Journal 2
My drafting process begins with looking at the prompt that has been previously given to me. I then think about what I am going to put into my essay or piece. I proceed to just type everything that I want to say down that had come into my head as the words come to my mind. After I am done with writing my first draft of an essay I always make sure to reread over whatever I write to make sure that it is grammatically acceptable and sounds all right. I always make sure that I have the correct punctuation in the correct areas. Finally, I make sure that the sentence structure makes sense, and everything flows smoothly from one sentence the next. So, in other words I partially revise my essay multiple times in multiple different ways.
When I was revising my paper, I begin by looking for any punctuation mistakes that I may have missed the first time around. I then try and fix any sentence structure mistakes to make the paper flow. The next step I take is to fix anything I may have missed in the original prompt. This is the process that I have been using since I first began revising papers. This works for me because I can take this step by step instead of just looking for every little detail straight through the paper. I usually read the paper through at least three times, and one of the reads is out loud. When I read the paper out loud, I can hear if my sentences make any sense or if they flow nicely. How I revise my paper helps me because I can better understand what I need to complete. Also, when I am fixing it in my actual paper it helps me become better organized.
Journal 3
The things that I found helpful was in the section framing every quotation. I found this helpful because it is teaching how to actually frame a quote. The templates for introducing a quotation is helpful because it gives examples how to frame the quotes. It gives many different examples. Can you overanalyze a quote was helpful because it tells you whether or not to actually explain and how much to explain? Finally, how not to introduce a quote explained how not to introduce a quote.
The things that I like through this chapter included the templating and how not to introduce the quotes. I liked the different templates because it showed a lot of different examples of how to introduce a quote. I also liked how they worded and included the information in the section about how not to introduce a quote.
Journal 4
This essay was about Soylent, a meal replacement strategy. Widdicombe begins her essay by introducing us to Rob Rinehart, who is the founder of Soylent, and why he actually decided to start this company. He went through many different processes of saving money with food, such as living of off McDonald’s and saying, “he tried out his own version of ‘Super Size Me’” and then eating an all kale diet etc., but nothing seemed to save him a lot of money. He then found the food replacement on the Internet. Rhinehart stopped eating food after that and after thirty days he was much healthier. Widdicombe discusses throughout the essay the speculation towards Soylent, even to go as far as to compare it to movies, and how some people were otherwise one hundred percent for it. She also explains the development of Soylent and how it grows from being just Rhinehart to his roommates to a huge company that they ship all over the United States. Widdicombe concludes with her living off Soylent and how it is affecting her. Other people are also living of off Soylent and they put in their inputs of how well the product tastes when they do a DIY or even when they buy from the company.
This essay changed my way of thinking because of how Widdicombe wrote it. She didn’t write it in a fluent delivery, it came out in different passages of time and would jump all over the place. This changed my way of thinking because it showed me that not all essays, especially long essays, have to be perfectly fluent. She may have changed my mind a little on Soylent due to the calories but not the texture or the sight. I thought it was interesting though how it changed Rhinehart’s health so drastically in thirty days just from drinking Soylent saying “[he felt] like a million dollar man”, that possibly also could have changed my mind because it seems a lot healthier. I also appreciated that when Widdicombe was getting her Soylent it asked her to “plug [in] your height, weight, age, and activity level” meaning that they were actually considering the person that you are and not just for you to order the Soylent.
Journal 5
In They Say/I say, I really liked that they included a lot of examples. I also found this helpful because they would say something in their paragraph and then turn around and show you what they were trying to explain. Including the Martin Luther King Jr letter was also very interesting because they were talking a lot about argument and this letter is a lot about the opposition. I also liked that they used templates, and a lot of them, to show how to format certain things like an argument. This I also found really helpful because they didn’t only show one way to accomplish what you wanted they showed many different formats. I also liked that they used a cartoon to prove their point in the beginning on page 5. This was showing that you need to explain your argument and not just state your point. Finally, I really liked that they were constantly using different references throughout the chapter such as “putting in your oar” it made it a lot more interesting and not just a boring read.
Journal 6
https://files.uneportfolio.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/1284/2018/10/Tom-Smit1.pdf
https://files.uneportfolio.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/1284/2018/10/Braden-Hiltz-2.pdf
https://files.uneportfolio.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/1284/2018/10/Food-Essay1-Cobey.pdf
Journal 7
Journal 8
I found it helpful when they included the templates. Also, I think it was helpful when they are talking about opening a debate and how they used an example template to show how to do it. Next, I think it is interesting when they used different forms of debate and shows how each one is different. Finally, when they are discussing the “they say” it is important because they are discussing what you are responding to.
Journal 9
I spent a good chunk of my revision time making sure my sentences were fluent and that everything actually made sense when in a whole paragraph instead of being a choppy hot mess. I also spent a lot of time making sure I had all of my small grammatical mistakes in line because in my first time through I usually never focus on that its in my revision and editing process that I focus on this part. Finally I focused in on my thesis to try and tie it into my paper and make it sound like a thesis statement as best as I possibly could. I would change how I actually go about my editing and revision process because I focus small then go large and I tend to still miss some mistakes because I’m focusing on details that aren’t necessary when I should focus in more on stuff like my sentence structures and not just the flow of the paper. This differs from my past revision approaches because in the past I would do just a quick read through to make sure everything made sense and I didn’t have any spelling mistakes. I didn’t really focus on any major issues in my paper and I would wait for my teacher to give me a grade and I would just go n and fix it. This process kind of fit with my expectations. I didn’t really expect the peer review to be in “big” groups, I expected it to be groups of two and you would edit each others. I do like how we had the others insight but I wasn’t expecting that many papers to be reviewed or the letter in the end that had to be 600 words.
Journal 10
“For the rise of Julia Child as a figure of cultural consequence-along with Alice Waters and Mario Batali and Martha Stewart and Emeril Lagasse and whoever is crowned the next Food Network star- has, paradoxically, coincided with the rise of fast food, home-meal replacements and the decline and fall of everyday home cooking.” (Pollan 4)
I agree with this point, but I also slightly disagree with this. I disagree because a lot of families still cook meals for their dinners and sometimes they are homemade. Some families come home after a long day of work and still make a homemade meal. I agree with this because a lot of families are starting to go out to eat or order take out more and more and skipping the process of cooking. A lot of people are also skipping the actual process of cooking for tv dinner meals and the quickness of these meals. Pollan states that cooking has declined in the household and that “is no longer obligatory” for women or men to be in the kitchen cooking. Many people don’t see cooking as a necessity because they can just microwave what they need to eat and don’t have to take the actual time to cook.
“Many of today’s cooking programs rely unapologetically on ingredients that themselves contain lots of ingredients: canned soups, jarred mayonnaise, frozen vegetable, powdered sauces, vanilla wafers, limeade concentrate, Marshmallow Fluff. This probably shouldn’t surprise us: processed foods have so thoroughly colonized the American kitchen and diet and they have refined what passes today for cooking, not to mention food.” (Pollan 7)
I agree with this because everything that is in the kitchen now is processed. Pretty much the only thing you can get that isn’t processed is fruits and vegetables from the farms or organic foods that are very expensive. Foods that aren’t processed tend to cost a lot more. Therefore, people will go with the option that is cheaper and get more processed foods. This means that it is easier for processed food to be present in households and to be used in a lot more meals. As Pollan puts it “many of these convenience foods have been sold to women as tools of liberation.” These processed foods were seen as freedom from cooking and being able to spend more time doing other things such as watching cooking shows, and that’s what most families did after processed food with a quick cooking time came out. The liberation and time were good things for women as they were now able to do less cooking but were able to claim that they made the meals.
“Since 1967, we’ve added 167 hours- the equivalent of a month’s full-time labor- to a total amount of time we spend at work each year, and in households where both parents work, the figure is more like 400 hours. Americans today spend more time working than people in any other industrialized nation- [. . .]” (Pollan 14)
I agree with this statement because a lot of people now work more than they spend time cooking and with their families. Many people especially women, ever sense they joined the work force, began to spend less and less time cooking. They joined the work force to get a sense of freedom and this sense of freedom meant that they began to spend less time cooking. Pollan is showing his point here because people are not cooking anymore, and they are spending more time in the work force. Then they will come home, and they will spend their time doing other things like watching a cooking show, browsing the internet, or something else besides cooking. They are taking less time doing housewife things and more equality things between men and women. As Pollan said Americans spend a lot more time in the work force than any other country that is industrialized other countries such as France or England have more time to spend in the kitchen than in the office.
Journal 11
One thing that I found helpful was how they described the stating how authors subtly introduce that it is not their own work. This was helpful because they are showing how to see and figure out how to decipher their own statement vs another person’s. The they say is unstated was helpful because it was showing how to display a counterargument. This is helpful because they just summarize everything, and you must decide whose opinion is who’s, and this section is also helping you decipher how to do this. Finally, challenging texts was helpful because it explained how to look at a challenging text and be able to pick out an argument from all the words. Also, it is teaching you to listen to all the arguments before making your point.
Journal 12
“Our relationships with animals can also be emotionally complicated”
This is important to the author’s argument because he begins his essay discussing different people who thought they had a moral obligation to become a vegetarian/vegan. Also, it is showing that some people have a problem with eating meat and keeping pets in their household while some people just don’t. This strengthens his argument because he has started by showing us people who have conflicted with these feelings but made their own choice, whether it be to be and vegetarian/vegan or not to be.
“In addition, cats, unlike snakes, are recreational killers. It is estimated that a billion small animals a year fall victim to the hunting instincts of our pet cats”
This is supporting the author’s argument because he is discussing that impact of feeding animals to other animals. This came shortly after he was accused of feeding kittens to his pet snake so then he started thinking about how much meat other animals actually eat even if it isn’t in animal form. This supports his argument of the morality of eating meat because he had a pet that had to eat meat, and after being falsely accused of feeding his snake kittens he started thinking about how many other animals actually eat meat even if it isn’t in the same form as a snake.
“In the weeks after I was accused of feeding kittens to boas, I found myself thinking more about the paradoxes associated with our relationships with animals and less about my animal behavior studies”
This is strengthen his argument because the relationships that people have with animals are very strange. Some people believe that dogs are family while others believe that they are the devil. The relationship that we have with animals as Herzog says is interesting as every person has a different take on every relationship with that animal. It could be a snake and a person could absolutely despise it but it could be a puppy and everyone wants it. The relationships that people take on are very unique.
Journal 13
On this paper I spent considerably more time and energy into it than on my last paper. I began my process by finding all the quotes that I was going to use throughout and where I thought that they would fit best. My next step was that I actually put them into sentences that would fit with the quote. I know that this paper is better than my last because I spent more time explaining my quotes, revising my paper, and actually writing my paper. I spent most of my time explaining my quote on this paper and trying to tie in the prompt. I should have tried to spend more time on revising than I actually did.
Journal 14
My thinking hasn’t changed since I first read “Consider the Lobster.” It hasn’t because I still believe that you need to be able to eat and that lobster is meat. It would be the same thing if it were a lion hunting for its prey. The things that seem more obvious the second time around is why PETA was so intense in trying to save the lobster. The thing that was still murky to me was the structure of this essay. The way that Wallace structured his essay was very confusing since he would go from the Maine Lobster Festival to a story back to the Maine Lobster Festival.
Journal 15
Question1: I think what is lost when you are giving up meat is a lot of protein that your body essentially needs in order to grow. They say that that you can get it from nuts and beans, but you don’t get as much from those foods. Also, people are giving up some of the fulfilling foods. Speaking to vegans and vegetarians they sometimes miss the meat that they have given up, but they believe that what they are doing is the right thing for humanity. What Foer believes that he is gaining is his ethics. He adds in some statistics right after this paragraph about where most meat in America is coming from a and he believes that raising his kids vegetarian and himself giving up meat is going to be beneficial to the economy and to the animals who are on these farms. I think that he is really only giving up eating meat just to say he gained an ethical stand point.
Question 2: People don’t rape animals when they are horny for many reasons besides the fact that it is just morally wrong. There are some people who do rape animals when they believe they need satisfaction but that is absolutely wrong. It though is not the same as eating an animal when we are hungry. A person eats meat when they are hungry because it is the circle of life. It is the same as us eating plants, but you don’t see people advocating for people to stop eating the plants because it is morally and ethically wrong. It is the circle of life and people need to eat to survive. Most of our protein comes from meat and we need protein to grow healthy. It is morally wrong that people confine the animals and how many people are treating the animals before they kill them for our benefits, but most don’t actually think about this. A lot of people just think about the food that they are eating and not where the food is coming from or what has happened to it before it has come to their dinner plates.
Journal 16
Planting a naysayer in your text, meaning that you want to include a person who will help lead you text. This is helpful because this will help me further my understanding of an argumentative essay and how to put my viewpoints into play. All of the templates were also very helpful because it puts the different ways that I can create an argument into perspective. Also, in They Say/ I Say they discuss how putting labels on people and the groups of people that you are talking about might not always be the best idea as you may anger them. This is helpful with my writing so that next time when I am discussing a large group of similar people I won’t label them, and I will make sure that if I am putting a label to them I am putting a correct, nice label. Next you want to be careful that people won’t take your objections over your argument. So, you want to make a more compelling argument that will turn people away from your objections. This is helpful because it reminds me that your argument always has to be stronger and that you can add some objections, but it can turn people away so make a stronger argument.
Journal 17
Journal 18
In my revision process on this essay after the peer review, I first began with finishing the essay. I then read it over to make sure that it made sense and flowed. I also made sure that my essay was grammatically correct, such as with my punctuation and spelling. Then I made sure that I had a strong thesis that supported my essay. I checked to make sure that I incorporated quotes into each paragraph. Also, I double checked that I improved myself from my last essay from the points that were pointed out from my previously graded ones. Finally, I checked to make sure that I had all the components that were necessary and outlined on the rubric and assignment sheet.
