Considering Genre

In this post, I will write about what genre I am using for Project 1.

Daniellarie, "Drawn image of an essay." 13 October 2014. Creative Commons.

I am going to commit to the standard college essay for Project 1 because this project focuses on presenting a controversial topic in my field of study and the best way to display the necessary information is through traditional textual bodies. What I plan on doing during next week’s production phase is organizing all of the crucial points of both sides of the controversy I am focusing on.

I also plan on finding the best arguments to support my opinion on the matter. As of right now, I am feeling confident going into the production phase; I have spent a lot of time preparing and organizing. The only challenges I anticipate are being able to present solid reasoning for the argument I support. 

Cluster of Stakeholders

In this post, I will explain what I included in my cluster for Project 1 and why.

Primary, Luca. "English." Public Domain.

In my cluster, I provided the most important positions of both sides of the debate regarding whether or not doctors are to blame for the drug epidemic that has risen over the past decade in America. Additionally, I expanded on what the purpose of each side of the argument is and how it affects doctors. This is an incredibly controversial issue, and with that comes several different points of view on the topic. This is the hyperlink to my cluster.

Evaluation of General Sources

In this post, I will evaluate two sources that focus on my topic of controversy for Project 1.

Troha, J. "Prescription Drugs" 1982. Public Domain.

Governing's “America’s Biggest Drug Problem Isn’t Heroin, Its Doctors”

This source is credible because it is a national monthly magazine that mainly focuses on state and local government in the United States. The author of the article that interests me is John Buntin. After doing extensive research, I learned that he is a widely known writer who mainly covers health care, public safety, and urban affairs. He has also published several books that are based on the government.

The Web page does provide the date of when the article was last updated; the date was June of 2014, which is relatively recent. There are links to videos that were posted that same year regarding the subject of the article. The text’s purpose is to persuade readers that doctors are to blame for America’s present day drug abuse epidemic. There are graphics of nasal application of Narcan. There is also a photo of a police officer holding a drug kit with a caption below stating, “All squad cars in Quincy are now equipped with tow-dose kits of naloxone.” This further supports Buntin’s argument. Additionally, there are photos of past drug abusers.

This source is doubtlessly biased; if viewers of the website believe its information is true, I am not entirely sure who profits from it, but I can say who doesn’t profit from it: doctors. This source suggests other links that are related to this controversy. It doesn’t cite other sources, however, it does list specific names of institutions and people directly involved with this issue.

TIME’s “Are Doctors Really to Blame for the OverdoesEpidemic?” 

This is a credible source because not only is it a source that professor Bottai provided, but it is a well-known magazine. The author of this specific article is Maia Szalavitz; she is a neuroscience journalist and author of the book “Unbroken Brain: Why Addiction Is a Learning Disorder and Why It Matters.”

The Web page was last updated November 2, 2011; therefore, it is relevant to the past decade. Additionally, there are links to related articles such as “U.S. Aims to Reduce Overdose Deaths, But Will the New Plan Work?” The purpose of this article is to inform and persuade readers that doctors are not entirely to blame for America’s drug abuse issue in the past decade.

There is a picture of a hand with an excessive amount of pills, signifying present-day America’s desperate reliability on drugs. The source is not as biased as the previous article I read, but still leans towards the position of defending doctors. The source provides several links to related articles, as well as names of people involved. 

Reddit and What I Found There

In this post, I am going to write about what kind of forums I found on Reddit that were related to my major.

Appelo, Jurgen. "Reddit icon" August 2012. Flickr.

Some of the forums I found that were related to physiology seemed almost like an online clinic in a sense. There were posts asking why something happens to the human body and what can affect certain changes within the body.

For example, one person asked why some people tolerate the cold better than others. There were several comments with claims and evidence supporting those claims. Other posts were related to finding good resources, like textbooks and websites, for learning about physiology and anatomy.

One interesting forum that I came across provided a link to an article “Blood vessels can actually get better with age.” This article claims that arteries are able to adapt to oxidative stress caused by aging. This is debatable to many people because it is widely known that oxidative stress is the main cause of age-related diseases.

However, studies claim that aging triggers some sort of counteraction of effects of oxidative stress on blood vessels; but I won’t bore you with all of this anatomy talk! There were comments on this forum questioning these findings. Additionally, another blog post that led me to an article, “Why do some people feel the cold more than others?” was intriguing to me because it is directly related to my major (physiology) and elaborates on different experiments that were conducted to support the supposed answer to the article question.

Overall, the impression I got from the Reddit forums was not entirely what I had hoped for. People were not necessarily debating; they were providing information to forums posting with specific questions. It is not my favorite website for research, but it definitely isn’t useless.

Evaluation of News Magazine Stories

In this post, I am going to evaluate different news magazine stories related to my major.

CFCF, "Body Cavities" 14 November 2013. Creative Commons.

After exploring Time Magazine, I found several health related articles. One article that caught my eye was Alice Park’s “Why Cutting Back on Fat Isn’t Enough to Help the Heart.” The author argues that it is more important to focus on obtaining healthy fat, the ones found in plants, nuts, and fish, than to cut out saturated fats. Dr. Dariush Mozaffarian, dean of the Tufts Friedman School of Nutrition and Science policy, discovered that “only 3.6% of global heart deaths can be attributed to eating too much saturated fat, while just over 10% of heart deaths can be traced to eating too little plant oils.” There are numerous studies that Mozzffarian does to prove that heart-related deaths should not be solely blamed on saturated fats.

The most sympathetic characters in this article are those who live in countries such as Russia, Germany and Egypt because they have dealt with the most heart deaths due to lack of vegetable oils in their diet. If this research had come out earlier, these heart failures could have been prevented.

The least sympathetic characters in this article are the doctors and the dietary guidelines that are released by the U.S government that insist that the main and only cause of heart failure is the consumption of saturated fats. These doctors should not have made such a broad statement because now it is a widely known and partially false assumption that in order to have a healthy heart, one must simply cut saturated fats out of their diet. Because of this statement, Americas are replacing the saturated fats they used to eat with carbohydrates, which will evidently turn into triglycerides and be stored as fat.  

After exploring The Week Magazine, I discovered an article written by Andrew Joseph, “Your ancestors’ poor diet may have ‘scarred’ your gut microbes.” Joseph’s main argument is that the assumption that we pass on only our human genes to our children is false; our children also inherit a microbial set of genes from us. This new claim is supported by the research done in mice: their depleted bacterial diversity, resulting form low-fiber diets, was passed on to offspring. The researchers compared mice with diets full of fiber to mice deprived of fiber and the mice with the deprivation had offspring with even lower bacterial diversity than they did.

The most sympathetic character of this story is the child of parents who do not eat nutritiously. It is one thing to not be able to control your own genes, but its another thing to decrease your child’s quality of life due to your own eating habits! I hope these recent studies encourage Americans to consciously eat a diet consisting of fruits and vegetables and whole grains now that it is known that they have the responsibility of their child’s microbial genes.

The least sympathetic character in this story is the parent who does not obtain enough fiber. Before this article was released, one should already know the importance of a nutritious diet. It frustrates me to witness people damaging their bodies and ultimately shortening their own lifespan simply by not eating properly. These studies are just another reason for people to watch what they eat. 

Twitter and What I Found There

In this post, I am going to explain what I found on Twitter feeds that pertain to my major.

Goldbach, Bernard. "Logo of Twitter."  March 9, 2009. Flickr.

After searching my major on twitter, physiology, I found that most people talk about advancing through opportunities and grants that could fund research. In fact, there is a Physiology Society twitter that devotes most of its tweets to informing followers of upcoming events and workshops that may provide financial aid for research and lab work.

Additionally, there are accounts that provide breaking news about physiology all around the world. There are other physiology twitter accounts that are more humorous and less information heavy. It seems like their main purpose is to quiz their followers by describing a certain muscle or bone and where it is located in the body and it is up to the followers to guess the answer.

In my opinion, the two most interesting conversations or stories I found in the twitter feeds can be found in Physiology News and Experimental Physiology twitter accounts. Physiology News provides news story headlines and links to the articles with breaking news regarding anatomy and physiology around the world. 

The Experimental Physiology twitter account provides original research on all subjects relating to the human body. For example, there is an article link on energy metabolism and how it is effected by high-altitude environments, while there is an additional article link on single muscle fibre contractile properties and how they differ between body builders, power athletes, and control subjects.

Overall, I was surprised at the amount of information there is on twitter regarding my major. I had expected to see only things similar to what the Physiology Society twitter provided: clubs, meetings, research opportunities, and grants that are mostly available to graduate students and adults already starting their careers. Instead, I found incredibly interesting links to various physiology websites with articles providing breaking news. 

Evaluation of New York Times Stories

In this post, I am going to evaluate science-related New York Times stories.

Dsarokin, "New York Times" 24 November, 2007. Public Domain.

For the science related article, “The Bugs Sharing Your Home,” there isn’t necessarily a main character; however the central characters in the story are arthropods. This article focuses on all of the different types of arthropods that can be regularly found in homes, having lived there for years without being noticed!

The specific events in the story take place in houses in Raleigh, N.C., where researchers collected several different arthropods that they could find. This is important to take into consideration because the story mainly focuses on how many arthropods can be found in family homes, not just anywhere.

There is no kind of disagreement or debate happening in this story; in my opinion, it was written as a way to raise awareness that yes, there are bugs everywhere in our houses-where we sleep and eat- but no, these bugs are not harmful pests. For most of our lives they go completely unnoticed. Scientists plan to find out more about bugs in homes in different places and how they are affected by climate and location.

For the health related article that I researched, “Monkeys Built to Mimic Autism-Like Behaviors May Help Humans.” The main characters are, as the title foreshadows, monkeys that have been genetically engineered to exhibit autistic behaviors. They are the center of the entire story because scientists are aiming to test different therapies on the monkeys in order to discover more about the disorder.

I am assuming the specific events in the story take place in China because the researchers are leaders of the Chinese Academy of Sciences in Shanghai. However, there could be tests taking place all over the world. The setting for the actual research being done is a cage where the genetically engineered monkeys are observed and videotaped.

There is a debate over whether or not testing genetically engineered monkeys is worth the extreme expenses and time consumption. Some scientists believe it would be more beneficial to continue testing mice and observing more closely than to go through the troubles of testing monkeys. Other scientists believe that monkeys would help them better understand the disorder, thus making a possible cure or therapy more attainable.

Course Projects

In this post, I will focus on my understanding of the course projects.

Barretr acquired from OCAL, "Illustration of a pencil" Public Domain

1. When viewing the controversy postmortem, I am most confused about what kind of controversy I am supposed to focus on. Should I write about a personal controversy or a controversy I had with others? When viewing the rhetorical investigation, I am unclear on what you mean by investigating a “field.” By field do you mean picking one of the four course genres that I haven’t already used for another project? When viewing the public argument, is the ongoing present-day controversy a personal controversy or a widely known subject? Lastly, in the reflective self-assignment, I am not confused on ay part of this project.

2. I am most interested in exploring the four different genres more. I am only familiar with writing formal essays; I have never really used multimedia to express my ideas and writings.

3. I will definitely need to start my projects a decent amount of time before the due dates. After reviewing the requirements, I am fully aware of how work intensive these projects are and how heavily they affect my grade. I had time management issues my first semester of college, with of the clubs and Greek life that I involved myself with, therefore I will not let it happen again.

4. In high school, I took honors English all four years and truly enjoyed writing. However, choosing a science major, I did not have any courses that encouraged me to continue writing, unless it was a lab report. I am incredibly excited to refresh my memory and improve my writing skills this semester.

5. I don’t have any further questions regarding the four major projects, I understand the majority of what is required, I am just unclear on the things I mentioned previously.

Reflection:
After viewing Ben Macklin's and Joshua Martin's posts, I have a much better understanding on all four of the course projects that we will be doing. I also feel less insecure knowing that other people in this class are nervous to be using different genres that include videotaping and podcasting to present. I am excited to start our first course project for now I am much more comfortable and have a better idea of what is going on! 

Investigating Genres

In this post, I will focus on investigating genres.

FSP Vintage Collection. "Vintage illustraion of a man writing with a feather pen" Public Domain.

1.     The purpose of a video essay is to explore different types of visual media by taking parts of footage and analyzing what they mean and how they relate to society. Successful video essays are brief and allow the viewer to see the argument presented by the video essay creator. Because today’s society is so technologically advanced, video essays are incredibly helpful; people are able to obtain information comfortably through multimedia and explore different topics in a subjective way.

2.     Depending on who is making the video essays, readers can usually find video essays on YouTube, on a blog, online magazines, or even on Facebook. For example, a professional critic or scholar could be the maker, whereas a simple movie fan could also be the maker; this justifies where the video essay can be found. Bloggers and YouTube users have made the majority of video essays that I viewed. Their main purpose was to raise awareness or educate the viewers on a certain topic.

3.     The typical audience for video essays is generally people who take interest in learning about a controversial topic or subject. People who are media scholars, literature students, or essayists have taken part in this genre. Video essays continue to grow in popularity because of their easy use of technology, allowing large majorities of people view a topic or argument in less than ten minutes of footage.

4.     Based on my answers above, in my own words, a video essay is a brief presentation of a certain argument that is typically presented by bloggers to the world through the Internet in attempts to raise awareness on that specific subject. It is in my opinion a great way to present arguments because it provides images and sound to the audience, allowing them to analyze the argument in a more creative way.

Reflection:
After viewing Gabby Dietrich's and Marvin Chaires's blog posts, I have a much clearer understanding on the different genres that we will be working with this semester. Each blog was incredibly informative, not only on the genres that I failed to do extensive research on, but even on the genre (video essays) that I researched myself! I am excited to explore these different technological ways of presentation.  

My Writing Process

In this post, I will focus on my past writing processes.

Mills, Amanda. "Female hands writing on a laptop keyboard" Public Domain.

1.     I consider myself to be a heavy reviser. I usually do not plan ahead of time; when an idea comes I feel the need to start writing immediately. It is almost like I fear losing my ideas and must document them before they leave my mind and the more ideas come to me. However, after finishing my drafts, I read carefully over them and always find a multitude of errors or unclear thoughts. Often times, I will find insignificant details and sentences that have nothing to do with what my initial ideas were. I also write too much, I find myself going over the word limit and having to go back through my writings and clean them up.

2.     My writing process definitely includes the above approaches; however, I focus heavily on some approaches more than others. As I had mentioned above, naturally I am a heavy reviser. But often times I also find myself to procrastinate on my writings. Because ideas tend to come to me as I write, I push off planning and thinking of ideas beforehand. It is difficult for me to focus in public places with several distractions; I prefer to begin brainstorming ideas when I am sitting at my own desk with my computer or in the library. I may not necessarily be a “heavy” planner, but when I am able to focus, I organize my ideas thoroughly.

3.     I truly believe that my writing process is successful. It may not work for everyone, but it certainly works for me. I thoroughly enjoy writing and that is because the way that I choose to create my writings is a comfortable way that does not stress me out or confuse me. A significant strength of being a heavy reviser is being able to catch my own mistakes. People often say practice makes perfect, and I have never heard a more true statement. The more I revise, the less mistakes I make in the future, thus making my revising process shorter. A weakness of my approach would be the procrastination that comes with being a poor planner. It is almost as if I use my poor planning skills as an excuse to delay my writings until the last minute.

4.     It would be beneficial for me to try a different approach because my strengths in writing are focused mostly on revising and my weaknesses are in all of the other approaches. By practicing other approaches, I would be strengthening my skills to become an overall better writer. Writing is about being creative and open to new ideas, therefore I will not restrict myself to one writing approach simply because it is the one I am most comfortable with.