Wednesday, August 12, 2015
A Letter to My Peers
To my Peers,
Through this class we have learned a great deal of things from analyzing controversies in our field, analyzing rhetoric from those who are regarded as the best in our field, and even learned how to structure an argument based on a debate in our respective fields. For only being a month long class we have sure done a lot and like everything in this world, it must come to an end. As we have done a seemingly extensive amount of reflection in this class, I begin to take a good hard look at my relationship with writing over the past couple of years and look at where I succeeded and where I failed.
For the longest time writing has been a challenge for me. I hated it and I still don’t like it to this day. This kind of attitude has always stemmed from my irritation with it. After so many years of just plain hating writing I learned how to write successfully due to a lot of experiences. This change started my senior year in AP Literature when my comprehension of writing was tested constantly. The class was tough and the type of writing asked of us was above and beyond what I expected. To make it worse, I was not doing well on my papers. I could not write successfully until I began to get a better understanding how I write. I am not the most methodical writer in the world, but when I got down to reading and understanding how others were doing well I began to get writing down to a formula. The ability to analyze literature and the other skills I learned in that class prepared me for college writing.
However, as college came around, I became a bit lazy with my class work and my procrastination became worse. In one of my general education classes in my first semester I had to write an analysis. I didn't really read the book so I looked at a summary of the book and took some key elements and wrote a paper on it and I got an A. This style of writing may sometimes work against me, but as I have learned and reinforced in this class, my writing style works for me and it will for the next couple of years. Since that class, I have began to look at my writing and realized that if I put effort into whatever I am writing I can actually do pretty well. In the foreseeable future I will probably procrastinate on most of my papers but I have to learn to not follow this writing process and evolve my writing even more so I can be successful. In terms of how I felt about this class, I don’t think I would ever want to do it online again. This subject has to be more personal to me. Even though peer review helped a lot, I think it would work better in a classroom setting, which I am excited to get back to in about a week and a half.
Like many of the papers I had to write in this class there will be more ahead. The papers I have written in this class have freshened my style of writing and will allow me to be more confident in my writing and my writing process. It was a pleasure to be in this class with such wonderful people and I wish you all the best.
Best Regards,
Adam Karsten
Reflection on Open Letter Draft
The two drafts I reviewed were Helen's and Brittany's
1. My peers and my instructor are my audience for this letter I have written.
2. My readers may have bias based on recent papers I have written because they already know what to expect from me in terms of writing style.
3. I think that both my peers and instructors have high expectations for me due to the quality of writing I have been putting out. I feel as though this class expects quality form the students and I want to meet those expectations.
4. For this paper I think that I should give some background history on what I did in high school in terms of writing and how I did in my first year of college. This kind of background knowledge can benefit them and I don't think it will insult them cause most of my readers don't know too much about me.
5. The language shouldn't be too overly complicated because I am writing a letter to my peers so they should not have to struggle to read what I have written. The language should be simple and friendly.
6. The assignment states that we should be writing in a semi-formal tone so that is what I will use in my letter. I don't think I am at that tone in my paper yet but through a little bit of revision I can fix that.
1. My peers and my instructor are my audience for this letter I have written.
2. My readers may have bias based on recent papers I have written because they already know what to expect from me in terms of writing style.
3. I think that both my peers and instructors have high expectations for me due to the quality of writing I have been putting out. I feel as though this class expects quality form the students and I want to meet those expectations.
4. For this paper I think that I should give some background history on what I did in high school in terms of writing and how I did in my first year of college. This kind of background knowledge can benefit them and I don't think it will insult them cause most of my readers don't know too much about me.
5. The language shouldn't be too overly complicated because I am writing a letter to my peers so they should not have to struggle to read what I have written. The language should be simple and friendly.
6. The assignment states that we should be writing in a semi-formal tone so that is what I will use in my letter. I don't think I am at that tone in my paper yet but through a little bit of revision I can fix that.
Tuesday, August 11, 2015
Draft of Open Letter
I mostly want my peer reviewers to look at my grammatical issues and sentence fluency. I don't think there are many other things to look at so here is my draft.
Reflection on Project 3
1. I mainly looked at grammatical errors and sentence fluency because I felt like my content was sound so I didn't want to change that at all. Mostly what changed was how it sounded and I think it was a better paper after revising.
2. I didn't look at any organization because I felt as though it was organized well. I didn't do anything with my thesis either because I felt as though it was well done.
3.The changes I made were mostly style based in that I wanted to look at what could sound better and how I can get the attention of the audience. There wasn't a change in purpose or audience change I mostly just fine tuned an already good paper.
4. The changes I made don't really affect my credibility.
5. The changes address the audience better because the reader is able to read the piece much easier.
6. Like I said before I looked at sentence structure and style a lot so I can make my paper more crisp and overall better.
7. The changes will allow the audience to get more involved in the paper and if the paper is good the purpose will get through to the audience which is what I wanted to do.
8. Yes I did have to consider the conventions because of the genre I was writing because the I have to try and persuade a reader to believe my opinion and side with my stance.
9. This process allows me to see what I did right and wrong and ultimately grow as a writer.
2. I didn't look at any organization because I felt as though it was organized well. I didn't do anything with my thesis either because I felt as though it was well done.
3.The changes I made were mostly style based in that I wanted to look at what could sound better and how I can get the attention of the audience. There wasn't a change in purpose or audience change I mostly just fine tuned an already good paper.
4. The changes I made don't really affect my credibility.
5. The changes address the audience better because the reader is able to read the piece much easier.
6. Like I said before I looked at sentence structure and style a lot so I can make my paper more crisp and overall better.
7. The changes will allow the audience to get more involved in the paper and if the paper is good the purpose will get through to the audience which is what I wanted to do.
8. Yes I did have to consider the conventions because of the genre I was writing because the I have to try and persuade a reader to believe my opinion and side with my stance.
9. This process allows me to see what I did right and wrong and ultimately grow as a writer.
A Case for Stem Cells
A Case For Stem Cells
Written by Adam Karsten
Throughout history humanity's thirst for knowledge and natural curiosity has led to many technological advancements. From the creation of the automobile, to putting a man on the moon, we do not see limits to what we can discover and create. Though sometimes we may be hesitant to change, we eventually embrace the technology that can progress our species. So as we look towards the future, a bit of medical advancement called stem cells has led the way for the future of medicine. In 2015, the question still remains: Why are we not funding this?
Discovered in 1981 in mice embryos, stem cells have been seen as a revolutionary treatment option for a variety of diseases (NIH). In 2015 the controversy behind stem cells has slowly but surely begun to fade away as researchers have begun to find different ways of acquiring stem cells. This was in response to the ethical concerns of embryos being used to extract stem cells. But now scientists have discovered that there are different ways of getting stem cells. One type of stem cell is called an induced pluripotent stem cell (NIH). This stem cell comes from an adult stem cell being reprogrammed to act like a stem cell (NIH). Induced pluripotent stem cells are being used worldwide for research purposes to help cure diseases like Diabetes and Alzheimer's. But what happens when a type of research that has been seen as unethical for so many years suddenly has an alternative source? Well, a new wave of “stem cell banks” have been created and this allows the storage of stem cells for treatment. So with all this in mind the government of the United States still hasn’t given more money to this kind of research. The Obama Administration signed a bill in 2008 that allowed more funding for stem cell labs, but there hasn’t been that much change in recent years (Utah). While they are making progress, what needs to happen in the near future is that stem cells should be used to help in the research of0 almost every disease and become a primary treatment option. The facts show that they do help treat diseases like Diabetes and that in most cases they successfully cure the ailment. For these reasons alone the people of the United States need to pay more attention to stem cell research and support it where it is applicable. We need to follow suit with other countries in the world like India where there is a federal stem cell bank and allow the use of stem cells for bone marrow transplants (Pew). They do have a ban on cloning like every other country, but India does heavily support stem cells. Other countries have very similar laws that support the use of stem cells but in the U.S. they are only used for research and have not undergone many clinical tests. This is something that needs to change in order to create a better future for humanity as a whole.
If stem cell research is more heavily funded, stem cells will become the next penicillin of medicine. The more popular stem cells become, the more healthy humans become. Leading to longer lifespans. This could be the future if we just ban together and pledge support to helping the research of stem cells because they can help save lives.
Works Cited
."Stem Cell Research Around the World." Pew Research Centers Religion Public Life Project RSS. Pew Research Center, 16 July 2008. Web. 05 Aug. 2015.
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