Thlogger's Remorse

Thlog me all night long

Group presentation might be my least favorite word in the english language. 

A: I really don’t like group projects.

B: I really really don’t like presentations.

Both of these things make me quite nervous in practice. I have never liked group projects because I never feel comfortable being represented by somebody other than myself, and I don’t like representing anybody other than myself. Since during a group project both of these things are happening at the same time, I generally don’t care for them. That being said, this one went pretty poorly. I am kind of surprised that we were in danger of going over time. Each slide took a lot longer than I thought it was going to. I thought that everyone did a pretty good job; my favorite one was the one about flow or something. I really liked their medium, prezi, I had never heard of it before this class, and although it looked kind of hard to use, I might look into it for future presentations. I also liked how they used candy to keep the audience engaged. Their questions were super hard though. That three word one was crazy. Whoever answered that one earned the starburst. Looking back the one I remember the most was the one about semicolons. I think it’s because I was jerking myself off the whole time for knowing all of the semicolon rules beforehand, even the list one(see there I go again). I didn’t love the hedged language one because they made it seem like you should always use it. Like when poor Jonathan Bruning asked what to do when stating a fact and the chief shut him down. Now, I am a pretty pluralist guy(nothing is certain/other hogwash), however, sometimes it just makes for better writing to pretend like you know what you are doing. Do I know what I am doing? Hell no. Does my reader need to know that? (see previous answer). People are more likely to question what I am saying if I hedge my language, which can be a good thing yadda yadda, but if you make a strong case and pretend to be competent more people are likely to believe you, which is usually what you are going for in a thesis-based essay. Another side of the pro-hedge argument is that people could disagree with you if you don’t hedge your language. To me, that’s not a bad thing; at least they form an opinion of it. I would rather have someone read something I wrote and think I’m an idiot or be offended than come away from it bemused. I suppose that’s my rant for the week. I still thought that the presentation itself was fine, just disagreed(at least I remember what they said) with the content presented.

Thlog Me

Thlog Me

WP3 is over a with that coms relief. I was honestly very excited about WP3, but the scheduling of it killed my available work time on it. The end result was a half baked idea that turned into a quarter baked WP3. Not super thrilled about it to be honest. This was the first WP3 where I actually could stand peer reviews. I think it was my group rather than the WP though. I don’t know why it is but I absolutely hate peer reviews. I can consciously understand that they are of tremendous value to us writers; with that said, they make my skin crawl. I remember doing the peer review of WP2 and someone was reviewing my essay, yet I had already finished theirs. I was just sitting their actively thinking of ways to discreetly board a plane to Tunisia. It is an awful quality that I have, but anyway yeah this peer review wasn’t nearly as bad. Moving on to the portfolio, I am really looking forward to some of it, I am really really not looking forward to some of it, and I know that I will end up messing it up gloriously. This has failure written all over it from my perspective. The revisions and reverse outlines I will probably do aggressively mediocre on; however, the meta-congnative reflection will fail oh so gloriously. Since it doesn’t have a strong base and we are encouraged to be informal, I see my future self losing touch with the root of the essay almost instantly. What I think will be this wise, smart, funny, clever, eye-opening, and thoughtful reflection will turn into this kaleidoscope with sparks of  bright substance, overwhelmed with browns and grays of nonsensical, ass-upidy(hypen?), drivel that will drive anything of meaning from it. Maybe I will write an outline for it. I don’t think it will exactly help me, per se, but it might help remind me that I am not Douglas Adams or Andrzej Sapkowski. It will be kind of cool to see how it turns out though. I can honestly say as of right now I have no idea what it will be about, which is kind of exciting. All this said, the reflection is the part which I am really looking forward to. I think it is because I am a narcissist(like most of us) and am looking forward to finally being able to write about the only thing that I am truly passionate about:myself.(<—-72% sarcasm)

A Thlog in the Machine

This(last, sorry it's late) week in writing class we talked mostly about WP3 which is a cool idea. I am having a hard time trying to make it interesting. I was reading through lots of the other student's PB3As for PB3B and what really stuck out was that for those who did option 1(most people), everyone's essence was the content of the scholarly article that I read. It would be really interesting to see another take on the essence of the article. When we went over the essence during that activity in class other examples of essence were like sources and citations, but more of the stuff is about IMRAD things. I think that I am going to try and do option 3 for my WP3, but if I do end up doing option 1 I think I will try to do something interesting for my essence. My definition of essence can only describe the content of the work however,  I think that your(Zac) definition is different than mine and I am trying to figure out exactly what is so I can have some fun with it. Honestly, I will probably come to class tomorrow with 3 poorly put together rough drafts of different ideas and re-pitch them to you. I know that the whole idea of PB3A was to pitch you these ideas; however, I really just didn't have a good grasp on the idea of PB3A when I wrote it, sorry. Now that I do, all these segments of ideas are forming that could potentially work together and form a somewhat coherent WP3. For option 3 I think I am going to write either a fable about writing a fable, or a ballad about writing a ballad. If I do option 1 I think I will throw some somewhat shady ideas at the wall and see if they stick. Who knows what will happen. But it the essence that I extract from the piece will definitely not be the content of the work. I going to look into more niche disciplines and try to find any unique techniques that they use and extract them from the scholarly article. The only real problem with that is then I don’t see the point in picking any one article. If all I am doing is dissecting the technique of the article  and extracting the essence, then ignore the content(mostly) which seems off. Anyways, we’ll see what happens; I hope it works.

PB#A

                                                                                                        PB#A

Older Genre: Now, I know that you weren’t thrilled about the whole “ballad” idea, but I think that it fits into the older generation genre. Specifically I would be doing a broadside. They were like 16th century newspapers that we hung on the street. They have a big picture on them that accompanies a little song. They give the tune that the song is supposed to be sung in, and the good ones are quite scandalous. I understand that identifying the characteristics of the audience might be hard because since the audience hasn’t been alive in a while but I’m willing to put in the work to research exactly what the audience was like. If that is a no-go for whatever reason, I do have a backup for the older generation genre. I think it would be fun to write a super-market tabloid. They have always kind of interested me because I don’t understand them at all. Who reads them, are they held to any journalistic standard, and how they get their stories. I think it fits into the assignment pretty well and would but fun to write. Other topics I can think of are very doable but awfully boring.

For the younger genre, I was thinking of doing something like a board game. I understand that a board game isn’t exactly a textual genre but boardgames instructions are. If I make good enough instructions I think I can do a good job of relating the essence of my article and analyzing the audience a purpose etc. This is kind of a stretch I realize, but I think I could do a good job with it. Other ideas are more tech-y since when I think of young kids today I think of tech. App descriptions, pewdiepie videos, and apple terms and conditions all pop into my head when thinking about writing a genre for young people. These are iffy genres at best though. Another solid idea I had was act/sat prep stuff or AP questions. I could write up AP questions that has to do with my topic or I could write a act/sat prep guide about my topic. 

Topic:

To be honest I am still a little confused on what the topic is supposed to be like. We are supposed to extract the “essence” of the scholarly piece then use that essence as the base for our new genres. However, to me, the essence of a scholarly piece can really only be the content of what’s within. So if i’m wrong about this, then please correct me because I have no idea. Moving on, unless otherwise instructed, I will be using the content of the scholarly piece as my essence. As such, I want my article to be broad enough for me to write a ballad on, yet playful enough to make into a board game. Marine biology keeps popping into my head because I can easily enough write a ballad about life under the sea, and I can relatively easily make a board game that teaches the players about sea life or takes place under water. If I can not do either of those genres, then I will have to change my topic probably. If I have to do super market tabloids and AP questions, I might choose an article that has to do with divorce. I could write a super market tabloid about the divorces of celebrities, and write a statistics questions and a literature question that has to do with divorce. Once I figure out the genres that I am doing definitively, then I will choose a topic that fits into those genres effectively. That shouldn’t be to hard.

If all else fails, I’ll just write a ballad about writing a ballad which fits under Option 3(self-referential genre). I really want to write a ballad.

Captains Thlog #6

November 1 2015:

We have gotten the prototype of WP2 up and running. It is not yet quite finished but we seem to have a handle on the situation. The engineers are having some trouble devising a thesis that means anything but drivel. I am sure that they will eventually figure it out, but without the thesis, it is hard to construct the pieces in a cooperative way. Right now they are barely being held together by nibidium oxide, but that won’t work once we enter the portal.

November 2 2015:

Alright, we have a thesis. We have the idea the WP2 is trying to prove; however, it is a little bit wacky. The head engineers decided to try to do something a little bit unorthodoxly, and although it works, all of the pieces in the essay don’t quite fit into the thesis all that well. We will see how it turns out. Although I do have to agree with them that it is at least interesting, I don’t know how well it work once we enter the portal.

November 3 2015:

We have found a second source for WP2. It is an interesting article that will work effectively work for the prompt. However, although the second source fits the prompt well, it does not fit in with the thesis as well as the other source. We are trying to debug this problem but it is proving challenging. I am starting to further question the idea of making the thesis a separate being from the prompt. It makes the essay more interesting but less well constructed. It is above my pay grade to question these decisions, but I think that I have a right to know what the hell is going on in my own ship.

November 4 2015:

This is the day. This is the day the WP2 enters the portals. Days of hard work have gone into this essay and they have all culminated to this moment. One word to describe my emotions right now: nervous. WP2 is an essay. WP2 is an essay whose contents are pleasurable to the eye. However, I am very nervous that WP2 will backfire when it goes into the portal. We do not know what is on the other side. To make something that has the potential to backfire easily when going into an unpredictable environment seems irresponsible. Those fat cats up top don’t care about us. They just care about their own ego. They want to win this battle rather than prevent a war. I cannot agree with this. We should have played it safee instead of going for the kill. Now it’s to late; today’s the day that the battle begins. Let us hope to God that we come out the other side alright.

November 5 2015:

We are in the portal. It’s horrible. Before the first paragraph even got through the portal it was already ripped apart. The flux matrix calculator that was supposed contain the thesis and be the brain of the essay broke down instantly. It caused WP2 to backfire and start attacking our men. To date. WP2 causes heavy casualties within our ranks. The ambiguity of the topic working together with the specificity of the questions decimated our vanguard and destroyed our right flank. I knew the risk when I undertook this mission but I had no idea the amount of destruction that would follow. We should have played it safe. This is the consequence of our hubris. This is our sin, now we must accept our judgment. We can only hope that He is merciful. 

Ze moves du Bob Ross

Bob ross has a very distinct style. His voice is a soft as a whisper yet as shard as a frog-snake.
He always tells the viewer how to mix the colors and what instrument to use when actually painting. As he paints he typically says not only how to paint as he does but also why to paint like that. For example, when he paints the mountains he says to use more paint on the top and then blend the paint as you move down the mountain. Then, he gives the reason that as your vision goes down the mountain it is obscured more and more by my fog and other things. This helps the reader not only paint better, but also understand why painting this way is better. Also his soothing voice makes is seem that Bob Ross isn't telling them how to paint but rather giving advice on how to paint. This distinction makes him seem less bossy and more relatable.


Disney thing.

I liked this video. It was cool to see how parts of sleeping beauty were made. I especially liked the part about how it was like a symphony made up of members that could all be solo artists. It was cool.
However, I understand that the important part of the video was the part about the tree. In this allegory, the tree is the scholarly idea and each of their versions of the tree are supposed to be different genres, different ways of capturing the tree using their own ideas.

online class journal maybe?

I hate my WP@. It is terrible. Estimated grade is a 6.5. I found it incredibly hard to write a paper that had an interesting thesis, fulfilled the prompt, and was 5-6 pages. I had no idea how to do it, and I think my paper struggles from lack of focus.

things I did well: I had a more specific thesis from before, I had shorter paragraphs, and I had more concise sentences as well.

Things I didn't do well: I have terrible structure in my essay as well as terrible flow. My paper seems disjointed as well as lazily written. I shoehorned in stuff from the course reader that doesnt necssarily fit into my essay just to fit the prompt. My tone and style are inconsistent throughout the essay.


Q2:
The one that helped me the most was that my paper was too content oriented. another one that was good was how to fit the course reader into my essay.  These helped me identify what was wrong with my paper and also gave me a solution to the problem