"Overly Documented Life" analysis

In A.J. Jacobs “The Overly Documented Life” he tries another experiment, recording every day so he can look back at every moment and fact check himself. Similar to his “Unitasker” chapter in The Guinea Pig Diaries he chose to write little headers, so he can emphasize some of the steps to the audience. Overall used the dinner conversation method that we talked about in class. That means that he writes mainly informally for entertainment, adding jokes here and there to grab the audience’s attention. While still incorporating a decent chunk of facts, so the reader can understand the experiment better. Some examples are the google glasses and the Bell method. That is the main method that he used to do his experiment. After doing his experiment for a while he realized how he changed psychologically at first, he stopped doing things like peeing in the sink because he did not want to see the recording. Quickly he figured out that it did not really matter and continued doing it. It was pretty interesting how he compared that to reality TV programs. I do think a lot of those shows the people get so used to the cameras that they start acting like themselves again. All to go with his overall theme that life does not need to be recorded. Although it seemed like a good idea it tends to make life more boring because people guard themselves when they see that they are being recorded. Most times it is better to just live in the moment and interpret events the way with think they went. This is something that I completely agree with because I have always felt that experiences are better than pictures and videos, even though those can be nice too. It addresses another major issue that many people have including himself, which is privacy. As I mentioned before many people feel uncomfortable being recorded, when he found out that his post from his mood app was public he was enraged. As many others were when he told them that he was filming them.

"Inequality: Can Social Media Resolve Social Divisions?" Inquiry or not

“Inequality: Can Social Media Resolve Social Divisons?” by Danah Boyd illustrates how even with this new and innovative technology that we have today, race is still a huge issue in the United States. Most people argue that the internet connects people around the world, which gives them tools to be more tolerant. This is not the case in today’s society people do not take the opportunity to utilize these tools. Boyd does tons of research interviewing various students to prove this point. That is why I think that this is an inquiry essay, specifically an exploration. Boyd is engulfing himself into the internet culture endlessly observing the social divisions that the youth has made by taking notes and adding some of his own reflection. Analyzing how Myspace and Facebook in particular has created a cultural boundary between young people. Several people that he talked to did not even notice that there was social division, until Boyd pointed it out by looking at the people that they are friends with or their comments. Most of them where from people of the same race or background as them, due to the simple fact that people hang out or talk to people that they share things in common with. Then reflecting to himself that the internet is not the answer to solving this longstanding problem. People are the only thing that can fix this, because we are the ones who make up the daily norms, so we are the only ones that can change it. It is not enough to rely on endless amounts of information to stop racism anymore because most people do not look at it. Instead the internet has amplified the issue by calling people who use one website “ghetto” or “lower class” then another.

Map out of inquiry essay

For my inquiry essay I am, planning on doing an experiment. For my experiment, I will wake up every day at 8:00am to go to the gym, which should give me a little more free time during the day. Throughout the year, I have struggled with time management. A way that I have thought about fixing this problem is by waking up early to go to the gym, but I have always been too lazy to do it. Now that it is an assignment I will have to do it and note how it effects my everyday life. Hopefully it will help me have a more consistent schedule that will help keep me on track throughout the day. Overall it is a proven fact that exercise has millions of beneficial effects on someone’s physical and mental health. There are also a lot of benefits to working out in the morning. First, it enhances your metabolism by starting off your day working out and eating. That makes your body do one of three things; it can use it as a source of energy, it can replenish your body, or it can store it for later. It can also form some sort of consistency, which just means that if you go later on in the day you are more likely to be tiered or feel overwhelmed and not go. By getting it over with in the morning you are making it a priority and will not have an excuse to not go. This is one that is super important to me because a lot of times when I have a lot of homework or I am just tired from the school day I end up not going. Since I am so use to doing some sort of physical activity throughout the day that if I do not go I feel bad about myself and it is harder for me to sleep. Another positive aspect is that it prepares your mind for the day and works kind of like coffee for some people. Research has shown that it improves your focus and mental abilities throughout the day. Like I said before it helps you get longer and better sleep at night, especially if you go early in the morning like around 7 or 8am.

"Consider the Lobster" vs "the Unitasker"

The main difference between “the Unitasker” and “Consider the Lobster” is that one is an experiment and the other one is exploration. In “the Unitasker” A.J. Jacobs, tried to limit the number of times that he multitasked throughout the day for a month or so, researching different methods to help him like meditation. “Consider the Lobster” on the other hand researched the lobster community by analyzing Main Lobster Festival, the background of the lobster, how they cook them, some controversial issues that people have with them, etc. All of that made “Consider the Lobster” a little more factual and formal then “the Unitasker”, which was more of a dinner conversation. Although Jacobs still had facts and was performing an experiment, he tried to add more comedy then the lobster article. What they both had in common was that the authors had to do research in order to write their article. Jacobs researched different forms of meditation by using the Wii and reading different books about it. Wallace, who wrote “Consider the Lobster”, researched practically all aspects of the lobster in his article. They used different methods to get their point across due to their different audiences. “Consider the Lobster” was written for a former magazine called the Gourmet, so its main focus was on the culinary aspect of the lobster, describing why so many people are against eating it. “the Unitasker” was a chapter in a collection of experiments for a book called The Guinea Pig Diaries. This was made more for entertainment and would probably have a more youthful audience then the lobster article. Both had a definite question and similar responses to their question. In “the Unitasker” Jacobs was trying to see if he could go a full day without multitasking and in “Consider the Lobster”, Wallace was trying to answer if it is ethically okay to eat lobster since they are boiled alive. Neither one of them got a straightforward response to their question. Jacobs never actually went a full day without multitasking, but did learn to stop doing it as much to enjoy the smaller things in life. Wallace, found faults in both sides and concluded that it is too abstract of a question to respond too.    

The Unitasker analysis

The Unitasker was a chapter in A.J. Jacobs novel The Guinea Pig Diaries, here a man is trying to do an experiment to see if he can go a full day without multitasking. The whole chapter is a mixture of both the dinner conversation and Aldous Huxley’s 3 directions that we talked about in class. It was written pretty informal starting out with a story about him and his wife almost dying in a car crash, to show the motivation behind his experiment. This goes with the dinner conversation, where someone talks about their own personal experiences. Similar to most diaries he writes mainly about his own personal thoughts, while trying to become a unitasker. He asks several questions to himself and even adds some jokes, all in a way that you would sort of talk to a friend due it being a diary. Then it goes into Huxley’s 3 directions, when he starts to become more factual and do research. An example of this is under" just sit" when he hears about meditation. Apparently, a lot of studies have said that it is a great way to practice focus, which would help him with his experiment. When he practiced it and failed he turned to research stating that that he was reading a “knee-high stack of meditation books”. All of that going along with two from Huxley’s 3 directions, which is looking at the factual or concrete. At the end it goes to number three when he talks about what he learned from experiment. His main focus with his experiment was to try to eliminate multitasking all together. In the end, he learned that people can multitask, but they should do it in smaller doses. A lot of people have stopped living in the moment to try to do multiple things at one time. Even when someone is just talking on the phone and mopping it still effects the conversation that they are having. Once in a while we all just have to stop what we are doing and put “nickels in a watermelon bank” or focus on one thing at a time. This is a more abstract and universal concept that many of us do not really think about.

Self- Evaluation CRA

The overall message of my rough draft is fine, but I need to refine my thesis and go more in depth with the topic. I did identify the audience and the rhetorical elements like pathos, ethos, and logos. I did not really answer why he used those elements to get his point across. I kind of just touched the surface on all of the elements, when I need to dig deeper and analyze all of my sources more for this rhetorical analysis paper. Since this is a rough draft there are a lot of little grammatical mistakes and redundancy throughout the paper that I am going to need to fix too. I could also probably work more on the flow of the paper and add more transitions. The best way to do that is to compare and contrast the articles to add kind of like a bridge that we talked about in class. That way my paper can be less choppy when I am going from one point to another. I forgot to add in text citations too, so I will need to go back and fix that. Along with my annotated bibliography because I did not add a description to the tweet like I did for the other two articles. I am going to need make my essay longer because it is under word count and hopefully I can read it over to spruce up some of my vocabulary. Adding that will probably help my paper flow better. Even with all of the things that I have to work on, I think that I have a solid starting point. My sources are good and I have touched bases on how they relate to the message that I am trying to get across. Once I fix everything that I mentioned before, get help from my peers in my peer mentoring workshop in class, and probably go to the writing center then I think I will be ready to turn in my paper.

Thesis/Question

Why do informal sources make issues more personal than formal sources?