Sandra's Research Update #2

This week I've finally gotten my sources and I've started on my paper. A little behind, but at least I've finally started. I'm a little worried that the sources I have won't be detailed or practical enough. I've found some information about chicken abuse, and even some news about the Avian Flu threat. Some of the information I've seen have been repetitive, but the more information the merrier!!! So far I think I'm on the road to finishing my paper without any problems but I'm worried my paper might turn out a little bland.

Drew Kevlar's Research update

About a week ago I switched my topic to being about the Monsanto Corporation. I have completed my note taking process and I am about to begin most vital part of my reseach paper writing the actual paper. So now you can all read my opinion on the quintessential earth destroying mega-corporation-- well, actually my opening picture probably gave it away.

Research Update by Dylan

I was only recently able to start my research because I have been out sick for a while. I must say, MCC's search engine is horrible. Although all of the titles are creditable sources, the sources they give you have almost no relevance or reference to the subject I've searched. It took me almost four hours to find the sources I have and I had to expand my topic twice because it had so little information on my original topic. I have gained most of my information and have converted most of it into a few pages of notes.

Cameron's Research Entry Number 4

So the due date for this paper is next week. That sign on Mrs. B's wall saying, "Due Dates Are Closer Than They Appear," is totally true! I'm stressed because I am afraid that I won't have enough information to write my paper. I have four sources, but I KNOW I need more. I gotta get into it this weekend though because the rough draft is due Monday. There is an upside to all this chaos! The MCC internet resource databases are coming in handy. It took me a while to get into the flow of things. (especially since I learned to rephrase my searches). RESEARCH PAPER? HERE I COME!

Andrew's research update #2

So I started on my research again. Have about 2 pages of notes, and after these last 2, I will start with the writing of my essay. I have found a near endless supply of sources on my new topic, which is a good sign considering I was able to find none on my previous one. We will see how it goes in the near future.

Cheers,
Andrew.

DJ's Research Update 4/5/10

As of now, my research project on the dangers of high-fructose corn syrup is going pretty well. I have found four sources on my topic and have taken notes on them. I plan to find a few more sources to help my research before I start drafting. The MCC Online Library is a huge help in finding sources. I have used it before with moderate success, but having a person from MCC visit our school and teach us more about it made the process of using the online library even easier. I am confident that my research will be more than sufficient for the writing of the project.

Sandra's Reflection On The Mamet

Cameron's Research Journey Continues!

I don't know. I'm getting stressed out from this paper's due date being a few weeks away. I mean, I've found sources, but I feel like I need more. That my paper will be lacking in some way. The last time I did research, I happened upon this article by J. Weeks called, "Factory Farms." I found this article in CQ Researcher, an online database that I haven't used yet, and took notes on some pretty interesting things. I found out that a disease called Bovine Spongiform Encephalupathy (something I can't even pronounce) killed many consumers who ate packaged meat. This disease occurred recently in cattle, and was caused by the cattle being fed, "ground-up cattle parts", such as brains and spinal tissues from sick cows. I also learned that raising the cattle in tight confinment helps to spread diseases quickly.
I've been finding good information, but a lot of it has been mutual between my other sources. I know I definitely have to find more sources then. Great...

Andrew's response to "When the Other Dancer Is the Self" by Alice Walker

This was a wonderful and insightful read for me, in which I gained enlightenment and understanding to others misfortune and how one was able to overcome her misfortune and use it to her advantage later in her life. The story starts off with a spoiled brat two year old in a considerably large but poor family. The father is conflicted on who he should bring to the fair with him, for there is only enough room for three. This is when his little two year old girl (the author) comes up and had the audacity to say that she should be chosen to go to the fair because "she is the cutest". Well, she got her just desert, when her brother "accidentally" shot her in the eye with a bebe gun. The author goes on and complains on how her "horrible disfigurement" restrains her from having a social life, and how the other children "hurt her feelings." This gives her the motivation to become a writer (as, I have found, that most writers come out of misfortunes in their childhood) and she begins to write poems about her crippling defect.

The story goes on and it starts to get better, she mooches off of her rich brother and persuades him to have the white goop removed from her eye. After this is done, her ego becomes so inflated that she finds herself falling under the illusion that she is the most popular and prettiest girl in school, that she had found the "perfect boyfriend" (which is highly improbable for there have been studies conducted that show that I am the perfect boyfriend, thus my current status of being single because no one is perfect enough for me), and she then crowns herself as queen in her leaving of her high school. She then marries this man, has a child, and the child. As she is tucking her child into bed, her child notices something, an odd imperfection in her eye, and subtly says "your eye is ugly" in a way that she wouldn't get in trouble, and was actually taken as a compliment by the author.

This reading shows the many ways that if one can get over their misfortunes and start focusing more on their goals, that they too can follow their dreams and succeed in anything they put their minds to.

Cameron's Reflection from "The Dairy of a Young Girl" by Anne Frank

I was suprised to find that this reading wasn't really heavy on the Holocaust issues because that was what I expected to read from a Jewish girl's diary from that time period. I can relate to the moment when Frank writes, "It is that I have no such real friend", because I find myself not having anyone to talk to about personal things sometimes. I agree with her when she writes, "...with all my friends, just fun and joking, nothing more. I can never bring myself to talk of anything outside the common round," because that happens with me. I'm afraid that no one would take me seriously, or that who ever I'm trying to confide in won't be serious about the matter.
She touches on the rights that the Jewish communities lost when Hitler came to power later on in her diary. That subject depresses me because I'm currently learning more and more about that era, and I think it's a shame what they had to go through. As I reached the ending of the reading, I thought it was strange that she referred to her period as being a, "sweet secret". I've never had to deal with that, nor will I ever, but my little sister goes through the same changes, so I've heard enough about the subject to know that it's not a "sweet" time in their feminine lives. I was a little thrown off by the closing of the reading because I thought it was odd for her to end the diary entry talking about her desires for companionship for other girls. But I do believe she was brave for voicing her feelings on the paper which she referred to being " more patient than man."

Sandra's Research Update #1

So my research is going pretty terribly. My computer is being rebooted and I'm sharing denise's public library card. I have some primary sources with farm names, but I have yet to visit the farms and talk to the farmers yet. The secondray sources i have aren't really scholarly considereing it's a PETA website. So far i've taken some notes off the PETA site but I still have to use library sources. Happily, Prof. Burnquist is going to let me use her computer. :)

Andrew's research update #1

So I finally found the motivation to go onto the MCC library website and find some sources. I had to change my previous project idea from the mistreatment of cattle to factory farms vs. organic farms because of the lack of sources. Since the change, I have been able to find two sources through the CQ researcher on my new topic. I am now using the opposing viewpoints resource center to hopefully find some more sources. Wish me luck.

Brian's Response to -Diary of a Young Girl:Anne Frank

The essay "From the Diary of a Young Girl" by Anne Frank was depressing yet inspiring. This essay had depressing points like where she talks about how no one would care about what she has to say (Boy was she wrong), and what was also depressing was that a little girl went through all that loneliness. She states that the reason for starting her diary is because "I have no real such friend". Inspiring because even though she was going through The Holocaust, she still wrote, she didn't give up. What some may find kind of funny yet sad is that for the most part, the diary was written to "Kitty" (what she calls her best friend), because she thought no one would "care to read it" in a sense. Another sad factor, it doesn't have a happy ending.

~Brian

Sandra's Reflection on Alice Walker: Beauty When The Dancer Is Self

I really liked this piece because it shows how insecure and paranoid a person can be. When Alice was younger, she was the typical "daddy's little girl" who admired her father and enjoyed cute girly material things. She was like most girls who were somewhat spoiled and thought they were the prettiest in their fathers eye. Later she becomes a tomboy and feels that this transition led up to the accident that made her feel not so pretty anymore. I think that whether she became a tomboy or not, the inccident with her brother shooting her eye with a shotgun would have been inevitable.

I find it odd that she would pray for beauty instead of her eye. In that situation where you are blind in one eye, can a person really be that shallow? I think this is what most girls would also pray for because they are afraid that people will be judgemental but later they meet people who accept them for who they are. I also don't think that the procedure helped boost her confidence to make friends. I think she's always been confident but she was just afraid of rejection. I think that Alice was so obssesed with beauty and the way her eye looked because she thought that her father only chose Alice to bring to the carnival and only liked her because she was the prettiest girl. I think that was the relationship Alice and her father had.
Although the event of her getting shot while she was pregnant had nothing to do with the story, I wish Alice would go into detail about it. The last part of the story where Alice tells about the photoshoot and literary magazine she's featured in is so touching because she's so worried that she won't get enough sleep and her eye will look lazy. Yet when Alice goes into her three year old daughters room, her daughter finally realizes her mom's eye and asks how her mother got the world in her eye instead of being like most children who would have poked fun. I like how Alice realizes that her eye is a part of her at that point and the photoshoot doesn't seem to bother her anymore. I love the part where Alice dances to Stevie Wonder who is ironically blind.

I can relate to why Alice became so insecure about her eye and why she would be paranoid about people looking at her eye constantly because every girl has plenty of imperfections, but i think that the inccident did not change how beautiful she was nor her personality. It might have helped her gain a stronger will, but even with her eye looking a little lazy she managed to find herself a husband, a sweet daughter, and a writing career.

DJ's Response to "Beauty: When the Other Dancer Is the Self" by Alice Walker

In “Beauty: When the Other Dancer Is the Self”, Walker tells about an eye injury that she received at a young age, and how she dealt with it. What I find most interesting about this story is that she cared more about her own appearance than she did about the fact that she had vision loss in her eye. For years she avoided eye contact with others, but I don't really blame her as I probably would have done the same. One thing that really caught my attention was the recurring statement from her mother and sister, “You did not change”. It wasn't until her son brought up her eye, that she realized that she really did not change at all. This story was an interesting read and even a bit heartwarming at the end.

Cameron's Research Journey: Entry #2

So I was sitting in class the other day, doing research on the Opposing Points database within the electronic resources of MCC, when I happened upon a disturbing article. "Modernn Slaughtering Methods Are Inhumane", by Joby Warrick, opened up my eyes to issues I didn't know existed at all. As I kept reading and jotting down a few notes here and there, I found myself becoming angry. Cattle are beat over the head with blunt objects, prodded with electric rods, and sprayed in the nose as a means of knocking them out and getting them to stand up once they have fallen. If the cattle fail to stand, the workers shovel them along with forklifts over distances such as 15 to 20 feet before they stand allow them to stand up.
This all happens before the slaughtering. I scrolled farther down in the article and learned that cattle often times go to the slaughterhouses still conscious. Workers are aware if this, yet they still push the cow into the slaughter line. These cows survive past seven minutes of workers chopping off their hooves, ripping their bellies open, cutting off their tails, and stripping their hide. I was sickened by my discoveries, wondering why these people continued to torture these cows when they knew they were still alive. Another thing that shocked me, is that the government knew this was going on and did nothing to stop it! I can only imagine where my research findings will go from here. This truly is inhumane!

Brian- At War With My Skin }John Updike

John Updike
At War With My Own Skin

At war with my skin is a sad story were the author talks about his (and I hate to say this) disgusting disease that is on his skin called psoriasis. The best thing is his detail he uses to talk about his life and disease. For example, he mentions that he married “a young brunette with calm, smooth, deep-tanning skin” and that he had four kids and that the fourth one inherited his skin disease. To sum up, nice read but a little sad.
~Brian D

Drew kevlar's BLOG FODDER: THE TRIUMPHANT RETURN TO GLORY

Drew Kevlar’s BLOG FODDER
And now Drew’s riveting take on John Updike’s, "At War with My Skin"
Psoriasis is a disorder that causes certain parts of the afflicted’s body to have rough “scaly skin” it is mild in 65% of all cases (by mild I mean from a overall health standpoint and only affecting under 4% of the subjects body). However, immeasurable is the psychological damage that the afflicted gather through a life time of self-induced seclusion.
John Updike is an author who in this paper described how it feels physically and emotionally to have psoriasis. He tells the reader of how psoriasis kept him from living his life at times. He was to afraid of being noticed that he didn’t learn to swim. John also tells us of how his disorder has fueled the majority of all his life choices (marriage, having children, ETC.) There is nothing in my life that can even be compared to Updike’s experiences. However, I can honestly say that this essay is an inspiration to all people who feel like outcasts.

Brian- Me Talk Pretty One Day}David Sedaris

David Sedaris
Me Talk Pretty One Day

David Sedaris’ “Me Talk Pretty One Day”, was fantastic. He talks about something very common-- about trying to learn a language and the difficulty in doing so. For example he states "I find it ridiculous to assign a gender to an inanimate object incapable of disrobing and making a fool of itself. Why refer to Lady Crack Pipe or Good Sir Dishrag when these things could never live up to all that their sex implied?". And the characters in Mr. Sedaris’ story are amazingly funny. It’s mostly just about him and his teacher, but he does talk about his fellow students being in the hallway and having a conversation "commonly overheard in refugee camps" (if you want to know what is is you'll have to read the story) The teacher he describes is funny and that’s what makes this story great. David turns something that would usually be boring to something pretty funny. Overall, it was a great read. Mr. Sedaris, thank you.

~Brian

DREW KEVLAR: And now, my opinion of David Sedaris' "Me Talk Pretty One Day"

In this essay, Sedaris describes to us how he managed to overcome one of the world’s hardest obstacles - learning a second language. To most people, a foreign language sounds like random syllables being bunched together into a load of gibberish. If I came up to you and said, “Bok moje ime je nacrtao,” (Croatian for, “Hi my name is Drew”) I might as well have been saying, “Klattu barada nikto.” However, in this essay Sedaris not only learns to speak French (or at least understand it) but manages to do it while being instructed by a teacher who has a pole that could support the Eiffel tower up her bum.
In the course of the essay we get to see Sedaris learn to deal with the confusion of being spoken to in an unknown language and eventually feel his triumph when he succeeds in learning the language despite his teacher’s best attempts to hinder him. While I can’t even pretend to have had such an evil and judgemental teacher, I can understand the triumph of accomplishing something against all odds. I have a developmental disability which places me on the Autism spectrum. When I was younger I could barely understand my own emotions let alone those of others and the idea of putting them down on a piece of paper was something I could not even begin to fathom. But, I have fought to comprehend the world around me on a higher level and now look at me! I am the self-professed, “King of a Blog” with approximately two followers…WOOHOO!!!
Ultimately, Sedaris conveyed the struggles of learning a second language with humor and wit that conveyed his emotions effectively.