Thanksgiving Extra Credit

Due before we reconvene after the break (so before Monday Dec 2 at 8:00am)

Thanksgiving is a holiday of lies. Or rather, the “story of Thanksgiving” is a lie. The Pilgrims and other European colonists were generally violent and racist toward the indigenous peoples of the Americas (even if some individuals were kind), and they took advantage of them more or less whenever possible. Including deliberately spreading smallpox to wipe them out and steal the land they lived on. The U.S. government has continued to oppress Native Americans throughout the country’s history, including continuing to remove them from the land they live on (look up the DAPL pipeline and the proposed NASA telescope project in Hawai’i for examples).

It’s fucked up.

HOWEVER, a holiday tradition of eating special foods with your loved ones and being thankful for things in your life is beautiful, so I think as long as we keep the real history of European colonization in mind and recognize the revisionist history that is taught to us in school and in popular culture, I think it’s okay to still enjoy the loving parts of how the holiday is currently celebrated.

THEREFORE, for one point of extra credit (onto your participation grade unless your participation is already at 100%, in which case it will go to your rhetorical devices grade), leave a comment with some things you’re thankful for this year!

No length requirement, but you’re welcome to write as much as you want. You may NOT say you’re thankful for this extra credit/extra credit assignment. And I encourage you to read each other’s comments, too! I will also be writing one.

 

Final Paper Rubric

Partial Draft Due: 11/25 (Monday by 8:00am)
Full First Draft Due: 11/27 (Wednesday by 8:00am)
Final Draft Due: 12/4 (Wednesday by midnight)

For a word doc version of this rubric, please click here: Final Paper Rubric

General Guidelines

For this assignment, you will compose a 6-10 page paper in which you synthesize research on the topic of your choosing to answer (or begin to answer) your inquiry question(s).

In your essay, you should:

  • Leave the reader with a clear understanding of the answer(s) [or lack of clear answer(s)] to your inquiry question. Stay focused on your inquiry question throughout the paper.
  • Develop and support your statements with evidence drawn from your research
  • Make rhetorical choices appropriate to your rhetorical situation (writing a formal research paper).
    • Choose two rhetorical devices that we have studied to use in your paper
      • Use each device at least twice and underline the usage
    • Appeal to your audience’s sense of ethos, logos, and pathos
      • Either label where you use these rhetorical appeals or write a summary paragraph explaining how you used them
    • Utilize both academic sources and non-academic sources for a total of at least 6 sources (may or may not be the same 6 as in your annotated bibliography) and document these sources appropriately using APA style
    • Follow the structural and stylistic conventions of academic writing

Final Paper Rubric (100 points)

  1. Turned in drafts on time and participated in writing workshop. (25 points)
  2. Incorporates research effectively and appropriately to support the argument (15 points)
    • All claims are backed up by evidence as needed (5 points)
    • Quotes or paraphrases from sources are well-integrated into the paragraphs (no naked quotes) (5 points)
    • All information from another source is correctly cited using APA-style in-text citations (5 points)
  1. Paragraphs and sections follow the structural conventions of Standard American Academic English (25 points)
    • Paper includes an introductory section that establishes the topic, the inquiry question(s), and the writer’s preliminary answer to the question(s) (5 points)
    • Body paragraphs stay focused on individual claims supported by relevant evidence and use topic sentences and transition phrases (10 points)
    • The paper includes a conclusion that explains why the inquiry is important and what readers should take away from the paper. (5 points)
    • The overall organization of the paper is appropriate to the topic, inquiry, and assignment (5 points)
  1. Paper is formatted in APA style (15 points)
    • Title page with name, title, school, page number, running head, and author’s note if needed
    • Abstract with keywords
    • Running head and page number on subsequent pages
    • References page is formatted correctly
  1. Follows the stylistic conventions of Standard American Academic English (10 points)
    • Spelling, Grammar, Punctuation, Formatting, Capitalization, Formality
  1. Other Requirements (10 points)
    • At least two rhetorical devices are used at least twice and are underlined
    • Uses of all 3 rhetorical appeals are marked or summarized
    • Paper meets the length requirement
    • At least 6 sources are used

Writing Skills Survey

Please fill out the survey below. No one will be able to see your responses but me. This is to gauge where we should focus our time in class over the next couple of weeks.

Writing Strengths and Areas for Improvement

    Check as many as you wish.

Some Examples of Outlines

There are many ways to outline a paper. Some are formal and highly structured, and some are very loose, and most are inbetween! An outline can be mostly or entirely textual, or it can include visual elements. An outline can be a graphic organizer for essay writing that you find online and fill in.

I realized that you might have never written an outline before, or not really know what to do for this assignment, so I’ve compiled some examples for you. These are only SOME of the ways you can outline.

I will just be grading your outline on completion (did you do it), timeliness (did you turn it in on time), and detail (did you actually put time and effort into this based on your research so far), not on any specific form or formatting.

An outline might not make sense to someone else who is reading it, because it’s notes the writer is leaving their future selves to help with the drafting process. As long as it makes sense to you, that’s what matters.

Outlines from Person 1

Okay, these are some of mine from my sophomore year of college.

Outline 1: Witchcraft Outline
I like this one because of the color-coding. I wrote the main ideas/section headers in black, all of the things I wanted to talk about in that section in blue, and the names of the authors I wanted to cite in red. I also wrote out my thesis in full at the top to always remind me of what I was trying to argue. It helped keep me focused.

Outline 2: Amanda Palmer Project Outline
In this one, I didn’t use color coding, just loose nests of bullets and main ideas. However, you can tell when I copy/pasted a quote from a source, because the font and coloring is different. I did this to remind myself of what quotes/examples I wanted to use as evidence in each section.

Outlines from Person 2

These are from a colleague of mine, also from her early years of college. Notice that she uses a much more formalized structure of headings and subheadings (numbers, capital letters, roman numerals, lowercase letters, etc.) than I do. In one case, she wrote her entire introduction as part of the outline.

Islam outline

ps35, paper1 outline

Outline from Person 3

This person uses the standard structure of a scientific paper (Intro/Methods/Results/Discussion) but then added sublevels of bullets to her outline based on her specific topic. (This was for an advanced research course where psychology majors had to design and conduct their own studies.)

APA Study Outline

Once she had her outline, she wrote her paragraphs in the same document underneath each subheading. By the end, she had almost an entire paper and just had to paste the paragraphs into another document and add transitions/formatting.

Same outline with paragraphs: Copy of Outline

Scripted Interview Instructions (11/18)

Today (11/18) we will be working on the “Scripted Interview,” one of the 8 assignments the English department requires from all 101 students. If you are unable to finish this during class, please complete it for homework (Due Monday 11/25 by 8:00am).

Instructions

  1. Review the sources in your annotated bibliography (by re-reading your annotations and reminding yourself of what each one says!)
  2. Choose two or three sources to work with for this activity
  3. Write an imaginary conversation where you interview the authors of your sources about the topic of your final project.
      • You should ask at least three open-ended questions that allow the authors to give complex, interesting answers (3 points)
      • Each of the authors should respond to each of your questions, giving a complex, interesting answer (6 points)
      • One of the authors should respond directly to the other author’s comment at least once (1 point)
      • The assignment should be turned in on time (2 points)

Total: 12 points

For people who conducted their own interviews: Don’t rewrite your actual interviews with the people, but ask new questions in this assignment and imagine what your interviewee might have said based on their responses to your real questions.

To complete this assignment, you must think seriously and carefully about each author’s point of view (based on what they wrote/said in your source) in order to imagine (as accurately as possible) what they would think/say about your questions.

It also might help to consider, if you were actually interviewing those two people, what would be interesting to hear both of them talk about?

Format the interview like a script. For example:

Scripted Interview Formatting Example

Olivia: What is the most important thing you have learned in college so far, and why?

Student 1: I learned that I have to be really careful about planning my time, because it’s easy to get behind, and if you’re behind, you don’t have time to do a very good job on your assignments or think about them a lot. So you learn less, even if the material is easy.

Olivia: I agree, that’s super important!

Mini Data Collection – Chelsea Mejia Figuereo

I decided to observe how many times I ordered an Uber for the past week. I kind of imagined that the number would e high because unless i’m going to school or work I don’t take public transportation. I hate waiting for trains and don’t feel the safest on public transportation because of past experience.

Anytime I order an Uber, I use apple pay to pay so there is an alert that gets sent to my phone that I’m bring charged by the Uber App. I noticed that I took 10 Uber rides throughout the week. the first that caught my attention was that most of my Ubers were ordered during late night hours or passed midnight. There were really big gaps between them maybe like 3 or more hours. I was able to connect my Uber rides with the amount of times I went out with friends or to eat. I go out frequently but when I really sat down and looked at the rides and the amount spent it opened my eyes.

When I go out to eat it’s two Uber rides. one to get to my destination and another to return home. and sometimes in one night I might change locations so that adds on an extra ride. the price of the rides would range from $10 to $20. Another thing I noticed was that there were only three days out of the week that I used Uber which are Friday, Saturday and Sunday. there is no school and I mostly don’t work on the weekends.

I want to change this pattern because as I order the ubers I don’t realize that that the amount adds up and I’m spending over $50 just on rides. It doesn’t include how much I’m spending wherever I’m going. I’ve decided to that if I’m going out early I could just take public transportation because it’l be light outside and most likely a little crowded. I will try to take ubers only when necessary.

Data Collection mini project

What I chose to write about for my data collection project is how much time I spend on my phone daily for the past week. I am usually on my phone all the time but I never really noticed how many hours I spend on my phone daily. For the past week I have been collecting data from the screen time app on my phone and seeing what applications I use most of my time using. I use my phone wherever I go, whether it’s to school, or before and after practice baseball practice, when I’m home and even when I’m out with my friends. When I find something interesting I pretty much spend a couple hours just watching and searching for that kind of stuff on youtube, instagram or on Google. I guess you can say my phone takes up a lot of my free time.

Looking back at the data I collected, I figured out that I spend more time than I thought on my phone. For last week’s average screen time I spent 6 hours and 40 minutes on my phone but my total screen time for that whole week was 46 hours and 40 minutes. I spent 16 hours and 46 minutes of that time on Social networking ( 9h 33m snapchat, 7h 52m instagram), 8 hours and 53 minutes on Entertainment ( Youtube and Netflix ), and lastly the rest of that time was used on creativity apps 6 hours and 23 minutes. Another thing that I found out was most of my screen time is from when I get home from school because that is when I choose to procrastinate my homework and just talk to my friends and watch movies, shows and videos since I don’t feel like doing my homework. I thought this was very Interesting because I guess I never really notice the amount of time I spend on my phone and using social media.

If I showed my data to someone without them knowing anything about me I think that they would make the assumption that I’m on my phone literally all the time and that I can be a person that is probably bored for most of the day from just viewing my daily and weekly average. An educated guess that could be made based on this data is that people would think that I’m glued to my phone. I can see how that guess could be accurate. If I saw the same numbers on someone elses phone I would think that all they do all day is use their phone.

After analyzing all that data I have realized that I should not spend as much time on my phone as I do. I would probably save the battery a lot more for when I need it instead for my phone dying on me. Instead of being on my phone so much I could focus more on sports and school work.

My Mini Data Project: Alexis Enanian

In my mini project I planned to collect the amount of times I nap. I chose this specifically because as a commuter and being awake for long periods of time I believe that napping is a healthy way to gain energy throughout the day instead of chugging coffee every hour or so. With many opportunities to nap as well, in the cab, bus, or train, any chance I get to sit down and rest I am seemingly enough falling asleep each time. As some may believe that napping is a characteristic for lazy people and “Bums” as my mom claims, I on the other hand believe napping can really relieve stress and gives you a nice “pause” in your day. I decided to count the amount of times I nap and how I feel afterwards, I decided to write the time I wake up from my morning and when i took my first nap.

For 7 days I woke up and wrote the time I woke up and went along my day, when I felt tired I wrote down where I was (to show that anywhere you are to take advantage of resting and to take any chance you get to relax and close your eyes for a few.) and how i long slept. Afterwards, i analyzed how i felt after my nap. That even a 10 minute subway ride can really amp me up for the day.

Me personally, I nap about 2-3x a day. sounds like a lot but I am awake from 4am to approx 12:30am. So i barely get a good nights sleep. From being at school during the day and my 2 hour commute there and back takes from my day, I also go home to do some Homework and go to work for an 8 hour shift everyday. This results to me being very tired and overwhelmed time to time. A big belief of mine is self-care is not selfish, a healthy mind is very important and personally helps me throughout the day.

Overall, my data shows that I nap often but tend to feel really good everyday. I get the proper amount of sleep so I am energized and ready for the day. I also concluded that I can sleep anywhere and everywhere, and that it doesnt matter to me. As long as I am in a resting position.

Monday.

Wake Up Time: 4:32am

First nap time: 5:45-7:00am

Location: LIRR

Mood: Awake

Second nap time: 7:15am-7:28am

Location: The 1

Mood: Energized

Third nap time: 12:58-1:49pm

Location: LIRR

Mood: Happy/relieved

Tuesday.

Wake Up Time: 7:00am

First nap time: 10:30-11am

Location: JJ’s Cafe

Mood: Happy

Second nap time: 11:58-12:10pm

Location: LIRR

Mood: A little delirious

Wednesday.

Wake up time: 4:00am

First nap time: 7:30-8:00am

Location: John Jay lobby

Mood: Relieved

Thursday. (I was sick)

Wake up time: 12:00pm

First nap time: 1-8pm

Mood: Felt better

Friday.

Wake up time: 9am

First nap time: 3-4pm

Location: My car

Mood: Relaxed

Second nap time: 8-10:30pm

Location: Friends living room

Mood: energized

Keshona’s Data

I took down the times I ate every day and how I felt during that day. I wanted to get this information and analyze how the way I eat during the day, affects my mood. Before taking down this data, I already know that the way I eat is like a roller coaster. Some days I have a very big appetite or I actually have the time to have a meal. Other times, I don’t really get a chance to get a meal and eat it or I’m not really feeling like eating.

I decided to record data about my eating schedule and how it affects my mood during the day. I chose this information to record and analyze because I was curious on if food plays a role on how I feel every day. People typically just record how they’re feeling but sometimes they won’t record a specific variable for why they feel how they feel.

I basically tracked what meals I ate for the day and what times I ate. Then, I analyzed how I felt for the day. Before tracking any data, I already knew that my eating schedule is like a roller coaster. It depends on if I actually have time to sit and have a meal or if I have an appetite. Most times, I don’t get time to have the proper amount of meals which is 2-3 meals a day. When you eat three meals (breakfast, lunch, dinner) a day, you are most likely to function and perform better.

As a result, I came to the conclusion that when I eat 2+ meals a day, especially breakfast, I feel my best or better than when I eat one meal a day. When I eat 2 meals a day I feel more energetic and I am able to focus on my tasks. I realized that how I eat not only affects my mood but it plays a role on how I perform during the day at school and work. Recording and analyzing this data helped me understand that if I want to focus better, I should start eating 2-3 meals a day even if it means being late to where ever I have to go.

Day:Times I ate:How I felt:
Nov. 5Breakfast: 11:00 AM, Lunch: 3:10PMI felt good
Nov. 6Lunch: 3:00 PMI felt tired, exhausted, unfocused
Nov. 7Breakfast: 11:00 AM, Dinner: 7:30PMI felt tired but happy
Nov. 8Lunch: 1:30 PM, Dinner: 7:30PMI felt energized and happy
Nov. 9Lunch: 12:00 PMI felt tired and unfocused
Nov. 10Breakfast: 11:45AM, Dinner: 6:00PM I felt tired and unfocused until dinner
Nov. 11Breakfast: 11:15AMI felt tired, hungry, and unfocused
Nov. 12Breakfast: 11:30 AM, Dinner: 9:00 PMI felt unfocused until I had breakfast
Nov. 13Lunch: 2:30 PMI felt focused and energetic after lunch