I kind of dropped the ball with the blogs for this project. It is real unfortunate that I did. I enjoy these blogs sometimes. They get me thinking and let my reader(s) know what I think of my various assignments. So this blog, as the title states, is supposed to be about what I thought of the project we just completed. The idea of the project I thought was really good. It made my peers open their eyes and look into why and how certain texts can have such a huge effect on a certain person or an entire culture. I think one of the problems with society today and probably throughout all of society is that people are ignorant. They never like to learn more about people and try to understand other cultures. I will admit that I am ignorant on a lot of things but the difference between me and the majority of society is that I am willing to learn. That whole saying that "ignorance is bliss" is a bunch of poppycock. The less you know, the less helpful to the world you are. It is always important to be informed to know what is going on so you are not left behind in your "blissful" world while the rest of us decide to pack up and move on.
I decided to use the word "gay" for my unethical text because it is a word today that most people use as a synonym for dumb and other insult words. Hearing this word used in the wrong context all the time and having several gay friends I already had a basic knowledge of how the word was being used unethically but I wanted to know more. I was amazed at how much I learned about the hardships of being homosexual in today's society. The high suicide rates, the origin of certain homosexual insults. Each disturbing fact I uncovered intrigued me even more and provided me a lot of research to write this paper with. The part that I did not understand and had trouble with this during this project was trying to be unbiased. I was confused as to how we were supposed to write an objective paper on something that we find to be subjectively unethical...but despite that obstacle I managed to write, what I and my peer editor believe, a pretty darn good paper. Obviously I noticed a little opinion in my writing but nothing can be 100% bias free, but I incorporated a lot of various facts and history of how "gay" is used unethically today. One of the troubles that I had again in this paper is revising. I know you said to do more research and that will help, but I could only find so much research without repeating myself. Like I said last time, I write papers to produce the final product. As a math major I am programmed to produce the final correct answer. If you need to revise your answer then you did it wrong. The combination of that thinking process and my peer reviewers not providing thorough notes, I find it very difficult to change anything about my paper. I even purposefully tried to sabotage myself so I could have something to revise which I wound up rewriting the Prop 8 paragraph near the end. I am not saying that the revision process is useless by any means, I just wish that I had someone who would truly revise my paper and try to tell me what I need to add or change or what sounds awkward so I can actually improve my writing. Other than that speed bump I think my paper went pretty well actually. My creative piece is probably my favorite part. I have to give credit to my roommate for helping my brainstorm about this idea. I feel like it probably could have used some color but with the materials I had available I think the absent of color actually makes it stand out more and adds to the message a little bit.
