2001 A Space Odyssey Rough Draft 1

Evaluating something is very difficult to do when one does not understand the subject. After watchign 2001 A Space Odyssey, a science fiction film directed by Stanly Kubick in 1968, I had many unanswered queestions. To fully understand this movie, I had to do some research online. Even then, many parts of it were still vague. I believe this is how Kubick intended for it to be. This would be the reason that he chose to have very little dialogue in this film. He tried to tell the story through imagery. Some things were very well represented, while others were never explained, and are still disputed about today.
Personally, I had a hard time sitting through the film. Most of the time, I sat in silence, wondering, "what is going on?" I found it very interesting that Kubick started the movie out with apes. This obviously symbolized the theory of evolution. I am sure that when this movie came out, this simple start of the story provoked many positive and negative feelings. At the time this movie was produced, evolution wasn't something that was accepted very much yet. This was a brave step, in my opinion. In this beginning segment, the first monolith is discovered by the apes. It was neat to see how Kubick believed we began to evolve, using tools as weapons.
Just after showing the monkeys beginning to use tools, the movie jumps millions of years ahead in just a few seconds. A simple plot line begins to play out as a scientist is brought to the moon to examine a monolith that was found. This part of the movie is vague, but that is expected. I woudl assume that the next segment of the film would begin to answer the many questions I had rolling around in my head, but it only posed even more confusing subjects. At the end of this part of the movie, the sun strikes the monolith as scientists are tryign to take a picture with it When this happens, a horrible shrieking sound is produced.
In the third section, we are introduced to Hal 9000, as scientists jouney to Jupiter. Hal 9000 is the ship's on board computer system. It speaks and runs more of the ship's operations. When I first saw this, I could only think about the funny jewelry store commercials with the GPS systems talking to the driver. I find it interesting that nearly 35 years ago, Kubick was able to make a prediction about takling computer systems. It must have sounded funny at the time, but it was a realizeic guess of how things might be in the future. In the movie, scientists fid out there is some sort of error causing the ship to fail within a certain amount of time. After examinging all of the equipment, they find out the error is in the hal 9000, which was supposed to be flawless. Hal 0--- speaks to the scientists, insisting that the problem is not with him, but in human error. Hal makes a suggestion to fix the problem. Hesitantly, the scientists agree to Hal's idea. The scientists talk in private, discussing how they will have to shut Hal down if the idea fails. Hal reads their lips without them knowing. This reminds me of the Disney movie "Smart House", where a home computer security system goes crazy and locks the whole family inside the house. I did not realize that there were so many movies and ideas that probably spawned from 2001 A Space Odyssey.
After a brief intermission, the film resumes as the scientists begin to try to fix the ship's problem. During this, Hal tries to eliminate the scientists that plotted to shut him off. He does so by knocking him witht he oxygen hose. Another scientist goes out to save him. When they return, Hal refuses to let them inside. I find it funny that when the second scientist goes out to save the first, he does not wear a helmet. Obviously, Kubick had hopes that sceince technology would allow us to do such a thing in space in the future; however, that has not happened. The scientists sneak into the ship and try to get to Hal's memorty center to disconnect him. Hal tries to reason that everything will be okay, but is ignored. When Hal is shut off, a prerecorded message begins to play. it explains that intelligent life had been found somewhere other than Earth. It talked about the monolith and why it was burried.
In the last segment of the movie, one of the scientists leaves the ship and finds a third monolith orbiting Jupiter. This is when the "Star Gate" is introduced, as the scientist travels through a colorful tunnel. At the end of the tunnel, the scienist finds himself in a strange room, watching an older version of himself dying. As he is ready to die, a monolith in the room changes him into a fetus, which begins to light up and float away, to the next Earth. This is the end of the movie. Confusing, right? Strangely, I like that I don't exactly know what everything is. It keeps me wondering. It makes me think about all of the possibilities of what it could mean. I think this is one of the reasons that this is though of as such an influential and important film. Nobody really knows what Kubick was thinking when he directed it... and I think he wanted it that way.

Never forget the Rhetorical Situation

For this week, we were to read about evaluating. Of course, it started out with a simple example story. I usually just skim over these, reading the beginning and ends of paragraphs because I find them boring. The reading then went on to menion the key features of evaluations. This was very helpful, since I don't really know how to properly evaluate something. Most of the key features were pretty self explanitory. Obviously, one should begin with a brief description of the subject. This is so with just about any paper that is an evaluation or analysis.
The reading then went on to once again mention the rhetorical situation. I feel this has been restated in jsut about every reading we have had to do out of this book. So once again, we must consider purpose, audience, stance, and media/design. It is good that it restates this so often, because it is clearly engraved in my brain, and I think of it often when I write a paper now.
The most helpful part of this reading was the part about ways of organizing an evaluation. Usually, when writing a paper, the part that I have the most trouble with is the part about getting my ideas organized. This was helpful. =)

Starting out and wrapping it up

For today's reading, the focus was mainly on learning how to improve our writing with the beginning and ending of our essays. This was perfect timing to read something like this because I have really been struggling with coming up with a good beginning and end. As we went through in class reading our first and second drafts with our peers, I was told that I mainly needed to work on two things: grabbing the readers attention from the beginning, and making my essay coming to a closing without being too abrupt.
I was able to go through what is necessary in both an intoduction and a conclusion and make sure that I knew what I needed in my paper still. I learned that in an introduction, it is necessary to include the main idea of the topic, the thesis, background information, and grab the reader's interest somehow. I had thought about whether to begin with a question or not. I like the idea of beginning with a quote but I feel my paper already has a lot of quotes in it. I also found out those elements necessary for a good conclusion. It is very much like introducing everything, but in a more repetitive format. It is making sure the reader knows the main topics, the overal thesis, and the importance of the paper. If one cannot see from the conclusion why the paper was important- the paper is a failure.
Personally, I always have trouble coming up with a thesis. I read through my paper and could not figure out for myself which sentence was my thesis. It all sort of merged together. I would like to work on going through and better organizing my ideas in a format that anyone could read my introduction or conclusion and see my overall thesis.

How to pick apart a reading

Thank goodness I read this before beginning my rhetorical analysis writing. This reading was definitely helpful in every way. First of all, it gave me great ideas on how to get started as I begin reading what I will be writing my rhetorical analysis on. I best liked the idea of skimming through the text, only reading the beginning and end paragraphs, beginning to middle paragraphs, titles, headings, etc. THEN, going back and reading the actual paper. I also really liked the annotating idea. I often do this when reading chapters for my classes. I make note of things in the margins (very helpful to come back to) and underline important information. I will most definitely do this when I read through my reading for my paper.
This reading also gave many ideas for organizing ideas so that I can best get information out of my reading. The thing that it suggested that I do most often now is an outline. Usually, I use an outline for my paper before I begin writing it, but I liked that this reading suggested to outline the actual reading before writing anything else. This is helpful to not only understand the main idea of what the paper is about, but to also get the smaller ideas throughout each paragraph that are easy to forget once the whole paper is read.

Similar but oh-so-different

I have always thought of editing and proofreading to be the same thing. Apparently, I've been really wrong. Upon reading the assignment for today, I was able to clearly distinguish the difference between editing and proofreading- something I definitely could not have done before.
I found the part on editing (which took up 3/4 of the reading) to be the most helpful. Usually when editing a paper, I simply start at the beginning and go through correcting things as I go. I usually have to do this quite a few times before I notice everything. I liked how this reading narrowed editing down to 3 different sub-categories: editing paragraphs, editing sentences, and editing words. This simiply showed me a new way of doing my editing. I actually used this on my narrative final draft- so hopefully it worked. I went through, editing only the paragraphs the first time. I checked for things like a topic sentence, where my information was positioned, and if there were good transitions. Next, I went through a second time, only looking to edit the sentences. I made sure all of my sentences were complete, and I check to be sure I was using a variety of kinds of sentences. The last time, I went through only editing the words. I checked for spelling, correct word usage, etc. After doing all of this, I knew I was ready to proofread. I went through and read my story... not to pick it apart but to read for content... to make sure everything made sense as a whole. Luckily, it did to me. I thought this reading was very helpful- i've bookmarked it for further use incase I forget later!

Let me edit myself...

For this reading, I left myself a bunch of sticky notes. I think the best way for me to reflect on this reading is to go through and explain each of the notes I left for myself.
Note 1- "DON'T"
I left this note to remind myself that when writing first drafts, don't be constantly trying to organize as I go, because I could miss something really important!
Note 2- "AGAIN- purpose and audience"
I write this to emphasize that these two things are very important to remember. They were mentioned in our first reading, and here again. Purpose is always important in a narrative, so I need to be sure that when reading mine, my purpose is clear.
Note 3- "transitions! beginning/end of paragraph"
I left this because I feel this is one of my week points. I have not been very good with transitioning from one idea to the next so hopefully this note will remind me to go through my drafts and check for this to be sure my thoughts are clear.
Note 4- "TITLE and clear thesis"
I have not yet come up with a title. I don't want a boring title, but I want one that makes sense. I also need to be sure that I define my thesis well within the first few sentences.
Note 5- "Lengthen"
self explanitory. my first draft was not quite 2 pages... but luckily I was able to make it 3 by the end of the 2nd draft.
Note 6- "Rewriting? -chronology"
I actually did this... and it was pretty cool to see my story from different views... in different orders... but I ended up liking my original order, anyway.

Reading, Writing, Education- the Things I Take for Granted

Until I read the literacy narratives assigned for this week, I did not realize how much I don't appreciate the fact that I get a good education. I never even think about how lucky I am, compared to others around the world, and others who lived before me. While reading the "Generating Ideas and Text" area, I also realized just how hard it is to start a narrative piece.
When I read the title to Frederick Douglas's Learning To Read, I thought to myself, "Great... another annoying story about how someone first learned to read when they were little", but it was much different. I liked that this story wasn't your typical "how I learned to read" story. It was about the struggles one had to go through to teach himself to read and write, even as an adult. This was all because he was an African American living in the US before the Civil War. The Malcolm X story, Literacy Behind Bars, also showed me the hardships some had to go through simply to get the things that are just handed to me today.
Of all of the methods for generating ideas, my favorite is the one we exercised in class last week, freewriting. During these 5-10 minutes of nothing but writing, I find myself able to throw all of my ideas on paper, even if they are unorganized. I think this is helpful because if one starts out trying to put organized ideas down, they are likely to forget an important aspect they may have thought to include before but didn't get into an organized idea. In freewriting, I can blabber about any idea I like and write about any aspect of it that comes to mind. This is great for coming up with supporting details for each idea later on. I will definitely bookmark this page for use these next couple weeks when writing my Narrative.