Pauses. Interruptions. Breaks. Discontinuity. Long, short, you name it. My time spent working on my essay was abundant with these calamities. My thinking shaped itself in this manner as well. As I sat down on a Sunday evening to begin the menacing challenge that lay before me, I was empty. Clueless. I had spent the entire past week working on my evidence plan, yet when I came face to face with the computer screen, I didn’t know where to begin. I stared at my evidence plan for ten minutes (No! I fell into the trap). The introduction? Yes, that seems like a good place to start. I faintly remember as I was creating my evidence plan a spark had jolted into my mind. I had come up with an attention getter amidst my deep thought of The Kite Runner text. What was it again...? Gosh, darn it. I should have written the darn thing down. My memory fails yet again. Okay, let’s return to this later.
The blank page before my eyes blinded me with shame. The blinking cursor was a constant reminder of the work not yet begun. Then, I decided to take your (do I speak in second person?) advice. I started with the body paragraphs. I had them planned out, so it shouldn’t be that much of a struggle. I began creating these minute miracles that rescued me from the emptiness that radiated at me. However, I realized that I had to reacquaint myself with the evidence plan I had written. I hadn’t glanced at this for about a week, and honestly I had forgotten some things. Once this revival of my structural thought began to occur, my thinking was more fluid. The body paragraphs flowed from my mind through my fingertips and onto the virtual piece of paper. However, this process was exhausting. Writing made me hungry. I had to take breaks. After completing each paragraph, I sat back in my chair and breathed in and out deeply. Then, I left for five minutes to eat a snack and relax a bit. This happened throughout my entire essay writing. Running back and forth, up and down, in order to exit my “writing” mode.
Writing the introduction and conclusion differed from creating the body paragraphs. I tried my best to follow the examples you (or Mr. Allen?) had given, but I couldn’t. After many failed attempts at testing different attention getters, I ended up kind of combining two methods. I also tried to utilize the ideas I learned from Beat by Beat. I began with words that had the ending syllables ring. Then, I separated them with commas to emphasize each. The final clause ended up being lengthier and comma-free in an attempt to speed up the tempo. I ended the statement with a question mark because my attention getter referenced confusion and craziness; this punctuation mark allowed me to grasp that uncertainty and that touch of craziness by ending what should be a declarative sentence with a sign of hesitance. From there I followed the simple structural format to finish my introduction. I did this as well with my conclusion, except I made an extra effort to include the novel’s ending as a final example and symbol of importance of the claim I was making.
My thinking is a difficult one to describe. It is on and off and acts in various ways. I don’t think it’s effective because I become too absorbed into the details of what I do and prevents me from looking at my essay as a whole. What surprises me is that my sporadic thinking hurts my essay in a way because it constantly cuts off the flow of what I was saying. I mentioned that I had forgotten my initial attention getter. This was an obstacle for me in starting my essay because my flow had been cut off. I think if I had least remembered that, I would have started my work on my essay better. What I like about my thinking is that I give the ideas I’m making full thought and make an extra effort to develop them fully. This is also what I don’t like because this often is time-consuming. I would like to improve on the speed of my thinking. I need to try and get into the flow of my essay at an earlier stage. One way I could do this is begin with the body paragraphs right off the bat (it helps).
Monday, October 12, 2009
Sunday, October 11, 2009
Blogging Around
I chose to first comment on Anna's blog which was about the theme of culture in The Kite Runner. I responded with the following:
"Anna,
I love the point that you bring up. As we've learned before, culture plays such a huge part in the everyday actions of people and the relations that people have. Culture is often thought of in the context of expressing oneself openly and freely, however you bring up a fascinating point that in the novel culture restricts one's individuality.
Culture is often the roots of a story. It's fun to see what role it plays in stories. Culture determines the actions of characters. Culture determines the voice that the novel is trying to communicate with you. Culture is what keeps the story alive.
However, I can kind of relate with Amir. I can feel the limits culture brings even upon myself. I guess the reason why culture brings its limits is because it is what has worked in the past and tries to shower its success upon you. But that raises another question. What's more important: success or the freedom to choose whatever you want? I guess culture somtimes struggles to find the middle ground. Hopefully as culture passes through generations, it will be able to blend and find that necessary change."
Next, I chose to respond to Mackenzie's blog which explored the topic of vulnerability in human nature. She talked about Amir's vulnerability in the novel and the vulnerability of humans as a whole as modeled by the Stanford Prison Experiment. I commented with the following:
"Mackenzie,
Awesombe job with this! At first like a good amount of people, I really despised Amir. I just couldn't take it anymore. His actions, behaviors, thoughts; it irritated me so much. However, I failed to look at the other point of view and your blog addresses that issue.
The vulnerability of human nature is a deep topic to explore. All humans have weaknesses; we were born with mistakes. In that sense, like you said can we blame characters gone wrong for the blunders they have committed? But then again, can we use human nature as an excuse for their mistakes? It's controversial.
I agree with you that the experiment was interesting. It frightened me though. If humans have this innate corrupted nature in them, can we save us from oursevles? How long will it be until it gets the best of us? Is there anything we can do to fix this problem within human nature?
Your post also mentions how important rules are. It reminds me of episodes on TV where societies/cities without rules become chaotic. We need limitations on power to keep order. We need laws to stop crime. We need rules in grammar to prevent messes. Rules are everywhere. The connection between rules and human nature is a peculiar one. We need rules to keep the negatives of human nature in check. How do we learn, then, to live when all the rules are thrown out the book? When the game has been changed? Can we?"
"Anna,
I love the point that you bring up. As we've learned before, culture plays such a huge part in the everyday actions of people and the relations that people have. Culture is often thought of in the context of expressing oneself openly and freely, however you bring up a fascinating point that in the novel culture restricts one's individuality.
Culture is often the roots of a story. It's fun to see what role it plays in stories. Culture determines the actions of characters. Culture determines the voice that the novel is trying to communicate with you. Culture is what keeps the story alive.
However, I can kind of relate with Amir. I can feel the limits culture brings even upon myself. I guess the reason why culture brings its limits is because it is what has worked in the past and tries to shower its success upon you. But that raises another question. What's more important: success or the freedom to choose whatever you want? I guess culture somtimes struggles to find the middle ground. Hopefully as culture passes through generations, it will be able to blend and find that necessary change."
Next, I chose to respond to Mackenzie's blog which explored the topic of vulnerability in human nature. She talked about Amir's vulnerability in the novel and the vulnerability of humans as a whole as modeled by the Stanford Prison Experiment. I commented with the following:
"Mackenzie,
Awesombe job with this! At first like a good amount of people, I really despised Amir. I just couldn't take it anymore. His actions, behaviors, thoughts; it irritated me so much. However, I failed to look at the other point of view and your blog addresses that issue.
The vulnerability of human nature is a deep topic to explore. All humans have weaknesses; we were born with mistakes. In that sense, like you said can we blame characters gone wrong for the blunders they have committed? But then again, can we use human nature as an excuse for their mistakes? It's controversial.
I agree with you that the experiment was interesting. It frightened me though. If humans have this innate corrupted nature in them, can we save us from oursevles? How long will it be until it gets the best of us? Is there anything we can do to fix this problem within human nature?
Your post also mentions how important rules are. It reminds me of episodes on TV where societies/cities without rules become chaotic. We need limitations on power to keep order. We need laws to stop crime. We need rules in grammar to prevent messes. Rules are everywhere. The connection between rules and human nature is a peculiar one. We need rules to keep the negatives of human nature in check. How do we learn, then, to live when all the rules are thrown out the book? When the game has been changed? Can we?"
Subscribe to:
Posts (Atom)
