Face to Face on my Horrible Draft

English: South facade of the Temple of Artemis seen from the South Theatre in Jerash, Jordan (Photo credit: Wikipedia)

A couple of days after the peer review on my critical analysis draft, I read it again.  Suddenly, it was horrible.  I don't know how this happened.  So, I went to my conference with Dr. Toffee last week under a cloud of angst.  It wasn't too bad.  She suggested a few tweaks for my thesis statement, and -- for once -- I saw what was wasn't working in the way I had put it.  She liked my explanation of my critical model, especially the parts about Artemis and Atalanta; I was kind of nervous about that, so it was a relief for me.  The analysis has to be reorganized some.  I need to put in a few references to other scenes from The Hunger Games to show that it's not just in the scene I'm focusing on that Katniss is following the archetypes.

All in all, it went okay.  I guess the draft wasn't as horrible as I thought.

Related articles

• Hunger Games Horrible Lip-Reading (kiss951.cbslocal.com)
• Francis Lawrence To See Out The HUNGER GAMES Series (badassdigest.com)
• 105WS Investigative Story: Prospectus with Annotated Bibliography (drkblog.wordpress.com)

Picking a Thesis the Hard Way

Childhood Secrets (Photo credit:
 Lisa M Photography)

I'm a few days behind in posting this (I already had a peer review on my draft), but I was having problems with my thesis the whole time I was writing the draft.  I couldn't decide whether I wanted to just look at my own rocky relationship with my sister (who shall remain nameless) or take a wider view of the situation.  For the first, the thesis was something like "I learned, too early, not to trust the people closest to me."  The second one was "Kids like to ruin other kids' happy childhoods. 

After the peer review, I wound up somewhere in between the two.

Related articles

• What made you pick up your first book? (sammydelali.wordpress.com)
• Universal (nikonusa.com)
• The Gold Party (rockstarronan.com)
• Post 20: I can thank Harry Potter for my childhood (maryhappyface.wordpress.com)
• A Good Childhood (childhoodstudies.wordpress.com)
• How do I make peace with my 51-year-old baby brother? (ask.metafilter.com)

I Crash and Burn, But Get Saved in the End

The Scent of Crash and Burn (Photo credit: Wikipedia)

Well, it's kind of obvious that I am having trouble keeping up with my workload.  I really should have cut back my hours at the store, but I need the money.  At the same time, I can't afford to waste the money I spent on the course, so I went to see Dr. Toffee about my problems -- she asked us to come see her if we were thinking of dropping.  And then she did something amazing.

She GAVE me a thesis for my research paper.  Of course, she brainstormed with me for a while and asked all kinds of questions about what I saw in Avatar (incidentally, my research proposal was a mess.  I didn't re-read the instructions before I wrote it, so it didn't make much sense), before she came up with three (!) different possible claims I could make about it.  She recommended that I take the easiest one, which was "Quaritch is an ableist villain," because the draft is due on 7/9.  I can do it, I think.

I didn't know that a teacher could do that, so I was kind of shocked.  She said that I was already thinking that anyway and all she did was put it into words, and I guess that's true, but I'm feeling sort of guilty about it.  That doesn't mean I'm not going to use it, though.  So now all I have to do is write a bunch more journal entries before midnight tonight (the checkpoint deadline), and then I'll get started on the draft.  I have the weekend off at work since I have to work the 4th of July sale (doesn't that just suck?), so the timing is good.

Related articles

• James Cameron to shoot three Avatar sequels at once (digitaltrends.com)
• Like The Movie 'Avatar?' Get Ready For Three 'Avatar' Sequels (manolith.com)

Another Thought about Another Writer

Image via WikipediaI've spent the last few minutes trying to decompress from finishing my paper, and I can tell that I'm probably not going to get to sleep just yet (only one class today, at 12:30PM, so I may get a nap before then).  I was thinking about the peer review I got on my draft (a bunch of useless, single-word answers to analytic questions), which made me think about the paper I reviewed.  The guy who wrote it (and who reviewed my draft) always shows up to class, but he doesn't take any notes, and his draft was only around 5 pages long.  It made mine look like a masterpiece -- his thesis made no sense (the topic was sustainability) and wasn't arguable, as far as I could see.  After that was introduced, if you can call what he had an introduction, he had a bunch of random quotations (from people he didn't introduce), and he didn't discuss them at all, just went on to making some points-- or trying to. 
It made me crazy:  after 8 weeks of researching and thinking and writing, this was the best he could do?  It was supposed to be a second or third draft, but it barely qualified as prewriting.  How does he think he's going to pass the course.  From now on, every time I think that I'm getting obsessive about school, I am going to remember him as the perfect example of how not to succeed.

Related articles

• Friday Foolery #39. Peer Review LOL, How to Write a Comment & The Best Rejection Letter Evvah! (laikaspoetnik.wordpress.com)
• Peer Review Guidelines (Paper 1, Draft 2) (20803writingworkshop.wordpress.com)
• Writer's block (camillejoven.wordpress.com)