Prewriting Blog: Essay #4

For essay #4 I chose to do prompt #1 because I do believe that every youth culture has a movement. Actually, we have two. The first one is the president elect Barak Obama in that when he was elected, he became the United States’ first black president. This election will change Americans forever because in the sixties we (Americans) discriminated against the blacks and now after this, we can say that America has overcome its racial segregated past and look towards a future of equality for all men and women. Or there’s the other movement that has to do with prop eight. To which gay and lesbians should or shouldn’t be allowed legally married. This is a movement of our youth culture because many young adults are into freedom of speech and the pursuit of happiness. Young Americans think that it shouldn’t matter who you marry know matter what your beliefs are. Compare and contrasting traditional marriage and gay marriage could be used here. As for the above I could do the civil rights movement in the 60’s. I definitely no matter which one I pick use language that won’t hurt others’ feelings and make strong points and back them up with good evidence. In Susan Jacoby’s book she talks about the movements of the 60’s and how they affected the United States as well as the youth culture. I think that Jacoby’s chapter 6 and 7 both correlate to what’s going on today in that the students at Berkley and protestors in general in Jacoby’s novel fought for what they thought was right. That’s exactly what is going on today in youth culture in America.

Reading Blog #4

According to Jacoby, 1960’s youth culture left “a lasting anti intellectual imprint on culture”, because of its music, hippies, and drugs. The music of the sixties was primarily, based on the freedom of speech movement. Freedom of speech was huge in the sixties young Americans felt that they should have the right to say whatever they want as part of the second amendment to the constitution. In 1969, thousands of Americans, known as hippies, and college students gathered for “Woodstock” which was basically a week of drugs, sex, and music. Woodstock was famous primarily for its major attendees, who were hippies. “Hippies” were created by the media and were classified as people who were free spirits and thinkers. When this persona was displayed on television, young Americans copied it and that is how hippies came to be. They dressed in weird outfits and did drugs to help them escape. Drugs affected the sixties a lot, students were a popular user for drugs in the sixties; they used it as an outlet to let go and escape from things like school and work. “Hippies” did weird drugs and psychedelic drugs. All the drugs would allow the user to let go and escape the world for a period of time. Today’s youth culture is surprisingly like the sixties in that we express our opinions and are free to take a stand on what we believe. I remember in high school, we did a day of silence protest to support gay and lesbian rights. The youth movements taking place today have to deal with civil rights, and like the sixties, we protest against those who don’t share our beliefs about a topic. The civil rights movement that is taking place right now has to do with whether or not gays and lesbians have the right to get married in the United States. Another movement taking place right now is the president elect Barak Obama, as he marks the first African American president in US history and overcomes America’s segregating, discriminatory against the African Americans past.

Self Evaluation: Essay #2

In this essay I had many problems. I had trouble understanding what the definitional claim meant and how to apply it to my essay. I didn’t have any problems with getting sources to use in my paper and I think I did a nice job of integrating them into the paper and using analysis to back up my claims. However, I think I could have used the PIE paragraph structure a little more. It would have made the paper flow better. I had a few problems with MLA in that I didn’t cite one of my sources well on my works cited page. I also had problems with using citations correctly when I used a source. I believe that from the first draft to the last It was an overall improvement. Even though I edited it a lot I should have had a couple of people assess It for errors. I feel that I had some trouble with the type of claim that you wanted, which made it harder to write, but if I would have come to you and had you explain it better, It would have been much easier. In this essay I chose to do an outline first, which made it a lot easier to organize what I wanted to say. Grammar has always been an issue for me, but I think that I have learned how to fix my grammatical errors with the textbook you requested us to purchase. Which makes it easy for me to fix them when I cant figure it out. In the lectures in class I took notes on what was said and used them in my paper to add analysis to it. I used one of the extra pieces of writing that you had us read and made it connect to my claim. The writing process for me started in class with the note taking and then the prewriting blog about the prompt, witch makes it easier for me to figure out what is expected of me. Also I like how you choose to have us do a free writing exercise, known as the crap draft, this draft makes it better for me to just write, then go back later with a highlighter and pick out the points out of all the crap.