Final Reflection

Final Reflection Writing

            The 2nd Blog I wrote was titled “Is the Republican Party anti-intellectual on social issues? “. With this title I was trying to make the point that to, many progressive thinkers, the mainstream republican presidential candidates at the time generally appear backwards on many important social and intellectual issues. My audience was the class and whoever else happened to read my blog, I didn’t respond to them on this particular blog considering, sadly, that I received zero comment responses.  My thesis statement was  “Pleasing the people and helping yourself become re-elected may at first sound similar, What at this point, it really comes down to is, will my policy in favor of the people get them to the polls, or am I better off with campaign funding to sway already active participants in the political process?”.  Looking back now it could’ve been much much better. My thesis should have been closer to the title, rather than that, considering that thesis is vague, and really unrelated to the paper somewhat, I guess I was hoping the blog title would ring more as the thesis than that statement. Although my thesis was not up to it’s potential, my ability to analyze seemed great. I provided many examples on a variety of republican presidential candidates who were backwards on particular, yet important, social issues.  I feel I worked well with other’s work, but I had a hard time getting their exact message across accurately, and not just completely stealing what they said. I think I found a better balance as the semester continued.

 

            My research paper was entitled “Media Bias”, which I think was an appropriate title, sure it wasn’t amazing, but intentionally so. I would rather have my readers focus on the bulk of my paper than have a flashy, but possibly misleading title, I meant to keep it simple and to the point. The thesis statement for my research paper was “The notion that media bias is prominently liberal is a myth, media bias goes both ways and is not always a bad thing, without bias, the news would not be nearly extensive as it is now, and would be unable to present stories from unique and personal angles.”  My audience was, again, my class. They brought up points like why does this matter? I responded with an example that Tucker Carlson used during at television debate where countries with traditionally intensely biased media has become almost ignored entirely by that countries populace.  I demonstrated my ability to analyze with my research that wasn’t particularly meant to support a thesis like mine, but it did.  I think at this point my ability to work with other’s work has come a long way, I was able to find a good balance between getting their points across, but not just writing what they said.

 

            My writing for the most part has stayed the same, but the major thing I did take away from this class was how to use sources more effectively. Near the beginning of the year I had a hard time creating my own arguments that were clearly defined differently from those my research had already attempted to argue for. For example during the first conference about the research presentation, I was having a really hard time coming up with my own argument, and not just rehashing the arguments of my possible sources. Yet the finished product in both my presentation and paper used a diverse array of sources to make a unique point. I think my writing is very articulate, but can be sometimes unorganized, as may be noticeable in this reflection.