Now that we have turned our summaries in, all we can do is wait for the dreaded grade *cue dramatic music* when Dr. Kyburz hands it back to us. Rooting out all the analytical fluff and past/future tense descriptions was a very big chore to me. What was your biggest difficulty in creating your final draft? Nevertheless, we must press on! Onward to something called a Microtheme. This semester I'm learning so many new words (mainly from organic chemistry), and spell correct says they're all wrong. I'm beginning to think its a conspiracy- all these higher-level classes, they get together at the start of each semester and make up words just to confuse students! This week's conspiracy, Microthemes, is a short and concise summary of an issue or debate with a major focus on your personal reason for being involved with it. Atleast from what I can tell, its a hybrid of an opinionated essay and a summary analysis of a social issue or debate. I don't fully understand what a Microtheme is about or how it will be graded, so I thought this blog could serve as a little brainstorming/informing area where we help each other understand what a Microtheme is. I am, however, assuming that I'm not the only one who doesn't know what a Microtheme is- hopefully I'm not alone in this boat! Anyways, it seems like this will focus on our ability to: present different sides of a topic without bias, explain the importance of the topic, and logically defend the topic though inquiry rather than fact-citing. What about the rest of you? Please feel free to correct me anywhere I'm wrong in my assumptions of what a Microtheme is!
I, being the genius (~sarcasm~) that I am, volunteered to show my horribly incomplete summary draft in class so you all got to see the incoherent rambles that my brain can conjure! However, always look for a silver lining- I learned a lot of things that I need to fix for my next draft. So yay, free group review for me! My first problem to fix: knowing when to shut up. Every English/composition class I've taken so far the teacher has heavily pressured me to analyze better, to go deeper, to see something from many points of views. Pros of this conditioning- I can be super annoying in arguments and write a 4 page paper about something that should only take half a page. Cons- I can't write a summary to save my life. Seriously, cutting all the analytical stuff from my draft reduced my 3 page paper to about 4 lines (including title). Next problem is formatting. A simple fix for most, however I don't have a working laptop and I have to use google docs most of the time with my roommate's laptop. Though I guess I should count my blessings and be happy my roommate lets me borrow it in the first place! My final huge problem is tone of writing. I switch between first person, third person, past, present, and future tense many times. I don't know why, but it's just a little weird to think of writing this in present tense. I watched the movie, so my brain defaults to "then they did a thing" instead of "the film shows..." and that was difficult to fix. How did all of your revisions go? I hope my blunder of a draft helped some of you make a better paper!
I have a very small history with documentary films, so perhaps I haven't seen enough to form a proper opinion about this yet. I've seen two George Washington, an Augustus Caesar, and a Thomas Edison documentary. Both Washington documentary films I was forced to watch in elementary and high school. These documentary films were, by all accounts, boring- because of how censored they were in order to adhere to the school's curriculum. There was nothing mentioning the harsh guerrilla tactics George Washington employed, but boy did the film hammer home the fact that he is the "father of our country" because some war stuff happened and we won in the end. Both school documentaries brush off the war as something that was easily won, when in fact Washington's leadership, brilliant as it may have been, barely tipped the scales in America's favor- it was an extremely hard fought and close victory. Washington himself said that we (the revolutionary colonists) were "trembling
for the fate of America, which nothing but the infatuation of the enemy
could have saved; we should not have remained all the succeeding winter
at their mercy" when he was forced to retreat over the Delaware (shsu). So these boring and misleading school documentaries left a sour taste in my mouth whenever I thought about watching one in my free time.
While you can say this was just something the directors had to do to stay within the bounds of school education, every documentary I've seen so far has had obvious bias. After thinking about it a little, it isn't very surprising that documentaries are biased- they are supposed to show the person or group in the best light possible. So documentary "bias" (if you can call it that) isn't inherently a bad thing. I remember being awed at a History Channel documentary I watched of Augustus Caesar. However, after doing a little independent research I saw that a lot of the things he is accredited for happened because of someone else. The most prominent example I can think of that most people will know is one of Augustus' famous quotes "I found Rome a city of bricks and left it a city of marble" where he quite clearly is taking credit for Rome's bolstered economy (TQP). While its true that Rome certainly got richer while he was in power, this was mainly due to Julius Caesar's previous successful conquests in Gaul. Not to say Augustus wasn't important, but the documentary was obviously missing a few facts. Same thing with Thomas Edison, the film showed him as a brilliant businessman and thinker who brought wide-spread electricity to the modern world. However, his title of "Father of Electricity" is a stolen one. He subverted and used Nikola Tesla's ideas and innovations while simultaneously smearing his name. The reason why we can have those small and efficient power lines all around America is because of Tesla, yet he is given the boot in favor of Edison. In the end, I think that's why I don't like documentaries- they don't tell the full story. I like to hear both sides of a story, and to hear about both the good and bad aspects of a famous person. I believe that learning about what struggles overcame a person and how they bounced back from them to end up on top again shows the person in a much brighter light than only learning about their achievements. Washington won an impossibly outnumbered revolution, Augustus isn't the sole reason Rome was able to expand her borders again, and Edison stole alternating current from Tesla. Every great person has faults, but it is a part of who they were and how they came to be the person that is so famous now that we have documentary films about them! We shouldn't hide these important facts just because they aren't as pretty as some others. To sum everything up, the reason I haven't seen many documentary films is because every one that I've seen has blatantly ignored important facts about the person the film was about; I don't like being told strictly one side of a story, I want to know the full and exhaustive story. Works Cited:
Washington, George. "George Washington on the Problems of the Militia." George Washington on the Problems of the Militia. N.p., n.d. Web. 11 Sept. 2015. <http://www.shsu.edu/~his_ncp/Militia1.html>.
Caesar, Augutus. "The Quotations Page: Quote from Caesar Augustus." The Quotations Page. N.p., n.d. Web. 11 Sept. 2015. <http://www.quotationspage.com/quote/24364.html>.
Well, what is not to love? Ever since I saw this a few years ago its been one of my favorites! I personally love the captions that the maker put in the video for the dogs "arguing" because it just adds to how adorable the dogs are. This video brings a new meaning to the word argument, one dog just wants to play outside and the other just wants to enjoy her bone she's munching on (in reality, they both probably want the bone). The video probably should've been edited to be a little shorter, as headphone users will definitely see how annoying high-pitched barking can be after only two minutes. Regardless, I think this video is cute because I love animals so much. But it's also funny because of how they're acting and the humorous subtitled put in for them. I can't imagine anybody not smiling at least once watching this- this has to be the perfect remedy for anybody having a bad day. Works Cited: Gardea. "2 TALKING DOGS ARGUE." YouTube. YouTube, 23 July 2011. Web. 09 Sept. 2015.
Not
sure how many others are in the same boat as me, but the first day of
class sure threw every expectation of mine out the window. I thought
this was simply going to be another English class where we read novels
and short stories by famous authors, sprinkled with a few famous poems, and
maybe one or two of the instructor's personal favorites. From what I can see, this class is going to be all about modern age stuff. I'm excited about taking a
different style of writing class, but also slightly worried. Quite a lot of the subjects and situations that are happening with slacktivism
and online protests are very subjective and opinionated topics. With
normal writing courses you can fall back on the fact that (most of the
time) the author of the novel you're writing a report on had a defined
point or goal, so there wasn't much bias you could throw in that report
of yours. This, however, isn't like that. I'm curious and worried about
how our assignments will be graded. I have full confidence
in Dr. Kyburz as a professor, but asking anybody to grade while having no influence from any bias is
an almost insurmountable task. This is even harder when you have the stress of grading multiple classes. In short- everyone has biases and they can affect a grade,
I'm not saying they "will" I'm saying they can.
The other concern I have is how these blogs should be written and organized. How much leeway do I have with the picture and title before they're considered irrelevant or off-topic?
Should they use casual language and have a simplistic idea of "flow" or
rather should this blog be treated as a method of posting college-level micro-essays with full attention to structure, word choice, and
progression? Should it only be written in a first-person perspective or third-person
perspective? Am I thinking too hard about this? Am I allowed to include questions? This post itself may be marked down for attempting to juggle two points that are related to the topic instead of focusing and expanding on one. Or it could be marked down for referring to myself (the author) with a personal pronoun. This paragraph itself could bring down the post's grade for simply discussing the grade! That last part would be some phenomenal irony. While this was brought up in class, the discussion didn't go very in-depth.
Other than those points, I think that I'm
pretty excited to start a different style of writing class. Hopefully I
will be able to understand and adapt to it!
