So many papers...

I think I have made some of my best papers this semester, and not just because I learned how to finally use MLA successfully. I was able to choose topics that I found interesting and explored them well, I think. I am most proud of my organic chemistry honors project, which detailed the chemistry behind art conservation and restoration. It was very difficult, but as I want to go into it as a career, I found a lot of motivation to write it. Plus it's cool! I love seeing the evolution of a restoration, and watching a painting go from damaged to "brand new". It was irritating to learn about all the failed restorations in the past, though, and I can't help but think of that old painting of Jesus that was screwed up by some lady in Mexico and became a meme. I hope that isn't me one day, in fact, I know it won't be.

End of the Semester

I don't think I've ever been able to write so quickly in my life. I feel like a wordsmith with all the content I'm putting out in all my classes. I just remember last summer trying to get a short story on its feet, but only being able to get out half a page at a time. I can't wait to revisit my creative writing projects this summer so I can use this writing momentum to my advantage.
Right now, I have a detective mystery waiting for me in one of my google docs folders. It has the best opening scene: Detective Harper is warning the cops at the station about the horrific murders happening all over town, but they don't prioritize it since it's only happening to the "low" members of society like drug fiends and prostitutes. Harper gets frustrated with their apathy, but is interrupted by a knock at the station door. When they open it, a body is laying on the steps-- and it has an uncanny resemblance to Harper, even down to the way his hair is parted. I can't wait to explore this story more.

What I got out of the Peer Review

I am glad that I had the peer review before the draft, because my reviewer helped me catch some syntax errors and weird phrases, and also gave good feedback on content. You know who you are, so if you're reading this, thank you!
I love doing peer reviews myself and often help my friends out with their school papers or creative writing. I especially love helping to edit poetry and give criticism on them. I think it helps my own writing too, because seeing what other people do can give me ideas on things to avoid, and things to include. One thing I don't like is editing my own papers sometimes, go figure. However, I'll take editing over writing some days.

What I would do differently

I have a boatload of suggestions for past-me on this topic. For one, as soon as you find a source that looks relatively good, cite it!! You can always get rid of it later, but digging for it is going to be a pain. And also, start your annotated bibliography as soon as possible and start adding notes to your cited sources right after you read the source. Add keywords in your annotations, so that when its time to do the research paper, you can ctrl+F to find which source you need quickly. Cause trust me, you won't be able to remember every single source and what it covered!
Another thing I would do differently would be to find a consistent way of keeping notes. For whatever reason, post-its work best for me. I tried to change this system half way through and take notes on a separate sheet of paper, but it just wasn't the same and I had trouble keeping organized.
Until next time,
Cheers.

How Well my Paper Turned Out

I think my final paper was my most successful paper I did in terms of writing, structure, and content. The issues from project 4 were addressed, as well as integrated successfully into project 5. MLA format was correctly used and cited (for once), grammatical errors were fixed in the final revision, and I expanded upon my new thesis.
My draft from this project was improved upon in a few ways. I added direct quotes from experts for the definitions portion of the paper, and better explained how it related to the film.
In my draft, I had issues with adding irrelevant details in the scenes and cutting out important dialogue. I refined my scenes more and added dialogue quotations after watching the movie scenes again.

The final revision went over the word requirement by 450 words, and maybe I should have cut it back a little. But overall I think this paper was a success!

Writing the Draft

Writing the draft was about ten times easier than writing the definitions paper. But the reason it was easy was because I wrote the definitions paper first. I mean it was required to be written in that order, but I do remember thinking during the definitions paper, "How on earth am I going to apply this to the movie in a way that makes a bit of sense?"

To answer my naive question, pretty easily.

Once more I had to plop myself on the la-z-boy rocker and watch Iron Man 2 clips and repeat a number of scenes until I had them burned into the back of my mind. I'm pretty sure I can quote the entirety of the scene with Rhodes and Tony in Tony's workshop by now.

One problem I had while writing the draft (and panicking briefly as a result) was that I realized one of the scenes I thought was good was not enough to work with. I might have mentioned the plane scene with Tony and Pepper being one of my scenes, but yeah, that didn't work out. I did however mention it as a third, brief example in my paper.

I found the perfect scene with Tony and Vanko in the prison, so after that things went pretty smooth.

Until later,
cheers!

Another Source

Let's get right into it.


Shame and Pride by Donald Nathanson was a terrific source for the shame portion of my essay (obviously.)  But I think what helped me best to understand the book was reading a journal article by Jeff Elison (et al.) titled "Shame-Focused Coping: An Empirical Study of the Compass of Shame."  The writers showed the connection between Nathanson's and Tomkins's theories about shame and its affects.  The summaries in it on the compass of shame were very nice, and I'm glad I found this source through one of the sample papers posted for the class. 

Seriously, note to all future eng.102 students: the sample papers have some hidden gold in them. I think I found one other good source this way too, but I can't for the life of me remember. 

One final note: I think I might want to read Nathanson's book all the way through some day. Just not a week away from finals. 

Revised Thesis

I like how I keep saying I'm going to follow up with a topic for my next entry and never do it, and instead have a random assortment of entries vaguely linked together.

(Just kidding, I don't like that. What can one do?)

I'm going to talk about my revised thesis here today. In my last post discussing it, I said it was disjointed and needed to be more concise and hard hitting.

Here it is.

"The arc reactor and the Iron Man suit itself are Tony Stark's attempts to hide his impairment from everyone, including himself."

Badda bing badda boom. Not only does it present the movie in a broader sense than before, it was relatively easy to adapt to my paper. What I also like about it is that it's not only Iron Man 2 that it applies to, because I watched the first and third Iron Man movies recently and they were still applicable. (Moreso the first one, though.) If I ever had to expand this analysis, I would totally analyze all three films with this thesis and how Stark's character remains true to this, and how it differs.

Maybe I'll write more on it in another entry, but no promises!

The Most Important Source

Sometimes, in a research project, you come across that one book. You know the one I'm talking about. It's the one source that seems like a light shining in darkness when you previously had encountered only fragments of useful information.

That one book for me was the Disability Studies Reader. I think why I liked it so much was because before reading sections of it, I didn't really understand disability studies beyond the surface level. It also had expert authors featured in it, like Goffman that I talked about last entry, and Simi Linton who is a prominent writer in disability studies.

I think this was my best source by far, and contained a lot of quotable material.

That's all I have for now, so until next time, cheers.

Describing a Source: Stigma according to Erving Goffman

Alternative title: What shall I say about Goffman?

First of all, and this is completely irrelevant, but who names their kid Erving with the last name Goffman? Just saying it I can feel my tongue get caught up in the back of my throat. Granted the guy was born in the 20's, but still.

Anyway.

One of my sources that has been exceptionally useful is Erving Goffman's book, Stigma. He wrote about the different types of stigmas, and more importantly defined and explained the reasons for it.
I originally found the work in a compilation, called the Disability Studies Reader. I ended up not needing much more out of the complete Stigma book, and found all I needed in that compilation. What was also nice was the next chapter in the Reader went into more detail off of Goffman's work. Basically it was the best thing ever to find when you're doing a compare and contrast.

Anyway, I'll discuss another source in my next entry.
Cheers!

"Current" Working Thesis

Note on this entry: I revised my thesis after my conference, but this was my original thinking from my first thesis.

"Tony Stark passes as being fully able-bodied because of his fear of being stigmatized, or otherwise no longer controlling his own image.  He reacts by using the shame script of avoidance to cope with the fact that he is dying."

It was a little shaky on the wording but overall I think it was a good working thesis. The problem with it is that it is a little too direct. It did help me plot out exactly what I wanted to say in the paper, though. Now of course that sounds pretty redundant, but I've written more abstract theses before and had a bass ackwards paper as a result.

Anyway, next entry I'll talk about my revised thesis.
Cheers!

After My Conference

Today I had my conference with Dr. Lorde on project 5. I was the first one to go up, which was very nice for me since I was in and out within fifteen minutes. I had some errands to run around campus, which I'm glad because if I had just left, I would have forgotten to give one of the other students his peer review I did last class.

I was surprised on how well my conference went. I was especially glad that I did the definitions portion of the essay correctly, because that was what I felt like I had the most trouble doing. All I need to do is polish it up and refine what I said to match my thesis a little better, which means focusing the paper more overtly in disability studies.

This was actually something I noticed too, because I felt like I needed to rope in all of the definitions to be part of the bigger picture.  Additionally I need to change "nonvisible" to "hidden" disability for terminology purposes.

As far as the analysis, I picked good scenes and I am glad that they worked as well as they did. The only changes I need to make are to cut out the irrelevant bits of scenery described, and quote more of the dialogue directly rather than paraphrasing. I also need to explain facial expressions in a more analytical manner, such as "his eyes were downcast and his mouth seemed to droop down into a frown," rather than something like "he looked upset." I need to include any relevant sounds or music in the background too, if there are any.

Now I'm curious if I missed something in those scenes I've watched fifty times over.

The little things I'll be changing are those irritating "I will do x" and "I believe x" phrases that I wrote in to state my opinion. I put them in there to sound like some of the "They say/I Say" formats, but I did it in a way that was too blunt. I'll be changing them out for something more flowing, like "The point is that x" as suggested. I'll also fix the MLA in-text citations to be (Author 15) instead of (Author, 15). That'll teach me for going to a friend instead of google.


Finally, I'll be changing my thesis wording a bit, and creating an introduction that introduces the scene of Tony describing his iron man suit as a prosthesis.


For once this week and despite being sick with a cold again, everything's coming up Sabrina.

More Outline Blabbering

I've discovered how to write a thousand words without traditional writing anxiety. All I have to do is write the paper inside the outline. I can't explain it but it's the most effective way to write a paper for me.

Not only does it show a more visual pattern of how sentences branch off of each other, it is so easy to see if things do not follow in logical order rather than searching through several paragraphs.


Anyway,

I really enjoyed writing the analysis part of the research paper. I ended up with an even better scene to pair alongside the one with Tony and Rhodes; it's the one where Tony goes to talk to Ivan Vanko right after the Monaco fight. I'll put an excerpt here from my draft.



"With Tony remaining silent, Vanko continues with a key line, “ If you can make God bleed, the people will cease to believe in him. And there will be blood in the water. And the sharks will come. The truth, all I have to do is sit here and watch as the world will consume you.” This can be interpreted as a metaphor for stigma. If someone like Tony holds a godlike status, they have ultimate credibility and are at the forefront of the normal group as Goffman called it. However, if one “can make God bleed,” they ultimately are showing his weakness, or something discrediting. This can be said of both Tony’s cockiness in saying that the arc reactor technology would not be seen elsewhere for many years, but on a deeper level it explains Tony’s refusal to tell anyone about him dying. His ego will not allow him to be discredited in any way if he can avoid it. “The world” does not consume Tony nearly as much as he seems to destroy himself, as in one final line, Vanko says, “Hey, Tony. Before you go, palladium in the chest, painful way to die.”"

Outlines

Today I went with a friend of mine to watch her get a tattoo. She went to fix up an older tattoo of an arrow, and replaced it with a stemmed rose. In addition to being a cool thing to watch, it got me thinking; first, the idea of getting one myself is now very tempting, but also, the concept of outlines. 

Outlines are important. Before the artist started tattooing on the side of my friend's body, he first made a rough sketch on paper, then he transposed that image via sharpie to her skin. It took four revisions of that sharpie drawing before she was satisfied with it, and then the artist began the actual inking. 

Meanwhile, here I am at my laptop now, sitting with a half-finished outline of my paper. I continually learn that without an outline, my papers turn out disorganized to the point that I can't even figure out what I'm trying to say, let alone other people. It would be like getting a tattoo without deciding on placement, size, or even the image concept, and just letting the artist do "whatever".

Now maybe there are some artists that can produce something brilliant without an outline, but I'm not one of them (and that goes for both physical drawings, and my writing). 

Like the tattoo artist today, I need to revise the outline enough times until it is at the point that it will translate well to the finished work- the paper itself. 

Wish me luck.

research and writing schedule

I've been steadily researching ever since assignment 2, and I think I have a decent body of resources. I've read through several of them completely, and only relevant chapters in the full book sections.

I have pages in my notebook for each source, where I documented certain topics by page number so it will be easy later on for in-text citation. For instance, I have a page for author Erving Goffman, who wrote about social stigmas, on one of his book chapters. I'll have a phrase like "definition of stigma, being discredited" and next to it the page number in parenthesis. Handy, and better than littering my books with post it notes serving the same function.

With project 5 coming up, I'm first and foremost going to have to construct a general outline, because as I know, if I don't make an outline, my paper reads like s**t. And of course  I end up editing my outline as I write the paper to keep things straight and organized.

Next, I'll have to write at the bare minimum, a paragraph a day after that, even on days that I usually schedule the majority of my chemistry homework on. Whatever it takes to get something written.

Speaking of organic chemistry, my honors project for it also includes a ten page paper. (The subject is on art conservation and restoration techniques.) I'm using some of the structure from this english class to organize it, starting with a research proposal and an annotated bibliography. Definitions will probably be easier since they're concrete and technical terms, which to be honest, I prefer.

Enough on that, though.

Cheers!

What I found in a scene

I never thought I'd say that I took notes during an Iron Man movie. I'm not complaining.

I've found several scenes of importance to my paper, but the biggest one has to be Tony sitting in his garage when Rhodes comes to tell him about the PR crisis going on after the racing incident.

I don't think there's a more poignant scene demonstrating shame theory than that one. And consistently, Tony uses avoidance the entire time. I'm telling you, it's gold: Rhodes tells him to get up and come help, but as soon as he sees Tony's eyes practically glazed over, he becomes concerned and asks if Tony is okay.

Tony doesn't answer the question (avoidance right there,) and quietly says "let's go." He stumbles out of the car. Rhodes helps him over to the desk.

They have a conversation, mostly with Tony facing away from Rhodes (avoidance yet again). Rhodes watches him silently for a moment, Tony asks him what he's looking at, hardly able to look at Rhodes himself.

At the end of the scene, Tony assures him that he has everything under control. (Need I say it again?)


Now before this scene happened, there was a segment where both Tony and Pepper are on the plane coming home from Monaco. Tony had at least five opportunities to tell Pepper right then and there that he was ill, but instead he avoids her gaze, even when she gives him the golden opportunity by asking: "What are you not telling me?"

Tony's way of processing shame is avoidance! Cool, but why does he feel shameful at all? I'll have to answer that in another post.


Until then, cheers.

Critical Model, As I Understand It, revised

I love spring break because it's essentially just a giant week for catching up and getting ahead on all my classes.

And sleeping, a lot of sleeping. I think I took two naps in one day on Saturday, partly because I was getting over a gross cold that started on Thursday and partly because I've been so exhausted. 

Anyway,

My critical model. As you know I've picked disability studies, and consequently have felt way over my head because of it while simultaneously learning a ton about it. I've read through so many essays on the topic, but for whatever mental block I must have, I don't feel like I truly understand it.

There's the medical model of disability studies, which is as it sounds: based on the study of medical conditions that people with disabilities have. 

Then there's the social model, which seems to be concerned with how disability is viewed in society. Pretty broad topic. 

I'm using the social model for my critical analysis, and from it I'm examining stigma in relation to disability. If anything, I feel more confident when it's narrowed down to this topic. In order to better explain stigma, I had to explain shame theory. Now it's like I'm doing two critical models. 

Maybe this will get easier when I have the movie as a basis of examination. I can apply concepts like shame and stigma to actual examples.

Until next time, cheers.

Progress Notes

I have begun to gather resources from the library, and a couple from the Academic Search Complete database. Speaking of the database, it's definitely something with which I have a love-hate relationship; I love having so much information at my fingertips, but the damn site is the most non-user-friendly thing I've had to deal with in a while.

I've gotten two physical books from the library. One is titled "Disability in Film and Literature" by Nicole Markotic, and the other is a psychology book titled "Physical Disability and Human Behavior" by James W. McDaniel. I'm unsure if the latter will be too technical, but we will see! I've already bookmarked a couple of sections.

Besides that, I watched the first Iron Man movie the other day to get a little background on the characters. If I have the time (which I never do,) I might watch the third movie as well, but I hear it's not as good as the others.


That's all for now, since I have to get back to reading a chapter for organic chemistry.

My critical model

I am feeling like I have a better hold on what my critical model is. I had to read over the packet a couple times, but I finally got it after discussing it with my mom and reading it out loud. I usually learn best from discussion, so I'm glad to have people to listen.

I think what I was getting caught up in before was getting the medical and social model confused. Once I learned the social model was less about the actual disability itself and more about how people react to one, I started making progress.

I'm also thinking that I will have to research more on shame theory, since it is intertwined in the scenes I will be choosing from Iron Man 2. Specifically with Tony Stark, either shame/withdraw, or shame/avoidance.

Iron Man 2

I've decided to choose Iron Man 2 for my movie, and I will use a disabilities study approach. I decided a few days ago, and I think my main idea will work well. I want to explore if Tony's own ego comes as more of a detriment than his actual acquired disability. It can be argued that his ego and his confidence is what brought him so far in life, but I think it is in spite of it that he does succeed. Even his confidence isn't really confidence; it is insecurity.

In that case, I could summarize a little better by saying Tony's insecurity is more harmful to him than his actual medical condition.

I'll flesh this out better once I complete my draft, hopefully tonight.

Maybe instead of drag racing, you could try getting medical help, Tony.

Until then, cheers.

My film and my approach

After class today I talked with my teacher about the different options for my research paper. I've narrowed my choices down to three movies, with a strong lead on one. They are Zoolander, Iron Man 2, and Chicago.

If I decide to do Zoolander and the corresponding shame criticism, I think I could find a lot of material for that.  I might, instead of shame, do a masculinist study on how the main characters do not see themselves as being anything less than men.

For Iron Man 2, I would do a disabilities study on how Iron Man refuses to see himself as disabled, and how that ultimately hinders him more.  Or alternatively, I could talk about how revealing a disability affects relationships, and Tony's fear of that reveal.

Chicago is my third option, but just as a fall back. I think I'm good to go with either of my first two options, though.

I'm watching Zoolander tonight with my mom. I'll report back when I've watched Iron Man 2.

New blog title (because the first one was dumb)

I've decided that for whatever reason, I really hate the first blog name I used!  So now I've had time to think, and I've come up with something better.  Since this class is using films as a point of analysis, I'm going to change the name of one of my favorite movies (For a Few Dollars More, starring Clint Eastwood) to suit the title.  Welcome to For a Few Points More, since the blogger site gives 10 points extra credit.

First Post!

Hello, my name is Sabrina Lau. This is a pretty dry first post, but I hope you'll understand. I am currently taking English 102, and have created this blog to document my adventures in it. The blog's title is "Concernedly Confident," because I am "concerned" with how confident I am at the beginning of this semester. We will see if I am just confident that I'm concerned by the end, if that makes sense. 

This semester I'll be doing six projects for this class, and am looking forward to them. I don't expect them to be easy, but I know good things come with difficulty. 

Here's to a good start. 

Even though I don't drink, cheers!