Journal –
To be blatantly honest, I have struggled in ERH 102 compared to how I did in ERH 101. The material is much more in depth and requires a ton more time dedicated to research and evidence. I have learned the strategies and techniques that are considered “good” for writing research papers, but I often find myself lost and just writing down random facts that hopefully back my thesis. I expected ERH 102 to be like 101 in that in 101 I felt like we went over topics more thoroughly. I did not expect to be doing a lot of research compared to how much we actually had to do. Picking topics was more difficult because of the nature of the prompt. This all does pay into the fact of how poorly managed my time with english, I found myself focusing on my Electrical Engineering Classes and it effected my writing. In ERH 102, I focus more on what I thought and felt towards a subject and made claims that I did not back with evidence. I lost my credibility due to my ignorance of the fact that I had no way of proving my claims.
As I wrote my first paper I wrote about legislation that was created to prevent sexual offenders from transferring schools and enrolling in them after they got kicked out of the previous school. For this assignment we had to side with the opposing view and for this specific topic it was hard to because I could not find evidence to back my reasoning. That is what I struggled with the most was finding good evidence that supported my claim. For the second paper I switched up my topic and got to be for the legislation I chose. This time the evidence was easier to find and I feel like I successfully got my points across that I needed to.
Garriott is obviously always the hardest on us, but for good reason. She wants us to realize our mistakes and learn from them. In my first paper I started off my paper making claims that I couldn’t back or just chose not to because I was trying to be humorous, but I found out that wasn’t going to work. Instead, I needed to focus on just getting the background in for the rest of my paper. So the audience could understand what it was they were about to read. When I go my peer review back, I saw that my peer reviewer had said the exact same thing. So for my next paper I worked on backing my claims with evidence that I had found and it made the paper flow more smoothly.
*The bold font in the first paragraph is my activity 4*
My first bit of evidence comes from the first paragraph in my first essay which. This is a claim I made in the intro to try and kick of a sexual assault paper. I make the claim referring to VMI saying, “The only sexual assault that goes on is the occasional slap on the ass for jon well done on the drill field.” This was a claim that I just simply do not have evidence for. Their is no research backing this because it is so specific to this school and I should have left it out of the paper. Also, I talk about a issue that should be addressed with the legislation I talked about, but fail to describe what it is because I don’t provide enough evidence about the bill. The sentence states, ” The merit that is found in this bill is overlooked because of the lack of perceptive that Speier is unwilling to talk about and analyze.” It seems like I am on to something but then I just cut it off there, I don’t further go into detail and I leave the reader hanging.
For each evidence, it shows how I make claims, but do not support them to back my thesis. Of course I will have more examples because this isn’t enough to get me the 5 or 6 that Major Garriott is looking for, but that will come with time.