Writing Shitty First Drafts

Anne Lamott believes that all writers write shitty first drafts. She states that "the first draft is the child's draft, where you let it all pour our and then let ir romp all over the place, knowing that no one is going to see it and that you can shape it later" (Lamott, 1954). I have been working on all of my shitty drafts by reading all of Dr. Seloni and Bee's feedback and making the changes that they recommended. I still need to revise my introduction to make it fit with the rest of my paper better. After that I will read through all of the sections that I have written and polish them up. After I am done with the sections, I will read through the entire paper and try to make the sections flow better.

APA Exercise

1. Adams (2000) states that saccharin, a sweetner that causes tumors in rats, does not cause cancer in humans.

2. Adams, M. A. (2000, May 16). U.S. report adds to list of carcinogens. New York Times, pp. F4.

3. [Saccharin] had been listed [as a potential cancer-causing agent] since 1981.

I-SEARCH: Research Process

In order to find the topic of my social action research project, I thought back to my high school days and what I wanted to change about it. I immediately thought of one my best friends who "came out" during high school and the bullying that he went through. To find sources, first I went to the IUP library website to look up academic articles. I found many interesting sources about the mistreatment or Lesbian, Gay, Bisexual, Transgender, and Questioning, LGBTQ, students this way. The articles I found helped me a lot but, I found the most helpful sources by accident when I went to the library to find a book. The book that I went to look for was in a section that had many other books about the topic. I had not realized that there would have been an entire section of the library devoted to LGBTQ students and the bullying they undergo. To investigate this topic, I have put together a survey that I am going to send to high school teachers. This project has really opened my eyes to the mistreatment that LGBTQ students have encountered in the past and are still encountering today.

Paraphrasing

The use of direct quotations in many student's note taking has become a frequently occuring problem which has led to the overuse of quotations in their final research papers. Final manuscripts should be 90% of your own ideas and writing and only 10% direct quotations. Limiting the number of direct quotations from your sources while taking notes will allow you to easily accomplish this (Lester, 1976).

Tipping Point Reflection

1. As a contributing member of my society, I would like to see the negativity toward homosexual and bisexual individuals diminish. I do not believe that a person should be mentally and physically abused for being who they are. When I become a teacher, I think that I could help tip this social epidemic by showing my students to be themselves and to not judge anyone else. If we were all the same, life would be boring.

2. I found chapter two to be the most influential to me. This chapter had an example that showed how a person's facial expression can change how the people watching that person react. This was interesting to me because as a future educator, I have to be careful not to send the wrong messages to my students.

3. One idea that I will take with me from reading this book is that it only takes one person to start an epidemic. It can apply to my academic life because as a teacher, I will encourage my students to strive to be that one person to start an epidemic and that nothing is too far out of reach.

Chapter 3 Discussion Questions

1. Bernie Goetz is a man who lived in New York City. Three days before Christmas in 1984, he boarded the subway. He noticed that all of the other passengers were staying away from four black men but he decided to sit next to them anyway. The four men approached him and asked for money. Goetz assumed that they were going to mug him and pulled out a gun. He shot all of them once and then noticed the one of the men still moving so he shot him again. He was viewed as a hero and was aquitted on all charges of assult and attempted murder. I believe that Goetz was a cold-blooded murderer. He did not know before he shot the men that they all had criminal backgrounds and all they did was ask him for five dollars. He could have just said said no and there probably would not have been any problem. I believe that Goetz only believed they were dangerous because of their skin color. If they had been four white men asking him for five dollars, he would have probably either given it to him or simply replied no.

5. In his prison experiment, Zimbardo took college students and placed them in a prison-like environment. The students portrayed either a guard or an inmate. Each of the students seemed to become the role they were playing. I believe that if the living conditions in prisons improved, the inmates behavior would definately be impacted. I don't know if that would necessarily be a good thing though. If prison becomes viewed as a safe and good place to be, criminals will not hesitate to commit crimes because prison will no longer be seen as a horrible place to be.

English Conference

On Monday I attended Panel 8 and Panel 17 of the English Undergraduate Conference. Panel 8 was a creative writing panel in which two young women shared very emotional pieces. The first woman shared her prose piece called "Silence" in which she shared what she remembered about her father and his passing when she was only eight years old. It was very touching and inspiring how she was able to share something so personal with complete strangers. The second woman read several of her works. They were all very well written.

Panel 17 was about Identities. The first of the three women to present read a paper that she wrote about how inspired she was when she saw Bill Stickland give a speech at IUP. The second read a paper that she wrote about Islamic phobia and the third read a paper she wrote about Spanish customs. The most interesting fact that I learned was during the third presentation. I did not know prior to the presentation how important family is to Spaniards and how different their customs are compared to ours.

Chapter 2: Reflective Writing

Malcolm Gladwell talks about Connectors, Mavens, and Salesmen in Chapter 2 and how they contribute to epidemics. I think that the most interesting argument that he presented in this chapter is the experiment which took place during the 1984 presidential election conducted by Brian Mullen. I had never realized how much a newcaster's facial expressions could impact the way that their viewers react to the topic. It is as if the newcaster could subliminaly make you feel poorly for a canidate that you may have otherwise voted for. Gladwell collected data from experiments such as Mullen's, interviews that he conducted like his interview with Alpert, and many other sources for his research writing.

Contrasting Genres

During high school and during the summer, I enjoyed reading fiction books. Fiction writing is much different than Malcolm Gladwell's book. Gladwell's book is all about facts, statistics, and other things that are known to be true where as fictional books are stories about things that did not happen in reality. Fictional books tell a story that starts at the beginning and continues until the end but in Gladwell's book, each chapter has different examples. It is the type of book where you could open it up to a chapter in the middle and start reading and pretty much get what he is saying. If you were to do that with a fictional book, you would have no idea what is going on.

Introduction and Chapter 1 Summary

The author Malcolm Gladwell raises this issue of how it only takes a few people to start an epidemic and how the point in which something becomes an epidemic starts is called the "Tipping Point." He gives the example of how Hush Puppies were out of style in the early 1990's but then a few teenagers started wearing them and they became a trendy style which almost everyone was wearing. He also gives examples of the syphilis epidemic in the Baltimore area during 1995-1996 and the three ways that experts on the subject believe it could have started. He concludes the chapter by stating the three rules of the Tipping Point and by asking a question to get us thinking about what is to come in the book.

Social Action Research Project

My major is Business Education so for my Social Action Research Project, I would like to research sexual orientation and it's affect on how well the student does in the classroom. I believe that students who are homosexual or bisexual may have difficulty in class because of bullying or problems at home that occurred because of their sexual orientation. The problems associated with being of a different sexual orientation may have decreased over the past decade or so because of more media and more celebrities showing a positive view of the subject so I could narrow the topic down more by focusing on the problem today and comparing it to 10 years ago. This topic is important to me because one of my best friends through my middle school years ended up “coming out” about being gay during our freshman year of high school. He was bullied a lot by our classmates. His grades suffered until he could not take it anymore and transferred to a different school. I would like to know more about this topic and maybe find some things that other educators have done to help students of sexual orientations to fit in with the student body more and feel as if they are not out of place. To conduct research about this topic I will do research online about statistics and interview homosexual and bisexual students and maybe even educators to see if they ever had to deal with this problem.

Diversity

Before coming to IUP, I had always been told about the problems our society faces with diversity but I had never actually experienced any of them. I was raised in the very small town of Nicktown, Pennsylvania where everyone was Caucasian and mostly middle class. When I came to IUP, I was introduced to many different races and social classes. My first semester I joined the National Service Sorority, Gamma Sigma Sigma and became really good friends with girls from all different types of backgrounds. I think that Gamma Sigma Sigma and other groups around campus are really promoting diversity through social action. They do not discriminate against ethnicity, social class, sexual orientation or gender and they make sure that everyone knows they are welcome. As an education major, diversity is going to be a part of my classroom. I know that I am going to have both male and female students and that they are probably going to have different social classes, ethnicities, and sexual orientations. For this class, I would like to either explore if a student’s sexual orientation affects how well they do in the classroom or explore teen pregnancy and it’s affect on the student’s schooling. I will most likely run across both circumstances in my classroom so I believe both topics would be relevant.

Linguistic History

During my elementary and middle school years, I remember writing a lot about my personal life (e.g. my family, my hobbies, my summer vacations etc.). I also wrote a lot e-mails and personal notes to my friends which got me in trouble with my teachers sometimes. Writing about topics that did not interest me was particularly hard for me. It was also hard for me to get past writers block and actually start writing. This usually led to a lot of procrastination because I would get bored every time I tried to start and move on to something else. When I was younger I kept a diary and wrote a little poetry for fun but I also had to write a lot of poetry and also a short story for school. It was hard for me to write poetry that had a particular rhyme scheme or had to be a specific number of syllables but I really enjoyed writing free verse poems in which I could express how I was feeling. Last year my boyfriend was in Iraq so I wrote a lot of letters and e-mails to him but I haven’t done much since he came home in September. I do admit that I do spend a lot of time texting now though.

Reading was interesting to me. During my middle school and high school years I was a member of the Reading Team so I did a lot of reading. My favorite books to read were fiction ones which would take me to places and worlds that I would not get to go to otherwise. My favorite book was a murder mystery called Fall Into Darkness by Christopher Pike.

During my childhood I was very shy and I had a hard time talking to people that I did not know well. It was easier for me to write e-mails and notes rather than to talk to a person one-on-one. Today it is still hard for me to give presentations in class but I have been getting better at that since I became a bartender last summer. Bartending has taught me to open up and not be afraid to start conversations with people. The only writing that I do at work are taking customer’s food orders.

Essay writing and activity writing usually have specific topics that you must write about but the writer is usually the one who choose the topics for e-mails, letters, poems, etc. The audience of essays and activity writing is usually the teacher and peers where as the audience of other forms of writing are usually your friends. Essay and activity writing is also more formal that other forms of writing.

About Me

Hello everyone. My name is Kimberly Ann Dumm and I am from the very small town of Nicktown, Pennsylvania. I am currently a sophomore at IUP majoring in Business Education. Computers have always interested me and I had always dreamed of becoming a teacher so I was really excited when I found a major that incorporated both. I am usually very easy to get along with so if you have any questions about me or just want to talk, feel free to leave comments.