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Military metaphor blog post linked as a drop down

In using MLA format, there are specific guidelines to meet to do it correctly. In doing so, the overall format must match as well as the way quotes are integrated and cited within the body of the paper, and the works cited page at the end of the paper must be done properly. In our class discussions, we talked about how to properly cite different kinds of sources within our essays like research studies, television shows, TED talks, articles, books, etc.. I think that what we covered in class this semester was extremely helpful in establishing what MLA format done well looks like, as well as how to do it correctly. It was definitely hard in the first essay to do MLA format, since in high school, the format was never really gone over or used. Some examples of my in text citations:

research study: “…social media may create a compelling context for online body-related social comparison “(Higgins et. al. 2018). “

article: “Ma states that we “live in such a measuring society, people tend to put a person in a box they can put on their mental shelf”(Ma 5).”

MLA works cited:

Works Cited

Alter, Adam. “Why Our Screens Make Us Less Happy.” TED, 2017, www.ted.com/talks/adam_alter_why_our_screens_make_us_less_happy.

Choukas-Bradley, Sophia, et al. “Camera-Ready: Young Women’s Appearance-Related Social Media Consciousness.” Psychology of Popular Media Culture, vol. 8, no. 4, Oct. 2019, pp. 473–481. EBSCOhost, doi:10.1037/ppm0000196.

for photo, used only. “Body – Shaming: Tội Ác Trên Nỗi Đau Của Người Khác.” Sóng Trẻ, 2018, www.songtre.com.vn/news/gioi-tre/body-shaming-toi-ac-tren-noi-dau-cua-nguoi-khac-41-16141.html.

Lehrer, Jonah. “The Future of Science…Is Art?” Seed Magazine, 2008, daniellevitin.com/levitinlab/printmedia/2008-The_Future-Seed_Magazine.pdf.

Rice, Asheley. “Social Media Increases The Risks Of Mental Conditions In Teens.” Health Thoroughfare, 15 Mar. 2019, www.healththoroughfare.com/medicine/social-media-increases-the-risks-of-mental-conditions-in-teens/1526.

Yo-Yo Ma, ContributorGrammy Award-Winning Cellist. “Yo-Yo Ma: Behind the Cello.” HuffPost, 7 Jan. 2015, www.huffpost.com/entry/behind-the-cello_b_4603748.

In my experience with doing multiple peer reviews this year, I felt as though editing another persons paper was not only beneficial for them, but also for myself. When editing another persons paper, you are exposed to different writing styles as well as may notice grammar or format mistakes you have made in your own essay and can edit it correctly. I think my peer review skills have improved with each one, as my own writing improves. In my comments, I try to focus on sentence wording, format, how a quote fits in, and the overall flow of the paper. In my end notes, I just summarize my comments and if there is a big issue that seems to be holding the paper down I will discuss it in the note.

linked in drop down menu, my comments are in red

Whilst reading a new article or essay, I take a few steps in order to fully absorb and understand the information in front of me. First, I will annotate the work by using a combination of underlining, circling, summarizing paragraphs, and by identifying and defining words that I’m not sure of  meaning. Along with these actions, I often choose to re read the work a few times to fully understand the context. One of the works we have read this semester that I used these techniques is Dhruv Khullar work titled “The Trouble With Medicines Metaphors”, which was definitely one of the pieces that I needed to read a few times. For this piece, I knew I would want to use a lot of  it and the points discussed in the essay for that section, so I really dug in. I read it once and found a few key quotes that stuck out to me, and underlined those. I continued to pick out some quotes but also began to point out general ideas that stuck out to me while reading it again. With this work especially, I did a decent amount of summarizing in the margins to fully grasp the paragraphs. This was also seen in Susan Gilroy’s writing piece titled “Interrogating Texts: 6 Reading Habits to Develop in Your First Year at Harvard”, she writes that when reading an essay, you should “take the information apart, look at its parts, and then try to put it back together again in language that is meaningful to you”Doing this and rewording the paragraphs in my own words really helped me to understand the concepts being talked about. This essay connects quite a bit to psychology, which is my major so it was really interesting to see the crossover, and I think that is part of the reason this article really stuck out to me.

In my selected writing piece, I used my sources as a way to not only improve my paper, but to support my claims and ideas. The topic of this paper was to discuss the impact social media has on the mental health of teens. For this paper, I had multiple sources that we used in class as well as a psychological research essay. Since it was a multimodal essay, I included multiple photographs as well as a TED talk on the subject. In using these devices and sources, integration was extremely important to connect them all and to keep the flow of the essay even. I used the regular ways to include quotes. That is, integration, summarization, as well as explanation. I think that, especially in this essay, my technique of integration has improved vastly from the beginning of the year and even more so since high school essays. On example of integration from this essay is

Granted, I use nearly every social media platform almost everyday, so I can attest to the fact that they are, in fact, causing more “lower body esteem, greater depressive symptoms, and a host of other maladaptive outcomes” as well as “body comparisons with peers may provide women with a “standard” toward which to strive…previous research suggests that social media may create a compelling context for online body-related social comparison “(Higgins et. al. 2018).

my comments are the ones in red

In my edits on the chosen writing piece, I made use of many techniques to improve the overall quality of the essay. I created a rough draft, and then from that draft came the peer edits. On this essay I focused mainly on what my peers had to offer for improvements, wether it was in the peer review sessions or even just my friends. I expanded on who read my paper to allow different points of view to judge the paper. Using these outside views really helped to propel the quality upwards as well as cutting back on bad habits in my writing. After having my peers overlook the paper, I did a final overall glance on the paper to do more revising, the ideas provided by my peers were incredibly helpful and beneficial and resulted in a complete rewrite of a couple paragraphs and help cutting it down to be closer to the desired word count. After the outside point of view was provided on many levels, I read my paper aloud and found some more hiding kinks in the flow of the words. After this I also practiced rewriting one of the paragraphs completely using the same quotes as well as working on the repetitiveness of the essay and issues with run on sentences. In some spots, as my peers pointed out, had some awkward wording so I went through and tried to fix those as best as I could. This new way of editing is vastly different from how I edited drafts in high school

first and final draft linked in drop down menu titled Eportfolio final

ACTIVE READING 

• Annotate
• Look up the meaning of unknown words
• Read article or essay multiple times
• Search for quotes that would fit in the essay

BRAINSTORMING

• Answer essay questions like a short answer
• Pick quotes and explain them separately
• “Word vomit” and  write down all ideas

DRAFTING

• Write each idea/paragraph separately and connect them later
• Write thesis last
• Integrate/explain quotes first
• “Word  vomit” and type everything that comes to mind

REVISION

• Read paper aloud 
• Peer review
• Make sure quotes work

POLISHING

• Peer review 
• Read aloud 
• Run through websites like Grammarly 

My favorite writing strategies would be those listed above. I find it easiest for me to just write, and write too much, and then go back later and edit it down. Sometimes when doing this, I like to not add quotes and to focus on the base idea of each paragraph and the overall essay, then add the quotes in to support the topics previously written. A reading strategy that works best for me is to read each piece multiple times, as well as summarize each paragraph mentally and in my own words, to further understand each paragraph. I also annotate quite a lot and do my best to connect each new reading piece to past ones, whether it be from the same class or an old one, or just something I saw or read on my own. I plan to continue to utilize these strategies in my future, for any english classes or if I need to read articles for a class, since it has been very effective in increasing my understanding of each topic in the different pieces. These strategies will be very useful to me in the future, and I am glad this class helped me to discover what works for me when reading pieces and writing essays from said pieces.

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