Taking A Stand Essay

What issue or controversy concerns you? What current debate engages you?
An issue that concerns me everyday is the idea that individuals are embarrassed of who they are.
What Position do you want to take? How can you state your stand? What evidence might you need to support it?
I want to take the position that if an individual does not feel resentment towards their own personal being, it would lead to happiness, lower suicide rates, and more honest relationships. Evidence I might need in order to support this hypothesis is statistics.
What other view might you want to recognize?
Some viewpoints I might want to recognize during this stand is circumstances where it may be acceptable for an individual to feel embarrassed.

-Emily LeMasters

Chapter Nine: Taking A Stand Review

Personal Review: Although chapter nine presents a large amount of information, I am familiar with a large portion of it. I really enjoyed the example essays throughout the chapter due to the way it helps present information. I feel as though these essays will help me with the completion of my essay regarding taking a stand.  Even though I have past knowledge on the topic, this chapter and the essays included will help, in my opinion, in both academic and professional writing. 

Professional Review: Taking stand is a procedure that many go through during their life. There are  multiple steps regarding taking a stand. First, one starts with finding a topic they want to take a stand with. The topic presented is not only going to intrigue the writer, but the reader as well. After this step is completed, the writer will present a question regarding the topic one wants to answer, looking at both points of view. While doing this one is to find information that will help support their thesis. While you're creating your essay, you'll categorize the claim within endorsing, evaluation, and substantiation. Once you find the claim, you find evidence that supports the claim. From here, one will draft a paper to support their claim. Once this is complete, one will complete their argument. All in all, this chapter helps one identify if one's argument is a logical fallacy or not. 

-Emily LeMasters

I chose this picture for many reasons for my presentation. This photo illustrates a few of the characteristics for reflecting on a photo. This photo incorporates many colors. The colors that are seen in this photo range, and keeps your eyes from focusing on one area. I feel like this analysis can be connected to my personality due to the fact that I’m all over the place, but I am also put together. Though there are many different parts of me, like the mountains in the photo along with many other subjects, it all makes part of the whole picture. Another concept that is used to keep your eyes from one area is the texture. Throughout the photo you can see many textures, for the most part, the grass shows a very fine texture the larger the photo. I feel as though the texture also helps distract from different other portions, which I hope some of my personality traits helps with. I make this connection because I believe that on the first glance, you may see something totally different than when you look at the whole picture. The aspect of light and shadow can be seen in this picture as well. The photo is illuminated with sunlight but when you get closer to the subject, you can see multiple shadows. On my figure as well as the grass next to me, you can see a shadow from the form blocking the sunlight, which I believe makes the photo look very candid. The design and layout of this photo can be expressed as well. I believe that the photo is very well organized due to the fact that there is one main subject, but still other aspects one can view, such as the mountains, or the ball that is in the left hand corner. I believe that there can be many different styles incorporated in this photo, but I believe one major one is landscape. Even though theres a subject in the photo, they make it possible for one to see the landscape around, letting the viewer know what the individual is doing, telling a story, in a way. All in all, I believe that this photo incorporates many different elements of art, but the ones listed above, are just a few. 

Everyday-Carry Review

I decided to review the blog http://everydaycarry.com. In regards to a scale out of 1-10, I would rate this blog an 8.5. I found it was very easy to navigate the website even though it is very well put together and looks very official. At the top of the page, it offers many topics one could scroll through, but it makes it easy for the reader to navigate through the website. Not only that, but it also provides an area for the individual to subscribe to their posts through an email, or Facebook. 

The blog provides information that is not appealing to me, but I can see how others would enjoy it. I decided to review this blog due to the idea that I would probably rate a blog better if I was interested in the material, but with no idea of what the blog is posting, I can actually review the content without a bias. 

I really enjoy how they organize the posts. The first post I scrolled to I accidentally put my cursor over the image and found that it was interactive and gave each item numbers regarding the post below. I believe that it’s really cool how tech-savvy it is, but I can see how others could be confused without this knowledge. 

Each post is either a personal post regarding what one blogger may carry on them, on the first page, to reviews on items. I really believe that this website could be very helpful to an individual that is interested in the products they’re posting. I don’t have many complaints on what I would change regarding their blog. 

Out of 10, I would rate this blog an 8.5 regarding on the following criteria:

Recurring Themes: I would give this section a 10 because all the posts are similar in topic, but they’re very different regarding which individual is posting to it. 

Author Voice: I would give this section a 7 because one has to press into a read more section in order to see the whole article and the individuals summary. These summaries are also very short from what I glanced at. 

Multimedia: I would give this section a 10 because it’s very tech savvy and has tons of pictures in the articles. 

“Good” Writing: This blog would get a 9 for the good writing because it’s very professional and I did not find many errors, let alone, any. 

Frequency: This blog posts quite a bit everyday so I would say an 8 as a rating. Some people may enjoy frequent posts but some may not, so I believe that it matters on the person. 

Credibility: The posts would definitely get a 10 because they all are linked to the item’s the discuss instead of making the reader search into it. 

Organization: The blog is very well organized even though there may be a lot on it. Because of this, I would rate it a 9.

Use of Advertisements: This blog has quite a bit of ads so I would say a 9. Even though there are a lot, they’re on the side, so they’re not too distracting. 

Emily LeMasters

Blog Review (Group) and Personal (Clayton Peppler)

We chose to review the blog mentalfloss.com. With a scale of 1-10, we would rate this blog an 8. We really enjoyed how easy it was to navigate the website, the content of the blog, the presentation and the wide array of interactive material.

The navigation of the blog was not only simplistic but intuitive. We really liked how it had a site map with all the main categories listed. We also liked that if you could not find what you were looking on the site map, there was a search box.

The content of the blog was very interesting and applicable to everyday life. The content varies from movies to money to interesting new technology. The presentation was “calendar” style and was executed extremely well. Each square had a short synopsis of the topic and if you like what you read you could click the square and it would link you to the full article. This style created an organized and clutter free blog. Each post had at least one image and each image was relevant to the topic.

Our favorite part of the blog was probably that it was more than just written posts. The blog incorporated things such as videos, quizzes and an “amazing fact generator”. We felt that these added extras made the blog more desirable than the others and more likely to keep us returning for more.

One thing that we would change about the blog to give it that 10/10 rating would be to reduce the amount of advertisements. We also think that the frequency of the posts could be reduced as it seems that they were posting four or more times a day. We feel that posting this many times a day makes the blog too busy.

Mentalfloss.com (Clayton Peppler)

Out of 10, I would rate this blog an 8 based on the following criteria:

Recurring Themes: 10

-       The blog has different categories that they post to each week, creating reoccurring themes.

Author Voice: 8

-       Because there are many different authors, you get a sense of different voices and perspectives which really livens up the blog. Some authors work is more enjoyable to read than others.

Multimedia: 10

-       There is always an image or a video in the blog post and that image/video always pertains to the content of the post itself.

“Good” Writing: 9

-       When looking through a couple of the posts, the errors seemed to be nonexistent.

Frequency: 7

-       This blogs posts four or more times a day. I find this to be excessive and creates too busy of a blog.

Credibility: 10

-       All of the work that is taken from other sources is cited.

Organization: 10

-       I really like the calendar style that this blog follows. I found that this style creates a flowing, organized and clutter free blog.

Use of Advertisements: 5

-       I really do not like how many advertisements are on the blog. On a couple of the posts an ad would pop up right in the middle of the reading.

-Clayton Peppler, Emily LeMasters and Elizabeth Victorio

Photo From: http://www.otoons.com/eso/floss.htm#sthash.z8RBBRFV.dpbs

Chapter 1 & 2 Review

Personal Reaction: The main component that stuck out to us in chapter one was the different characteristics and expectations that are expected to effectively reach your target audience. In Chapter two we found the reading for a purpose portion to be very important. Collectively, our group often reads just to read, but having different strategies from the "preparing to read" paragraph will help us comprehend the reading the first time so we don't have to re-read the information over and over. We learned different techniques regarding reading, but for the most part, we were familiar with the content. There was nothing in this reading that angered us, but we all agreed that we wish we knew the tactics expressed in high school. 

Professional Reaction: In The Bedford Guide for College Writers, the first and second chapter introduce concepts regarding the writing process and the reading process. For the writing process, it explains three critical steps in creating an effective paper. The three steps expressed are Planning, Drafting, and Developing. After completing these steps, one must continue on to the Revising and Editing portion of the writing process. Even though the two may seem similar, there are many differences between revising and editing. Revising consists of reviewing the purpose, structure, audience, thesis, support, and the language. While the editing component explores word choice, punctuation, grammar, mechanics, and the format of the paper. After both revising and editing are complete, you must proofread the paper. Proofreading consists of finding spelling errors, incorrect words, minor details, minor errors, and missing words.Within these processes, one must also take into context the way they're presenting their information in regards to the purpose of the end paper, along with the audience they're targeting. There are four different audience characterizations: the general audience, the college instructor, the work supervisor, and a campus friend. Each audience has a unique tone, format, language, style, and amount of detail. The second chapter explains the reading process for college writers. In order to be a critical reader, one must prepare, respond as they read, and read on an analytical and literal level. To prepare, first identify the purpose, gain background information, skim the text, and plan a follow up. To respond, the reader must read deeply, annotate, and keep a journal. An analytical reader evaluates, synthesizes, and analyzes the information, while a literal reader applies, comprehends, and recalls the information they’ve read. A exceptional reader is able to incorporate both of these concepts into their everyday reads. 

Photo from: http://jkullrich.com/2015/02/05/bleeding-pages-the-strange-dichotomy-of-revision/

Emily LeMasters, Clayton Peppler and Elizabeth Victorio