Last Blog

How have your experiences with revision changed the way you view your own writing and style?

My experience in English 101 as well as English 102 has truly given me a new outlook on my own writing style. At the start of both of these classes i never really took into consideration on how I could improve my writing, but as time went on I quickly began to learn new ways to successfully improve the essays that I had been working on. Before, I would only go through my essays correcting punctuation and such things, but now as a more developed writer, I am now able to criticize my own writing in a positive way which has allowed me to do much better work. This experience in revision has made me realize that my best work comes from topics where I am able to create my own ideas off of research that I have made. This is not true in all occasions because I feel like my writing flows the best when I am able to simply state my own ideas within my own papers that I have created. Overall, my experience with revision in this year only has developed me into a much stronger writer, and with that I have found what areas I am strongest in as well as where I need to improve.

Essay 4

The first source i chose was an online article from the New York Times titled, "Steroids". The article starts off by explaining what steroids are and the effects that occur from taking them. "Anabolic steroids are synthetic hormones that can help an athlete build bigger muscles far faster than with workouts alone" (NY Times). From these findings many athletes have begun to use this drug to gain muscle and stamina at a much faster rate. We than learn that most sports to this day have baned steroids, but in previous years it was a little different. Starting in the 1950's the Russians discovered the effects of steroids and from than on athletes have cheated their way through their sports career by using this drug (NY Times). The article than goes to talk about how steroids in baseball is such a major issue. The author talks about how some of the most famous sports stories of the past decade have been ruined because the player had previously used steroids. It is to bad this this happened to some athletes but they did cheat, and they should pay the consequences.

The second source i found was from CBS News, titled, "The Truth About Steroids and Sports." The article starts out by saying that everyone who enjoys watching sports should agree that steroids are wrong. The debate of this has been an issue for the previous decades, especially in baseball. "They're among a number of players facing questions over former Senator George Mitchell's recent report linking 89 major leaguers to performance-enhancing drugs" (CBS News). Outside of baseball, the article talks about how people with poor health use the drug to help out with the healing process. Patients with cancer and aids have been known to use the drug, to increase their energy as well as their appetite. "I noticed a change in my energy level. I noticed a change in my appetite. I noticed a change in how much I could push at the gym," says Berry Tyson who is a victim of aids (CBS News).

blogggg

For the papers that I have written in English 101 I have only had to use a few sources in my writing. Usually, when looking for a source I start with the library website that WSU has to offer. I find it very helpful because you can narrow your topics down so you can get exactly what you are looking for. Once I have found a source using the library website, depending on the topic of my paper I will try and find the article that is the most recent. This is a good way to go about finding sources because it will allow you to gather the most up to date information, instead of attempting to cite an article that was wrote ten years earlier. I also have found Google to be a very helpful website as well. Google has allowed me to browse through thousands of different sources to find the correct information that I’m looking for. Even though not all of the information that I find is credible I have found a lot of reliable information that has really helped in my writing. If I am not sure of whether or not a website is credible I will do a background check on the creator of the website or the author to make sure that the information I am obtaining is worth using in my work. At this point in my research I have found that I have been successful in finding credible sources, but there still is a few things that I could improve to enhance the quality of my searches. First off, I believe that even though I have been occasionally using the library as a way to find sources, I should use it as the number one place to search for sources for my essays. I could also try and stay away from the easy way out like Wikipedia and even Google as a way to effectively find sources.

Kellogs article response

The significance of this article is to explain why and how Kellogg's has decided to take on this new form of advertisement through the use of lazer printing. Of course everyone has noticed the Kellogg's brand at some point in their life, but for some reason Kelloggs believes that if they lazer imprint their slogan on the actual pieces of cereal than the public will now that they are in fact eating the Kellogg's brand, and not another store name brand cereal. From this, Kelloggs wants its customers to now that they do not make cereals for any other brands. This article could be used in essay three because it brings in the idea of advertisements and food, and how a companies image can increase through the use of a new type of advertising campaign. In Kellogg's case, it is to put their label on each individual piece of cereal that they produce. It could be used in my paper if i end up talking about how food advertisements have changed and effected how a product has been sold to its customers, or maybe how companies come up with new ideas to keep their image positive.

http://www.dailymail.co.uk/sciencetech/article-1220135/Kelloggs-plan-use-laser-burn-logo-individual-corn-flakes-stamp-fakes.html

Norman Borlaug Response

The Norman Borlaug articles main purpose is to basically explain what the world needs to do in order to stop the world hunger issue. At the end of the quarter century, it is projected that the world will have 8.3 billion people inhabiting and consuming the worlds resources (Borlaug). If that statistic is accurate than the world must do something in order to fix the problem or else mostly everyone will go hungry. From this, scientists have been looking into ways to stop this problem through the use of biotechnology. For example, progress has been made into developing cereal variates that can adapt easier to soils that in reality might not be the healthiest places to grow. Since this step has been made, certain cereals can now be harvested in many new places because more arable land has been opened to grow on. Even though this sounds like a great plan, there is the anti science crowd who thinks differently. The fact that these groups do not realize is that if a change is not made in the way we grow our crops, their is no possible way that the world will be able to survive if there is 8.3 billion people trying to survive on our planet.

Chapters 6 and 7 They Say I Say

In chapter six, writer Jane Tompkins starts out by talking about her experience as a writer and how readers criticism is extremely important to take in while revising your work. The book states: "even though most of us are upset with the idea of someone criticizing our work...it can actually work to our advantage" (They say 74). I would definitely have to agree with this statement because when you incoorperate the ideas of others into your writing it will always give you a competitive advantage over the argument or idea you are trying to state. Even if you dont always agree with what the reader is criticizing you on, it is always good to take note on the advise that they are trying to give you.

Chapter seven than goes on to talk about this issue of "so what" and "who cares" when being applied to your writing. As a writer, you always have to let your reader know exactly what the text is about and why they should even care. In reality though, "these questions are usually left unanswered... because writers and speakers assume the audience knows or will figure out the answers on their own" (They say 88). That's why it is so important for the writer to clearly give the reader an idea of what they are talking about.

Chapter 16 and 17

In chapter 16, Michael Pollen begins to discuss the idea of "good to eat, good to think" through the three main factors of taste, cooking, and appetite. Pollen first brings up the subject of specialized eaters and how animals make their food choices. The monarch butterfly for example, notices milkweed as food and everything else in the environment is not food. I found this to be very interesting because it allows many animals to only focus on one food group. If this particular food group goes away than their animal group will go extinct, unlike the human and the rat who can survive off basically anything that comes their way. Pollen that continues to talk about taste, and how sweetness, bitterness, and disgust are major factors that show what we can and cannot eat. From there, the idea of cooking is brought upon by Pollen, in which he states that, "cooking, one of the omnivores most cleverest tools, opened up whole new vistas of edibility" (Pollen, 293). I would have to agree with this because before the time of cooking, the foods that we ate had no way of bringing out all the nutrients that certain provisions had to offer. Appetite is the last idea that Pollen had to offer, and we notice this by the growing amount of eating disorders in today's society. Harvey Levenstein sums this up perfectly by saying, "that taste is not a true guide to what should be eaten ; that one should not simply eat what one enjoys" (Pollen, 300).

Chapter 17 goes on to talk about the ethics of eating animals. Many people believe that the idea of eating a once lived animal is completely immoral. That's why many people in today's world have decided to make the switch from a carnivore lifestyle to the vegetarian or vegan diet. For me personally i do not see the problem in eating a perfectly cooked steak but for other people they see the steak as cow that once a leaving being and it brings them away from that diet. I agree with Pollen on the fact "that humans have been eating animals for tens of thousands of years without to much ethical heartburn," so why stop now (Pollen, 305)?