"Good Enough: Getting the writing written and letting it go"

One main point of this article is don't procrastinate. When you procrastinate you put pressure on yourself to get everything done at the last minute. When you're under pressure it could be more difficult to put your thoughts into words and keep these thoughts organized. You also give yourself less time to think about your topic. If you have a lot of time to think about the topic, you can come up with some really interesting and creative ideas. I also learned that it's okay to start with a messy first draft. First get your thoughts out, and then give yourself time to go back and organize and polish them up. This article also taught me that my writing doesn't have to be, and will never be perfect. There will always be something about your paper that you will want to change or think you can make it better. Perfect isn't always necessary, sometimes all you need is "Good Enough." This article relates to the Social Action Research Paper because we're writing these papers piece by piece so that we are not procrastinating. By doing it in pieces, the length of the paper isn't so overwhelming. It also relates because we do many drafts of each piece so that we can polish and organize our thoughts, and we need to realize that it will never perfect.

Living Sources: Interviews and Surveys

One thing that is a important when conducting interviews and surveys is to interview experts. Here are a few things to do to in order to find these experts are: check your sources and note who the authors are, look under a specific category in the phone book, ask your friends and instructors if they (or someone they know) can help, check your school's faculty directory, check encyclopedias, and check the internet. It also important to interview nonexperts, or people that have experienced and are knowledgable about the topic. Another important thing is that when you are conducting an interview it is important to make it natural, like a conversation. I also learned that conduct a successful survey first you must define your goals and audience. It's important to know what you want to know and who you want to get this information from. Then you have to choose your approach and decide what type of questions you want to use. Finally, you have to devise a way to distribute the surveys in a way that they will reach your targeted audience. In order to collect data for my project, I plan to conduct interviews among my friends because my targeted audience is teenage girls. I also plan on analyzing magazine ads and discuss their effects on the viewers.

Literature Review

From the first draft of my literature review, I learned how media effects body dissatisfaction and eating disorders among adolescent females. Although I have always thought that media does have a negative effect, I found some surprising facts and opinions that I did not know before. I think that my paper needs a literature review section because it is important to review all of the research and findings I will use throughout my paper. It shows the readers that I used credible sources and I am providing them with accurate information. The research that I found was basically what I expected, however the specific details I found were somewhat surprising. I feel that most of our population agrees on the fact that the media does influence eating disorders in the teenage female population, so I think that my research fits in well with my current knowledge. With my own research, I want to discover how my generation feels about eating disorders, most likely by interviewing my peers, because I feel that we are the ones that are most effected by it. I also would like to get a better idea of how many cases of eating disorders go unreported because I feel that this happens more often than them being reported. If I researched this, it would further support my argument and make it more effective.

The Art of Quoting

When writing papers, quoting is very important as it helps suppurt your argument. As one author points out, "Quoting someone else's words gives a tremendous amount of credibility to your summary and helps ensure that it is fair and accurate" (Graff, 2011). I agree with this statement because when you quote another author, it shows that research has been done on this topic before, and that someone else shares the same point of view as your own. This allows your argument to be more valid and persuasive. Although quoting is important and extremely useful, it is even more important that one knows how to use quoting correctly. Graff argues that "...the main problem with quoting arises when writers assume that quotations speak for themselves" (Graff, 2011). I agree with Graff's argument because I also think that it is important to explain your quote, not let it stand alone. If you do not show how the quote relates to or supports your argument, it is not as effective on the readers.

They Say, I Say

One main idea from chapter three is that to make an effective argument, you must use others' arguments. The best way to do this is by using direct quote. Therefore, you provide the reader with proof of the statement and it makes your argument accurate. It is important that when using quotes, one doesn't use too few or too many. If there are not enough quotes used, there may not be much support for your argument. If there are too many quotes used, there is not enough original thought provided to the reader. It also important when choosing quotes that they are relevant to your argument and that you are able to fully explain them: who said it, what it means, and how it is relevant to your argument. The main idea in chapter five is that although quoting is important, it is also important that the reader is able to distinguish who is saying what. The writer needs to differentiate when they expressing their own ideas, and when they are expressing the ideas of others. As a writer, you must provide subtle clues that allow the reader to know which ideas belong to whom. As a reader, you must look for these subtle clues and be able to analyze their meanings.