So far i have examined both the Mississippi Loggers Association website and their Facebook page. I have also scheduled an interview with the director of the MLA and one with my mom who is a former writer for the  MLA magazine. I still need to conduct these interviews and gather the responses into a cohesive research paper. I am concerned that my research might still be bias although I have come up with plans to try and counter act this. Reading about the damaging effects of logging has helped me understand others point of view of logging. I still find that logging is a good thing when done correctly and conservatively. It has been very easy to obtain these interviews because the MLA is a ‘close family’ and are willing to help out with whatever I need. My grandmother saw the director the other day and relayed my phone number and so it was easy to schedule and interview. As for the other interview, it is my mom and that will for sure be easy to get.

The main goal I had in mind when choosing the Mississippi Logger’s Association for my research was to inform readers. I know that not many people know about the community of loggers. There is this typical stereotype that loggers harm the environment when cutting trees; however, I have never found this to be the case. I have seen the good these people do for the community first hand. I hope the readers will leave my paper feeling more informed on the community as a whole and especially how the Mississippi Logger’s Association handles business and keeps the community and environment strong and healthy. At first I was confused on what discourse community to write about when it hit me that my family is involved in one. I did not want everyone to think I took the easy way out. Because of this, I decided to interview someone I had never met instead of someone I live with. It is easy to know my grandfather’s view of the community, but to make sure there is no bias I need to interview someone I have never talked to. I first started by making sure an interview at a later date would be possible. Once I spoke with a few others who said they could get me in contact with the director, I knew this was the community I was going to write about. I had planned on also interviewing my mom who was a writer for the MLA magazine for a couple of years but I decided not to because this could be a bias. I felt that the comments from my peers helped a lot. I really liked the idea of adding context to the specific lexis used by the loggers because it is another way to show insight into the community.

While it was very difficult to pick through information for this draft. I believe i did a good job. One of the ways i always decide what is important is to make a list. I will make a bulleted list of the information, then i will read the prompt and decided which information is the most relevant to the prompt. This is exactly what I did for this draft. I went to the MLA website and wrote the information from there. When I finally had all of it written down,  I could then decide what to leave in and what to leave out. I decided to leave out certain parts of the information that seemed to be repetitive and redundant when it came to the prompt. It takes a lot of hard thinking to narrow down information when you think it is all important but it is not impossible. When constructing my draft, I did two things: looked at the MLA website and called my grandfather to clarify a few terms. Because I already know a lot about this community, I did not have to do a lot of primary research for this draft. That will come in the following major projects. I know of one very important bias I had when drafting this paper which was the fact that my family own a logging business so obviously i think they are good people. It is important to me to look at the community as a whole instead of just my own family; which is how i will contextualize and check this biases. The MLA website is full of facts about the community. It was easy to use these to form an argument that this is a discourse community because the website states many genres and specific goals that they have. In further research I would like to take a deep dive into the website and find information for people who aren’t looking to join the association but just want to know more about it. I also plan to contact the director for more insider information on the community that someone who isn’t a member may not be able to obtain.

Honestly, I don’t really know if i would consider myself a writer. I write for school and for school only. At one point, I tried journaling, but it only lasted for about a week and I got tired of it. One time I felt successful as a writer was sophomore year. My teacher had entered my essay on To Kill a Mockingbird into a local contest in which the winner would get their paper put into the Neshoba County Democrat (our local news paper). I won this contest. Some aspects I would like to work on this year include grammar and getting to the point of my writing. I am really not good at grammar. I kind of just write however I talk, and being from a southern state, that is usually not grammatically correct. When grading my rough draft I would like for my professor to correct any grammar mistakes they see. I don’t necessarily mean every single grammar mistake but if one is seen while reading, mark it. My learning style is different for every class. I am able to learn very easily the way this class is structured; however, for example, for my astronomy class, I have no idea what is going on. I am so lost in that class every day. 

           One thing I found very strong in each essay was the information provided for each discourse community. In the S.P.I.T essay, the writer has an entire portion that is used to describe one of the genres and its respective sub-genres. In the PRSA essay, the writer explains many details about the group. How they communicate, how members can join, and how important their impact can be are all detailed in the essay. I found that personally, the organization of the PRSA essay was a little confusing. There were a few times where some of the same information was stated in different paragraphs. Overall, both essays are very informative and helpful when looking at the inside of a discourse community. Personally, I liked the structure and organization of the S.P.I.T essay more. The clearly labeled portions, by headings, can be very useful when one needs to look for a certain part of an essay. The PRSA essay was informationally organized to an extent. In the beginning, the writer explains why the UCF campus has a large Puerto Rican population. They then go on to explain how to join and the rules of the discourse community. Next, the writer goes on to give the interview portion of the essay. Finally, by closing with the genre portion of the essay, the writer explains the various ways in which the members, along with the general public, can keep up with the organization. Although i mentioned that the structure could be confusing, the conclusion of this essay is very nice.