Self-Critique Blog Post

Overall, my blogging as a whole was fairly decent. I felt I made good, logical points and arguments in each post and I tried my best to provide thought-provoking arguments for readers to respond with on my posts. Although some blog assignments were easy and others were quite difficult, I think I did a good job by completing all of the blogs and reaching the length requirement on each and every blog I posted. 

There was not one, particular post that stood out to me as being my best work because I thought at least four or five of them were good, but if I must choose one I would have to say my “How To Say Nothing In 500 Words” post was really good. I know it was good work because I received three comments from classmates on the post which told me the blog post was interesting enough for my classmates to chime in on their opinions. Also, I felt this post was one of my better ones because I fully understood the assignment. Sometimes, the blog assignments have so many components to respond to that it gets difficult to post everything without contradicting myself. The article I had to respond to from this post was easy to grasp, so therefore, it was simple to write my opinion about it. Also , I liked this post from the beginning because I was able to learn something from the reading portion. It was one of the posts that I got to take notes on because it clarified the “do’s” and “don’t’s” in college essay writing. 

I know in the previous paragraph I mentioned how it was hard for me to distinguish a particular post that was my best piece writing and I feel that statement goes both ways. I had some good posts and I had some bad ones as well. There was not one, single bad post because I felt there were a few do to the tedious amount of posts we had to complete and the more difficult and time consuming ones also. One that I know was bad was the last one I completed, “Annotated Bibliography”. My writing was not the bad part, but rather my lack of understanding the prompt is what made my post bad. I thought we were assigned the post as a response to our own preliminary essays, but I later realized (after I completed the post) that we were to respond to a classmates preliminary essay. I was embarrassed I made such a mistake but I’m not going to respond to my own essay in my final paper. 

By doing these posts, I learned a lot about writing. The main thing I realized was how difficult it can be to create a good, solid post that must be five hundred words and rambling thoughts are not to be included. I’m still learning to pay more attention to the prompts and to plan out each post before writing it, rather than trying to just write until I reach the five hundred word mark. 

Annotated Bibliography Post

Article- “Woven to Last” (2007) Retrieved From: 

http://www.articlesbase.com/religion-articles/a-christian-marriage-woven-to-last-134642.html 

I chose this article to help support my reasoning behind my argument regarding marriage from a Christian standpoint. It gives a detailed account including three important aspects that are supposed to make a marriage work between a man and a woman. “When a married couple takes Christian wedding vows, they celebrate a special bond of love, hope and faith between a man, a woman and God.” This article provides evidence that there are many references about marriage in the Bible which will be helpful when I am trying to defend the argument. Also, it says nothing but positive ways to keep a marriage alive for people who may be struggling with marriage problems. Since divorce is so rampant now, I want to encourage readers that a marriage can last and there are ways to make it happen and this article makes a simple claim that love, hope and faith between man, his wife and the Lord, will ensure a lasting marriage. 

Article- “Divorce Rates in America-Why so high?” (2009) Retrieved From:

http://marriage101.org/divorce-rates-in-america/ 

I think when writing a response essay it is important to have statistics about the topic the author is writing about. This article provides statistics and ratings dealing with divorce in America according to different age groups. I want to point out how serious and real divorce has become and this shows the progression of how even couples in their twenties are divorcing. The most useful part of this article is the last paragraph where it talks about how children are affected in a divorce. It is very important to address this issue because its one thing when a couple with no children divorces because innocent family is not hurt, but when a married couple with children split, it can be devastating for the kids. Since this is in an issue I have dealt with personally, I think this article will really help me back up my opinion as to why divorce should at least try to be stopped instead of just giving in like our culture seems to think is normal behavior. 

Article-”Divorce on TV” (2010) Retrieved from: 

http://www.womansdivorce.com/divorce-on-tv.html 

This article is very helpful towards my disagreement with how media portrays divorce. What people do not realize is children that are going through a divorce will watch television and if whatever program they are watching happens to be about divorce, those kids are going to compare and contrast what they are going through to what they see on television. This particular article really tells a lot about how children seem to always pay attention to what they see and hear even when what they are watching is an inaccurate depiction of what divorce consists of emotionally and physically. It is important to keep children from seeing only the bad aspects of divorce and television really dramatizes this in divorce stories so the reason I like this article is because it provides some ways to protect children from getting the wrong perspective about divorce by simply catching what they are viewing and turning the channel. This article is a very good resource for my paper when it comes to writing about children and how they are affected by divorce. 

Response Essay Blog Post

For my response essay, I plan to give a full explanation for the reasoning behind my preliminary essay. In my preliminary essay I mentioned how unfortunate divorce can be and how it can be prevented, avoided and obstructed. With such a strong topic, this should be fairly easy because I have a lot of information dealing with divorce and its affect on the family. Since my parents divorced, and I have first-hand experience with it I am going to tell my personal story and how I was affected as the oldest child dealing with my parents messy split. I want to end the paper with signs of hope that divorce can be prevented. I have quite a bit of useful facts, statistics and research that I plan on using to give my audience the happy ending I want to finish my essay with. 

Throughout the essay I want to give a background history of why statistics show that Christian marriages tend to last longer than people of other religious affiliations. I want to be very clear that I am not trying to write a paper to persuade readers into Christianity, because that is not my motive at all. I just would like to make the point that generally speaking, couples who base their marriage from a Christian foundation and that are trying to live the marriage according to God’s plan, will indeed be successful. The media can be very deceiving when it comes to love, divorce and marriage. Many times, divorce occurs in movies just because the couple could not seem to be with one another any more, which is not a proper reason for divorce at all and it is implied that the couple gave the marriage no effort to work things out between one another. I want to remind people that what we see and hear from television is not at all the way real life operates. True love does exist but it requires a lot of hard work that is not shown on television and movies. People get so wrapped up in what is supposed to be love, but television is never accurate when trying to depict true love. Directors always create movies where the main characters end up divorcing but magically, everything seems to work out for the better in the end. In movies now, divorce occurs simply because a couple cannot work things out and fall out of love with each other. That is no reason for divorce and I want my response essay to prove that fighting through tough times in marriage is definitely possible and doable if people are willing to work for it. Love can be a difficult process but it has been created and is still possible even today where divorce and infidelity reside. Ultimately, this paper will be a deeper, more in-depth response to my preliminary essay discussing how divorce is portrayed to not be a big issue in movies, how it can be prevented in real life, and I will give proof that it can be done. Even if statistics show that Christian marriages have a longer time-span than other marriages, I want to use that as my argument for why these people are happier in their marriages than others. 

Challenging Media (Killing Us Softly 4)

I watched the video about women’s health because as a young woman, it relates to me the most and I have a strong opinion for this topic. The way women are portrayed to look like is absolutely absurd. Fashion has created a mindset within women worldwide that skinnier is better. It is one thing to have health and wellness articles as a guide for women to remain in good shape and to be healthy for the prevention of disease and death, but when models are nothing but bones wearing the clothes “we” are supposed to want to wear, then what kind of image is that sending women? 

When models are roughly 5 ft. 9 in. and weigh approximately 100 pounds and they are publicly displayed as what women should strive for, multiple consequences are created. Women feel pressured to look emaciated because that is what is advertised as pretty. Airbrush work is also a major problem because it has the capability to destroy any imperfections and flaws women have. Magazine advertisements and television commercials make women look flawless with no visible wrinkles, blemishes, excess fat, cellulite and whatever else makes a woman feel ugly. Most women get so wrapped up in how amazing models look in a product that they do not realize how much touching up was done to make the model appear so perfect. 

This video also made me realize how bad women feel when we see these flawless images of “women like us” looking so elegant, beautiful and skinny. Advertisements not only make women want the product or give them the desire to become skinny just like the models in the ad, but they also give women that feeling of “hmm there’s no way I would ever look like that, I must not have the capability to be a pretty girl.” That is not at all the way women should vie themselves. Media makes it so hard for us to see past it when we are constantly slammed with fashion, hair and makeup advertising. 

Beauty should be characterized by uniqueness, not whoever is the skinniest is the prettiest. In my opinion, looking half dead where you might as well be a walking skeleton does not make a girl pretty. In fact, that is a little but frightening and causes people to worry. I find it very unfortunate that girls and women starve themselves and spend all their money in order to look like what is on television or in magazines. Maybe if the fashion industry would step back and see what they are doing to women worldwide, they would change their whole view on what is hot and whats not. “Dove” products have done a good job recently of using “real” women in their advertisements, which is putting a small dent in this ongoing phenomenon of appearance-related women issues, but simply not enough. Everyone is beautiful in their own way, no we are not all a size zero, but why should everyone look the same? Like I said earlier, beauty should be characterized by uniqueness, and the variety of shapes, sizes and colors women possess, is what makes them truly beautiful. 

Dissenting Voices Post

I found a pro-abortion article that is perfect for this assignment. Abortion is a strong issue that I have a lot of passion about. It is the one topic I will never change my viewpoint on due to the extensive study I did last year in my “marriage and family from a biblical standpoint” course. The article I read said it is simply the woman’s choice whether to terminate her pregnancy or not because it is her body and she is the only person who is ultimately affected by this. That statement alone is wrong. She is not the only person affected because if she chooses to get the abortion, she has killed the fetus which would have potentially grown into a human being. So no, she is not the only person that is affected, the dead baby is affected because it was not given a chance at life. It also tries to make the point that people are always thinking about what the fetus is to become, not what it is under three months after conception. The article tries to inform readers that an embryo, no older than three months, is cells still apart of the mother and more “primitive” than a frog or a fish. This statement is ridiculous in my mind because as soon as a baby is conceived all it needs is to remain in the womb of the mother until it is carried to term (nine months) and as long as the mother eats and stays nourished the fetus will continue to grow into a human being. So At any point of terminating the fetus, should be considered murder. Granted, the mass of cells may not look like an infant, but it still going to be an infant and in the world in less than a year! It is absolutely absurd to assume it is not a human being. 

This quote from the article is perhaps the most disturbing, “If anti-abortionists object that an embryo has the genetic equipment of a human being, remember: so does every cell in the human body.” What is this quote even implying? If you ask me it is contradicting itself by saying an embryo may have the genetic equipment of a person, but so does every cell in the human body. Of course human beings have genetic equipment, so why wouldn’t an embryo contain the same components? Embryos obviously have genetics hence the reason why they have the potential to become humans! They are people, in the earliest form. It is so sad that people are brainwashed into thinking otherwise. This article found ways to beat around the real issues that are being dealt with today. It presented pro-abortion facts and made the real facts seem as if it was biased information for anti-abortionists. Hopefully more research and scientific studies will be conducted on the issue and begin to prove that abortion is indeed an act of murder, regardless of whether the mother was raped or just does not want to continue with the pregnancy for personal reasons.  

Link to the article: http://www.capitalismmagazine.com/politics/abortion/2404-Abortion-Rights-are-Pro-Life.html 

Online Interaction

So far the online blogging has been a fun way to write openly and freely on the topics that have been assigned for online homework. I enjoy giving my full opinion about the concerns pertaining to the work we have completed in the past. I like to read a little portion of my classmates blogs to find out what they thought of an assignment compared to what I thought of the same assignment. I also like blog writing because I do not feel scared to say the truth and the exact way I feel about the questions I am asked to write about. I like being able to say “I” when I write because I am explaining how I feel and I want to get that across to readers and my very own classmates. 

Although I personally tend to enjoy blogging, I find it to be quite a challenge sometimes. Depending on the topic or assignment, I struggle when it comes to commenting on my classmates blogs. It is hard to communicate via blog posting because the emotion and tone of the writer is hard for me to identify. Sometimes people will comment on my posts and the comments do  not provoke argument nor do they agree in any way with my blog post. Sometimes I feel like my classmates just provide filler writing because that particular student is writing because he or she feels like they have to to get a decent grade for completing the assignment. I know I feel like that sometimes and it is hard to develop an opinion about someone else’s blog post when one may really have no concern for the topic at all. I need to work on getting more focused on reading my classmates blog posts and trying to develop my own argument or just a good way to say I agree with the writer. 

I feel like blog commenting would be a good way to start interesting discussions if the comments were stronger. Sometimes comments do not really say anything so an argument or discussion is hard to get going off of what is presented. It seems difficult to find a way to correct the way people have commented on my blogs in the past, but maybe for future blog posting, there could be a number of sentences required Or, maybe there could be certain questions a student (the commenter) should ask themselves as he or she reads the classmates post. That way, a certain guideline is in place to be followed and all blog comments will make more sense. 

In conclusion, I like blog posting, it goes by pretty quickly and is usually easy for me to form writing ideas while I work on the assignments. I wish the comments I received were a little more thought-provoking and argument inclined, but I cannot complain too much because I at least receive some feedback on my posts. I just wish the comments followed a guideline of some sort so I can get a feel for where everyone is coming from, and why he or she may say certain things.  

My Concerns About Qualitative Research

Since qualitative research is all about the “why” of something rather than the “how” it is going to be difficult for me to gain and understanding in my mind before getting it out on paper. In quantitative research I could just get some statistics and evidence to back up a topic but with qualitative I have to provide and understanding and give an analysis as to why something is the way it is. Qualitative research requires deep and advanced levels of thinking which will be hard for me because I will have to stay focused for a long period of time on the topic at discussion. 

I feel like it will not be too difficult to write open-ended questions because everyone has an opinion about something. It is easy to come up with questions that do not create yes or no answers so I think if I make the questions broad enough, I will be able to get a wide variety of responses to each question. A big concern I have is that I do not confuse quantitative and qualitative standpoints. It is very easy to drift into using quantitative methods because I feel like I need to provide an explanation as to how something can be the way it is. In my mind, all I can think about is how something can reach a certain point even though that is not necessary for the assignment. SO I will have to try my best to steer clear of quantitative methods.

The best part of researching qualitatively is that it will allow me to reach levels of thinking I’ve probably never been to before as far as research goes. In the past, research has always been about getting facts and using them as support for an assignment. Now I hope to be able to provide reasons as to why people are the way they are or why certain events happened the way they did. Since I am going to be majoring in communications and public relations, it is vital for me to understand qualitative research and methods. I will be facing people for the rest of my life so to have a background in qualitative research will be so insightful for peoples behaviors and motives. 

I know this is going to be a very challenging concept for me to grasp but I am going to try my best because I find it very interesting to understand the “why” of all of the things around me. I am worried my thoughts will not be presented in a clear, understandable way, but I plan on proofreading several times before submitting anything that does not make sense to readers. Mainly, I hope to stay away from quantitative methods because that is the ultimate test in this assignment, whether or not I can note the difference in qualitative and quantitative research. I plan to make an outline comparing qualitative and quantitative research before I begin the essay because I want to make sure I am not confusing the two.