Blog 6: final blog

The course, Writing 100, helped me gain more confidence as a writer and in myself as a college student.  I learned how to present arguments more soundly through the book, “They Say/I Say”.  I found the text helpful in gearing my mind toward how to present what I wanted to relay, my thoughts versus another person’s thoughts.  I also found the templates helpful.  At first I couldn’t understand why it was okay to use a template in essay writing, but learned that it is a foundation.  The learning I gained about writing will help me in my career path at work as well as my continued studies in college.  I also learned from receiving and giving feedback to my peers, this is something that I needed experience with.

I learned to read and reread, and to be more analytic when reading.  I do wish that I had taken the course in a full semester though because I feel I would have benefited from more time to read and reread the material as well as my writing drafts.  

The book, “The Glass Castle”, was a great read, I enjoyed it.  I felt that it was a very good lesson in suspending judgement.  It came at good time as we were just presented a course at work called “Unconscious Bias”.  The course taught us, similarly, the importance of suspending your beliefs and judgments in meeting new people, phone conversations, learning of one’s ethnicity or cultural beliefs, etc.  The book was also a lesson in gratefulness for me.  I feel that even though Jeannette Walls had a difficult childhood she was still grateful for it.  Everyone should be thankful for their parents and family in any little way that you can as you never know how much time on this earth we are granted with them.

The documentary film, “The House I Live In”, was riveting and eye opening.  Though  Eugene Jarecki the director and producer does have some partiality to the views and topics he presented based on his relationship with Nannie Jeter and her family, ultimately I feel the messages he presented were important.  Most of the opinions, research, and personal side to the story of the war on drugs that he presented are ignored in our general media.  We are usually just presented with what the media and government allow or want the public to see.  I appreciated the opportunity to view this film and think about the impact of the war on drugs in our country.

Both the book and film were relevant to me.  I learned through reading, viewing, analyzing, and writing about each of them.  I will keep writing; I write at work and at school.  However, the most important to me is journaling at home.  This is a personal way that I keep writing and put my thoughts and feelings into words.

Thank you to my peers and Professor, this was an enjoyable course and learning experience to share with you.

Blog 5: The House I Live In

This blog is being written while I watch in sadness, the continued news coverage of the shooting in the church in South Carolina.  A young white man is suspected of killing nine African American people in a church.  The continued violence in our country is so disheartening.  And I can only hope and pray that as the song goes "we shall overcome".  

I, like Eugene Jarecki, the director of The House I Live In, and his "second mother", Nannie Jeter, had thought that living in post-racial, post-civil rights movement would be different than it clearly is.  When I became a mother I naively thought that I wouldn't have to explain race issues and discrimination to my children.  This is not the case, and this is very difficult for me to accept.

In the film, Nannie Jeter explained that she chose to leave her life and home in southern Virginia in hopes to move north and avoid the discriminatory and bigotry experienced in the south.  It turned out that her life and the life of her children did not end up as she imagined just by making the move north.  Racism, bigotry, and discrimination is alive and well in our country and this is very sad.

In respect to Jarecki's creation and direction of this film I feel that he had a good foundation to start the process through his firsthand knowledge of the struggles he saw in Nannie and her family experience.  Jarecki was able to relate to his second mother, Nannie, and feel compassion and empathy for Nannie and her family.  He created the film out of love for Nannie, and the viewer can feel his passion through his construction of the film.  When Jarecki began the film project and began to interview Nannie and get to know her personal struggle with poverty and drugs within her family.  This was the springboard for the journey to creating this film.  Through the additional research and search for answers to the reasoning behind our country's drug war he was able to more clearly learn for himself and ultimately show the viewer the gravity and reality of the war on drugs in America.

The way Jarecki shows historical facts and film versus current state is powerful.  The viewer is able to see the root of our country's past transgressions and beginnings of racial profiling that led to our current state.  The research and opinion of the experts that he interviewed added more to support the fact that our country has a problem with its response to drug use.  Jarecki was searching for answers as to why people he loved struggled with poverty, discrimination and drugs.  The intimate interviews with Nannie and her family members were a powerful way to begin this exploration.  The interviews throughout the film with the many involved in the drug war in our country from lawyers, judges, dealers, addicts, parents and children had such an impact on the viewer being able to see all of these

perspectives into the issue.  The personal stories mixed with the history, psychology and political information presented in this film brought light and clarity to the discussion and evidence being shown.

Jarecki was able to share that he learned that there are many roots to the drug issue in our country.  The issue is not drug use and dealing on its own.  I agree with his statement:

"For people to understand the scale and urgency of this crisis, I felt that facts, figures, and expert testimony weren’t enough, so I sought out individuals whose lives were directly and deeply shaped by the War on Drugs, hoping their stories would reveal some of the everyday tragedies left in its wake. Ultimately, with my beloved Nannie Jeter as inspiration, THE HOUSE I LIVE IN grew into a larger examination
of race, class, and capitalism in America—of a tragically misguided system that preys upon the least fortunate among us to sustain itself. "

The issue is race, class, capitalism, poverty, bigotry, intolerance, poor healthcare, and lack of education.  I cannot think of any other research or any other way to present this information and research.  The way Jarecki choose to present his message through his research was very powerful.  I only hope that our country learns from its mistakes and stops the cycles we have been on; cycles of poverty, cycles of drug use, cycles of discrimination, and cycles of violence.  In my opinion the war on drugs needs to end and we need to turn our attention to the real problems at the root of drug use in the country.

I really enjoyed the book, "The Glass Castle".  It is full of a lot of lessons.  I did like writing about it, however I still didn't find it coming easy to me.  Maybe part of the struggle with this book is that we as human beings judge situations and people without even thinking about it.  Immediately a reader would want judge the Walls parents and not care about the reasons they lived the way we did.  It is hard to suspend that judgment, and then move on from it and analyze the book more.

Unfortunately, I felt that writing this paper was harder than the first.  I am not sure if it was the topic, or me getting in my own way.  I struggle to find a thesis and then to stay on track with that thesis through my whole paper.  I found it time consuming to find appropriate quotes to support my argument and to find research to support my argument.  The feedback from the first paper we wrote did help my train of thought in the beginning stages of writing this paper, but I fell back into old habits while writing like getting off topic and not supporting my thesis.  Writing is definitely an art that takes time to perfect.

Family

fam·i·ly

ˈfam(ə)lē/

noun

noun: family; plural noun: families

1.        1.

a group consisting of parents and children living together in a household.

o    a group of people related to one another by blood or marriage.

"friends and family can provide support"

synonyms:

relatives, relations, kin, next of kin, kinsfolk, kindred, one's (own) flesh and blood, nearest and dearest, people, connections; More

o    the children of a person or couple.

"she has the sole responsibility for a large family"

synonyms:

children, little ones, youngsters; More

o    a person or people related to one and so to be treated with a special loyalty or intimacy.

"I could not turn him away, for he was family"

o    a group of people united in criminal activity.

o    BIOLOGY

a principal taxonomic category that ranks above genus and below order, usually ending in -idae (in zoology) or -aceae (in botany).

synonyms:

taxonomic group, order, class, genus, species; More

o    a group of objects united by a significant shared characteristic.

o    MATHEMATICS

a group of curves or surfaces obtained by varying the value of a constant in the equation generating them.

2.        2.

all the descendants of a common ancestor.

"the house has been owned by the same family for 300 years"

synonyms:

ancestry, parentage, pedigree, genealogy, background, family tree,descent, lineage, bloodline, blood, extraction, stock; More

o    a race or group of peoples from a common stock.

o    all the languages ultimately derived from a particular early language, regarded as a group.

"the Austronesian language family"

There are clearly many ways to define family.  The dictionary has many as I have shown above.  It’s also clear that our American culture has many definitions of family.  The typical family in America has evolved and continues to evolve.  The depiction of what a typical family is and how they interact as seen on TV is very stereotypical.  The messages, family members, situations, and drama seems to intend to be as close to reality as possible, but many times it is a long-shot from reality.  The themes on the TV shows are very stereotypical.  Though we have made strides in our pop culture with such shows like Modern Family, Parenthood, and Blackish, as more recent TV shows that depict what a more true family life in today's American culture is like.

What is a typical parenting scenario in American culture?  In the year 2015 I don’t know if we can say that there is a “typical” family in America.  In the past in American culture we generally assumed that a “family” consisted of a married man and woman and their children in a house.  I think of the picket white fence American dream, and “Leave it Beaver”.  “Typical” meant dad went to work from 9 to 5, mom stayed home to clean, cook and raise the children.  The children obeyed discipline from dad, and comfort from mom.  I would say that the basics of what it is and means to be a parent in general has not changed but the roles and who fills the roles has changed.  We can see this through divorced families, single parents, teenage parents, grandparents raising children, and many other situations that exist in our current culture.  A parent is a caretaker, it should not matter who takes that role, as long as there is someone in that role in a child’s life.  A parent is responsible for a child financially and emotionally.  A parent supports a child’s physical, mental and social learning.

In reflecting on my own childhood and my family I can relate to the Walls family in some ways.  I did feel emotionally connected to some of Jeannette’s struggles.  I do not pretend that I had it anywhere as bad as Jeannette did.  I do not feel comfortable sharing which parts of the dysfunction of the Walls family that I connect with, but I connect.

Today, I have my own family and pray every day that I can be the best version of myself so that I can be the best mother, wife, sister, daughter, aunt and friend.  I work hard, and study hard so that I can ensure my children are supported financially and emotionally.  I play hard with my children, laugh with them, cry with them, teach them and love them.  My faith and my husband allow me the support I need to be the best in all the roles I have in life.  I hope to be able to do the best I can to be the role model my children need.  To me family is everything, the basis for your path in life, and I hope I am building a good foundation in my children so that they follow a good path.

The Process and Emotion of Writing the First Paper for Writing 100 Course

Writing the first paper for this class was daunting.  I felt overwhelmed knowing that I had a lot of preparation to do to ensure I was capturing the information required.  Though I have written papers in

my college career before I felt that this one was more important being the first one in an actual writing class.  After reading and understanding the assignment prompt I felt uneasy, unsure of my direction.  I had feelings like one does when it is your first day at a new job or your first day at a new school.  It was feelings of uncertainty, indecision, insecurity, and questioning.  However, I had to do this, and put my mind to it and my best effort in.  I had to those self-doubting thoughts around and think positive.  The motivation that drove me during the process was the emotion I felt from the articles we read and the prompt of the assignment.  I have passion for women’s rights and for food.  I felt hard to get that passion into articulated words and a supported argument that a reader will be drawn into.

The first step I took in preparing to write this essay was to read the articles related to the assignment over again.  I wanted to be sure I had a thorough understanding of each of them.  I felt that the assignment prompt led me to the “Having It His Way” easily.  After reading the articles again I chose to focus on a commercial described and analyzed within “Having It His Way”.  The next step I took was to view the video that I chose, “BK Manthem”, on YouTube.  After viewing the video, re-reading the articles and thinking about the prompt some of my irrational thoughts started to be replaced with drive to write my feelings and get my argument on paper.

During the first few steps of this process I continued to feel overwhelmed.  I was trying to think of ways to possibly incorporate all of the articles we read into my essay.  This made me feel anxious, I felt like a sponge trying to absorb too much water, like the water my thoughts were all of the place.  This feeling of being overcome led me to decide that I was overthinking.  I could not use all three articles in full, but could possibly add parts of what I learned from them to help in my essay’s arguments.

I began jot down simple words and phrases describing the video.  I wrote down a few quotes from the video that stood out to me as related to our assignment.  I choose and then described parts of the video that made me feel angry, sad, even some parts that made me laugh.  I then found links between my thoughts about the video and the analysis in the article “Having It His Way” and wrote those down.  From here I began to form my arguments and found support of them in the article, and started to write my essay.

I also felt nervous about the peer review process.  I feel uncomfortable with the idea of providing someone else feedback.  What if I offend someone with my thoughts on their essay?  (Because I know I can be opinionated…and how to appropriately phrase my thoughts?)  I was thinking that I don’t even really know my classmates, and they don’t me so this could be difficult.  How do I phrase my responses to their writing when I’m not sure of their personality, their response to my feedback, their writing style?  I also felt nervous about the prospect of receiving feedback from peers.  I only experienced peer reviews in one other class.  In that instance the peers that reviewed my work really didn’t give constructive or what I felt to be useful feedback.  It was just a few kind words, or grammar/spelling corrections. 

I must say after experiencing this type of peer review process where the professor is requiring a certain type of response in our feedback, I feel much more at ease with the process.  I feel that since we all knew what was to be expected in our feedback to others, and what we were to receive in our feedback it made the process easier and more comfortable.  I appreciated this type of review process and the feedback received.

Overall, from start to finish I feel that this assignment and most likely the class in general is going to make me stronger as a writer, reader, student and classmate.  The amount of time, effort, and emotion that the class will take will add to my qualifications in taking on any type of writing assignment from a simple email, essay or research paper.  I will feel very accomplished when I complete not only this assignment, but this course.

Food: -It's a Love/Hate Relationship

My relationship with food is a love/hate relationship.  I can relate in some way to all three of the articles that we read this week.  “Fat is a Feminist” issue really invoked feelings of uncertainty, history, and how stereotypes affect women and their relationship with food and how women feel about being overweight.  “Don’t Blame the Eater” brought up debate our personal responsibility versus the food industry and its effect on the health and well-being of American children.  “Having It His Way” highlighted advertising and direction of fast food toward men, showing how masculinity and meat-eating are related.  I say that I have a love-hate relationship with food because I love food, food is a passion for me, however, it can also turn into an obsession; almost an addiction leading to unhealthy habits.  The word hate is harsh.  I hate food because I can very easily overeat well past the point of when I feel full, make unhealthy food choices, and eat when I am bored.  I hate that food equals fat and weight gain when you don’t make the right choices.  I love the taste of food, trying new foods, cooking food, the smells of food, and how eating makes me feel.