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.