Chapter 30

Chapter 30 talks a lot about using the internet as a source for a paper, something that even at the college level many students struggle to do.  using the internet as a source for papers has become much more common over the years as libraries and books have become much less common throughout the learning society. 

A couple of things that someone should keep in mind when looking for a source online is the ending, where the website originated.  If the source that you are using has a ".com", a ".gov" or a ".edu" and so on.  Some endings can be trusted much more than others can.  A ".gov" website can be trusted fully seeing as it is a government website that is monitored and watched to make sure that the information is truth.  A ".com" website is usually trying to sell you something, seeing as ".com" websites are websites that usually do most of their business online and do require money to stay afloat.

Throughout my years as a student teachers have also mentioned the use of Wikipedia as something that should not be done.  Wikipedia is a website that can be edited by the general public, therefore some believe that it cannot be trusted and some teachers go as far as to not accept Wikiupedia as a valid source.

Quick Access

Chapter 28 dealt with organization for writing a research paper.  It offered a couple of good ideas on the matter I thought, but there are definitely alternate options for starting a paper that are not talked about in this chapter.  Two methods that  particularly liked are the Expert method and the Chaining method.  Both of these allow the writer to insert his or her own opinion into the paper and allows their ideas to flow and get deeper into the subject.  A research paper grows very boring if all it contains is the facts, without any emotion or backing up of the facts.  Another key of chapter 28 is the bit on primary and secondary sources.  As a journalism major, I have to read a lot of papers and it is quite obvious that a lot of writers even ion college don't know what a primary and a secondary source is.  Most writers only include secondary sources and totally forget about the very important primary sources.

Near the end of the chapter, Bias comes up as it should.  It is very hard to find a research paper that does not have a a bias, because papers without bias' are boring and almost pointless to read.  A problem a lot of people have with a bias is that they forget to include the opposite side of the argument and just overwhelm the reader with facts and ideologies supporting the side that they chose

Things that are true to me Monologue

I believe in real. Real people, real places, real things. Friends that care about your personality over the way you look. The beach.  Thoughts of the waves calming as apposed to crashing. I believe in blood, sweat, and tears. Completely putting a gun to somebody's head with 200 meters left of a mile. That's all real to me. The same is true for the opposite; losing, getting beat. That's life. Perfect doesn't exist, as it shouldn't.

 

Pain is real to me. Physical pain, mental pain. Losing a loved one, having to stay in on a Saturday night to work on a project for school, or branding yourself with a fork. None of those things are pleasant, at all. But sometimes getting told what you did wrong is better than a "nice try", pat on the back. Because if all you ever got were just pat's on the back, that wouldn't be life in its entirety.

 

Drugs are real. Getting high, real. Yet people who take drugs are seen as imperfections. And people continue to be judged by their imperfections. Imperfections, flaws, are what make us human. What make us….. us. Make us real.

                        

My real is different than your real. My real is different than the definition of real. The definition being something you can touch. Winning is real, but I've never touched it. The feeling of true satisfaction is real, yet I've never been able to reach out and grab it. Yet I know people, even friends, that I can, in fact, reach out and touch, yet they, to me, still seem superficial in their beliefs and the way they present themselves, fake.

  

Legendary actors, actresses, sports stars, seem perfect to us. The illusion of which they aim to create is simply that, an illusion. Fake, manufactured. Yet to their personal friends, those mythological beings to us, are just another person to go to the movies with for them.

Yes, things you can touch are still considered real to me. I can feel the hot sand. I can feel the cold salt water. But the feeling I get at the beach, with the sand beneath my toes, it's indescribable, more real to me than anything else in 

The first story, "Writing about General Apache" is pretty boring in my mind as far as reflective stories go.  It is hard to see many students, especially my age relating to this and caring enough to read it in the first place.  The author does do a very good job of putting mental pictures in the readers mind to help understand the story, but the events don't have much to do with the average life of a college students, making it hard to relate to.  

The author spends a lot of time explaining what seems like the middle part of the story to me and doesn't spend very much time telling us what happened before and after the teachers time with the student.  I could see the story being interesting if I were a teacher, because i could learn a lot about teaching styles through reading it, but as a freshman college student at Humboldt I think all i may have learned from this is how not to write a reflective piece aimed at teenagers.

In my mind the article "Simplicity" is a little bit funny in the way that it is al about telling us to simplify our writing and get to the point quickly, yet the essay is quite long.  According to what the article is trying to tell us to do, shouldn't the author be able to convey his point in a simple manner using a few paragraphs or even a few sentences?  As a journalism student I appreciate what the writer is trying to say, I just cant say that I agree with how that they choose to say it.  The idea of simplicity and the appearance of the essay contradict each other.