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This paper turned out to be really difficult for me. Conducting the interviews was fun. I had all my data, but i hit a roadblock when it came to turning the data into a 3 page paper. I did not want to repeat myself, since i had already touched on the subject in my two previous papers and my confusion heightened when after my conference, I still had a hazy idea of what line of argument to pursue. Its like having too many options only served to hinder my progress. I managed to put something down, but I do not feel quite satisfied with it, especially with my conclusion. I really felt the pressure to use an extra page.  Any way, it appreciate the challenge of chanelling qualitative information into academic writing. There is always  a first time. Next time i can tap from this experience.

This paper was difficult for me in that I'm not sure I adequately understand what a research paper is supposed to be like. I didn't have a problem using my interview data to support my claim, but was that what we were supposed to be doing? I felt just like I was writing one of our usual papers but using the interviews as texts. Beyond my confusion about the format of the essay, I really enjoyed hearing first hand accounts from my interviews, and using my peers' knowledge to provide data for a topic that I am interested in. Although I didn't end up using one of my interviews in my essay, seeing a different, administrative view of Bryn Mawr was certainly very helpful and enlightening. In the end, I'm not sure I was able to do myself and my efforts justice with this paper. It was difficult for me to present the information in a concise, scientific way when so much of my information was personal to the speakers. However, I did find that my thoughts flowed onto the paper easier this time around. I think this comes from the amount of papers that we've written so far and that my writing is finally growing to reflect/catch up with my expanding thoughts. If I could go back, I think it would have been helpful for me to have seen/ learned about what is meant by a research paper, similiarly or in conjuction with how we learned about interviewing. 

I have been thinking a lot about Tuesday's class. I think the class had a lot of positives and a few negatives. For starters, I think that it is really important to talk about rape and sexual assault. It is important to read texts like Ensler's litany. It is important to have tense, emotionally packed discussions. In doing so, it helps to bring aware to a subject that I feel is often glossed over as something horrible and awful and so we should acknowledge its existance but keep our distance. It also helps to de-stigmatize the survivors. With knowledge comes understanding and a tool box. Of course, I am not naive enough to believe that we can outright prevent rape by talking about it, but we can fix our reactions to it. We can learn to use the right terminology (i.e survivor, not victim), we can learn about resources that exist currently, and we can learn about what we can do for ourselves and for others that we know.

I've just finished my paper and I feel relieved now. Honestly, the assignment is not hard to write since I believe that everyone has a lot of things to say: on-campus workshop, parkway visit, those interviews and writing partners notes. I can feel a sense of responsibility throughout this assignment. I can feel I act as a part of the workshop and I am the active part of those interviews. I can feel that I am responsible to make everything connected and make things around me glittering. I hope that I conduct others opinions honestly and my voice can help making a better community. The change is really subtle and interesting. Previously, I am giving my response to others theories and ideas while those outcomes turn out to be less important when compare to this assignment.

I find this style of academic writing to be a lot more enjoyable than many other types of academic writings. I wouldn’t say that it’s easier because it’s definitely is not, but it’s a lot more interesting. I think what makes it a harder form of academic writing is that there is so much information from my interviews that I feel obligated to include in my paper. What also makes it difficult is that because I made my claim and interview questions before I actually interviewed someone, I had a specific idea in my head about what I wanted to try and prove in my essay. What makes it frustrating is that I didn’t get the answers/results that I was looking for and for that reason, I wasn’t able to exactly support my claim. I think that this form of writing has made it possible for me to question what I have written and if what I have written actually makes sense…

A lot of people have mentioned that they found this week's paper easier to write, but I actually found the opposite. I really enjoyed conducting my interviews, but felt constrained by the fact that we could only make statements based on that information. In addition, I ended up disagreeing with what my data suggested because of personal opinion and an outlying story I heard from one of my interviewees. I guess what I really struggled with was figuring out how to show the data I'd found and then disagree with it by highlighting a specific story. I also felt like I was juggling a lot of different things we'd gone over in class – including bringing in stories from our visit to the high school and information from our Wendy Luttrell reading. I ended up with an essay where I feel I got to highlight my feelings on the subject of going to college (and the assumption that everyone should) and I appreciate that opportunity, but the writing process was definitely difficult for me.

Hi everyone,

This is just a post about the upcoming event with Tania Chairez at TGH ths coming Tuesday. Professor Cameron sent out an email to the Class of 2015 but I figured I'd post about it here in case he missed anybody:

I enjoyed writing this paper more than the others. I think it was because the idea that I was able to pick my own topic made it easier for me. I like to write about what I think is important and this paper allowed me to do so. Although it wasn't to fun to intervew people, it was the bases around writing an academic paper and had to be done. I had a lot to write when I had the chance to sit down.

I was pleasantly surprised at how easy it was to write this paper. I can't tell if it was because I got to think out loud and formulate my thesis during my one-on-one with Professor Cohen or if it was because it was a topic that I could write about forever because I was a part of the interviewing process too. My paper largely focused on the experiences of first-year Posse scholars so far and how the scholarship has benefited them. I interviewed three of my friends from the Posse and it was interesting to hear their answers because they were very much the type of answers I would've given because I'm going through the same things as them. It was so nice to not have to look for a reading and cite authors and squeeze quotes into my paper. Citing other readings from our classes just seem to be particularly difficult to me for some reason. Sometimes I'll write a paper with my claim and my personal thoughts and then someone will suggest that I use a reading to back my claim up. I didn't have to do that this time because my source of reading was my own self! I took my own notes and I was able to make a profound claim all on my own, not based on some other scholar who had the idea first.

Academic writing is difficult for me, no doubt, but this kind of paper was a little better. I enjoy interviewing immensely due to the interpersonal part of it and that definitely made this paper easier to plan and write. It's not my favorite form of writing  but this paper was a lot more fun than the entirely essay based essays from earlier in the semester. At this point, it's still a work in progress but I'm confident yet nervous about where this paper is going. I know I'm going to have do this kind of writing more often so I'm treating this as a practice run for my future papers for biology. Biology papers are organized in a specific way and that's how I'm structuring this paper.