I haven't written a proper research paper in years, since my senior year of high school. Trying to get back into that mindset to do a research paper is extremely hard for me. I used to have no problem doing what was asked of me but for some reason this time around I am struggling. It’s actually made me become frustrated that I posted a terrible first draft that is incomplete and didn’t meet the 1000 word minimum. I am extremely angry with myself for allowing that, but I am having trouble understanding exactly how to make an argument in my paper since I feel like my thoughts are all over the place. My professor explained how he reads papers that seem to be full of ideas that they become all over the place and I can say that my paper is one of them. I wonder if my other classmates are having the same or similar trouble?
My research project is based around how young women are affected by social media because of how they portray women. In my essay, I wrote “According to the film Miss Representation, its states that women from an early age are told that looks are important, which makes their value and worth depend on that. This is harmful to the self esteem. Even though, social media has its pros, it does more harm than good. Depression and anxiety leads to lack of sleep, not eating or overeating, isolation, mood changes, self harm, and could eventually lead to suicide.” I do not think this is as strong as I’d like it to be. I need to have evidence on why social media has pros and cons. Although, I do like the fact that I explain how low self esteem leads to depression and anxiety. I do believe that this is a strong point. Finding evidence on why social media affects young women seems to be harder than I thought. From the articles I have read for my research, I was shocked to read what I did. I did not fully comprehend the impact social media actually had on young women's lives. It’s proven that women are greatly impacted by how they are portrayed in articles, photos, any forms of ads, etc,. From the media, we are expected to live up to a certain expectation of how we look, think, and act. This can lead to all sorts of problems. For example, depression and anxiety, eating disorders, anorexia, body dysmorphia disorder, and so many more. It is a toxic environment for young minds. Thankfully, multiple companies are trying to break this stigma and have started a ‘love your body movement’ that has helped young women be comfortable in their own skin. Despite my struggles, I hope by being proactive and being able to ask questions in class, while having a conversation with my professor and even possibly reading my other classmates research papers that I’ll have a better understanding of how to construct my paper. I hope by completing my next draft that I will not have my thoughts all over the paper and I can properly execute my ideas and research.
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In this blog assignment, I will sharing the comparison between Plato’s Cave and the two films, Miss Representation and The Mask You Live in. From watching the videos provided by my professor, I got the message of how society is the reason why men and women act the way they do in current days. It presents an idea of how we are controlled as a society.
In The Cave: An Adaptation of Plato's Allegory in Clay video, they showed three prisoners that in a cave, facing a wall with a fire lit behind them. The fire illuminates shadows of people, animals, and other objects that cross a bridge in the cave giving the prisoners a distorted vision of what the outside world looks like. The video continues and explains how a prisoner is freed and is finally getting the world for the first time. The prisoner sees everything that he could have never imagined and tries to go tell the other prisoners what he has seen. While he is yelling to them and trying to explain how beautiful and magical it is, the prisoners that are left only see a shadow and a mumbled version of what he is trying to tell them. This lead to me getting the message of how the light is controlled as I said earlier. While whoever controls that light allows them to only see what they want them to see, a distorted version of what it could be. This made me think of the films, Miss Representation and The Mask You Live In. It made me think of how society is affecting the growth of men and women at a young age. They’re being made to grow up a certain way and if they don’t act, think, and feel that way, they’re seen as ‘abnormal’ and ‘weird’. In this blog post,I will be sharing insight into my research project. I have analyzed the films Miss Representation and The Mask You Live In. During class, I was asked to create a slug line, a six word memoir, and a found poem for the two films.
The slug line is words or phrases straight from the script that we did not change or add anything to. For the film, Miss Representation, we chose the phrase “We need to challenge the media, encourage women and value women.” I liked this dialogue due to the fact that the media is the reason women have such an obstructed idea how to look, act, and feel. Women can be seen as the weaker sex and we need to encourage women to fight and stand up for themselves. A six word memoir from the film, Miss Representation, we chose was “Support, encourage, and value all women.” This was not the strongest six word memoir, since the other groups had a better one but I saw this six word memoir as society is so used to women having to put each other down to get ahead of one another. We need to realize that women are all powerful and capable of achieving whatever they set their minds to without tearing other women down. In the film The Mask You Live In, our slug line was “A many does everything to the extreme.” This referred to how men are pushed to do things to an overbearing extent. Society has created a stereotype that men are supposed to be extreme in things they do when that is not the truth. The six word memoir we chose for this film was “Be a man, hold it in.” This quote makes me feel angry. Men are told to not allow their emotions get in the way of their being. They are suppose to be strong, and rational. They are expected to hold emotions in until they snap and that will lead to them acting out, becoming violent, and even hurting themselves due to the overwhelming emotions they feel. The found poem we chose was From the beginning, we’re taught to lock down emotions. Sometimes my friends act tough, when they’re not. Man up, why step down from that? I see this found poem as sad. Young men know that they’re not suppose to feel like this but there’s so much pressure from society to be tough and not weak that they have to put on this persona to mask the emotions. In this blog post, I will be interpreting the film Miss Representation and The Mask You Live In. This film Miss Representation talks about the hardships women faced back in the 70’s, showing the uprising and the awakening of female empowerment and fighting back against what was considered normal back then, while also showing what is going on in our current day. The film The Mask You Live In shows you the way men are pressured into being a certain way due to the way society has labeled masculinity. They explain how they try to be what was ingrained into them from family members and society while also trying to be true to themselves and their own emotions.
Q: How does the argument in the film make you feel (impact on your being)? A: The argument in the film Miss Representation makes me feel empowered. Women shouldn’t be seen as the lesser sex but unfortunately, that’s never the way it was. Seeing all of the women who have fought to be seen as equals makes me feel strong, and proud of how far women have come. While, in the film The Mask You Live In makes me feel angry for the men who were told to be a certain way because they are supposed to be strong and not show emotion because society says emotions equal weakness. This film gives me hope that the current society is changing and more aware of issues that go on with men. Q: How does the argument in the film make you think (impact on your knowing)? A: The film The Mask You Live In makes me think that the media plays a huge part into what masculinity is defined by. You have older movies that show that men are supposed to be strong leaders and strong leaders don’t talk about what scares them, or what makes them sad because they’ll be perceived as weak. Young boys see this in movies, games, the media, etc. and this makes them have to prove that they’re not weak, or gay, or emotional, etc, consistently. If they show any sort of femininity, they can be bullied and this can lead to many, many issues and can even result in a young child taking his own life. This is a serious problem that needs to be fixed now. It’s toxic, and sets these children up for failure and to have issues in the future. While, in the film Miss Representation, it makes you think that also media is to blame for the way women are perceived. Movies show that women should be the nurturers. That they should be at home with the children, cooking, cleaning, doing things for the husband. In reality, life is not like that anymore. Women are taking charge of their own lives and doing what they believe is going to help their future. Q: How does the argument in the film make you want to make change (impact on your doing)? A: Watching these films make me want to fight for change for men and women. They both show issues that are still happening to this day. Young boys are being bullied for showing any sort emotions which result in higher rates of suicide and mass shootings. Women are still not being respected and are still fighting for basic human rights. That’s just the surface level of the issues we have going on. If I ever have kids, I plan on showing them how to be a good, independent person and aware of their emotions. My children will be apart of the change and will fight and be vocal about what we as a society need to fix. We also need the people in power to take some accountability and vocally support what the younger generation is trying to do. We need better leaders and I fully believe our generation will be the change we need. We fight for what is right, and no one deserves to be belittled due to their gender, sexual orientation, and race. The focus of my blog post is to share with you about our discourse community and how the texts What is Literacy? (James Paul Gee), We Are Many (Pablo Neruda), and Our Discourse Community Values all have to do with how they speak to the identity of our community. These texts give an overview of what we want in any learning environment.
Reading the texts above, you can tell there is a common theme, having a strong community to improve your goals whether they are in education, or in real-life situations. In the text Our Discourse Community Values, it states “conceptualize discourse communities as social networks that frame the ethics, expectations, and exigencies of stakeholders who use situated languages to bond with others and to make meaning”, from this we can say that a discourse community has a group of people openingly communicating to acquire the same goals. We have this in our english composition class by our professor giving us the opportunity to communicate with each others work on our digital portfolio. We’re able to give feedback about things we like, we relate to, or even we feel could be stronger from the one classmate. While I was reading We Are Many by Pablo Neruda, he writes “While I am writing, I am far away; and when I come back, I have already left. I should like to see if the same thing happens to other people as it does to me, to see if as many people are as I am, and if they seem the same way to themselves.” This piece stuck out to me because I interpreted it as even though I know my author identity, I believe we should stay connected between our peers and help each other to continue to grow. My peers may be doing something I have never thought to do and it can help my writing become better and I believe our weebly web pages have helped tremendously with that. During my last reading, What is Literacy by James Paul Gee, he referenced a discourse as a “Identity kit” which he says “comes complete with the appropriate costume and instructions on how to act and talk so as to take on a particular role that others will recognize.” This “Identity kit” stuck out to me because I feel like we can relate to this in the classroom. We are pushed to write what we normally aren’t used to and to also give feedback to our classmates. Speaking from personal experience, I was never really engaged with my other classmates, we were asked to do an assignment, make it to our teachers requirements and then move on. We were trained for many years to write like robots and not with emotion. Never to check with our peers, or ask for feedback. We are just getting out of that routine with how Professor Sabatino has us using our abilities, with our web pages, free writing, sharing our memoir, commenting on each other’s blog posts, looking at other classes posts to help us get an idea of what we need to do and it’s refreshing and helps our author identity and our discourse community. Home Page Well-Being Assessment: Functioning.
Why Assessment Summary: My quote and my welcome to my page intro needed to be switched. How Assessment Summary: I plan to fix it by 11:59pm on Thursday, March 7th. About Page Well-Being Assessment: Functioning. Why Assessment Summary: My answers were not fully answered as they could be. How Assessment Summary: I plan to fix these answers by 11:59pm on Thursday, March 7th. Contact Page Well-Being Assessment: Flourishing. Why Assessment Summary: I have all of the requirements. Header photo, quote, contact box. How Assessment Summary: Done. Blog Page Well-Being Assessment: Functioning/Flourishing. Why Assessment Summary: I have 7 blog posts. I have all of T-T-C, header, quote, author bio, images, links. The one I do not have is the posts that can deepen my learning and strengthen my course grade assessment. How Assessment Summary: Complete a blog post about my spring break or how I have continued to progress as a writer in the course by 11:59pm on Sunday, March 17th. Narrative Project Page Well-Being Assessment: Functioning. Why Assessment Summary: I have what the page needs to be functioning. I do have to add more depth into how my blog posts have helped me write my narrative project. Also, my actual narrative project needs to be revised a little bit to make it as strong as it can be. How Assessment Summary: I plan to add more information and insight to my narrative page and strengthen my narrative project by 11:59pm on Thursday, March 7th. Research Project Page Well-Being Assessment: Flourishing. Why Assessment Summary: I have met all of the requirements that can be done since we have not started the research project yet. How Assessment Summary: Done. In this blog post, I will be sharing my midterm reflection about my English Composition course. I was asked to answer questions that have to do with Reflective Writing and how I have used it in my writing and my writing process. During the video, I will be discussing my author identity, my theory of writing, my growth as a writer, and how I plan to transfer my knowledge of writing to future academic and non-academics contexts.In my blog post, I will take you through a Wizard-of-Oz journey through my narrative project. I was asked to interpret the videos, Wizard of Oz: If I Only Had The Brain, Heart, Nerve, Wizard of Oz: Meeting the Wizard, Wizard of Oz: You've Always Had the Power to help me navigate through my narrative project.
My narrative scene relates to Hills Like White Elephants (Ernest Hemingway) by having to make a life-changing decision. In the story, Jig, has to talk out the decision to get an abortion or to have the baby. In my own story, I am faced with the decision of either going back to college or not attend college and continue working full-time.
My narrative scene connects to My Name is Margaret by Maya Angelou because of the anger that Margaret feels towards Ms. Cullinan. Ms. Cullinan belittles Margaret and changes her name to “Mary” only because it’s convenient for herself. My narrative scene is related to anger due to having someone belittle you and making you feel less of a person.
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