How to Tell Personal Stories

I really enjoyed reading "Writing Family History and Memoir" from William Zinssner because it gave insight to strategies that writers use when collecting information and writing a memoir. For this upcoming final project I feel like if I did not read this piece I wouldn't have asked the right questions to my family over thanksgiving break. I feel like I was planning on asking questions to them that I already knew the answer to. This would have made for a fabricated, unoriginal project. One of my favorite things that Zinssner said "Your biggest stories will often have to do less with their subject than the significance–not what you did in a certain situation, but how that situation shaped you." I feel like when you are collecting information before writing you may think of a situation that you vividly remember that did not create anything physical but it played a major part in how you changed your thinking from then on. Another strategy he talked about was collecting as much information as you can from who you are interviewing and from there you can read it over and the story will unfold. This method is more truthful and original than collecting the information you want for your story. Instead let them tell the story then just put it all together. This is what Zinssner said, "They will tell you what your memoir is about–and what it's not about. Once the information is gathered the story is right in front of you. You will be able to see how much you should talk about a subject and how little you should talk about another. It will become clear from all of this and when you have it in front of you, just focus on what's important and condense it into a shorter version. "They will tell you what's interesting, what's not, what's emotional, what's important and what's worth expanding."

Tweet: Sir Ken Robinson's TED Talk

Ken Robinson thinks that our educational system causes us to grow out of our creativity and we become afraid to be wrong #DontKillCreativity

Plagiarism: Ethical Issue or Educational Issue?

In Susan Blum's text "Academic Integrity and Student Plagiarism: a Question of Education, Not Ethics" she brings about some new thoughts about an old topic of students vs. plagiarism. Her thoughts about the subject, as you can see in the title, present the topic of plagiarism not as a topic of ethics but one of education. At colleges across the country students are told not to plagiarize when they agree to the institution's honor code. She says "Such codes appeal to the desire of students to do the right thing. The codes assume that, with appropriate social pressure, they will." This is the only way colleges right now are enforcing students not to plagiarize. Blum proposes that students already break a vast majority of other rules included in the honor code why would this one be any different. "The laws regarding drinking, for instance, are routinely flouted at almost every college, and those regarding music downloading, a form of sharing intellectual property, are broadly disregarded." This scare-tactic method might not be the most effective way to tame a generation of college students who already disregard the other rules of their institution. Blum believes that teaching students why to plagiarize their work instead of scaring them with punishments is a more promising way to instill these ideas in students. "Treating academic integrity as a constellation of skills, taught largely through the long apprenticeship of higher education, is the most promising approach for getting students to follow the rules of academic citation, and the one with the least likelihood of providing a shortcut." I think that Blum makes a good point and it sounds good on paper but in reality there just aren't enough college students who want to learn why they can't plagiarize. Most just accept it and cite their work so they do not get thrown out of college. Although this may be the way it should be taught, it just isn't practical enough for the majority of college students. 

 

 

What does "I" Look Like?

In Phillip Lopate's writing on "The Personal Essay and the First-Person Character" he describes how big of an impact using the letter "I" in an essay has. Describing yourself is not an easy thing to do by any means, especially through text. Lopate says "the first step is to acquire some distance from yourself." I think that this is an interesting thought and one people often do not do. Think about if you were anybody else, how would people see you? what would you look like to them? For some people this is a scary thought, but it can be used to improve writing and storytelling especially in works about you. For my final project in College Writing I have to show my class/teacher who I am, why I'm at Manhattan College and who has been the biggest help in getting me here, all in a 15 minute video. It seems near impossible to show strangers who you are and give them the best image of yourself in that short amount of time. I am definitely going to have to use Lopate's strategy and step-back for a second and think about what makes me, me. It may be a difficult story to tell at first but once you are able to gather your thoughts and figure out what makes you different from everybody else it will start falling into place. Whether you are writing a personal essay or creating a short video, whenever you use the letter "I" make sure that they know who that is really talking about.

News Reporting: The Whole Story

In Alma Guillermoprieto's text "Telling the Story, Telling the Truth" she discusses her techniques and tendencies for reporting the news throughout the years. One of the most interesting things she said was her take on news addiction. She described it as "an ethical desire to participate as a citizen of the world community." She also said "Hard news doesn't give us the knowledge or ability to do that." This provoked my thoughts about how news is reported. Hard news that we often watch on CNN or Fox is reported using hard facts to an extent. They choose to report the facts that they want to support their beliefs and sway the thoughts of the general population. Because most people will watch the news and take it for what its worth, but very few will investigate what the news said and try to uncover the whole truth, not just the perspective of one or two news channels. She claims that she is a reporter who wants to reveal the whole story by not just revealing her own opinions and facts but she reads numerous amounts of material from other authors on the subject so that she can support what she said by previous writers. Similar to writing an essay you have to support what you write with other references because this strengthens your claims. I don't like how she rambled on about her own personal strategies in news reporting in general. She talked about how/why she liked to put her "opinions" into her reports and use "personal pronouns." I feel like everybody has different strategies and telling the readers how you write is not interesting, at least to me it's not. Overall, I think her text had some good information and was thought provoking in the topic of news and how much of it you should take with a grain of salt.