Reflectionn4

The project 4 remix was kind of hard for me because finding information relevant to psychology and media was harder than expected. However, I did learn a good amount of information and it gave me insight into my future career, which I liked. I did not enjoy this project as much as I did the other ones, but it still was good for researching skills and different forms of writing.

Reflection: Project 3

I enjoyed Project 3 because it was structured and gave us very clear directions but also allowed us freedoms. boyd's article was interesting and I'm glad that I had to analyze that as opposed to something boring, because her article was not a drag. Although some of her points were obviously outdated, many were still relevant and made me think. To compare her articles with others, I used two other articles written by her as well as articles that reflected on the pros and cons of social networking sites. The cons ranged from hacking to cyber bullying and the pros ranged from identity formation to informal learning! It was interesting to read upon. I made sure to include statistics from reliable studies to gain credibility. 

After writing this paper, I felt I am much more updated on why people use social networking sites. I very easily can see how people use their profiles to portray themselves. The pictures they add and statuses they update (and etc.) tell so much about them - myself included. 

This paper was really relevant to the course and I'm glad we had to write it because writing an analytical essay is great practice, for research and comprehension take time. 

I'm worried about my final in one aspect though, because on my rough draft Professor Gerber told me to ask questions to boyd as if I had the opportunity to. However, with the points I included in my paper I didn't really have too many questions and I felt like I backed them up well with other sources. In hindsight, I hope this does not hurt my grade because of the spin I took on my paper and my comprehension of what she was reporting. I felt like I really understood it. 

Synthesis Review

I found in my primary data that technology usage, including the internet, is becoming much more available and widely used. In fact, it almost seems as though it's a necessity. My secondary data provided information that confirmed what I found in my primary data; internet is becoming much more popular, especially because of social networking sites, such as Facebook and Myspace. My media diet logs found plenty of support that students use these sites often, but my interviews proved otherwise because these sites, as well as the internet, were unavailable during previous generations' youth.

As the internet is becoming more advanced and more popular, kids and teens are logging onto it and joining the ever-popular social networking sites. The ages for joining these sites get younger and younger: Facebook, for example, used to be for college students. Then, it allowed high schoolers to join. No, anyone can join. You could make a profile for your 4 year old child if you wanted to.

This connects to Boyd's article because these growing social networking sites are how teens and kids are forming their identities. They can mold themselves into who they want to be or how they want others to see them based on their profiles or pictures or interactions with "Friends." It also can define how kids act; if they see pictures of a "cool" kid doing something, they may indulge in it as well.

My primary research shows how technology has grown and evolved, and how it is used very frequently. This connects to my secondary sources because my secondary sources show how this evolution is changing out people define themselves and create their identities.

Reflection Project 2

The writing project for project 2 was really eye opening for me. While conducting my interviews, I was surprised by the answers I received. First, I think I thought that technology was nonexistent in my parent's time and especially my grandparent's time. I was not surprised, though, to find out that having a TV was really rare in my grandparent's time. When my Mom talked to me about my grandparent's life in the Netherlands I was so intrigued. Less than 100 years ago people would have to just walk over to each others house. Now, we can call, text, email, drive, and communicate through pretty much everything. I am really glad I did this project because it was interesting and I got to find out a lot of fun facts about technology years ago, communicating years ago, and how it was impacted our generation!

Reflective Writing

Reflective writing is writing in which you think about your own thinking. Because you're asked to describe what you're thinking or feeling during certain processes, a basic question in reflective writing is "Why am I doing this?" or "Why did I chose this?" That way, you can go into depth about how you relate to the particular situation, making the writing piece more personable and relatable. This will also help organize the essay toward a goal; if you acknowledge what you really are trying to talk about and the points you specifically want to make, the essay will be more straightforward and will better meet the structure you were anticipating! That way, you can say "my essay focused on this and included examples and experiences in this, this, and this..." instead of "oh, my essay kind of just talks about this." Reflective writing will make an essay much more organized as it helps it reach its goals. A good way to use reflective writing is to talk about your own experiences and then ask "Why did I do that?" or "Would I have done it differently?" and questions of the sort that analyze why you did exactly what you did, creating a better understanding.

Reflective writing essentially works, as described above, by questioning motives and reasoning behind experiences or actions and discovering why you did it or why you are doing it in order to reflect and to make writing goal oriented and organized. It also helps with the revision process because you can decide if something is necessary or how you should change an aspect of the writing to fit what you're really trying to portray.

6/6 Primary vs. Secondary

6/6 Primary vs. Secondary

Primary research is not research that is collected from a book at the library; instead, it is research that has been found first handed. This research is often based on the scientific method, for people have to find their own facts and analysis'. It's a great way to get realistic research without any biases! There are three common ways to conduct this research - by observing, conducting interviews, or surveys.

Secondary research, on the other hand, often analyzes primary research. They are not as directly related to the event. Instead, they may just talk about or analyze events that were originally conceived by primary research.

Examples of Primary Research: an original diary, an interview, an artifact or original document.
Examples of Secondary Research: a textbook, a newspaper article, a library book.

In my current WRA project, I plan on using both primary and secondary research. I will be interviewing subjects (primary) to find first hand and unbiased, realistic information on my topic. Then, I will be researching websites for reliable data (secondary) to help prove my findings in the interview or to compare my subjects first-hand experiences with national data to make my article interesting!



3 Potential Primary Research Topics:

What is the most popular type of car in your neighborhood?
One could study this by observation, just observing what types of cars their neighbors drive.

How long do doctors go to school for?
One could use an interview for this and interview a few doctors to see how long they went to school and to gather information about the process along with their experiences.

How many people fill up their gas at least 1 time a week?
One could make a survey with options on how many times a week someone fills up their car and have people fill it out to figure how many people fill it at least once a week.

Annoying Ways People Use Sources

I think it's very important to separate a source's ideas from one's own. I also have been told multiple times that if a paragraph contains multiple facts from a particular source, just cite the source after the last fact explained from it. This prevents people from writing:

"Today there was a festival downtown (Source). 100 people went (Source). 75% of them said they had a great time (Source). More people say they will attend next year (Source)."

If it's all from the same source, listing it after each fact, if listed near each other, would be annoying and would make reading smoothly impossible! It's just very distracting. Granted, the choppy, blunt sentences are also distracting and could easily be blended together, but for the sake of the example I thought it worked. Anyway, in this situation I think the rules could be bent where the source was just cited at the end of the facts to avoid having "(Source)" interjected every few words.

I also think the rules for using the first word from your Works Cited page as an in-text citation can be bent. Sometimes someone could use a variety of articles written by the same author. In this case, using an in-text citation that was the first word from the Works Cited citing would be useless because you wouldn't be able to tell which article the person was referring to. So, this rule should be bent. If this were to happen I think the person should just write the name of the article as the in text citation. Although it is not necessarily consistent, this way would definitely be more clear in terms of multiple articles by a single author.

I also think that the rule for citing page numbers for web pages or internet sources is a pain; many websites don't include page numbers. So, the only thing you can really do is leave it out. The page rule is bendable because of this; with books or hardcopies, though, there are no excuses; page numbers should be used to correctly credit the information that was used.

The author's purpose of the material he/she is writing can allow the rule for a quotation or a phrase to be included in a sentence or structure where it does not grammatically make sense. I am a fan of correct grammar, but I think this rule can be altered if the author's purpose is to reflect a character with bad grammar, or perhaps a narrator. This way the story seems authentic and realistic, and it is even fun to read. Mark Twain is a classic author who would bend this rule for the sake of a realistic or defining dialect, and I think it's great. I also just read a book about a girl who grew up in the streets of a city. If the girl, also the narrator and now an adult, portrayed her dialect as grammatically perfect with no random sentences that sounded wrong, the book would have been totally different and much less intriguing.

One last rule, although not necessarily wrong, as Stedman states, that can be bent is the starting and ending paragraphs with a quotation. Although blurting a random quotation would be confusing and ineffective, sometimes using a powerful one and then elaborating on it correctly can be attention-grabbing. Ending a paragraph, or even a paper, with a quote can also be very sentimental. However, you would not just end a paragraph with

He lived in South Africa for the rest of his life. "Random quote by Mandela."

Instead, you could ease into it

He lived in South Africa for the rest of his life, claiming he would "forever instill peace among different races and would never give up."

For the record, that quote was made up, although it does sound like something Nelson Mandela would say (or at least an idea he would have.) But ending a sentence with this is a smooth ending, perhaps wrapping up a paper about Mandela's life story and experiences battling with apartheid. Sometimes ending with a quote can be sentimental and even inspirational.



Although there are plenty of rules that can bend concerning a writer's purpose, publication space, and audience, some can not be. Statistics or data, for example, can not just be included without giving credit to the source you received it from. There are many other examples of rules that are strict of that can bend under given circumstances.