This link will lead its viewers to a podcast on how something as simple as a fictional story can affect a person’s views as they grow and develop.
https://drive.google.com/file/d/1qiOk5OC0AAz6lZNueF0ghVkm36IALt7G/view?usp=sharing
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My favorite brainstorming activity to use when writing a paper has to be between making columns and free writing. As I was writing my first paper, I found it easy to connect the three texts by bulleting important points made in the essays. Once I had the important information from each one, I’d put a 1, 2, 3, etc next to some of the points connecting the authors’ ideas together. I also enjoyed free writing because it gave me the chance to just type whatever I wanted/needed to let out without thinking too hard about it. Had I spent too much time, I wouldn’t have been able to reach certain points I wanted to make throughout the essay.
Potential Thesis:
I believe that in the curious world that we live in today, art will provide a gateway for inspiration and better explanations that connect to the gigantic, unknown science universe we continually try to explore.
Pinker & Yo-Yo Ma
Steven Pinker and Yo-Yo Ma talk about the importance of sciences in our world not just based off of experiments, but also on religion, and art. Science is often argued as solely a subject with experiments, data, and observations that have nothing to do with art. However, art may play a larger role in the sciences than an individual may think, as they help to compare and inspire ideas. It may be agreeable that science is such a closed society which needs to open up to the world we live in. Pinker states that, “To cultivate the world, we must cultivate work-arounds for our cognitive limitations, including skepticism, open debate, formal precision, and empirical tests, often requiring feats of ingenuity”. Likewise, Ma argues that science needs art to inspire a scientist by allowing their brain to be flexible in the ways in which it studies a subject. Ma states that, “The values behind arts integration – collaboration, flexible thinking, and disciplined imagination – lead to the capacity to innovate”. As Ma argues, arts will introduce more qualities of a successful individual that will allow them to better explain what it is that they are researching. Science is not just about the experiments, or the data, or the observations. It is about being able to understand our limits and using our senses and emotions in ways that other subjects, such as art, can do. After comparing the arguments of Pinker and Ma, I agree that sciences need to open up to the humanities as they will vastly impact the way the scientific universe works.
Text to Self
As a student in the medical field, I can easily say that all types of sciences are important to my education, as well as many other fields students study these days. Science seems to be a large part of our world’s educational society these days because experiments, observations, data, and measurements are always being taken. In a world driven around technology, we are always finding ways to make science easier, find cures for medicine, and angles and tools at which to build buildings. As a future dentist, science even goes into the creation of making an effective toothpaste that will benefit your teeth in all ways possible. When it comes to science, Pinker states that, “It is, rather, indispensable in all areas of human concern, including politics, the arts, and the search for meaning, purpose, and morality.” Essentially, Pinker is telling his audience that science is important in all fields and serves a different meaning for different perspectives in our lives. Personally, I am able to see how science correlates to any field someone may choose to work in. Furthermore, an individual may even notice how their field helps the science world to become more explainable. Whether we want to acknowledge it, or take a science class, or not, science is and always will be a major part of our society.
- Part 1:
Part 2: Summary
Jonah Lehrer’s main argument throughout this paper is that the sciences and arts need to work together to create a better understanding of scientific discoveries. He argues that scientists often look too deep into concepts rather than taking broader views. Sometimes, it’s the ideas and inspirations of a piece of art that allow us to question and understand why something may be the way it is. Or, it can just simply help us to better explain what we are already imagining, just as Bohr with the cubist paintings. What Lehrer tends to argue most is how metaphors, which were recently discussed in class, have an effect in how we understand something. Despite having two separate things, they make a second reality between their similarities. While some may argue that this can be dangerous, Lehrer continues to explain that if scientists are to work with artists to come up with better metaphors, then they won’t turn out to be as dangerous as one may believe. Lehrer also argues that the brains complicated sections may never be understood scientifically. He argues, and I agree, that when someone reads a novel, or poem, that they are more likely to understand how someone is feeling, what’s going on in their brain, and why. In conclusion, there’s need to be a “fourth culture” in which there is no gap between a scientists and artists communication. Instead, they should work together as one to explain theories, and create better questions that need to be answered.
Part 3: Glossing the Text
- Reductionism – Analyzing and describing a complex phenomenon in terms of phenomena that are held to represent a simpler level, especially when this is said to provide a sufficient explanation. (Dictionary)
- Epiphenomenon – A secondary effect that arises from but does not causally influence a process. (Dictionary)
- Holistic perspective – A perspective in which many different factors are taken into account to generate a picture of the culture as a whole (Study.com)
Annotations:
I believe that for the most part, annotations are starting to become easier for me. However, I would like to see more of a connection with text-text, text-self, and text-world.
Yo-Yo Ma:
The essay, “Necessary Edges: Arts, Empathy, and Education” was written by Yo-Yo Ma, a cellist, and songwriter who has won multiple national awards along with Grammy Awards. This essay was first posted to the online news website, World Post, during January of 2014. The main argument in Ma’s essay is that arts should be required in the STEM (science, technology, math, and engineering) field, turning it then to STEAM. As a student in the STEM field, along with many other majors, the argument of whether art should apply to students in my field is something that should be important in my perspective. Do we need art even though our courses are based around what chemicals are reactants, how photosynthesis works, the body’s systems, etc? Personally, I agree with Ma’s argument. I think that we often get caught up in the competitive side of STEM and only having a right or wrong answer. However, I think that is important that we start to look at both opinions on things, really focus on why something was wrong rather than why it’s right. The arts inspire us to picture things differently, and usually, the skill of drawing out context allows our brains to comprehend what we are attempting to learn. Ma argues throughout his essay that when meeting someone, we only allow ourselves to see the first picture of them. We don’t dive deeper behind their first impressions, what type of emotions they have, what they do, etc. Arts allow us to do this by creating an equilibrium from both extreme sides of an environment. By this, he means that we then create an understanding that allows opposing sides to agree on. Without art, we do not have the inspiration to take differences and creativity into our thought processes which typically comes together to create the best type of work environment.
“Glossing” Terms:
- Posited – Assume as a fact or principle (Dictionary)
- Tandem – When two things are arranged one in front of the other (Dictionary)
- Invigorate – Give strength or energy to (Dictionary)
Annotation Pictures:
Part 1: First Draft Experience
After reading Lamott’s Shitty First Drafts, I’ve noticed that we both have a lot in common when it comes to writing first drafts of something. We sit there, looking in different directions for some bit of motivation to get us going. It seems like it takes days to get something down on a piece of paper, or on your laptop in some cases. I tend to get nervous about what I’m writing and what peers will think about it when they go to review my paper. “Wow, this girl doesn’t know how to write”. However, after a couple hours of outlining and organizing, the process seems to become easier as I’ve played out my quotes, intro and conclusion, and transition sentences. I am a bit shocked to see that professional writers/journalists struggle with this too, but at the same time I feel like all writing takes time and effort to just sit down and let the words flow.
Part 2: Revision Plan Strategy
My goals that I have set forth for revising my paper come together to make my paper stronger overall. First off, I plan on looking through my peers comments throughout my paper and seeing where they best understood what I was arguing and where they needed a clearer explanation. Once I’ve checked through their suggestions, I plan on double checking my quotes and seeing how they correlate to the topics I’m trying to make in each body paragraph. If necessary, I may need to go back through the three texts and collect more quotes to put into my paper that will strongly support my topics. This will also help to bring me up to the required word count of the paper. Lastly, I will look through my essay and see where I can place stronger words which will stick out to my audience.
Steps:
- Read through my peer review comments, see what worked best and what didn’t
- Add more to third body paragraph to better explain topic
- Go through previous assignments and see which quotes I believed were important to describing metaphors
- Add in text citations!
- Make sure my transitions flow clearly through the paper
- Once done, look through for grammatical errors and places where stronger words can be placed
My biggest challenge I think will be trying to add more information into my body paragraphs to bring me up to the word count. I am just short of the word count, however there still may be a struggle as to what should go where and what exactly should be added to the essay that makes the most sense to the argument. If this challenge seems too difficult to solve myself, I have a variety of resources I can use. I plan to talk to peers in and out of the class to get more perspectives on how to better my essay and what they think should be added. If they don’t seem to help, then I can email our writing fellow and get her opinion on where I can add more evidence and what I should be adding. If need be however, I can always contact my professor and ask for her guidance on this first paper.
My entire high school career, peer review was always a way of picking out the little things, rather the local edits, in a paper. I’ve always found it easy when it came to peer review to then just sit there and pick out the grammatical errors rather than focus on what the topic was, whether evidence was making sense or not, etc. However, changing this perspective of peer reviewing from local to global edits seems to help give me a better understanding of what I am writing about as well. I feel as though global editing will also give help me when reviewing my own paper, looking back I will know what evidence fits and what evidence may not, where it is needed, etc. It has also given me a better understanding of what I should be writing about as well. Global edits are also the reviews we as students typically need the most, rather than going back and seeing grammatical errors that we could have easily changed when we went to read through our papers. By allowing someone to check the structure of our paper rather than the small easy to find errors, we can then focus on writing and fixing the important parts of our formal essay. Overall, I would prefer to receive and give global edits on papers rather than local edits so that way I can focus on the big picture rather than the small points I can go back and fix quickly.
Intro 1:
Our life is like a box of chocolates, no? You wake up everyday, not knowing what to expect but hoping, just hoping, that you’re day will go as great as if you were to blindly pick your favorite chocolate. Now take a minute and ponder over how this metaphor may have just influenced your thoughts. Am I really waking up everyday not knowing what to expect, just as a box of chocolates? It’s crazy isn’t it? Metaphors create this image in our heads that give us a new version of an idea/object that doesn’t seem to correlate at all, such as life and a box of chocolates. James Geary, Michael Erard, and Dhruv Khullar have all published their own ideas on how metaphors affect society’s everyday thinking. Geary uses examples such as Elvis Presley to catch his audience when describing how metaphors are created. Erard, metaphor designer, goes deeper into the creation of a metaphor explaining how they are created to force us to see both sides of a reality. On the other hand, Khullar connects metaphors to health studies as he leaves his audience to question whether it is morally okay to compare a chronic illness with war. Ultimately, all three authors come together to discuss the importance of metaphors in our daily lives, affecting us emotionally, and stimulating our thoughts.
Intro 2:
We often miss out on the small details in our lives which often have the greatest impact. The sunsets, the hellos and goodbyes, and most importantly, metaphors. Metaphors, as we commonly know them, are a tool used in English to compare to things. However, the meaning behind a metaphor can become so much deeper. In fact, there are metaphors all around us today that psychologically affect us without us even noticing. James Geary, Michael Erard, and Dhruv Khullar all talk about the effects that metaphors have on society and the deeper meaning that comes from their creation. Geary discusses how our brains translate a metaphor just hearing them. Erard discusses how designers make “pseudo-mistakes” in order to create a metaphor in which society will see both sides of something. Khullar on the other hand discusses the ways in which metaphors such as “this illness is a battle” can affect our health. Overall, the way in which we perceive metaphors may affect our emotions, visions of reality, and health.
In Dhruv Khullar’s “The Trouble with Medicine Metaphors”, he discusses the influences that metaphors may have on chronically ill patients. When faced with an illness, society automatically uses “military metaphors” as Khullar would say, by creating a situation where the illness is a battle. Khullar argues that this comparison of an illness to a battle may be making things worst for the patient. Instead of going towards the problem with positivity, they resort to the pressures of “fighting a battle” not for themselves, but for their doctor and family. There have even been studies indicating that patients whose illnesses were not referred to as a battle showed lower levels of stress and depression. However, Khullar concludes with the importance of the patients perspective. Instead of referring to their illness automatically as a “fight”, doctors should converse with the patient as to how they see their illness.
Personally, I was back and forth with Khullar’s argument that illnesses should not be compared to a “fight”, or “battle”. Throughout the beginning of his article, Khullar continued to mention that the idea of a battle with a chronic illness would only result in a negative outlook from the patients perspective. However, I disagree. About seven months ago, I went through the removal of a benign tumor. This entire experience was a battle I never thought I’d face, and quite frankly a battle I’m proud to say I overcame. It was a fight between these rapidly multiplying cells inside my body, and my mental health. A fight I continued to tell myself every night that I would defeat, and I did. Attending breast cancer parades and seeing individuals with “fighter” pins and quotes about beating the battle reminds me of the strength that we all hold inside of us, despite the obstacles we are forced to face. On the other hand, I do agree with Khullar’s conclusion that the doctor should communicate with the patient before automatically connecting their illness with a battle. I found that allowing myself to become a strong soldier helped to push me through my entire experience. Although, I can see how for some individuals they may feel pressured into showing off their strength for the people counting on them in their lives, making everything much harder on their part. Despite the difference between my vision and Khullar’s, I believe that we can agree that the patient should decide how they metaphorically see their illness.
Metaphorically Speaking: “Metaphorical thinking is essential to how we understand ourselves and others, how we communicate, learn, discover and invent.” I chose this quote because it states to it’s audience the importance of metaphors on our psychological behaviors in our day to day lives.
See Through Words: “It’s the classic look at how metaphors structure the way we think and talk, and once you’ve read it, you can’t help but agree that, at a conceptual level, life is a journey, and arguments are wars.” Metaphors are often opening up doors for our thinking, allowing us to see both sides of an idea and influencing how we think about it.
The Trouble With Medicine’s Metaphors: “Metaphors allow doctors to develop a common language with patients, and offer patients an avenue to express their emotions and exert agency over their conditions.” Metaphors give the patient a better description of what their body is going through when they face serious illnesses, and allow them to express their emotions towards how they visualize their situation.
After rereading Erard’s essay, I found that I still agreed with most of my original comments. One thing that I took more of a notice to this time was how people were not comfortable with being uncomfortable as they read metaphors. As Erard says, people wanted certain terms, “because they’re conventional and recognizable”. That being said, people can take metaphors with comfortable terms and relate their lives to them, or even understand them better. Along with realizing this, I also took into consideration how much effort Erard put in to making each metaphor and its author credential by showcasing their education. However, I personally feel as though his “paintbrush as a pump” metaphor still does not make sense. Sure you can explain that a paintbrush moves liquids just as a pump would, but a pump can also push air through it, unlike a paintbrush. If a consumer were to look for paintbrushes and saw “paintbrush as a pump” on it’s package I feel like they would question it and not understand that both objects move liquids. Although I do not have any examples of my own, I believe there could be better ways to compare a paintbrush with another object that would be appealing to everyone, not just the designer.
Rereading the essay not only brought these views into light, but I was also able to better understand the major points that Erard made after “glossing the text”. When I first read the essay, I was unsure as to what he meant as he talked about “pseudo-mistakes” and their importance. Once I took the time to look up pseudo, I found that it meant fake/false, and was able to conclude that the term pseudo-mistake meant a fake mistake. Intended I guess you could say. Metaphor designers deliberately use this strategy to make their metaphors understandable. As if they had just been throwing words all over the floor, as Erard would say, and later examining them and testing their collaboration with the original object of comparison. If you spend hours miscategorizing an object, you may be able to find a similarity between said object and another member in that same category, as he did with a paintbrush and pump. After understanding this term, I was able to better understand what Erard was attempting to explain to his audience.
In conclusion, rereading this essay has created a better understanding, personally, as to how Erard was explaining the metaphor process, and how to create a meaningful one.
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