Call for Papers: Discovering Myself as a Writer

          For this reflective blog post, I would really like to elaborate on my writing process. In documenting our writing processes during class for our responses to the Calls for Papers, I realized that my writing process has always been the same. I have even wondered if changing my writing process and switching things up would make me a better, more creative, structured writer. Nevertheless, in regards to my current writing process, writing an introduction to any piece of work has always been the hardest part of an essay for me. Finding ways to creatively set a tone in the beginning of papers has always been more difficult in my opinion because simply stating what I'm going to talk about has never seemed like much of an attention-grabber, but more of a boring approach. However, once setting the tone in the first paragraph, it normally becomes easier to efficiently write the rest of the paper. I frequently use an online thesaurus to avoid using specific words repeatedly, as I feel this makes my writing less appealing; I also try to avoid using words that are too difficult to comprehend, words that people rarely use, as this also is a deterrent for most readers. When I wrote my response to the Force of Fiction, the flashcards we wrote on during class were my main guide to writing my response because I focused all of my flashcards on that specific call for papers. What took the most time when writing that response was organizing the flashcards in a way that made sense for the response so that the information used wasn't completely random. Lastly, of any essay of course, is the conclusion which typically sums up the essay as a whole. This is also a hard part of writing any essay to me because I have a hard time restating the thesis without sounding so repetitive. So instead, for this response to the Force of Fiction, I decided to end with an idea, but I do feel as if my conclusion could have been a lot stronger to sum up my paper and make it more interesting.

My Toy Hack Reflection

          At first, creating my toy hack was a very complicated, difficult process. I later found that, in order to choose the topic I wanted to represent my make cycle 3 with, I had to first search for a problem that bothered or puzzled me first, then find a way to relate it to science. This was easier than the initial process of choosing a scientific problem that I could relate to personally. When I did this, I realized that an issue I could best relate to was college in terms of why I am here, what brought me here, what I intend to achieve at this university or the next, etc. I especially wanted my audience to understand this question to, so I kept the overall question very broad: "Why will you go to college?"

 Reflecting on this, I wish I had asked this question in present-tense; for example: "Why are you here at UNCC?" or "What brought you to this university?" 

           Instead of leaving my project with the first question for the reader to ponder, I decided to give 3 basic reasons that many people consider when choosing a university to attend or even whether or not to attend a university to begin with. However, since this was a toy hack, I had to find some sort of way to visually represent these three scenarios. I considered borrowing my brother's toys or legos, but since most people did the same I decided to use my old stuffed animals from when I was little. Below are the two first scenarios, which tie more to the social aspects of college: 

This last picture for my toy hack represents the most broad and likely answer to my initial question: 

Meta-Blog Reflection

        Looking back on my first week of school and all of the activities we did and how I responded to them, I've begun to realize that I come off as really technical. I am not sure if that is a good thing. I always attempt to convey how seriously I take my education, but I soon realized that technicalities weren't a defining factor in this class and that Lacy wanted us to think outside of the box. I've never considered myself to be a very creative person, so when she told us that doing things that we weren't comfortable with was a great way to earn the grade for this class, I felt very challenged. Though this class doesn't require a large Quantity of work, it requires a greater Quality in every task we do. The activities we have done spark deeper thought, and I wish I could have represented myself as more of a person- narrating my experiences and connecting it to my posts. If someone read my blog or my G+ posts and comments, they probably wouldn't be able to deduce much about who I am as a person because my posts remain quite vague: "I also enjoyed talking about literacy and writing in response to Gawandi. From this I have learned that we always have a purpose when we write, whether our opinions or objectives are directly stated or not." In my posts, I tend to reflect on the tasks we completed that I enjoyed, but not my deeper or more negative thoughts about what I could do to improve my writing. If I could do things differently, I would somewhat choose to appear less optimistic and a little more realistic. 

Contemplating Make Cycle 2

               Make Cycles one and two were both very similar in that we were relating what science is viewed as compared to what it actually is. For make cycle 1, we found creative ways to represent ourselves, either with words, physical representations or pictures. Make cycle 2 was harder because we now had to think outside of the box by noticing scientific observations of the world compared to how we narrate scientific knowledge. We completed field experience one pagers to help us get an idea of how the outer world views and does science. 

                 For my make cycle 2, I chose to draw a picture of things we normally wouldn't think of as science in a place where we would normally "do science", such as a science laboratory. In retrospect, I wish I'd have done more research on scientific laws so that I could better tie the idea of all the science that surrounds us to the idea of what We typically consider science. However, I am happy with my Make cycle 2 because I find it pleasing that my project was rhetorical in that a laboratory is a place where we typically think of carrying out scientific activities, and I was able to point out all of the other science taking place that we don't normally think of. 

Writing & Rhetoric: Week 3

            This class continues to diverge greatly from any of my past English classes, or any class for that matter. One of my favorite activities over the course of the past three weeks was watching the videos about natural gases. This topic was my favorite because I have never talked about the truth in such detail or openly discussed it with other classmates. We first watched a commercial from America's Natural Gas Alliance, which showed much bias in terms of the viewpoint that the information was coming from- farmers, owner, founder, etc. They claimed that natural gas is a safe thing and their commercial was more about the idea of natural gas rather than the actual science of how it is derived. This only made the next video we watched more intriguing in that it spoke negatively about natural gas and the dangers of it and how it is actually obtained, whereas the last video only covered the benefits and advantages of natural gas. 

            Watching these videos me realize that a lot of what we "know" (accepted truths) are a combination of numerous views and may not be true after all. One of my favorite quotes about science that I heard months ago from Adam Savage is "the only difference between science and screwing around is writing it down". This activity in class also reminded me that truth depends on who is telling the story in our world and who has the authority to call it truth. Aside from openly discussing truth in English 1103, I also enjoyed talking about literacy and writing in response to Gawandi. From this I have learned that we always have a purpose when we write, whether our opinions or objectives are directly stated or not. I also came to realize that what we choose to write and how we choose to write it ties into our identities. I could relate this to my own writing just by reviewing what I've chosen to write about for the five minutes that we worked on our writing into the day. So far, everything we've done in this class has only helped me find out more about myself, along with finding my strengths and weaknesses in creativity, writing and the way I intend to portray myself versus the way I actually do. 

My First Week

               Hello readers. I was a little confused with the whole blogging process and posting to our G+ community, so this is a bit late. However, I vividly remember my first week, so the timing doesn't take out any of the truth or feeling in my writing. I would first like to say that although my first week of college was a confusing adventure, this English class surprised me even more. I didn't quite understand how science and writing could possibly be linked together, especially not in the course of an entire semester. 

               On the other hand, I also found this very interesting and I thoroughly enjoyed one of our first activities- choosing pictures and attempting to answer the questions posted on the pictures. It was a fun chance to test my scientific knowledge at random, though I know we weren't actually expected to fully understand the answer to the questions we were given. I may be wrong, but I think the purpose of the activity was mainly to provide "food for thought". This, along with our impromptu games and activities that helped us get to know each other, drew a definite separating line between this class and any of my other English classes in the past. I was expecting ten page papers; instead I've already found that this method may be more effective than others in showing me that writing is more of an expression, rather than reciting facts you already know. Maybe I'll even learn more about myself.