PB2A

The scholarly article I chose for PB2A is called “Slowly Learning the Hard Way: U.S. America’s War on Drugs and Implications for Mexico” written by Glen Olives Thompson. As the title is very straightforward, you can determine what the paper is going to discuss: the drug war in America. There is nothing interesting about the title and unlike many other genres of writing, there is no “hook” sentence to draw in readers.

This scholarly article is separated into clearly labeled sections, each giving a preview to what the section will discuss. The first section is called “Abstract.” The purpose of this section is to give brief background information and present the reason for writing the paper. In this article, the abstract gives some brief background information on America’s drug policy. The first line of the paper is “U.S. America's aggressive drug enforcement policy, costing over US$1 trillion and putting millions of people in prison for casual drug use, is an abject failure.” This sentence presents the authors opinion on the drug policy and the side that he will argue throughout the paper. The last sentence of the abstract poses the question of how to reform this “failure” of a drug policy.

Next is the “Introduction” section, where Thompson goes into further detail about the history of drug use and trends relating to prohibition or legalization of certain drugs. He explains that “for U.S. legislators, making certain psychoactive drugs illegal, regulating oth­ers, and leaving others still unregulated, requires a difficult balancing act, and an easy one to get wrong.” He argues that if alcohol, which is the third highest preventable cause of death in the United States, can be regulated, that other drugs such as cannabis, cocaine, and opiates should be regulated in a similar manner.

From there, he goes on to talk about how history shows that prohibiting a drug doesn’t stop it from being used in a third section titled “The First War on Drugs: Alcohol Prohibition in the United States.” In his next section, “The Current War on Drugs: History and Consequences,” he describes how drugs such as marijuana were prohibited and how the U.S. government has spent over a trillion dollars in the drug enforcement efforts. The result was that our incarceration rates increased tremendously. Thompson states “When a country has a prison population approaching one percent of its resi­dents, most of whom are incarcerated for non-violent, drug-related crimes, spends bil­lions of dollars a year on drug enforcement and prison related activities, and yet has the highest rate of illegal drug use of any country in the world, some­thing is deeply out of balance.” He goes on to explain that the more effective prohibition is at raising costs, the greater are drug industry revenues. So, more effective prohibition means that drug sellers have more money to buy guns, pay bribes, fund the dealers, and even research and develop new technologies of drug deliv­ery (like crack cocaine). He states “It's hard to beat an enemy that gets stronger the more you strike against him or her.” In another section, “Piecemeal Political Solutions,” he explains how one could reform the drug policy. “Of course, the sensible thing to do would be to repeal the Compre­hensive Drug Abuse and Control Act and replace it with liberalized drug policy where most drugs would be regulated and controlled like alcohol and tobacco.” By doing this, Thomposn says that bil­lions of dollars could be saved, millions more earned through federal and state tax­es, and many millions more, formerly spent on drug prosecution offenses, could be spent on drug education and rehabilitation. He supports this by telling readers that other states that have done this, have had multiple benefits such as decreased drug use and an increase in tax revenue from drug sales. In the “Conclusion” section he sums up everything from throughout the paper in a brief, straightforward manner.

Overall, the author uses advanced vocabulary and an academic tone, demonstrating his knowledge on the subject and has references throughout the whole article, making readers trust him and believe he is credible.  The format of the paper makes it easy for readers to follow along, or even quickly get to a certain area of information that they are interested in. Also, the article has footnotes, which the author uses to give definitions or other background information. All of these rhetorical devices used helps the author strengthen his argument, that the U.S. drug policy should be reformed. Personally I think there are two specific aspects of the article that are the most important -- the evidence and the argument -- because they work together. Without the the argument, the evidence is just factual information, and without the evidence and background information, the author’s argument is very weak.

Link to article: http://web.b.ebscohost.com.proxy.library.ucsb.edu:2048/ehost/pdfviewer/pdfviewer?sid=6bc65fdf-8ab0-4be4-914a-27192e4164f7%40sessionmgr120&vid=8&hid=106

what I learned this week pt.4

            This week has been a rough week, not gonna lie. With the WP1 due and midterms, along with what seemed like an increased amount of homework in some other classes, I've been pretty overwhelmed. The biggest struggle for me again this week was definitely trying to make my thesis stronger and incorporate an argument throughout my paper. I really struggled with the concept of that and putting it together was difficult and frustrating. The two activates on Monday, the reverse outline and the highlighting activity really helped me a lot. The reverse outline was something I had never done before this class but it was something I found valuable. It made it easy to go backwards and pull main ideas from each paragraph and figure out whether or not those main ideas supported the thesis and argument of your paper. I found the highlighting activity to be helpful too. Breaking up my writing project into such specific aspects, highlighted in different colors, made me look at my paper in a visual way, which I never really do. It showed me what aspects my paper lacked, and for me it happened to be use of course readings. I will definitely use that activity in the future for other writing projects. I thought the "murder" activity we did Wednesday was unique and I thoroughly enjoyed it. It was a creative way to have fun, while learning. I love breaking into groups because it gives me a chance to meet new people and gather new ideas. I've realized that there are some pretty cool people in our class and if it weren't for talking to them one on one in our group activities, I would never know that!
           I really appreciated Zack's changing of the syllabus because many teachers do rush through things and just expect us students to keep up. It's pretty clear that Zack wants us all to succeed and by slowing the pace of the class, he is showing that he is doing everything he can to help us. It's refreshing to have Zack as a teacher because he is unlike any other. His excitement and passion to do what he does makes me have a much better experience being in the class. You da bomb Z. Keep up the good work!! (p.s It feels weird telling a teacher to keep up the good work haha)

Catch y'all on the flip side,
Jrey

what I learned this week pt.3

This week our class only met one time and we focused on peer editing papers. Although there weren't many new topics introduced, I learned more about how to improve my paper and how to give feedback to my peers. I enjoyed meeting new people and making new groups, as it allowed me to see new people's writing and ideas. It also allowed me to get ideas that I might not have thought of on my own to use for the writing project. I enjoyed reading the feedback on my own paper as well and found it to be quite helpful. The biggest struggle for me this week was trying to make an argument play into my writing project. Through the peer editing, I was able to get many ideas on how to better my paper, but most importantly it helped me realize how important a thesis and argument can be in a paper. When editing others, it was easy to point out that papers with a clear thesis and argument were stronger than ones that lacked those vital aspects. I realized that my thesis and argument were somewhat unclear and knew that in order to better my paper, some work needed to be done. After messing with it for a while and using second order thinking to logically place my ideas, i do believe my paper become stronger. This week I also learned that writing. is. not. easy. Writing is a form of art that takes a lot of time and effort. After spending more time on this paper than I ever have on a paper (probably because it's my first paper of college), I based my thought process off the idea that what I put into it, will be what I get out of it!

what I learned this week pt.2

One thing I appreciate about writing 2 is that every class is different, and so much knowledge is thrown at us every time. I feel like I’ve actually learned so much already. PB1A was really helpful for me and I enjoyed writing it, but this week in particular one of my favorite activities was the PB1B. Exploring all the genre generator websites really solidified my grasp of the genre topic and helped me understand the multiple aspects that factor into each genre. I thought it was interesting to see the difference between textual conventions and visual conventions, as they both are different, yet accomplish the same goal.

I also thoroughly enjoyed the discussion about hyphens and dashes, as I needed some clarification. Before the class I think I would’ve said I understood dashes more than hyphens, but now I think I am slightly more confused with dashes than anything. I feel that they serve almost the exact same purpose of commas and still don’t quite understand when to use them. Other than that, my only real problem this week was trying to decide on a topic for my WP1. For me, that’s usually the hardest part and once I do pick a topic, writing the paper comes rather easily. I’m still stuck and trying to decide on a topic but I have two in mind and I am trying to see what topic would result in a more solid paper.

Another thing I liked about this week was when each group discussed and then shared a vocabulary term with the class. Many of the terms were new to me and going through all of them so in depth was an easy way to quickly learn their meanings. Solid week, I’d say!

PB1B

The SCIgen website is one that creates science based research papers instantly. With the click of a button, any student can have a seemingly intellectual, scholarly research paper. Key word in the last sentence being “seemingly”. Each paper generated, appears to be knowledgeable and well constructed, until one takes a deeper look at the paper. First, each of the research papers included a rather long title, hinting that the paper is about something complex. For example, some of the titles were “Towards the Understanding of Lambda Calculus that Made Exploring and Possibly Improving Courseware a Reality” and “Constant-Time, Ubiquitous Configurations for Linked Lists.” More conventions I noticed was the use of advanced vocabulary and very clearly labeled titles and subtitles.  Words such as “ambimorphic”, “heuristic”, and “ubiquitous” lead readers to believe that the author is intelligent, therefore readers may be impressed, rather than fooled. The structure of each paper, specifically the titles and subtitles show that the paper is well organized and put together in an intricate manner. Next, I observed the use of graphs and visual displays. Each paper that I explored had multiple visuals included within them which makes the reader think that the author is very involved and interactive in his work. Lastly, the convention that I believe has the biggest impact with convincing readers that these papers are real/factually correct, is the use of in text citations and the references. Each paper had a very long list of references and used numerous in text citations. All of these conventions make each SCIgen created research paper appear credible and logical, although none of it may in fact be true.

While clicking through multiple comics on the pandyland website, I noticed that I struggled a bit with finding conventions. Because it was not a piece of writing, I was forced to think of more “outside the box” conventions. Because comics are limited to pictures and small text boxes, I noticed most of the actions are expressed through facial expression and the type of text box used. Each box in the comic strip has vivid facial expressions to help emphasize what cannot be said in the small text box. Along with that, the type of text box being used also helps to accentuate the emotion of the characters. Although most of the text boxes are regular circle/oval shaped, I noticed a jagged circle looking thing was used to convey shouting or yelling. Also, the texts themselves tended to be short and simple, which I think broadens the audience. A more obvious convention includes animations, usually consisting of the two men and a simple action.

The last site, memegenerator, does exactly what you’d think it does, which is generate memes. These often include a popular picture or cartoon, along with a funny, creative caption or pun. The captions are short and easy to read, attracting as many readers as possible. These are usually intended to create laughter and humor.

Although I’m not sure if this ties in, a website I found was http://passwordsgenerator.net. I don’t entirely understand if “passwords” are a genre, but I did notice that there are more conventions to them then you’d think. For example, many passwords must include over 8 characters, use an upper and lowercase letter, include a symbol, and include a number.

While exploring the different genre generator websites, I noticed many interesting things. Each different website had a similar concept, yet was so different in its content. While the SCIgen website constructed random research papers, the pandyland website created short comics, and the memgenerator created several different memes. One thing looking at these websites made me realize, was the relationship between genres and their audience. Each genre has a different intended audience. For example, the audience of a research paper would be a teacher or professor, where the audience of a comic or a meme would be more broad, expanding to kids, teens, or really anyone looking for a laugh. Because each website followed a different format and consisted of different context, they helped me see genres from multiple perspectives, all which helped better my understanding of genre.