Thlog #3- WP 1, More Like WP DONE.

You know that psychology experiment conducted by Ivan Pavlov? It’s the one with the dogs that are conditioned to salivate at the sound of a bell, because they learned to associate food with that sound. I am like one of Pavlov’s dogs, except instead of drooling when I hear a bell, I have been conditioned to nervously sweat when I hear someone utter “WP-1.”

 In other words, writing my WP-1 was a struggle, and looking at other people’s thlogs, it seems that others share my sentiment. Understanding the prompt was at first a bit difficult for me, but I eventually figured it out (I think???) and managed to write 4-5 pages of what I hope made sense. I never really had problems writing theses for those run-of-the-mill five paragraph essays assigned in high school, but writing a thesis for this paper was kind of hard for me; I’m not really sure if I formatted it correctly/addressed the right things. But the main thing that I wrestled with was figuring out a balance among talking about my topic, the genres, and the three sources. I kind of felt that I focused a lot on analyzing the genre, and maybe I should’ve tied in the topic more? *heavy sigh* I don’t know, I suppose it’s in the universe’s hands now. On a less dejected note, like I mentioned in my previous thlog, I am really appreciating the writing tips that Zack has been giving during class. For writing my WP-1, I thought the reverse outline and the highlighting activity were particularly useful. The reverse outline reminded me of what main ideas I am (and should be) focusing on, and the highlighting drew attention to the fact that my brain was out to lunch at one point and I had forgotten to include evidence from the readings in my analysis (which I then immediately added a reprimanding comment on my Google Doc to remind me to do so once I got home.)

Anyways, WP-2 is now on the horizon, and though my conditioned fear of the word still lingers, with the help of a few deep breaths and some positive thinking I am going to muster up every bit of writing prowess I have and face this thing head on. #SuckItPavlov