When I used the plagiarism catcher, it only caught one of my citations. I assume that it recognized the exact words and phrases from the original source, so it thought I used those exact words in my work. Luckily, that was the only content the plagiarism checker caught, which meant that I did not plagiarize anything. I failed to include in-text citations, but I made sure to add those in the revision. I think that it is very unfortunate that this tool does not work as well as it should because his could be a great tool for students. They would be able to submit their essays once with the checker and see if any plagarism occured. After the checker, they could go back again and fix their mistakes, avoiding any trouble and teaching them what to provent from the next assignment.

Although this tool could do great things from students, we do not want it to replace teachers. Like Professor Mary said, she had a certain feeling when a student plagarized, so we do not want the professors relying on technology when most of them have had much more personal experiences. Although, if this program was tweaked and perfected, it would cause a major improvement in the amount of plagarism found in students’ writing.

While trying to come up with a metaphor for research and writing in my own life, I wanted to compare it to something positive. When students think of doing a research paper, they think of being bored at their desk with an extreme sense of writer’s block. But when I often think of it, I like to think of writing and research as developing an argument. Developing an argument in a research paper can easily be seen like learning to dance.

When learning how to dance, or learning how to do anything, you have to start with the basics. You need to learn to let your partner lead, how to move your feet, and move to a rhythm. The same concept goes to developing an argument. The most basic idea  with writing can be just simply finding your side of the argument. It gives you something to feed off of, regarding your research.

The next step to learning how to dance is learning the choreography. For someone starts from scratch, they probably are not coming up with organized, flowing moves by themselves, so they find an experienced partner to bring the whole performance together. An argument in writing is applicable here, too. But instead of a partner, we use sources. Sources guide our argument and supply us with facts to analyze both sides and form a valid point. We are not able go just make up facts and studies to write a beautiful paper.

After a lot of practice and gaining knowledge down the way, the two dancers have a near flawless routine to offer entertainment, or even motivate the audience to learn dancing or a new hobby. With developing an argument in writing, your point and research should make the readers want to make a change and make them form their own opinion. That way, with motivation, we learn more about everything, from everyone.

Privilege Doesn’t Have to Stay Taboo

      I chose these 6 words based on the amount of ignorance I see from very privileged people. I believe that the reason these people deny their ignorance and genuinely think they’re not saying anything wrong is because their privilege is not talked about. In order to be more accepting, try to understand others’ experiences, and be more open-minded, we need to discuss about our own privilege so we can move closer to learning about people different than us. I have witnessed this subtle ignorance in my own rhetoric classroom. While we were watching “In Whose Honor”, I noticed one of my classmates laughing at the Native American woman crying while explaining how she’s been affected by Chief Illiniwek, misunderstanding why she would be so upset over something that seemed so insignificant in the long run. Watching someone discard another experience just because they were not affected directly shows the privilege, and its lack of acknowledgment. If we talked more about social identities and our differences, especially around race, we would feel much more open, accepting, and passionate about learning how our differences make the world so interesting and special.

After reading “The Invisible Knapsack”, I realized how privilege does affect my everyday life. I can go about my normal day without having to acknowledge or be questioned because of my race. I don’t have to worry about being discriminated against or think about how others may view my actions just based on the color of my skin. This article reminds me so much of my EOL 199 class, which is highly based around social justice and identities. We learn that talking about race and listening about others’ experiences help privileged people have a better idea of what people of non-dominant identities go through on a daily basis.

Since I am underage and do not partake in drinking, the weekend of unofficial is just another normal weekend for me. On Friday, I have to go to classes then head to work for the rest of the night. I work at Chipotle on Green, so I am expected to see a large number of drunk kids, nothing too different than a normal Friday night. Unfortunately, I think that this “holiday” will have a pretty negative effect. So many students are going to be inebriated, ready to do something stupid. Not only are they putting themselves in danger, they are putting others in danger. And not only are these people drinking Friday, but all weekend. If any thing terrible happens on the campus, the University will have a make a statement and defend itself. The University is trying very hard to prevent as much damage as possible. As for me, I am just going to spend some sober time with my friends, and we might venture off campus to prevent getting involved in any way.

After reading Gerard’s quotation about research and choosing a topic, now I realize that I picked my topic based on his ideas, but subconsciously. For my paper, I chose to do research about domestic violence between young couples, but specifically students. I had some previous ideas about topics I am already pretty familiar with, but I wanted to avoid border as much as possible.  My final question, right now, is how does domestic violence affect students. Gerard stresses picking ideas that you do not know much or anything about to avoid becoming the “expert” and to just stay interested. I chose domestic violence because women are the majority of victims in abusive relationships and the violence needs to be stopped. But I chose the intersection of students because I am one. I want to be able to recognize signs of domestic violence and education my peers. This topic is important because everyone needs to be aware. Although I will focus my research on female victims, men are victims, too. Domestic violence can literally happen to anyone is any relationship at any stage and any age. I fell that it is extremely important to educate so we, as a society, can end the violence.

In high school, I did several different papers on several different subjects. When choosing a topic for this paper, I did consider doing a topic that was similar to something I did in the past, but decided against it. Although, I did want to write about something interesting and that could possibly affect me. As a result, I am choosing to write about domestic violence and university students. Similarly to Gerard in his interview, I thought that picking a topic I knew little about was a great idea. That was, I would not get bored and run out of points to talk about. Like the magazine mentioned in the interview, there are experts all around that are 100% sure they know everything. This will definitely help me eliminate a bias. By including sources and statistics that I learned and have not been influenced by in the past, I know that the information I am offering is supporting the truth. In this case, I do not have to know everything. As I want to inform and tech with my paper, I would also love to learn.

Hey there little guy,  I heard you wanted a sneak peak into the college life. Well, here you go. For this class I have to take, RHET 105, I have to write a research paper. I do not know the details yet, but I know I want to pick a topic related to social justice. There are a lot of topics that interest me, considering I would love to make a positive change sometime. Since I have been affected by it directly, I will probably chose a topic closely related to sexism. Obviously, I do not want to write about something  that is boring, because I will not feel any motivation to do it. And since I can involve my personal experiences, writing about sexism would actually be really interesting. With some research, I can learn about others’ experiences, too. When you come to college, you will realize that everyone has different experiences and perspectives that can really change the way you look at certain topics. They really open your eyes.

A few weeks ago, I had to write my first Critical Response. Overall, it went pretty well. I think that I developed some clear ideas and put them together well, especially for the first time doing the assignment. In the paper, I made good observations about the actual articles and my ideas and points related well. Although I did have some problems, most of which related to grammar and issues with my in-text citations. In order to fix these problems, I can always refer to the Writer’s Reference or Owl Purdue pages. I think that the grammar quizzes will help me in general, especially when those same topics come up in my papers. But they will be helpful, just in my everyday writing. In order to get a better grade on my next Critical Response, I will spend more time looking over my formatting and  double checking if all of my ideas are coherent. Overall, I feel that the first assignment was a success.

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Cover photo by Emily Patzke