Research Proposal

For my research topic I’m thinking about researching my family ancestry. I’ll have to wait and see what my work schedule is like for the next couple of weeks, but I can make time to see my Grandparents (Mom’s parents) and my Nana (Dad’s mom). They are the oldest living relatives I have so they can probably give me the most information. Honestly I don’t know a lot about my family history. I know on my Mom’s side of the family somewhere down the line I’m related to Daniel Boone’s brother (George). My Dad’s Dad passed away when he was 17, and my Nana didn’t keep in touch with his family that well so I’m not sure how far I could research that side of the family. My Nana always told me that she was a related to a Cherokee Indian princess. Guess I’ll find out if that really true or not in my research. I’ll probably use Ancestry.com, and any other family websites that I could sign up for a free trial for a certain amount of time. After we watched Faces of America it really made me interested in learning about my family. Where they came from, why they came to America, what origins and historical things did they do? I’m really excited to see how my research goes.

Multi-Genre Papers

Today I skimmed and read through quite a few papers. The papers I couldn’t stand were the ones that were about 35 pages long and based on a book. I don’t really know how you can write about a book. I can kind of see if you can relate your topic you’re interested in and it’s in a book you’ve read in the past. A couple papers really caught my attention. “Crumbled Creativity” by Katie Shinkle was really interesting. I’m interested in becoming a teacher so when I saw how this school board wanted them to JUST focus on test scores it was wrong and the teacher saw this and had the students write a “This I Believe” paper, how ironic. The teacher changed the syllabus and the way she taught her students. I’m not quite sure if I want to write about teaching or not. I also was really intrigued with the “Living thin: One girl’s fight for a Full life”. I’ve always been interested in eating disorders and I’ve read several books about them as well. I’d somehow like to possibly incorporate both in my paper. I am really interested in eating disorders, although I’ve never been through the experience myself, the story was very interesting and intriguing.

United Nations Millennium Goals: Reducing Child Mortality

The issue that I choose to dissect and do a little research about is the reducing child mortality. The really awesome thing is in Ethopia they have found ways to reduce it! It’s been said that most kids in sub-Saharen Africa and Southern Asia die at the age of 5 (before their 5th birthday). I honestly couldn’t imagine what life would be like for those countries, and it’s basically because they don’t have a health care or type of hospital to take their children to if they get sick. Seeing these decreasing numbers is great, but numbers are increasing in deaths of babies around their first month of being born. How can we help this situation? I’d like to say that their should be more schools set up, so that education is available and in time there can be more doctors and nurses in these countries that need them. Also for each city to have a couple or at least one doctor/nurse to help with this situation of sick children. But what can we do NOW? Well, we could have volunteered doctors go to these cities that are seeking a doctor’s help. Although they wouldn’t get paid (or maybe we could create a program that they could get paid for their time in other countries) they would be helping an issue that has been a problem for years and years to come.
I’m not quite sure if the severity of this issue really applies to Springfield or my own neighborhood. I work at Price Cutter so I do so people that don’t have enough money for something essential, or simply have to use all of their change to buy something. People come in and pay with food stamps all the time too. I’ve seen one or two people that I could say are struggling, and it’s a very sad thing. Most of these people were adults, but what if they did have kids? They can’t even support themselves so there’s no way they’d be able to support themselves and a child.
    I wasn’t interested in this topic at first I was just choosing one so I could get this assignment done and move on to the rest of my Saturday. Although I have to say it sparked an interest in me. We had a charity thing going on at Price Cutter during the holidays where you could spend $1, $3 or $5 and donate that money to kids that need food. Each dollar amount was a different number of meals that it provided. I’m kind of kicking myself for not actually donating to that organization myself. I don’t think we really think of these issues that go on until we read about them ourselves. Now I’m thinking twice about this issue and I don’t think I would have if I didn’t read about it.

Article 2 Response

The first story I watched and listened to was the Peanut Butter: Good Spread video (http://startsomethingthatmatters.maker.good.is/projects/goodspread). At first it didn’t make a lot of sense with the original company the two guys used to work for which is called Mana. Mana was able to produce this product that they called “peanut butter on steroids”, and it could basically feed a person that is on their deathbed the right nutrition to save them. The two men ended up making their own product called Good spread and with each order of good spread a Mana peanut butter packet is sent to someone who needs it. I think this is pretty cool because you could possibly be saving someone’s life. It’s very unique because people don’t think twice when they pick up a jar of peanut butter, it’s basically a necessity to us. I hope that even though they didn’t win, that someday their product is sold in a grocery store to purchase.

The next video I watched was the Lamon Luther video (http://startsomethingthatmatters.maker.good.is/projects/LamonLuther). I thought this was a really interesting way to help the homeless. Often you see people on the street that have a sign that says “Will work for food/money”. Brian Preston really took initiative and made this guys living in the woods DO something meaningful. I really loved the idea of them building, since they basically built their “homes” in the woods. It almost made me tear up when the one homeless guy they interviewed said he was able to move into a new house in one month after working. That’s a really awesome cause.

The final video that I enjoyed was the Sanitation Creation (http://startsomethingthatmatters.maker.good.is/projects/SANITATIONCREATIONS). I always thought normal port-o-potties were nasty. This is a cleaner alternative of one. It’s very clever and there must have been a lot of thought put into this creation. The fact that the Sanitation creations are energy savers too makes it all the more green and germ friendly. The way that they dispose of the waste is very interesting, I’m not sure how that would work on an airplane or bus like the video suggested. Very green idea, and it sounds much cleaner.

I thought all of the videos sounded interesting and they honestly caught my attention. The peanut butter one was very intriguing, because how could peanut butter help me people? That’s my main question I asked when I watched most of these videos. How is this product helping myself or other people? Lamon Luther sounded like a name of a man, and I wondered what the actual story was behind that organization. I can be a germ freak so that’s why I enjoyed Sanitation Creation. The video would explain in detail of how the product worked and how it helped a certain cause. I found that all of them could have been winners to me, and I hope that their companies become more successful and well known over the coming years.

If I didn’t have to worry about money, I would definitely be traveling more. I’d love to travel the world as much as I can when I get older. I find it all very interesting. I’d also do more things for myself like reading, playing saxophone, working out and even trying hot yoga or meditating. I’d also try all the super expensive organic food that I never want to touch since it’s so pricy. I’d start buying things that were handmade products, and healthier versions of makeup, shampoo, conditioner, ect.

I’f honestly love to travel and teach other kids in foreign countries. I haven’t really ever thought of that before a couple of days ago, but I think that would be very fun and heartwarming. I’d love to teach kids in other countries that are struggling in common core subjects. I think that would have a major impact on my life, and I would view the world in a different sense. Maybe I’ll consider doing that someday. I’ve always been interested in missionaries too.

I would serve needy areas in different countries that are struggling with education. Maybe give them care packages like the OAK backpacks. I’d really just like to improve the living situations that some kids in other countries should never be in. I feel like kids in America have it easy, and we don’t see an actual “horrible life”. I’d really be inspired to do something like that someday. 

Article 1 Response

When I read this article I paid careful attention to the examples, and which ones I could relate to. It’s very simple to write how I think, so it’s easy to have run-on sentences, or for instance, have ‘dangling’ sentences. I also think I struggle with bad parallelism, it seems very tricky, and I don’t think I’ve ever thought about the way lists can actually be written the wrong way. I never use semicolons, and frankly I don’t understand them enough to feel confident adding them in my writing. I don’t think I’ll ever feel like I’ve “mastered” words. What does that even mean? Our vocabularies get larger the older we get, so mastering this rule seems very impossible. Pronouns, verb problems and subjunctives I feel pretty confident about. Basically whenever I read a sentence that involves one those issues, it’s easy to spot out and clarify if it’s right or wrong.

The main purpose of this article was, of course, rules of grammar that we should pay attention to (the purpose is pretty clear in the title).  The main points were the seven different reasons the author mentioned. He was pretty clear about all the rules writers should pay attention to, and even gave examples for each rule. I found that this article was very helpful, I didn’t even know what bad parallelism was or how to fix a dangling sentence. These are all common mistakes that writers and students make, so it was very easy to point out the things that I struggle with whenever I write.

I’d like to discuss the passage that is about dangling conversations. I’d never quite heard of this before, but I could definitely see how people get confused. The author gives us this sentence that one of his students wrote about a consumer product, “Sitting in a class or dancing at the bar, the bra performed well…. Though slightly pricey, your breasts will thank you.” I did laugh when I read this, that’s probably half the reason why I choose this to discuss. What was wrong with the sentence? The bra did not sit in class or dance with you, and “your breasts” are not pricy. He talked about using a strategy by finding sentences that have this type of structure: MODIFIER-COMMA-SUBJECT-VERB, then changing the sentence to where it’s arranged as SUBJECT-COMMA-MODIFIER-COMMA-VERB. That’s how he formed the following sentence, “The bra, sitting in a class or dancing at a bar, performed well.” But, it sounds weird so throw in a couple words and BAM you get “Whether you're sitting in a class or dancing at the bar, the bra performs well.” This passage is important because dangling conversations can make the writer look stupid and uneducated, but whenever you go through the sentence structure strategy, the writer comes up with a genius sentence. I’m not sure if I can fully connect to this, but these dangling conversations sound like a form of run-on sentences, and I struggle with those. This strategy can help me improve my flaws of writing run-ons. If students and writers take this helpful hint into account for their own writings, then this can improve their writing and make it more interesting.

I choose this picture because at the end of the article the author said, “Do not use it's, you're or who's when you mean its, your or whose. Or vice versa!” I felt like this picture relates with the article, and it’s something that everyone from time to time, still struggles with.