strong views on almost every myth at the beginning of the research period. By the time I had finished, I had a completely new way of thinking about everything. When I looked at political correctness, I knew that it could be bad but the thought of it leading to terrorist attacks and other criminal acts had never crossed my mind. With the annotated bibliographies, I was able to see education in Mississippi in an entirely different way, and I have lived here my whole life. I think that these research projects have taught me that nothing is exactly as it seems, you need to do a little researching. I am really glad that we did these annotated bibliographies instead of going straight into the research paper, because the first myth that I chose was awful. I looked at three myths before I settled on the one about social class and education. My first choice, “George Orwell meet Mark Zuckerberg”, looked interesting at first glance but once I began to research the topic I found that it was probably the biggest bore in the book. I would have say that the most surprising thing to come from research is how specific sources can get. When I started looking at social class and education, I read a lot of broad articles that pretty much summed up what Anyon talked about in the textbook. There were thousands of articles on the Ole Miss library database that popped up when I searched this topic, but none of them were different enough to advance me further into the researching process. I think I had made it to the six or seventh page of the library search results when I saw an article about education statistics in America with data from each state. I saw that Mississippi ranked lowest in almost everything which got me thinking. So, I searched “Mississippi Education Social Class”. This was the moment that my paper began to take shape. Each article that I found was so specific: “Mississippi Delta Education Hindered by Social Class”. I had hit the jackpot! I think that the researching process forces you to simplify your searches in order to get you to the sweet spot. One of the biggest lessons that I am going to take away from this project is not to give up. After throwing out my first three myths I felt like my obituary was going to say “Death by Annotated Bibliographies”. Once I had picked a myth, I was faced with the challenge of actually doing the research, writing the bibliographies, and putting everything neatly on a word document before Friday – this was Sunday. On Sunday and Monday I wrote all eight of my bibliographies and thought that every writing particle in my mind had been sucked dry. I never wanted to look at an annotated bibliography again. But, I knew that I had to look at them again and not give up if I wanted to get a good grade. I was so committed to these little monstrosities that I even went to conference with Mrs. Forgette to make sure that I was doing them right. I know that the annotated bibliographies were extremely helpful and that I learned valuable lessons, but I am beyond happy that they are over.

Posted on by Greyson Young · 1 Comment

Argument 3-2-1 Unit Reflection

While writing this project, I learned a lot about the writing process. This was the first project where we had to really focus on our citations, which was a big obstacle for me. Up until a week ago I had never cited a paper in MLA format, so I had to rely heavily on an MLA format book I bought in the Union. I think that it took me an entire afternoon to figure out how to properly cite my paper, but now I feel like I could cite with my eyes closed. Even though it seems like it should be common knowledge, I learned that research is the key to a good paper. I wish that I could say that I didn’t spend an entire week solely looking up research, but if I did I would be a liar. There were a lot of differing arguments in The New York Times for my topic, so I had to be very specific in finding my research. It took my a while to finally start discovering information, but once I did it felt as if I was blazing through articles. At the end of the drafting process, I think I had printed out over fifteen different articles and completely drained the ink from my printer. The most important thing that I learned was discussed in class on Friday. When we did the project focusing on writing style, it hit me that I had a real problem with this. When Mrs. Forgette started taking out unnecessary words and stabilizing the flow of the paragraphs I knew that if I wanted to improve my grade I needed to do that. I will admit that once I finish a paper I think that it is time to submit when I really should be reading over it with a fine comb. I tried to do this for my argument and trust me when I say that nearly one hundred words came out.

One of the biggest questions I had throughout the writing process was using 1st person. I faintly remember someone, perhaps Mrs. Forgette, say that we shouldn’t really use 1st person in the unit because it needs to be credible. I tried to google it to see the correct way but there were way too many conflicting responses. When it came time for the peer review Wiki, I got a comment back that said I needed to use more 1st person in my paper to make it more relatable, which through me for a loop. I decided to write my paper without talking about “I” but about “we”. Whenever I addressed something that needed to be done, I would say “we need to ….”. I felt like because this issue pertains to everyone, we shouldn’t exclude people, but be united instead. Another question I had was with the researching criteria. We had to use research that came from the library guides only, which bugged the everliving crap out of me. I understand that this unit is all about credibility but if I can find a source that is 100% credible through regular google I think that I should be able to use it. Maybe I feel this way because I found a good ten sources from regular google before I actually read the instructions and saw that none of those were going to work. I blame myself for that one.

The greatest opinion that I have after this project is that seriousness of the drinking problem. I have grown up around people that drink, and I knew that coming to college I would be around more people that drink. I never would have imagined how bad the problem until I read all of the statistics from research. It was scary to see all of the horrific numbers and then to think that its literally happening all around me. I think that everyone should inform themselves on this issue, because it truly effects every single one of us.