Procrastination DOES NOT Equal Relaxation

For our blog this week, we were asked to write about what we have learned not only from our research paper topic, but also what we have learned through the process of writing it. The biggest lesson learned for me would definitely be DON'T PROCRASTINATE. I waited till 2 days before the paper to actually start writing it which was not a very smart idea. I was a lot more stressed out than I should have been and I did not get very much sleep. Also, if I had written it ahead of time I would have had time to look at it and revise it before the peer draft reviews so that I could have submitted my best work. Instead I just submitted the first very rough draft, which may not have been the smartest idea. I was in such a rush that I did not even write an outline which I usually HAVE to do in order to keep my thoughts organized. Once I was done with my introduction and I had no idea where to go or what to say I had to put the paper aside and write an outline. I just could not do it freestyle. I also am happy to say that the research paper helped me learn how to use ebsohost. I had never used it for any other project, but when I realized that the majority of my classmates were using it for the research project, I figured there MUST be something special about it and it must be useful somehow because of all the hullaballoo I was hearing about it. I found out I could have definitely saved myself a trip to the library I had just resorted to ebscohost before.

On another note, my topic was about how the Islamic law which was being used as a foundation for the Iranian law, appeared to be very anti-feministic and dangerous to women. I never knew how hard women had it in Iran. I never felt so privileged and lucky to be American and to have the freedom to be my own person. The part of my project that truly made me the most upset to write was when I started listing out laws that definitely portray not-so-subtle hints of anti-feminism. They had harsher punishments for women than males such as if they were sentenced to get stoned, men would only have to sit in the pit up to their waist, but for women it was up to their neck. If they were caught fornicating they got whipped and if they were caught wearing the wrong kind of attire they were whipped. There was one part in the actual Iranian constitution that stated that a woman's life is valued only HALF as much as a man's. I was outraged when I wrote this portion so the people that had to review my paper probably saw how strongly I felt about this portion of my paper. Although these laws are bad enough, the last one that I learned about is the absolute worst. If a woman is murdered by a man, the victims family has to pay money to the murderers family for any injuries procured on the man by the victim. Then, and only then, will the murderer or abuser be taken into jail. It is crazy learning that there are countries that have these brutal rules and subject women to so much physical abuse. Thank God I'm an American.

"Paper Paper Go Away, Come Again Another Day"

So I have a little problem. It is called the research paper and its supposed to be about a topic that we were supposed to pick and relate to Iran. I also have another little problem I sort of contracted that procrastination disease that seems to come from time to time where you say your going to work on it and then you don't over and over and over again. It seems to infect most college students and high school students because for some reason we seem a little more susceptible to it than the average person. Okay Okay I admit it I have not gotten very far on my paper at all. I am working on it more today so it will still be done earlier than the due date, but I know that I should have done more on it sooner. This morning I was dreading the fact that I still have so much to do on the paper and wishing I had been one of the smarter people that had finished the draft a while back.

I want to do my paper on women's rights in Iran because I think that it will be the easiest topic for me to relate to. At first I started writing my paper on the prompt that we were given that compared The Great Gatsby with Reading Lolita in Tehran, but then I realized that I could not find my Rlit book because it had gotten lost in the confusion when I had moved two weeks ago. I didn't notice that it was gone until I needed to find a quote and did not have the book there to look at so I was back to square one. One thing that I am not looking forward to is writing the works cited because like I've said before a number of times, MLA format is not one of my expertise. I am actually not very good at it at all even if I use the citation machine generator. The things that I type into the boxes to create the citation end up being wrong. I think I just need to practice a little more because practice makes perfect.

So far my biggest problem in writing the paper besides procrastination was creating the outline. I did something called brainstorming and wrote down everything I could possible thing of on a scratch piece of paper and just went from there. I had a hard time deciding what I was going to put where and I was and am still scared that I am not going to reach the five page minimum. I tend to write more in an essay than what is required, but I still worry about it because I don't want to sound redundant. As I sit here and sip my coffee at this very moment I am looking for even more sources to add to the paper to avoid that situation.

I think once I get started on the paper again and into the full swing than everything will come out smoothly. I think that I just have a little bit of worry wart in me, but I guess you could say it's in my genetics. Good luck to everyone on your papers! I hope we all do a great job and reach that page requirement.

Reality Check

So the blog for this week is going to be about one of the somewhat modern marvels of our generation. Something called "e-mail". It's this new way of talking accept you don't talk. You communicate through typing on the internet and you don't have to look at the person you talk to, you don't even have to know the person. You don't have to use complete sentences and you don't have to carry on conversations. If it sounds like I am against e-mailing than I can't lie, I can't lie. I think that e-mailing, even though I am a huge fan of it, is ruining the way people communicate entirely.

We no longer have to actually talk to our teachers, we can just send an e-mail and get a prompt response if we have any questions or concerns. We can get to know people and make friends from e-mailing on websites like MySpace or Facebook. Even huge purchases like buying cars or renting houses can be done entirely through e-mail. Moral of the story is, e-mailing makes life easier. BUT Do we really need life to be any easier? Whatever happened to student teacher relationships? What happened to having to make your own friends in person? Or take a look at the dating sites where people meet their soul mates through e-mailing. Whatever happened to finding that someone on your own and face to face? Because e-mailing and the computer has always been around in my life sometimes I want to know what it would be like without all these advancements in technology.

I really had a reality check a few months ago. I was watching a classic television show that I'm sure we have all watched at one time, Sesame Street, with one of the children I teach. I was very startled to see that Elmo was teaching the children how to e-mail. Last time I checked Sesame Street did a great job at teaching children their numbers, the alphabet, and how to read and it was geared more for children in lower elementary grades and under. The fact that they are introducing the children to e-mailing this young is disturbing to me and the fact that they are wasting time on this kind of stuff instead of focusing on what they have always been good at also bothers me. I think that e-mailing is definitely going to change the future generations. I think that since e-mailing has started to replace certain types of communication, it will progressively get worst. I think eventually, hopefully a loooooong time from now, e-mailing and texting will replace speaking entirely and the spoken language will cease to exist.