Read and Responses

R/R Week 1:

With everything going on with ISIS, middle easterners are given a bad reputation in America. People have become scared of them, and even Donald Trump says they should not be allowed in America. These people are not bad people, and they are human just like everyone else. And also like everyone else, they have their beliefs. This article is trying to show that just because he could have a background of heritage from the middle east and he is a Sikh, doesn’t mean people should be scared of him. He is American, and he should be able to show his American pride. The quote that stood out the most to me was after a child told him Captain America does not wear a turban or have a beard, the man responded ““Why not?” I asked him. “I was born here. We could have a new Captain America, who is Sikh or black or Hispanic.”” People think of the average American to be a white, middle class, man. But who said we should have that type of person be our “Captain America”? Captain America could be anyone that is born in America. This article shows it does not matter what religion you are, or what race you are, but if you are an American, you should be able to prove your patriotism. The outcome of this experiment goes to show that not all people are cruel towards minorities. The reaction people have to this man in the Captain America suit filled me with joy. People stared, but then people loved it. He got pictures with individuals who enjoyed the costume and it seems he taught New York City no matter what race you are; people shouldn’t be afraid to show their American Pride.

This article focused on false identity. A 15-year-old boy was helping out adults with their problems, and since he is behind a computer screen, the people couldn’t even tell they were talking to a 15-year-old. It is amazing how smart this 15 boy is. He never read books or did research to figure out the answers to the questions, and he just knew them. This essay speaks about false identity, though. Marcus is pretending to be someone else, and he tricked people behind a computer screen. He isn’t lying about the answers to the questions, but he is lying about who he is. Once he revealed himself, people treated him harshly. Marcus still offered to help people, but some of the big time lawyers did not like it. At the beginning, of the article, there was a quote that stood out to me. “For instance, the Internet was rock 'n' roll all over again. Not rock 'n' roll now, but rock 'n' roll in the 1950's and 1960's, when it terrified grown-ups.” When new inventions start to come out, kids are usually the ones using them to most and end up teaching adults about new inventions. The internet is a prime example. Lots of kids use the internet; I am one of them. I taught my mom all about social media, and my mom ended up teaching my grandma.  Changes can be scary, but it never hurts to face the change.  

This article was stereotyping. A black man was not doing anything wrong, but the people surrounding him were judging him and scared of him just because of how he looked. People immediately thought bad things when they noticed him, and they would even run away. We don’t know much about this man, but from this article he seems to have not done anything wrong, people just assumed him of doing so. The quote that stood out to me was at the end of the essay. “If I happen to be entering a building behind some people who appear skittish, I may walk by, letting them clear the lobby before I return, so as not to seem to be following them. I have been calm and extremely congenial on those rare occasions when I've been pulled over by the police.” He went out of his way to make people feel better about themselves even though he has no reason to.

R/R Week 2:

Lily Myers performs an outstanding smack poetry that about body shaming. Body shaming is a huge problem in society today. As she says in the poem, women grow inwards as men grow outwards. Women are always counting calories and are scare to eat as men eat and eat without worrying. Lily is rejecting this identity that society wants women to have. She doesn’t understand why women have to use the standards of not eating that much as men get to eat what they want. It is hard rejecting this when men can be so harsh. She brings up how even her brother was saying how he was confused with people having a relationship with their food. Women get so worried, and they do begin a relationship to what they eat and how much they eat. She is rejecting this culture identity because it makes women seem weak. Women should not feel weak compared to men, and they shouldn’t have to worry about what they eat or how much they eat. If they are happy with what they are eating, they should eat it.

The second video is based on the “average” adult life. Kids seem to get annoyed by adults, but they don’t understand their daily routine. It seems the average adult life is someone who wakes up early, goes to work for 8 hours, go home, cook dinner, watch TV, and go to bed. Some day’s after work they have the time to stop to shop. This is how it seems every adult lives their life; very dull. But that doesn’t have to be your life. If you want a change, go for the change, nothing is stopping you except your dull thoughts. He is rejecting the average adult life and saying if you don’t want to live by the average adult life, and you don’t have to. Don’t go into adulthood thinking that that is going to be your life. If you don’t want it to be your life, don’t let it. It is difficult to reject these identities because it is what people grew used to seeing. In some movies, we see adults act like this. And even in everyday life, we see adults act like this. Its what people get used to and comfortable too, it is hard to change. But change is what is needed if an adult is living this life and seriously unhappy.

This article is all about smiling. Not about men smiling, though, all about women smiling. Women are expected to smile no matter what circumstance. They could be having a terrible day, but their boss at work will make them force a smile. Forcing a smile makes it look like a woman is happy and enjoying. But why is a woman forced to smile but if a man doesn’t smile that’s no problem at all? This essay is similar to the first video. Men aren’t expected to care about how they look while women are. I can relate to this because while I was at work before I was asked: “what was wrong?” “why do you seem so tired?” just because I didn’t have a smile on my face at the moment. Nothing was wrong, and I was wide awake, I just choose not to smile that moment. But when the men making food behind the deli did not smile at the same customer who questioned me, the man was not questioned. Not only do women care about their appearance, but men care about a woman's appearance was well. It is hard to reject this because of the questioning a man can do to an unsmiling woman. But if a woman does not feel like smiling, then she shouldn’t.

R/R Week 3:

The first tip she gives is the most helpful and surprising to me. I always thought of an interview as a conversation. This changes my perspective on interviews and now that I am about to create questions for one, I am thinking about what to ask, so it does not sound like a conversation. The noncontroversial questions to ask first is also a helpful tip. I see how it helps to ask the simple questions first then ease into the more tough ones. The tip that makes me less stressed about interviewing people is tip number seven. It makes me feel better that questions don’t have to be phrased in a good way for the person answering the questions to understand. A surprising tip to me was for the narrator to describe a person’s appearance. I figured the narrator would remember the people, but learning from this article it doesn’t sound bad to remind the narrator to describe. Before reading this article, I was very nervous to interview someone. I did not know what to ask or what to do if I messed up. This article helped me feel more confident about constructing an interview.

Interview questions: (Being the youngest child)

1    How many siblings do you have?

2    Do you have a good relationship with your siblings?

3    Have your older siblings been helpful as you grow up?

4    Were your older siblings’ protective of you since you are the “baby” of the family?

5    What do you think it would be like if you weren’t the youngest?

6    Do your parents give you special treatment since you are the youngest?

7    Do your older siblings bully you?

8    What is the most valuable thing you learned from your older siblings as you watch them grow up before you do?

9    Do you think being the youngest affects how you are treated (By parents and older siblings)?

Do you enjoy being the youngest?

R/R Week 4:

Citing sources can be a struggle at times for me. One of the most difficult parts about citing to me is paraphrasing. I am not the best with rewording the information and I get scared I will reword it wrong, too much, or not enough. Another trouble I have it creating the source. If I get my information off a website, I regularly go to easy bib or bib me to help me site the source. Sometimes, the website doesn't have enough information to get cited. I will try my hardest to get the right information, but at times, it doesn't work. The site will have outstanding information, but the site doesn't have all the information it needs to be cited. 

After reading the essay, I can say I am guilty of some of these practices. I am not the best at introducing quotes. I either jump right into the quote, or I become wordy about explaining the quote. Another citation practice I struggle with is putting in useless information. I tend to want to put in any information I can find, and sometimes the information has nothing to do with my essay. After reading this essay and realizing I am guilty of some of the practices, I now know how to fix them and avoid getting in the sticky citing situations.

R/R Week 5: Work on First Draft of paper.

R/R Week 6:

While writing papers grammar errors were always my biggest mistake. I always tried to improve my grammar, but I tend to keep making the same errors. The errors I think I would make the most would be anything involving missing commas, wrong prepositions, wrong tense, subject-verb agreement, and unnecessary commas. After reading the first three paragraphs of my paper, I felt disappointed in myself. I made a lot of grammar mistakes that seemed so obvious when I was reading my paper over. I am not sure how I made such ridiculous mistakes while writing the paper. After rereading the paper, it made me realize how important proofreading is. 

Zadie Smith finds a way to use both personal experience and logical thought to create her essay. Smith uses her skills to create emotion. She explains a lot about the situation she has been in and her past and thoughts that it feels like we are there experiencing the moment with her. We feel what she is going through. She starts including logic to explain her personal experiences. She starts off the essay with logic and continues through explaining logic without the reader even realizing it. Smith does enough to convince me with her ideas. The power of combing personal experiences and logic thought creates an excellent essay.

R/R Week 7:

In Sarah Smarsh’s essay, she relates her life to a Netflix show. This strategy works a lot because she chooses a show that is very popular at this time, Orange in the New Black. Orange is the New Black has all different types of characters who could relate in certain ways to people. Smarsh has an unusual aunt who seems hard to describe, by using Pennsatucky to describe her aunt the reader can get more of a picture of how her aunt acts. People view Pennsatucky as bad most of the time, but for the people who watched the show, we know she has a side of her that is good, and she tries to help people out. Besides the Netflix character that is brought up, she talks about dental health care. People judged her grandmother and father for her their bad teeth. People assumed things about them and judged a lot, but they didn’t know the real reason they had bad teeth. Not many people know they have bad teeth because they can’t afford dental care, they just judge. Just like how most people judge books by their cover. Addressing this issue is critical which is why it’s a good strategy to include in our essay. This way works for describing an identity because people judge off of looks even though they don’t know the person. Once a person goes into detail, they can learn more about them. This is a great strategy to describe a person’s identity.

R/R Week 8:

Prior uses sources to make her argument. By gathering information from reliable sources, it makes her argument stronger. She starts out her essay using The New York Times and short essays in this newspaper. She moves through the essay introducing Poetics by Aristotle. She also uses multiple books to show what she learned and the knowledge she has gained. Towards the end, she includes a movie to show what she has learned. She uses so many sources, and it helps the reader know that she has evidence of where she is getting her information from. She links them through what they have in common, the differences, or what she learned. She has many ways to connect them. She pulls out short quotes from each article to show what she has learned.

I did not enjoy the article as much as I thought I would. I did not like the format it became very overwhelming with some sources she showed. I think she should’ve focused on just one or two sources.

Even though I did not like the article, I still think it was better than Said’s piece. Prior used familiar words and was able to catch the audience’s attention. Said used very unfamiliar words and over explained what he was truly trying to say.