This blog post will go over what my notes mean and how I used them as well as what I can do to strengthen my research project. First I’ll go over my notes and then at the end I’ll talk about my plans for the research project and where I went wrong and how I’ll fix them.
The first thing that I want to reflect on is the MLA paper that I started writing. I thought I was going to write an MLA paper for this project because it seemed the easiest and least time consuming. However, when I started writing it, the ideas I had were flawed and beyond repair. I went through a lot of writing and rewriting and ended up with something that I really didn’t like. I thought about how I could improve my MLA paper, but I kept returning to this idea that I had much before. I wanted to try to write a persuasive piece in the style of The Jungle Book by Rudyard Kipling. I really liked the idea of short stories, which were too long so I made them allegories, to convey a message. I researched a lot of folklore and snagged ideas from here and there and mixed them in with my own to create my research project. I didn’t do all of the work on the MLA paper for nothing though. I reused some of the ideas from the notes I had and built stories from them. The second story I wrote (The Son) was heavily influenced by the need to learn about emotion when they experience it. Your brain remembers emotion very well, even if it isn't with clarity. Through my research, I learned of the importance of teaching your son about emotion early. Many of the ideas I had with the MLA paper carried over into the stories. When I started writing the allegories, I wrote them down as I saw them happening in my head. I knew I wanted one to be about parents and one to be about friends because that is where you learn the most from growing as a boy. I also added one about a mentor because I learned of their importance as well. I basically just splashed down all of the ideas I had without really caring about setting. I just wanted to make sure that the message i was trying to convey was at the heart of the allegory. As I started writing the actual allegories, the messages sort of evolved on their own to fit into the allegory and my research better. I was pretty unhappy with how my research project came out for one main reason. I did not have a lot of time to revise it which really screwed it over, and it came off as very confusing, admittedly even to me. If I had the chance to step back and reexamine my project I think it would have turned out much much better. I plan on adding explanations for everything and also plan on including some quotes and other such things that reinforce my position.
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This blog post is going to discuss my budding research project and the work I have done on it so far. There is a lot to consider when someone tells you to ask a question and then answer it. There is actually quite literally everything to consider.
When your task is to ask a question, the best way to at least narrow down what kind of question you want to ask by . . . asking more questions. What kind of question do I want to ask? What kind of answers do I want to have. Do I even want answers? I'm going to forgo all of that because I already know what I want to research. The question I have is “What is Hinduism.” I like this question for a couple reasons. A large part of my family lives in India where the main religion is Hinduism. Therefore, there are a lot of people I know who practice this religion daily. The other reason that I like this question is because of music. I really enjoy music with middle eastern and Asian influences. Listening to more and more music of this kind has made me interested in the faith. Lastly, I also do not know a lot about the religion so this will be a learning experience. I haven’t done any formal research yet so I’m just going to outline my plan here. This way it is also in writing. The first part of it is the research. I think that I need to get sources from everywhere. Ever since the Beatles associated themselves with Hinduism in the late 60s, there has been a lot of western input in the discussion. I think that it is useful because it offers a much different perspective than what I would get if I only researched historical options. I think that a lot of my focus however should go into researching the values and the why behind the traditions. I think it is definitely useful to know that people who practice Hinduism worship cows, but not knowing why is like reading every other word in a book. The next part of the research would be to look into the daily practices of it. I will try to reach out to my extended family in India for this. I think hearing it from someone who lives it will probably be the most helpful in the way of understanding the faith. If that is not possible though, I think that there are plenty of online sources to help me find what I am looking for. The writing part of this project will definitely be ruminated on later. I think that once I get more research together, the direction of the project will look clearer, and I will begin the writing process then. The me of tomorrow will likely be understandably disappointed. After reading the summary of The Mask You Live In (Discussion Guide), I affirmed a lot of the things that I have been told and that I know about myself. In this blog post, I’m going to look at how this made me feel, what it made me think, and what it makes me want to change.
Before I start the discussion, one of the quotes that made me think a lot was “Every boy measures his masculinity, at the deepest level, against his dad.” I think that this is something that is at or very near the heart of the problem. When someone describes a father figure, they usually describe someone who is strong for the people who look up to them as well as fair and decisive. They could also say that he is a personal hero. While none of these traits are inherently bad, I think that the pressure and the push to conform to them ultimately cultivates toxic masculinity. The difference between what I felt after watching Miss Representation and reading this summary is definitely unfair to Miss Representation because I can understand The Mask You Live In more personally. I think this one made me feel a little upset at myself because things that seemed meaningless in elementary school and early on in my years actually carved my path directly to the trap of masculinity. Seeing a girl break down when a teacher scolded her versus seeing a boy shrug it off chisels the idea of toughness into your mind. Many small moments such as this build up the mask that guys wear. This film made me think about what I can do to get myself to express my emotions more openly. I think that understanding the root of the problem has shed a new light on my worldview. It was also kind of raw. It feels weird to have your psyche dissected like this especially if it has to do with masculinity because I feel that masculinity kind of pushes away the thought process of the whole thing and just says it is going to be this way. I also thought about playing sports as a child. I used to play soccer for a team and my coach would always tell us to be aggressive. If you are not getting to the ball first then the other team is. It rewards behaviors that anywhere else would be toxic and I think that when you are younger, the line between what is acceptable in certain situations and what is not is significantly fuzzier. I think that this film has made me want to change more internally than anything externally. I think that as I experience more of life, I want to perceive it in a more accepting way and learn to see through the mask to understand things. I think that we have made the first step to a solution by naming the problem. While that is great progress towards boys feeling better about themselves and in turn taking steps toward gender equality, there is still a hell of a road to be paved ahead of us. After watching the film Miss Representation (Script) (Discussion Guide), it has raised some questions as well as discussion points about the media, feminism, and where we find ourselves today. In this blog post I will discuss what I learned from the movie as well as the impact it has had on the way I view these topics.
Miss Representation places a lot of the blame for the societal ravine between women and men on the media. I think that's a valid viewpoint, but I don’t think it is the only one. I think trying to place all of the blame on one thing for gender inequality can’t be correct because the disparity has been around for thousands of years. If there was only one factor, I feel it would be impossible to have half of the people on earth marginalized for that long. While watching the film, there were definitely some emotional stories and statistics. I felt sympathetic for a lot of the women who faced barrier after barrier and attack after attack just to get the same thing as the guy next to them. I also felt ashamed in a way because I have fallen into the same trap as so many other guys where I think that I can’t show emotion. It is kind of scary to think about it as well because after a while it kind of just becomes part of your identity and you forget where it came from. I definitely learned a lot about women’s rights as well as a lot of history behind it. In high school there was never really a lot of attention put on women in power. Many of the events surrounding the push for women's suffrage and later movements in the 80s are all very briefly covered. I also learned that without role models, women don’t want to make the leap of faith and advance the movement. But this does not apply to only women. I think that anyone feels less motivation to do something if they are the first to do it. If you have to cross a shitty wooden bridge in the middle of the amazon jungle, you're going to want to be anywhere but the front. The film has not made me want to change a lot, however, I think that the film made me change whether I wanted to or not. I think that just by watching the film, I will subconsciously be more considerate towards women. I don’t mean to say that I’m not considerate to women. I just think that by knowing some more of the things that women face everyday just by being a girl, I will sympathize more. However, I also feel kind of hesitant to add my voice. To me, the message of this movement feels slightly undermined when a guy adds his voice. I think that the higher the number of females in positions of power is, the easier it will become to have both women and men contribute openly to gender equality. |
“If you want to be a writer, you must do two things above all: Read a lot and write a lot”
- Stephen King AuthorHello. I'm Raj. Nice to meet you. Archives
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