Another version

I like this version of “Just Walk On By” way better than the original. I think it was written much better and also delivered a more precise message. It seemed to be very effective. I like how he started out with a better description of himself. It added to the image that I got in my head when I was reading and I could get a feel for how a simple thing like clothing could make someone look a lot bigger or terrifying than they truly are. Just his presence actually disturbed people and made them huddle in fear. I feel like the description of himself makes the reader really jump into what he is thinking as he is walking down the sidewalk. I’m also glad that he edited out a few stories such as the one about him being a journalist and getting the security called on him by mistake. It was a pretty good account of how his life truly is, but I felt like some of them became a little repetitive, so that revision worked well in my opinion. But he also added a new story that I felt added to the piece. The story of how he played scatter the pigeons was amusing and I’m glad that he could look at it from another perspective such as turning people’s misguided fears into a game. I feel like Staples has to put on an act every time he walks out of his front door, but that is where our society has taken us. Once again, this just shows how stereotypes are so common even in the modern day. It actually scares me that people can have these false assumptions and live in fear based off discrimination and things that they have probably only seen on the news or in movies.

Since I couldn’t find the second article anywhere on the website or the databases, I’ll just blog on the first piece by Staples. This article was actually very interesting and kept my attention. I found it very straight forward and to the point. I wouldn’t say I found what he was saying shocking at all because I do see people on the streets that cross in fear of others or who see someone of a different race and automatically stereotype. I think we all do this to some extent but not to an extreme that Staples was speaking of. It was really sad that he talked of a women running in fear from him in the middle of the night. I also felt that he wrote in a way that everyone can relate to. I think many of us have experienced discrimination or seen it happening. All the stories that he spoke of showed how society today can brand a certain race as “violent” or “bad.” This doesn’t just happen with race either. Modern society today discriminates against not only race, but gender, age, religion and culture and it’s not right. I know a lot of people who put themselves above others who are different and it really gets to me that they aren’t open enough to change or uniqueness. The story that struck me most was when he spoke of being a young journalist in Chicago and actually getting the security called on him because the women at the front desk was frightened and didn’t know that he worked there, and all he was doing was bringing in a report for the magazine he was working with. People need to stop jumping to conclusions so quickly and making false assumptions about people that they don’t even know. It rude and unfair and I think this article presented perfectly the types of discrimination and stereotypes that society today can put into our heads.

Revision

I really liked the piece by Nancy Sommers because it relates so much to what we have been doing in our own class, especially recently. Throughout this semester we have been writing papers and creating our own works that will be shown in a portfolio due the beginning of December. After writing these papers we have conferences and are told to start the revision process, but I don’t think many of us knew the correct way to start or even where to begin and Sommers states this in her article. Many students don’t know what to do and aren’t really taught it in class.
In high school I was always told to correct grammar and fix structure, but I feel like revision needs to be much more than that and it is. I was never told the right way to revise and I think many others are in the same boat. When I was told to fix a paper, I just did what I thought would help my paper. But after being in GWRTC and learning about revision and getting help in conferences, I realized that there is more to it then structure and little errors, it’s actually trying to figure out what can make your paper better and make more sense.
I have learned that sometimes you need to do a little more research or even reorganize certain ideas so they flow better. Maybe you may need to even rewrite different aspects or add another paragraph to get your point across better.
I think Sommers understood that students weren’t getting the whole point to the revision process and started wondering where revision really came from and what happens from paper to paper, draft to draft. Like she says, you can’t just change words around. It’s much bigger than that. You need to focus on what you can do to reach improvement and overall satisfaction.

Response to Drunk Driving

The article about drunk driving prevention really got my thinking. I had no idea that the percentage of people who had been killed from drunk drivers was so extremely high. As college freshman, I think this article was a great piece to read and really understand. The author talked about how college students today use designated drivers and how that has become very widely accepted. After reading the article it brought back a memory from this past summer. My best friend Katie’s boyfriend had actually been in a pretty severe drunk driving accident. She called me one day near the end of summer and said that he had been in the accident.
When I asked if they knew who hit him I was shocked by her answer. She told me that he was the one who had been driving drunk. I knew her boyfriend for a while before this and it just seemed strange that he would do something that dumb to risk his own life. As she got deeper into the story, I learned that he had gone out and couldn’t get a designated driver, and actually fell asleep at the wheel and ended up crashing into a tree on the side of the road. He was pretty seriously injured, as I could imagine. He had a broken arm with bruises all over his body and a couple of fractured ribs. I kept thinking to myself, “what if Katie was in the car with him?” I went to visit him in the hospital with her the next day and he looked terrible. He said he was never going to do anything that stupid ever again and I believed him. He could have died and she gave him an earful about it. After all, that night he got in the accident was the night of his twenty-first birthday. Imagine that.
Reading this article really hit home for me. Not only had Katie’s boyfriend been in an accident, but I know many other who have been to, and some of them even fatal. I always was told to never drive drunk or get in the car with anyone who was in the slightest bit intoxicated, and I think after reading this piece and seeing it first hand, that I will be sticking to what I was taught.

Social citizen..or not?

When reading the “Social Citizens” article, I got the feeling that Fines was generalizing our generation as the ones who volunteer. I do agree with this to some extent, but I feel as if a lot of people get a false sense of why many kids and students our age do so much charity work and help out around our communities. I might also be stereotyping when I say this, but kids these days aren’t dumb.
We are told as juniors and seniors in high school to volunteer because it “looks good on college applications.” In my honest opinion I do feel as if that is why our generation is prone to this branding of people who volunteer. I’m not saying that all kids our age fall into this category, but I would say many. I feel this way especially because a vast majority of kids these days are going to college, compared to the times when a college education wasn’t as important as it is now.
What also interested me was Nina Rappaport’s story. I felt like she felt into the category of students that really did volunteer because she wanted to feel selfless, not just because she was forced or felt like she had to. As I kept reading, I was shocked to find out that she wasn’t registered to vote. She explains in the piece that “The system is so corrupt my vote isn’t going to change it, nothing is going to ever change politically.” Although she has a point with the system being corrupt, I don’t see how she can use that as an explanation not to register herself to vote. It made me sort of uncomfortable to read this. Just because you think your vote will not count, doesn’t mean that you cant make a difference. This point in the article really bothered me.
Overall I thought the piece was interesting, but didn’t really capture the other aspects of college students today. I feel like all I kept reading was about volunteering and charity. It was a bit repetitive. We students have a lot more to offer.

Response to Spanier's "Activism"

The article “Is Campus Activism Dead or Just Misguided” really opened me up to a whole new perspective of college students and how we spend our time. I always learned about the important protests of the 60’s and 70’s in history classes, but didn’t really read that much into it until now. Reading Spanier’s article made me realize how lazy college students can seem, for the most part. Spanier was completely right in saying that students tend to spend the majority of their time on Facebook, instead of standing up for a good cause, or getting involved with the community. I would say many students don’t even keep up with world affairs or read the newspaper, and I am including myself in this category. Just yesterday I was talking to my Aunt on the phone about something new related, and I had no idea what she was talking about. She then lectured me on why it’s important to be well rounded and keep up with topics in the paper and around the world. So this article came just at the right time. Thinking about it now, I would say that most if not all of my friends here at James Madison are slacking in the activism department, but it all seemed quite normal not to be pursuing such things. I really gave little to no thought about it. But it’s not just students today. I feel like the majority of Americans in general are not as well versed in worldly affairs as they used to be. I feel like this is a time when everyone should be trying harder to speak out against causes that interest them, especially in this time of economic downturn. This is definitely not the time for us not to worry. Spanier does make some great points, but I don’t think he should get so discouraged just yet.

Discovery

This past summer, I recently found out that my mother could speak pretty fluent Italian. I walked by her one day while she was on the phone with my aunt and I was so surprised to be hearing this. After she hung up I asked why I had never known about this and how I had never heard her after 18 years. When she was younger, she lived with her grandparents who came straight out of Sicily. They spoke Italian around the house nonstop, but I never really had put it together that maybe she learned how to speak it also. So here I am, the summer before I’m about to go away to college, and I am just finding out about this. Not only was I shocked but I was also a little upset. With how big my heritage is, I would have expected to be well aware of her ability. Plus, I thought that my mom had shared everything with me and I felt let down and disappointed. I didn’t know why this was such a secret. After I had a long talk with my mom, I realized that there was so much I didn’t know about her, which ended up being a strange feeling. Growing up and being at this stage in life, you figure you know everything there is to know about your parents. But after listening to my mom, I learned that there was so much I didn’t know about her life growing up. It was all so interesting that I also went to talk to my dad later that night. Talking with my parents really opened me up to this whole new part of their lives that I felt I had never known about. I feel that if others took the chance to sit down with a parent, grandparent or any family member that they could end up finding out a lot more about that person that they maybe didn’t expect. It definitely made me closer with my mom and I truly think others could also learn from my experiences and try the same thing.

Said's "States"

I found the piece written by Said to be really interesting and thought provoking. After reading the little bit of information about his life, the article took a turn and started to give you an insight into the Middle East. Coming from a man who did undergraduate studies at Princeton and received a PhD at Harvard, I knew I was about to read something completely intriguing. The way he described the Arab refugee camps painted such a picture in my head, and even if you couldn’t get a sense of these camps from the article, plenty of pictures were provided, which made it even more interesting. Seeing how much destruction there was gave so much insight into the Palestinian exile. What these people went through is nothing anyone of the modern age could even imagine. Camps were raided and ravaged for supplies. The Arabs were treated as commodities, not as individuals. Said pointed out that the Palestinians were subject to special laws, status and violence, all of which was just furthering the unfair treatment. Reading the article almost gave me a sense of the Holocaust. These people were exiled and even given unique cards to identify them as refugees. Even in their own homeland, they would always be considered aliens. Successful or not, I felt like they couldn’t win either way. It seemed as if they had lost all sense of identity with themselves. After time, it was like the violence they encountered and experienced just became normal. Even among fellow Palestinians, war was breaking out and children’s minds were being corrupted. The author himself even fled the country at a very young age and has yet to return for fear of death and growing violence. Like I mentioned before, these people lost who they were. There wasn’t even proof that they existed anymore, Said states. There has been no census kept for years. He also says that it is definitely near impossible to maintain any sort of identity while in exile. Their whole existence has just been put into ruins.

Jane Tomkin's "Indians"

This article had to be one of the most boring pieces I have ever read. I felt that it was so pointless to ramble on about historians. It was completely unnecessary. When she first started off talking about the show that she was taken to, I thought it was going to be rather interesting to hear about the headdresses and feathers. She talked of meeting the actual American Indians, and it made me excited to keep reading.
Once I passed the part where she was retelling her personal experiences, it became so ridiculously boring that I couldn’t even comprehend what she was saying. Over and over she spoke of historians. This when on for a few pages. I felt like she didn’t even get her point across. Overall I think that her rambling was not needed and she could have written the article without all the fillers. It had the potential to be a good piece but Jane Tompkins killed wit completely.

Revisionism

While reading “Revisionism Revisited” the first time, I was completely confused. After reading it over a few times, I realized the message it was trying to portray. Revisionism, it seems, really only matters to the people who read and believe what is being revised. History can’t be changed, what is done is done. But what can we take to be the truth? As in the Wright Brother’s example, it is widely accepted that the two brothers were the first to actually fly an aircraft. After reading the article, it may just be that another man should have gotten the credit. It makes one become skeptical of how deep they should read into factual dates and events.
Revisionism shouldn’t be taken as skepticism, though. I felt that classifying it solely as a conspiracy theory undermined the real basis. As I said before, it is completely up to the individual to make the decision whether what they are reading is historically correct. We also can’t just shoot down people’s ideas and thoughts for the very beginning. We need to take time to think about what is being said and what stance we take on it.
Overall, the point that Mortimer was trying to convey wasn’t very clear to me. I’m not big into politics, so as soon as he started out with talking about George Bush, I was lost. I felt also that he was trying to talk himself and his views up way too much, which made him come off as slightly arrogant and closed minded.

Process Journal Questions

Q1) What happened in using the Perl process in particular?
A1) It took a while for me to block out all distractions sround me and focus on just my writing. All that came to my mind was my friends back home and how much I miss them. After blocking sitting down and realizing what I wanted to write about, It was easy to free write about the subject that I actually chose.

Q2) What happened in using the open ended process in particular?
A2) After I started thinking in a more broad sense, so many words and thoughts came to my mind. I thought about family alot but decided not to write about it because it ould bring up too many emotions, especially being 6 hours away from home. Summing up what I wanted to say was hard because I chose to write specifically about sertain friends and I found that a lot of memories came out.

Q3) What did you learn about your writing? Language? Thinking?
A3) I learned that Im much better at free writing instead of having to stick to specific rules and guidelines. When I have something Im interested in, its much easier for me to get my thoughts out and express them on paper. When Im interested, Im more concentrated on what Im doing and it also helps me to get motivated.

The Art of College Management:Cheating

Whether one has cheated or not, it has been a known fact for years that the majority of college students have either cheated or thought about cheating academically. Cheating gives one the false belief of succeeding on a test, on a homework assignment, or anything else for that matter. Cheating has been seen not only in schools, but also in the workplace and other social situations. We all know it’s wrong, but that doesn’t stop most of us from doing it. As said by Rebekah Nathan, it has been estimated that 81% of students in 1963 had been involved in some form of dishonesty. Thirty years later in 1993, that statistic had risen 2%. I can only imagine how much that number has risen since. Although the numbers were high, this really doesn’t surprise me. Last year in high school, cheating would take place literally every day, and it was looked upon as normal among the students. Classmates swapped homework answers or maybe just copied completely from one of their friends. Test taking was much worse, having seen immediate shifting of eyes when a classmate didn’t know an answer. Students would think of basically anything to get out of studying. Cheat sheets were popular in my school, and people were proud of them too. Since a lot of the kids had to take relatively the same courses, after using the right answers on the sheets, they would simply pass them on to friends so they could take the test with that very same little piece of paper in their pockets. Sometimes they would get caught, but most of the time they got away with it, and I thought nothing of it. I figured if they really needed it that bad it wasn’t any of my business. I feel as if cheating is now just an everyday thing, and it is taking away from the integrity of high schools and universities across the country. But people cheat, and there really isn’t ever going to be a stop to it. They do it to feel accomplished without having to study rigorously. By doing this though, they are just sliding by with a free pass. The people who are being dishonest aren’t learning or bettering themselves in the process. They are just cheating themselves out of striving to be the best they can be on their own. When a student who has cheated receives an excellent grade, it is obviously meaningless and it’s taking the credit away from a student who earned a good grade through hard work and effort. I’m not saying everyone is perfect, but people should gain success out of their own efforts rather than stealing the spotlight from the ones who truly deserve it.

Mary Germanio

GWRTC

August 26, 2009

Writer’s Profile Assignment

When I think about writing, self expression is the first thing that comes to mind. Writing is a form of communicating my ideas, thoughts and stances on specific topics. These topics can be academic or just for plain fun. The only way I will be able to write effectively is if I take interest in what it is that I am writing about. For me, I find it difficult to portray my thoughts if my heart is not in the subject or the piece. Although I could probably throw together my attitudes into a paper easily, the finished product will not necessarily be my best work if something doesn’t spark my interest about said topic. I write best when I can choose the topic or if I am just free writing on my own time. I feel like I can convey my messages better when I let the ideas flow rather then having a specific structure or outline.

I didn’t always feel this way about writing, though. It was not until last year in my AP literature class that I realized that I actually liked writing. My teacher encouraged me to explore new styles of writing and also helped me improve my language and appeal. He helped me effectively produce pretty good works that I felt a sense of accomplishment about. Although sometimes he could be rather harsh with his “constructive criticism”, it helped me to be the writer I am today. I give him the credit for helping me develop my personal attitudes towards writing. Without him I could have never seen my potential and probably wouldn’t have continued to see my writing in a good light. To this day, I still love to put my ideas down for people to read, even if they don’t exactly agree with my views.