Blog 13 Final Reflection…

Throughout this year in English 1000 I have learned a lot about my writing and how to make it better. I learned how to make my writing more fluent and how to choose a good topic and stay focused on it. One thing I did new this year was learning how to use in text citations and using sources to back up my ideas in my paper. I found it frustrating sometimes because some thing I was writing about were my own ideas but sometimes Stephanie said that I need to use an expert to back up my own ideas. But overall it went well and I learned how to do things properly.

The thing that I think I have improved most on is how to get to the point of my paper. Most of the time I got to the point of my paper but I walked around it too much in the beginning. But now I know that it is ok just to go straight to the point of my paper. There is no need to add filler, just get to the main point I am trying to make and it will be fine.

This class was helpful to improve my writing, and I am glad that the semester is over but will still remember what we were taught in this class.

Blog 12 Thesis Statement…

My paper is dealing with love and whether or not we should believe in it.

Thesis-We as humans are meant to love not only for how our brain is designed but also because it is what are ancestors did. The belief in love is  a good aspect to ones life for it not only provides health benefits, but also social benefits that can drastically impact a persons life for the better.

Extra Credit Blog 4, Negative Effects of Being in Love…

The last two articles that I am going to use for my paper deal with the negative effects of being in love and in a relationship. The first article I found is written by Barbara Gormley and is titled, “Psychological Abuse Perpetration in College Dating Relationships: Contributions of Gender, Stress, and Adult Attachment Orientations.”

This article is about a study done to understand more about the effect of stress on a person in a relationship and how it can affect both the partners in a relationship. In this particular study, 127 college students were followed and their stress levels were monitored. The study found that a man feels a lot of stress to act like a man in a relationship, with the stereotypes of not showing emotions and having to always be the strong one. This study found that men with high stress levels are the best predictor of perpetration of emotional abuse against women. In other related studies, it was found that ¾ of women had experience emotional abuse in their relationships and over ½ in another study. The author goes on to say that once emotional abuse is present in a relationship, the chance of physical abuse arising in a relationship goes up drastically.

The second article I found is written by Rainer Romero-Canyas and is titled, “Rejection Sensitivity and the Rejection-Hostility Link in Romantic Relationships.” This is another article about a study done to see if there is a correlation between relationships and problems that can affect both parties in the partnership.

The author talks about how when someone feels rejection whether it is from a significant other or a social group; there is an enormous impact on people’s feelings and behavior. When a person is more sensitive about the thought of rejection, there is a higher probability that there will be violence in the relationship. Being worried about rejection is also associated with behaviors that increase personal risk. People will try to do everything they can to make their partners happy so they don’t break up and get rejected, but sometimes people go over the edge and push themselves too far. People will start to hold back their opinion on issues so as not to disagree with their partners, and they will give up their decision-making power to their partner. Sometimes when someone is so fearful of rejection, they don’t allow themselves to enter into a relationship at all. They become anxious in social situations and avoid contact whenever possible.

These two articles have very good reasoning of what negative outcomes there can be from being in a relationship. I will use both of these articles as support when writing in my paper what could be bad about being in a relationship. I will highlight that when stress becomes involved, it could lead to both emotional and physical abuse. Also I will talk about how people sometimes start to change who they really are in order to make sure that their significant other likes them and won’t break up with them. I will also talk about how people are so afraid of rejection that even if they are single, they are so afraid of starting up a new relationship and will start to avoid social situations all together.

Extra Credit Blog 3, Positive Benefits of Being in Love…

The next sources I am going to use have to deal with the positive benefits of being in love. Both of these sources are articles I found while searching the database Academic Search Premier.

The first article I found is written by PhD. Karen M. Grewen, who is apart of the Department of Psychiatry at the University of North Carolina. Her article is titled, “Warm Partner Contact is related to Lower Cardiovascular Reactivity.” This a study that she and some of her co-workers performed to see if a person received contact from their significant other when news of a stressful event came, if it would lower their blood pressure. They set up the experiment as follows; there were two groups to this experiment, people without a romantic partner, and a group with romantic partners. The people in a relationship watched a 10-minute romantic video, and then gave their partners a 20 second hug. The other group just sat in another room with no contact for the duration of the video. Next both groups were told they had to give an impromptu speech.

The experimenters found that the people in the warm contact group had lower blood pressure and were less stressed than those who were isolated and single. The attribute this finding to the fact that the people in the relationship had support and felt more secure with their partner by their side. The study also found that men benefited just as much as women did when they received contact from their partner.

The second article I found was written by Scott R. Braithwaite. His article is titled, “Romantic Relationships and the Physical and Mental Health of College Students.” This is another study done with 1,621 college students and the effects that being in a relationship had on the students. The study found that students in a committed relationship had a greater well-being than those who were single. Also those in a relationship had fewer mental health problems, and they were less likely to be overweight. The study also found that college students with a partner had a decrease in the frequency of problematic outcomes and risky behavior. This is mostly due to the fact that the students in relationships don’t have to worry about multiple sexual partners and the complications that can arise from that.

As you can see both of these articles show the proven health benefits that can come from being in a committed, romantic relationship. I will use both of these articles as support for the fact that being in a relationship can help your health and improve the quality of your life in many different ways. Besides just having health benefits, the second article goes on to say that being in love also has social benefits. You feel secure with your partner so in social situations, you are less stressed, and less anxious. You are able to function better and enjoy your time with people better knowing that you have a significant other waiting for you to come home and spend time with. For this part of my paper, the positive benefits of being in love, I will break done the argument into 2 sections. One with health benefits and one with social benefits, drawing on these two articles for my support.

Extra Credit Blog 2, Why We Love…

For my paper I have found a lot of really great sources to support what I am talking about. They have also been helpful because after reading them, they have given me new ideas about what to write about and things I should add into my paper.

The first source I am going to use I talked about a little already in my last blog. The source is a book I found at MU Ellis Library. It is written by Helen Fisher and it is called, Why We Love: The Nature and Chemistry of Love. This book is all about why we love. She gives two different explanations for why we love. One is a biological reason, and the other one is a physiological reason. For the biological reason, Helen explains how we have different chemicals in our brain.

One chemical in particular that is important to making us want to love is serotonin, that when released make us feel happy. According to Helen, when we are in love, serotonin is released which in turn will make us happy to be in love and want to stay with the person we are with. We are put into a state of bliss that makes us enjoy being with our partners. Now of course this feeling will only arise if you have fun with your significant other and truly enjoy being around them. There are relationships where people don’t feel this way to start with towards their partner, so the serotonin release won’t occur for these certain people.

For the physiological reason for why to love, Helen says we love because it is what our ancestors did.She theorizes that our ancestors fell in love, first out of companionship; they longed to have someone to care for. They found a partner to add security and support in their life. This partnership turned into love, and how could it not? They were spending their entire lives together, telling all of their daily trials and worries to this one person. The ritual of falling in love has been going on for thousands of years and is still continuing to this day.

I will use this book to support the first part of my research question, why do we love. I can break down that argument into 3 different parts.One, we love because of biological reasons, such as serotonin release and how our brain is built to receive and interpret signals of love. Why would our brain make us capable to understand and feel love if we were not meant to? The structure almost tells us that we are meant to love.

Two, we love because of physiological reason, like the theory about our ancestors fell in love. Our ancestors fell in love in order to help themselves survive, and since it worked pretty well for them, it is continued to help us survive now.

And lastly I will talk about the fairy tale dream that we all grew up wanting to come true. We all want to fall in love and get married to an amazing person how fits with us just right. I will also talk about how hard that can be but despite all of the difficulties, we still face the hardships and try to find a person we can spend the rest of our lives with.

Extra Credit Blog 1, Presentation…

I feel pretty ready for my presentation. I am going to outline my issue and talk about the major points I am going to make. The argument that I am dealing with is Why do we love, and how does love benefit us?

First off I will talk about my medium. I plan on just writing a paper, I would like to do a power point, but I don not think that will get my point of view across well enough.

Then I will talk about why we love. One source that I am using is a book written by Helen Fischer. Her book is titled, Why We Love: The Nature and Chemistry of Romantic Love. In the book she talks about how serotonin is released when we are enjoying something pleasurable and in return serotonin makes us even happier. So when we are in a relationship that we enjoy and are having fun in, our brain rewards us by releasing serotonin. It makes us want to keep experiencing this feeling. I’ll talk about why we love according to our society today also, what things are associated with love. Like in society we grow up wanting to find our true love, fall in love, get married, have children, and live happily ever after. Everyone wants to fulfill this fairy tale, though that is much easier said than done. In reality it is hard to find that special person, but when you do, the love between the two in the relationship has great benefits.

Then I will talk about the benefits of being in love. One benefit is health benefits. I have multiple sources that have done studies that prove a correlation between being in a relationship and having better health outcomes than those who are single. One study done found that those in a relationship had an overall better sense of well-being. They also had fewer mental health problems, less likely to be overweight, and had a decrease occurrence of risky behaviors. This is mainly due to fewer number of sexual partners and the problems that can arise with that behavior.

I have another study that showed that people in a relationship had a lower blood pressure when presented with a stressful event than those who were single. The experimenters attributed this to people feeling secure and support from their significant others, so they did not become as stressed.

I also have an article that points out some negative aspects of being in a relationship. This is another study done that looked at stress levels in relationships. They found that when men in a relationship had high stress levels, they were more likely to perpetrate emotional abuse against their female partner.In other related studies, it was found that ¾ of women had experience emotional abuse in their relationships and over ½ in another study. The author goes on to say that once emotional abuse is present in a relationship, the chance of physical abuse arising in a relationship goes up drastically.

So this is my argument so far. I still want to find some statistics on cheating and divorce rates and the emotional stress that goes along with these events.

Blog 11 Research Plan…

Monday April 5- Find 5 sources (Keep a bibliography going) Annotate one source and write extra credit Blog #1 about it.

Tuesday April 6- Find 5 more sources (Keep a bibliography going)Annotate another source and write extra credit Blog #2 about it.

Wednesday April 7- Research Worksheet due

Thursday April 8- Write out and practice class presentation. Write extra credit Blog #3 about what I am going to say in my presentation to get prepared.

Friday April 9, 12, or 14- Give Presentations

Sunday April 11-Pull together bibliographies from top 5 sources

Monday April 12-Annotated Bibliography due

Tuesday April 13- Write extra credit blog #4 about the main issue I am writing about to get my mind working.

Thursday April 15- Write rough draft, with bibliography

Friday April 16- Rough draft due

Sunday April 18-Read rough drafts and type up my revisions and response to their papers

Monday April 19- Peer reviews due, typed

Tuesday April 20-type up Blog #12

Thursday April 22-Read through peer’s advice and fix rough draft.

Friday April 23- First submission due

Wednesday April 28- meet with teacher, revise first draft.

Monday May 3- type up Blog #13

Wednesday May 5- Second submission due

Blog 10 Reflection…

For this assignment I approached it a lot like I did the first one. There were significant differences though. First of all, we had to find a critical source. I am so glad that we had that day in the library because without that I would have been searching for hours for my critical source. After I had my critical source, it was easy to annotate it and then pick out the pieces I needed that supported my analysis of Vonnegut.

When it came down to actually writing the paper, it was a little harder. First off, I did not fully understand the assignment. We did not really talk about it that much so I was confused about what exactly Stephanie was looking for. But once we went over it in class, it was easier to write.

I still had my same writing process where I sat down and did it all at once. But it was more difficult because we did not do as many blogs this time, so I had to pull together more ideas at once, instead of just being able to look back at my blogs and get ideas from that. Also it took a lot longer to write this paper because of all the quotations I had to find in the book to support my analysis of Vonnegut. It always seemed that I knew a scene of the book that I wanted to talk about, it was just difficult to find the exact page number, it took a lot of my time trying to find them. Then after I had the scenes, I had to pick out just a single line from it that would explain the point I wanted to get across.

Another problem I had problems with was with the rhetorical situations of both Vonnegut and my critical source. I am so glad that Stephanie took that part out because that was just confusing me and it did not flow right with my paper. I could not get it to fit in. I also had trouble using my critical source. In my first submission I was just giving a summary of my critical source and what he had to say about Vonnegut. I had to figure out how to still be giving an analysis of Vonnegut and just use my critical source as a support for what I was saying. I’m still not one hundred percent on that part of my paper, but it is better than before.

For the last assignment, I just need to make sure that I fully understand the assignment before I start writing. Also I will need to make sure to get my research done earlier so I don’t have to worry about that. I would much rather worry about the content of my paper, than finding all the critical sources I need. I think doing blogs really help me, so I will definitely take advantage of the extra credit blogs. Not only will it help me write my final paper but it will also boost my grade up a little bit, which will be good.

Blog 9 Five Categories…

The audience of my critical source would be to reach other people who are interested in Vonnegut. Now this is a very broad category. This article is a book review of the book, The Vonnegut Statement. You could infer that the people who would look at this article would want to find out if they would like the book or not. But for the audience we also have to include people who would just be searching for information about Vonnegut like our class is. The article aims to tell what the book is about and also to explain what kind of writer Vonnegut is. The article does not use very large vocabulary or anything like that, so it is very easy for the average reader to understand what Hauck is talking about and they can understand his point of view.

The purpose of this ad is to give an overview of what The Vonnegut Statement is about and also for Hauck to give his point of view about what kind of writer Vonnegut is. The article aims to explain to the readers what Vonnegut is trying to do with his writing and how he is able to get his messages across.

The genre of this ad is a peer-reviewed book article. This means that this article was written to explains Hauck’s feelings about the book, The Vonnegut Statement. This article was submitted to a board where it was reviewed and then deemed well enough to be published. In all book reviews the author puts down a summary of what they read and then add in their own feelings about the subject the original book was written about. In this case, Hauck not only reviewed this book, he also added in his own feeling about Vonnegut and his writing style and what Vonnegut sets out to achieve through his writing.

The stance of this article is that Vonnegut is a powerful writer who is able to tell the world what they need to hear and be able to warn society about what could happen if worse turns to work. Hauck is very appreciative of Vonnegut and commends his use of satire and humor in order to get his serious issues out to the public. Hauck states in the article that Vonnegut is a moralist writer, who is just trying to warn people about human stupidity and what that could lead to. Hauck values what Vonnegut is able to do with his writing and is thankful that he has the guts to point out the truth with what is wrong with man.

The media and design of this article is a book review article that was once published in a peer review journal. The medium of this article is a written form, even though I did find this specific article on the internet. Since it was originally written, that is what the medium falls under. There is not a real design plan to this article besides Hauck just reviewing the book and then Hauck adding in his own personal feelings about Vonnegut and the way he writes.

Blog 8 My Critical Source…

My critical source is an article I found written by Richard Boyd Hauck. Hauck is a professor at the University of West Florida. This article is a book review of the book, The Vonnegut Statement: Original Essays on the Life and Work of Kurt Vonnegut, Jr.

There are many things in this article that I agree with and I find very relevant. One of the main points that Hauck points out is Vonnegut’s use of humor. Hauck says that Vonnegut uses “humor as a weapon”. I like how he talks about this point. Using satire and humor, Vonnegut is able to address real world pressing issues but in a funny way that makes reality seem a little more bearable. By using humor, Vonnegut is able to talk about serious issues, but still get his message across without being totally depressing. Hauck says that Vonnegut is “a moralist deploying traditional satire, iconoclastic grim humor, and a lucid view of what is wrong with men. Vonnegut is able to combine these techniques in order to show his audience what is wrong with the society, and what needs to be done to fix it.

Hauck talks about how Vonnegut writes about what America needs and wants to hear. I agree with half of this statement. I agree that Vonnegut writes about issues that Americans need to hear. But a lot of the time, what Americans need to hear, is not always what they want to hear. It is hard to hear the truth about things when a topic is so controversial. This applies to my issue of no truth in love very well. People don’t want to know about deceit in the their marriage or if their love is all a joke. No one wants to believe that the person they love most, is off having an affair or doesn’t even love you at all.

One very interesting point that Hauck brings up is about the audience of Vonnegut writing. Hauck states that Vonnegut “recognizes that his audience are those who will someday be the generals and senators, and he deliberately to poison their minds with humanity.” I love this sentence. Its saying that Vonnegut is making a point to tell the younger generation who will run our country in the future what they really need to know. He is telling his audience what is really going on in the world and how things should be run. He is explaining what needs to be fixed in order to make America a better place to live.

The last main point Hauck brings up is about how Vonnegut is a moralist and sees the ills of society and tries to show others the truth. Vonnegut values family responsibility. He looks at Vonnegut and describes him as a good old Indiana dad just trying to pay his bills on time and to be a good father to his kids. This is  of course when he was younger. It was interesting to think of Vonnegut in this light. But it makes since. Even though he is a very well-known writer, he is still just a man. The only difference is, he sees what is wrong with our society, and what could happen in the future, and he is trying to warn people about the implications of their actions.