Writing with anxiety

"Writing anxiety" and "writers block" are two informal terms that come to most students mind when thinking of papers. Some people may feel more comfertable about writing on a specific topic, while feeling apprehensive about writing on topics you my not know a lot about. Writing anxiety and writers block are situational. People are not born anxious writers; rather they become anxious or blocked through negative or difficult writing experiences.
        These feelings may arise when you have to adjust to a new form of writing, working with  limited amount of time, you may not enjoy the given topic, your reader may be overly critical or your dealing with personal issues outside of school. In order for students to overcome these feelings while doing a writing assignment they should find and use some useful strategies. Get support, choose a writing buddy, someone you trust and know will encourage you during your assignment. Identify your strengths as a writer rather than focusing on your weakness's. Recognize that writing is an attempt to contribute what you know and how you feel about a topic at a particular point in time. Think of yourself as an apprentice, learning as you write, figure out your own unique writing process and go with it. Celebrate your successes. Whatever obstacles you've faced, celebrate the occassions when you've overcome them. There is always going to be parts in your writing that you may fail, but without failure it would be difficult if not impossible to grow as a writer.


Emily Cooper

Identity

     In class we started discussing identity and discussed how the people can influence others to change their identities. What had brought up this discussion was that in an earlier class, we discussed the Amish and how they should change in order to be more efficient. The class was split pretty evenly about this discussion. Is it right to force someone to change from an identity they have had for so long and have grown accustomed to?

    For me personally, I do not believe so. Unless their identity is causing them harm or others harm, why not let people live? The Amish have survived for many years without electricity and the luxuries we have, and I believe they will continue to do so. The human race lived like they do for many, many years, and we have come this far. I do not see the harm in allow a group of people to stick with tradition of that is what they want. And this can go along with any identity. As long as they are not causing harm to themselves or others, let people live the way they feel like they want to or in a way that will emphasize who they are.

Sarah Geisweit

Paper anxiety: A personal experience

Paper anxiety occurs with most everyone.  Writing a paper can be hard especially when it is on a topic that is foreign or uninteresting.  In some cases, you cannot choose the topic on which you write, this is usually a situation where paper anxiety comes in to play.  When you’re writing a paper and you begin to feel anxious, taking a deep breath and break from the paper is helpful.  Regaining your thought process and reviewing the topic in more detail would also help your thought process.  Keep in mind that it is not beneficial to panic or give up. A positive attitude will positively affect your paper.

                In paper II, the band I decided to write about was ABBA.  Although I knew some of their more famous songs, in general I knew little about the group.  The fact that we had to choose a band from another country alone started minor anxiety; when I had to make an argument on a band I knew little about is when my anxiousness took hold.  As I proceeded to write my paper, I learned more about ABBA and was able to construct a sound argument.  Throughout the process I also took multiple breaks to keep myself from becoming overworked or frustrated.  I believe my actions in writing paper II truly impacted my writing and anxiety.

Hannah Fullerton

Older adults and newer music styles

In the world of music and entertaniment, there has been some amazing music videos and musicans. Some older adults cant stand the new style of music, from techno/dubstep to rap/hiphop. Older adults love to listen to some artiest like the Beatles, to the Greatful dead, to Marvin Gaye. Personally i'm a huge fan of all those artiest, but can some older adults listen to artists like Lil Wayne, Kanye West, and even Notorious B.I.G. So what can we do to make older adults appreciate the new style of music?

In my mind we need to influence the older adults by maybe having a little sit down and conversation with them about the new style of music. Maybe they dont like how rappers curse and say expleciate words/meanings, but if you think about it and look at the lyrics its poetry. In a song by Kanye West called "Diamonds are Forever" it speaks a message that say the war in Africa about "blood diamonds" is a crime and should be stopped. Another song that speaks another message about how to live in the streets and the only way of income is by selling crack. This song is the "10 Crack Commandments" by Notorious B.I.G. So my final thought is will Older Adults final listen to "our music?" probably not.

Adam Clements

Imagining alternatives to your argument

In class Monday, group 2 talked about imagining alternatives to your argument from our book. When a writer recognizes weak spots in their paper, they show their readers that they are honest and dealing with them. Sometimes a source takes a different approach than yours. When this happens you want to focus on the different aspects of the problem. You want to emphasis on the part where you and your source disagree. As a writer you don’t want to dismiss evidence because it might be irrelevant or unreliable. A reader might consider it significant so you want to acknowledge it but explain to your reader why you didn’t use it. By doing this you can see alternatives and use them in your paper.

            In my paper 2 I did not think that what kind of keyboard my music group uses was important. Even though I didn’t think it was important, I still put it in to. It gives my readers a better understanding of the group.

Cassandra Gazzo

The importance of evidence to back up your reason

It is not enough to write a paper based on reasons alone to support a claim; there must be evidence to back up your reasons. If a researcher just states reasons throughout his research and does not sight them, a careful reader is not going to just take the researchers word for it. Evidence must be proved and even when is seems unquestionable to the researcher, it should be sighted for the assurance of the reader. In order to write a good research paper, there must be evidence to support your reason, and the evidence must be properly sighted.

An application of this would be the difficulties of losing weight by just using a fad diet, because you actually need to work your body in order to see positive and lasting results. Evidence for the importance of exercise in weight lose could surely be found on any number of health websites.

Leslie Boylan

Distinguishing Evidence from Reason

       In class on Tuesday we read and discussed the topics of Distinguishing Evidence From Reasons, and Distinguishing Evidence from reports of it. Both of these topics will most likely play a crucial role in the writing of our second papers. We will definately need to supply concrete evidence to support our reasons behind our claims for the bands or artists we have chosen to write about. Statements that we will make throughout our papers must report a shared, public fact that readers will agree not to question for the purpose of the argument, and to count as evidence as well. We must consider the idea that readers will question the quality of the facts we present. To be able to silence the skeptics we must be clear as to how we collected our evidence, and by whom it was collected. Ultimately we must be able to assure our readers that they can trust the data we have presented them with. To achieve this we should think critically about whose data we use, and how we use it.

        Even if you have not chosen who you want to write about, you can still consider the approaches you can use. Thinking about what types of data and evidence you would like to use to support your reasons and claims will only help you be better prepared, and able to write more effectively. I feel that the forms of data that are used in our research is extremely important. This not only affects our ability to convince or pursuade our readers, but also our credibility as writers. If we don't provide credible evidence, we will not come off as quality researchers.

 

Matthew Bush