Sandhya Pandey
Dr. Boone
16 December 2015
Analyzing

Before this class, English 110, I was accustomed to writing the traditional five paragraph essay about whatever topic my teacher had told me to take a side on. And as always I had become used to being praised for my argumentative essays. But, English 110 had something completely different in store for me. It challenged me to think beyond my boundaries, and join forces and communicate with the entire class to write about my topic and somehow make connections with them all. In Module I, about the article “writing and thinking analytically” By David Rosenwasser and Jill Stephen really showed me as a writer how to analyze; which was as the class went on was quite a difficult task for me. I had to understand “To analyze something is to ask what that something means” (Rosenwasser & Stephen, 1), I had become familiar with the way my thought process worked, and how I analyzed day to day things. And now I realized that analyzing is something we all do all the time without even thinking about it. And to become a better writer is to “become more aware of your own thinking process, building on skills that you already possess and eliminating habits that get in the way” (Rosenwasser & Stephen, 1). This class helped me to stay away from making judgements and steer closer to asking myself questions and explore outside of just agree and disagree. From doing the different assignments, I really found myself engaging more and more with the authors of the various articles. Like Linda Barry taught her class to take on creative forms of writing and thinking by asking her students to keep a diary where they had to draw instead of write, so they can "begin to notice when we notice something." (Barry, 2). I thought this was a very not only interesting but self-enlightening thing she had said because when one when one notices something the first time, you start seeing it everywhere without even trying, also known as the baader-meinhof phenomenon. And it really helped me understand how I noticed the differences in my writing from how I used to communicate before and now. In Module II, our dead media class project. This project was one of the most interesting things I had to do, where we took an object and showed how it was dead to us. When I was thinking about the object(s) that were dead to me, what struck out the most to me was sounds. Dead sounds or listening to music in different ways. I analyzed how the way we listen to music evolved as music itself was changing from generation to generation. When we think of dead media, we think that because something new and fancy came out that was the cause of the previous object to die, but that is not the case. I have to agree when Bruce Sterling said in his Dead Media Manifesto that the “Radio didn't kill newspapers, TV did not kill radio or movies, video and cable did not kill broadcast network TV; they just all jostled around seeking a more perfect app.” (Sterling, Alamut). We still listen to the radio, not as much as we used to but if you ask an ordinary person of any age, they can tell you what a radio is and how it works; it is in fact installed in our cars with fair reception. But some forms of listening to music do in fact perish like the Victrola, which some people know of, but do not use. People might use it as an antique furniture, but it is not an everyday way of listening to music. In part two of module II, dead media was also present in World War Two in the form of propaganda. The use of cartoons, and witty word play, to get the citizens of United States to join the war going on overseas. People still use political cartoons, but not in the way it was used in World War Two. Being a curator of the exhibit it was my job to draw connections between ideas of others in the group. I found that mostly everybody was writing about World War II and the Vietnam War, I then realized that both wars used propaganda but they were different. World War II was promoting the war, and Vietnam was promoting peace but both used emotion to get people to agree with their ideas. As the whole curating group we had found it hard to come up these connections and we really had to analyze and read through everyone’s labels.
In module III, the research essay I had chosen to go beyond my boundaries and comfort zone and talk about cultural appropriation in Taylor Swift’s music video “Wildest Dreams” and “Shake it off.” This was one of the most not only interesting but also one of the most challenging articles I may have written in this class, because again I had to analyze instead of trying to fix the problems people and critics had with her videos. When I began the essay I thought not knowing much about cultural appropriation that it is an easy fix. But as I read more and more about this topic, and every time I had to revise, I realized that this is way more complicated and if I try to even consider fixing it, it would be a gruesome experience. There is no way to make everyone happy when it comes to someone’s culture. But what I learned from this research essay was to appreciate one another’s cultures by doing some research on the culture they are trying to copy, rather than using their stereotypical image that everyone has made of them. The big issue with cultural appropriation is that people of another race do not get the respect they need from the people copying them. “Focusing on uncertainty can foster latent curiosity, while emphasizing clarity can convey a warped understanding of knowledge” (Holmes, 1). When someone stereotypes another it is seen as mundane, because it shows that, the person exploiting someone else’s culture did not feel the need to clarify the uncertainty they had which did not give rise to their latent curiosity to explore and understand one’s culture and background. And I had made the same mistake about my uncertainty to cultural appropriation.
Jamie Holmes said in her article that “the time has come to view ignorance as regular rather than deviant…our students will be more curious – and more intelligently so – if, in addition to facts, they were equipped with theories of ignorance as well as theories of knowledge.” (Holmes). I believe this class has taught me that being ignorant or unaware is okay, because we are unaware of many things and think we know it all, but in fact it is usually the quite opposite. Being unaware is what drives us to be curious and facts are always ever changing and so we are just challenging and revising these thoughts and ideas. I learned a lot in this class, I was taught how to make connections in my writing and not just stating facts. I also had a great opportunity to do a class collaboration as well, where I also had to make connections through what everyone else was writing about. And most of all I learned to analyze what people had to say and then make my own ideas and theories out of theirs.

Holmes, Jamie. “The Case for Teaching Ignorance”. The New York Times. 24 Aug. 2015 Web.
11 Dec. 2015.
Sterling, Bruce. “The DEAD MEDIA Project: A Modest Proposal and a Public Appeal.” Alamut.
28 Sep. 1998. Web. 9 Dec. 2015.
Stephen, Jill, Rosenwasser, David. “Writing Analytically: Third Edition.” Michael Rosenberg
N.d. Print. 9 Dec. 2015.
Barry, Linda. “The Near Sighted Monkey.” Tumbler. N.d. Web. 11 D