Improving Voiceover

I learned that it needs to be completely quiet when you are recording your voice. When there is noise going on in the background, it makes it very hard to understand what the person is saying. I learned that the medium needs to be consistent. If the person that I listened to wants to improve her video, she really needs to make sure that there is no noise in the background. There needs to be absolute silence. One way that I can improve my video is making sure that there is music to go with my voice and not just me talking. I also need to try to make it more lively and fun.

Reflection on Arguing

One thing that I learned while researching physician-assisted suicide is that a lot of people have different opinions. Some see it as an act of compassion or as a way to end a difficult situation due to disease while others see it as devaluing and selfish. I have always seen physician-assisted suicide as selfish and devaluing, and it really surprised me to see that other people saw it that way too. I expected more people to view physician-assisted suicide as a means of ending the suffering of the ones with the disease. I also learned new ways to look at physician-assisted suicide from the other forum writers. For example, Ira Byock said that society should discourage physician-assisted suicide not encourage it, and that there are cures being discovered everyday so that it is not needed. I had always seen the cures perspective, but I had never thought about society encouraging it. I do not really feel like society encourages physician-assisted suicide, but I do believe that society urges people to give up when things become rough which is what I believe physician-assisted suicide does. I also learned that I have a decent writing strategy. I love to organize my thoughts first before jumping into the paper. When I just jump in, it is a mess. I like to write down all of my information first to make sure that I have enough, and then I try to go back and use what is necessary.

One of the two questions that I have after composing this project is how do you know if you refuted something or someone correctly. I was struggling with that in the paper. I was not sure if I refuted the topic or the two debaters of the forum correctly. I feel like I did by using facts to prove why physician-assisted suicide should not be legal, but I am very skeptical. The other question I have is how do you know if your writing strategies are working and also which ones are best for what paper. I feel like mine work most of the time, but I really struggled with using my writing strategies for this paper. At first, I felt like my paper was a complete mess. Everything that I normally do for a paper seemed to not work at all. I tried to organize my thoughts correctly and then start, but that did not seem to work. The only writing strategy I used was getting all the information and writing it down. The reason why this paper was such a struggle for me was, because at the start of the paper, I had a lot going on. I was sick with an upper respiratory infection, and I had a sociology exam to study for. Being sick, trying to study for an exam, and starting a paper were not a good mix.

One opinion that I have after completing this project is that I stress out having to write papers when I am sick or studying for another class. This was the most difficult paper that I have had to do in college, because of all the things that I was going through that week. However, I was able to complete every assignment and felt good about my accomplishments.

Mistakes

One big mistake that I have been making in writing this semester is redundancy. I have a tendency to repeat myself a lot to make sure that my point is getting across. I have come to realize that this is not a good idea. I have learned that I can still get my point across without repeating myself two or three times. Being redundant has caused me to receive a lower grade in all of my papers. Even though there are more things that I still need to work on in my writing, redundancy is probably the biggest issue. I hope that by the end of this semester, I will learn how to stop being so redundant in my papers.

Argument

I have seen persuasion on the screens of my dorm with the teachers telling us to go to class. They use pathos by telling us that if we do not go, we will pay the price or our grades will suffer. Nobody wants to start failing their first semester of college. They are persuading us to go to class in order for us to get a good education and make something out of ourselves. They have good intentions, and it makes it seem like the teachers actually care if we go to class. These photos have been really effective, and I really like them. They make me feel like people actually care about us.

What I love to learn

I learn to love about about sociology. It is a very interesting way to look at the world and is very interesting. At first, I did not think that I would like it, because I felt like it would be really difficult, but it has been pretty easy. Looking at the world in a imaginative way instead of just black and white is very different. It has caused me to look at things I never would have thought to look at, and it has also caused me to look different at things that I never would have thought of to look at that way.

Racism: Should it be discussed?

Screen Shot 2015-10-09 at 11.18.08 AM  In this scene, this lady is saying that she may be racist, but hopes she is not. This scene influenced my paper; because my paper was about if white people should be able to talk about race. She made it very clear that she did not like to talk about race. Even though she veered off of the subject of if white people should be able to talk about race, the point she made about being a racist really stood out in the video. I made a point to put her statement in my paper, because her statement was very honest. Nobody in the video was as honest as her. Her stating that maybe she is a racist resonated with me, because I wonder how many people would actually say that? Many people claim to not be racist and are truly racist at heart, which makes them a hypocrite. Some are racist and boast about it. There are also many people who truly are not racist and have never considered the possibility of being racist. Being racist is never ok, and no one should ever be or want to be racist, but until this world is gone, there will always be racist people. I really hope more people watch this video, especially her part, and do some soul searching about any racism they may be holding on to.

Screen Shot 2015-10-09 at 11.38.31 AMMy conferences with my teacher always help me. I figure out if I am doing it right, if it is completely messed up, or if I just need to completely start over. I went to meet my teacher about my paper before the day of the conference and the day of the conference. The day before was probably the most helpful, because that day really helped me reorganize my paper. I had all the content, but it was all over the place. She told me that I needed to abandon the thesis I was going with at first, because I was not really talking about that thesis in my paper. When we finally realized what I was trying to convey in my paper, the paper was able to flow a whole lot better. We reorganized my paper to fit the new thesis, and it sounded like what I was trying to convey in the paper. After we finished the thesis, we decided that I needed to break my paper down a little bit more. We added another paragraph, and again, my paper flowed. When we met the second time, my paper flowed well, I had incorporated all of her suggestions in my paper, and I felt very confident when I submitted my final copy.

Screen Shot 2015-10-11 at 8.21.21 PMThis image represents my thesis, because my whole paper is about white and black people. In my thesis, I talk about how white people do not like to discuss race, because they do not want to labeled as racist. They also do not want to offend anybody. This picture shows how there will always be a difference between the color of our skin. When I first started to do my thesis, I was trying to go with pathos, ethos, and logos, but that was not really working well. I made it more simple by writing about how the authors used visual style and editing to get their point across. Writing my thesis in this way helped me get my point across in an efficient way.

 

#notthatbad

I would use the hashtag “not that bad”, because it really has not been as bad as I thought it would be. Analyzing has always been a little hard for me to follow but being in college has really changed that. When we first started doing analysis in this class I thought, “Oh, Lord!!! What in the world are we talking about?” I have never had to analyze when it came to writing so this was unfamiliar territory for me. As we started to talk about analysis more throughout the week, the concept became less fuzzy. I started to understand different ways to look at things. It was actually really interesting to look at one image and think of the different aspects of that image. Not only has it taught me to look at writing in a different way but all of my classes and even things in my life. I am not as afraid of analyzing as I was at first. All in all, analyzing is not that bad.

Collaborative Thinking

I am on the fence when it comes to working with other people. I like it, because it gives people a chance to bounce ideas off of each other. It also may clarify something that someone might be struggling with. I do not like it, because sometimes people do not like to give their all in a group effort. They try to pick the smartest one out of the group and make them do all the work. Collaborative thinking and writing can be a good when everyone does what they are suppose to do.