For the Researched Argument Unit, the course learning outcome that connected to my work the most is the obvious choice, research: students will understand what constitutes credible evidence, how to incorporate evidence in their own writing, and how to use library databases to find sources of evidence. I had to find sources for this paper, as with every paper, but this paper required scholarly sources that I was able to find using the Ole Miss library database. This was my first time using a library database for a paper and it was a very useful tool that I will definitely be using in the future. It was nice to know that the Ole Miss database was most likely not going to lead me to a source that was not a credible one, but I still had to learn how to check to make sure that the author was indeed credible. The hardest part for me was incorporating the evidence I found into my paper. Finding the sources that coincided with my topic was easy and interesting but I kept wanting to summarize everything I had found and really had to work on condensing it and only writing the basics, what the reader needed to know, and filling in the rest with my analysis. As with the other papers I had written, I struggled with analysis but this time I really felt like in the end I nailed it and could see improvement in my analyzing skills since my first paper in this class which was very rewarding. I was really proud of myself when writing this paper for absorbing some of the constructive criticism I had received on the past two papers and working hard to not repeat the mistakes I had made in earlier writings. Overall this paper was the biggest challenge for me but is the paper I have come to be most proud of in this writing class.
Tag: growth
Brain CRQ
This article written by Barbara K. Lipska, a neuroscientist and the director of the Human Brain Collection Core at the National Institute of Mental Health, was unlike any of the other articles that I have read in this class and was very compelling a little scary to think about. What called me from the page was the following, “The M.R.I. scan later that day showed that I indeed had a small brain tumor that was bleeding and blocking my right visual field. I was told it was metastatic melanoma and given what was, in effect, a death sentence. I was a scientist, a triathlete, a wife, mother and grandmother. Then one day my hand vanished, and it was over.” This was a shocking revelation that all of a sudden you could one day not be okay. The thought of my brain being taken over by “tumors, inflammation and severe swelling” causing me to not even be able to see limbs of my body was chilling. Lipska’s piece is so dark and yet is written in the lightest almost playful tone that makes the subject matter easier to swallow. The way she describes, so matter of factly, the strange things that her condition made her do make them almost funny rather then scary for example, “I got lost driving home from work on a route I had taken for decades. I went running in the woods outside my house, barely dressed.” The most alarming part of the article was what I read between the lines. This very highly educated woman, who daily worked with people dealing with mental illness, studying the signs of onset, treatment and symptoms, did not know until almost too late that she was suffering from a nearly fatal condition in her brain. Surley, I thought, she would be familiar with signs of something wrong and take them seriously but instead her thought process was a lot like what I assume mine would be. “I had battled breast cancer in 2009 and melanoma in 2012, but I had never considered the possibility of a brain tumor. I knew immediately that this was the most logical explanation for my symptoms, and yet I quickly dismissed the thought. Instead I headed to a conference room.” The question that this article raised to me was not about the symptoms and effects of her conditions, although those were terrifying, but it is if this highly educated woman did not know about a condition in her body in a region in which she specialized, then how would someone like me know if something were fatally wrong with my body?
Apple Case CRQ
This article is locked and loaded with information and statistics hitting you within seconds of the last fact. As a child of Generation Z, hardly remembering a time with a dial up connection, security breaches on our security blankets a.k.a. phones and laptops, are terrifying and and close to unfathomable. The Apple Case is a scary thought for most people who, like I am are touching an Apple product more hours in the day then not; but, what called me from this article was not a statistic but a quote from Chris Soghoian, the principal technologist at the American Civil Liberties Union. “The court left open the door to surveillance as long as the primary function of the device was intact. So as long as Amazon Echo can tell you what temperature it is or can still play music, that case seems to suggest that the government might be able to force Amazon to spy on you.” Mr. Soghoian’s words were used as main examples of government technological invasion in the past but this particular quote was intriguing, and a little alarming, because it talks about future or present privacy invasion in our homes that we are unaware of masked as a cool new gadget. The gadget to which he is referring is basically a personal home assistant that looks like a speaker. By calling out “her” name “Alexa!” she turns on and answers your questions such as what the weather is, how bad traffic is or can even order your morning coffee or five o’clock cocktail (Manjoo 15). Of course this gadget is cool, its basically one of the next steps to having robots do our laundry, which I thought we would have by now anyway. What is scary is when this “helpful” device becomes dangerous, just like the possibility of smartphone being able to be accessed by the government. If Apple does not stand their ground with this case, our iPhones and Apple products may become something we have to live without. With the release with the next new technological advance instead of being excited, we would be scared and disappointed that the government had to go and ruin a good thing. Even though the Amazon Echo is probably not listening to our conversations within our home, the fact that it is even a possibility, and a growing possibility in the world today, is so wrong. Unfortunately, we can not have the best of both worlds in this situation. The government can not have the tools they need to get one step closer to tracking and shutting down the organization that killed countless American citizens that day in San Bernardino if Apple chooses not to give up their privacy fight. But, if Apple were to give up their privacy fight, our technology would become another terrorist in this already scary world. Instead of getting excited about a new technology, we are worried that it can hear us or data mine us but when did the feelings of paranoia sweep the nation, and why did they?
Works Cited:
Manjoo, Farhad. “The Apple Case Will Grope Its Way Into Your Future.” The New York Times. The New York Times, 24 Feb. 2016. Web. 29 Feb. 2016.