Shitty First Drafts

In Lamott's essay I think she used the word shitty to show that first drafts are going to be awful. They're not really going to be coherent but they will have everything you could possibly think about the subject down on paper where you can't forget it. Afterward you can edit it to decide what is relevant and what isn't.

I think for our research papers the fact that we are doing it all in sections first is like doing a shitty first draft. It's a way to get all the information on each section down without having to think about the rest of them at the same time. After we've gotten each section just how we like them we can connect them to the other sections to make a better paper.

APA Exercise

Signal Phrase:

Journalist Michael Adams reports that "The National Institute of Environmental Health Sciences said it removed saccharin as a potential cancer causing agent because tests that showed it caused tumors in rats did not aplly to humans."

Reference Entry:

Adams, M. J. (2000). U.S. report adds to list of carcinogens. The New York Times, p.F4

Adding and Subtracting Words:

"The institute also removed ethyl acrylate...from the list" (Adams, 2000, p. F4)

Tipping Point Final Questions

1. I think that one social change needed in my community would be a reduction in racism. My town is a small town made up of white middle and lower class people, many of them farmers. In my high school there were only two black kids and needless to say they weren't really accepted by most of the other kids. I feel that that needs to change. Because we are such a small town many people don't get to experience life outside of it. I think that accepting and befriending others that aren't like us is a way to learn about the world. It's a good way to get an idea of what else is out there away from our small piece of the world. I think the only way to help tip this social epidemic is to be one of the people who start it, and get my friends to as well. Once we get to know other people we can tells others about them and help change people's views.

2. I think the most important chapter was chapter 3, about the stickiness factor. Anyone can cause a social epidemic, it's getting it to stick that's a big issue. I like the example they gave about the magazines competing with the gold treasure boxes and getting people to interact with advertising to get them to remember it.

3. Again, I think the stickiness factor is something I can take with me. After college I plan on being a teacher and I think by using the stickiness factor I will be able to help my students not only learn better, but remember it. It's important for students to take the information they learn with them throughout life.

The Tipping Point: The Power of Context

1. In my opinion, Bernie Goetz was a murderer, not a hero, and should not have been let free. He opened fire of four black youths just because he was getting bad vibes from them, and thought they were going to rob him. Some saw him as a hero for shooting those guys, while others saw him as a criminal. I agree with the criminal side. I think his actions were completely unjustified. The boys did nothing wrong to him. If he thought anything was wrong with them, why not move to a different car instead of just shooting them? People thought he did a good thing because the guys had criminal backgrounds and people felt they would just cause more problems. This too, does not justify what he did. It's the police's job to capture criminals, not Bernie's. He should have reported them instead of killing them.

5. I honestly don't know whether improving prison conditions will lead to better inmate behavior, but part of me thinks that we shouldn't improve the conditions because the inmates are there to pay for their crimes, not to relax and enjoy luxuries. I think the conditions need to stay as they are to teach the prisoners the lesson they are there to learn.

English UnderGrad Conference

During the English Undergraduate Conference I attended a session on the use of webquest in the classroom. I really liked this session because, being an education major, it's something that I can use in my classroom. It's set up like a web site that students can go to and see what projects and assignments they have to do. I can use this in my Family and Consumer Sciences classroom because I feel there are many different websites out there that can be useful to my class that I can get them to use through webquest. For example, if I'm teaching a foods class and my students need recipes, I can guide them to one of the many thousands of websites that will help them find what they need. The use of webquest's are a great tool for the classroom and think they will become more and more popular over the next few years.

Disscussion Questions on Chapter 3

Question 2:

Gladwell states that what makes a message memorable is it's stickiness factor, the ablility for the message to stick in your mind. Part of this is the repetition of the message and the impact that it had on you. Even if you don't like the message, if you still remember it than the advertisers have done their job by getting it to stick in your mind. We think that the cliche "even bad publicity is good publicity" is true because even if the commercial annoys you, you'll still remember them. For instance, the freecreditreport.com commercials. They stick in your head because of the catchy songs.

Question 4:

We believe that tv is stickier than books. Many kids would rather watch an animated cartoon rather than read something. It's good for young children because for those that can't read the message is still getting across because they can watch it. Also, a lot of low income families do not have books lying around their houses for kids to read. Tv is one of the main ways for these kids to learn.

Reflection on The Tipping Point Chapter 2

I think that the most interesting part of chapter 2 was the part about the connectors. Gladwell used his own circle of friends to find out who the connectors were. In his case it happened to be his friend Jacob. I really like when he showed how he met other friends through Jacob and said that it wasn't his circle of friends, it was Jacob's pyramid of friends. This is really true. I've noticed that, especially here at school, there are one or two people that I can link all my friends to. If I had never meet these two people, the group of friends I hang out with everyday would be really different from what it is now. And because my connectors know so many people, the circle is still growing and we're adding mew people everyday.

The part with the quiz was pretty interesting because as i was looking at I realized I know at least 25 people who had those names as their last names. Hopefully that means that I'm a good connector and am helping to expand other peoples social circles.

Differences in Genres

When comparing what we've been reading in class to what I normally read on my own time, I've noticed there's a lot of differences. Normally I read fiction books, they tend to be romance or mysteries. There's really no research in these books. I'm sure the author did a lot of research to find out how the certain characters act and how they do their jobs but it's not the same as Gladwell's research. In The Tipping Point Gladwell uses research to back up pretty much every example he gives. He's interviewed college students and made up tests that help him decide what to write. In my kind of books the authors write what they feel, not what they can back up so that separates these books greatly. The style of writing is very different as well because in my books the style is very informal, but in Gladwell's book he's trying to teach us something so the style is much more formal.

The Tipping Point: Intro and Chapter 1

Malcom Gladwell used The Tipping Point to show how little things can greatly effect a big issue.

During the introduction, he spoke of the epidemic of the Hush Puppies and how they went from almost being phased out, to being sold in every mall in America. This happened because a few kids in the East Village of New York and Soho started wearing them and people started to follow the trend. This small step caused a huge epidemic.

In chapter one, Gladwell states "The Three Rules of Epidemics." These rules are the Law of the Few, the Stickiness Factor, and the Power of Context. He uses the example of the spread of syphilis in Baltimore, Maryland. Each rule can be applied to a reason for the spread. For example, he states that the Law of the Few can be defined with the 80/20 Principle, meaning that 20 percent of people do 80 percent of the work and that's how the epidemic started, with just a few people. Gladwell continues the chapter by giving examples of the other rules in reference to the reason for the syphilis epidemic.

The chapter is concluded by stating that the three rules help people make sense of epidemics, and asking how the rules will help us understand other epidemics later in the book. Gladwell keeps your interest by stating that "the answers may surprise you."

Brainstorming about my Social Action Research Project

For my social action research project I think I'm going to do something on child development. This topic is pretty important to me because child development is my minor and I will be teaching my students about it in the future. One thing I'm thinking about doing is how social class affects child development in the United States. Some kids, while growing up, are very privileged in what their parents can offer them, while others are provided just enough to get by.

To research this project I may interview my peers about how they were raised and different things they were in involved in as kids. Depending on where they're from and their background there's going to be some differences in their childhoods. I can also use the internet and books to find research done on this topic.

I think finding out more about this will help me when I'm teaching students in the future. Not only will it help me understand my students better but it will help them understand each other a little better.

Linguistic History

When I was younger, in middle school, a lot of the poetry we did was based on poetry. We would read a certain poem and write about our reactions to it. Sometimes we would write our own poems and give them to other people to see how they reacted to it. These English classes were always pretty hard for me though. I don't really understand poetry that much because poetry is very abstract and I'm very concrete. Instead of the writing aspects of those classes I preferred the reading part. I like to read about a lot of different things. I read a lot of romance novels because I'm an admitted hopeless romantic. But I also read mysteries and biographies. Right now I'm reading a book about the assassinations of JFK, Bobby Kennedy, and Martin Luther King, and the involvement of the mob in those assassinations. I like to read about things I'm interested in, not things I'm assigned.

For most of the classes I took here on campus, I've had to write a lot of papers. I don't mind writing them as long as I can write them within my own guidelines. When I'm told that the paper has to be a certain length or contain certain information, then that's when it gets hard for me. Getting started is always the worst part for me. Introductions and conclusions just take me a long time to do. Instead of writing them first, I start with the body paragraphs. It's easier for me to write facts that I know, rather than try to get into a topic from nothing.

I think assignment writing is pretty different from other types of writing we do in everyday life. Most of the time you're being given something to write about and being told how to do it. When you're writing in everyday life, for instance texting, you define your own writing guidelines. You get to use your personal voice rather than somethings your trying to make sound formal or acceptable to whomever is reading it.

Intro about me

My name is Caitlyn Dunn. I'm a Family and Consumer Sciences Ed Major, and as soon as the paperwork's done, I'll be minoring in Child Development. I'm from a small town called Honesdale that's about 5 hours away from IUP, in the very northeast corner of Pennsylvania. I love going to the beach in the summer, and my favorite place in the world is Hilton Head Island in South Carolina. When I leave college I hope to get a teaching job somewhere near my hometown because I'm pretty close with my family and I'd like to be able to see them. That's basically me.