Documentary summary

For my documentary paper, I chose to watch After Innocence. This documentary follows several wrongly imprisoned men on their journey of gaining freedom through DNA testing.  I, personally, loved this movie.  Movies that can make you laugh at one point, cry at another, and make you want to punch the screen a second later are movies that I really enjoy and this had all three of those plus some.
While watching this documentary, I tried to put myself in the prisoner's shoes as well as those of them who accused them.  The descriptions that the men made of when they were in prison were so vivid to me, but I still don't think I fully understand how they felt when they were in there. I'm not sure if I ever will.  Stepping into the shoes of the people who accused them, mostly those who picked their faces out from a line-up of people, was easy for me.  When I was in seventh grade one of my cousins was killed in the Tinley Park Lane Bryant murders.  The man who killed her and the other women was never caught, but I would do everything in my power to find him and put him behind bars.  I can easily see how a witness or victim could pick someone who looks similar to the actual person who did something to them, thinking it was the real person.  Sometimes you make rash decisions because you try to make yourself feel better or, in these cases, safe.  If a man was put behind bars for my cousin's death, I would want DNA testing done to make sure it's the man.  I think a big part of the reason I want this done is because of watching After Innocence.  I don't think anyone should go through what those men and so many other have gone through.

You learn something new every day.

So, the past week I've discovered something new about myself: I don't like summary writing.  I usually love writing, but I don't know why I don't like this particular form of writing. I think it might be because I feel as if I can't use my own voice in it, I can't state my thoughts about what is happening in the movie, book, song, whatever it may be that I'm writing about. I love writing that is free, without limits, and that I can just talk about. That's why I enjoy blogging on here so much.  I write about what's happening in class, but I also write about things that are on my mind.  Due to not really liking summary writing, I questioned my essay a lot, which made me create several different drafts.  I, honestly, don't even feel like my final draft was my best.  I know I could do so much better and I'm looking forward to other essays where I have the opportunity to do so.  
I also learned that food labels lie when they say "Wait 1-2 minutes for food to cool." I waited 10 minutes and still managed to burn my tongue on soup while at work.

Assignment for 9/17

Rhetorical Knowledge:

I felt like the Cristo Summary really helped me figure out what things are important and which things can be left out. For example, I don’t think that every time the video switched to when Cristo was drawing is too important for what happened in the video, it doesn’t help move the summary along. It does, however, create good visual transitions while you’re watching the movie, ones that would be difficult to describe in words.

This assignment also made me think about what tense I use when I’m writing.  Looking back at my past writing assignments, I switched between tenses a lot.  I feel like that’s something writers shouldn’t do and I’ m glad that I realized that I was doing it and that I can switch it.  I’ll admit, it took a few drafts to get all of the words to be in the present tense, but I got it at the end.

Critical and Creative Thinking:

I’m a writer that almost always puts my own bias in my writing and this assignment forced me to make a conscious effort to not do that.  It was really difficult for me at first and I still prefer writing where I can use my own voice, compared to when I cannot.

Genre Knowledge:

Summarization papers were new to me until I wrote this paper.  I definitely didn’t expect it to be as difficult for me to write as it was.  Up until this paper, I would’ve used things that weren’t in the actual video.  I probably would’ve done extra research on the topic and would’ve added what I researched into my paper, but that isn’t what summarization papers are.

Mechanical Knowledge:

This was one of the first papers I have written where I did multiple drafts without my professor asking me to do so.  I revised this paper more than I had ever done before, which is weird for me.  I usually feel really confident in my first draft and I can’t think that there are things I can revise to make my paper even better.  With this paper, though, I felt like there was always something that could be switched or reworded or something of that nature. I believe I revised this paper five to six times total.

What Makes a Good Question?

Today in class we were asked "what makes a good question?" This made me think a lot.  There are a lot of different types of questions: true or false, multiple choice, thought provoking, and one worded answer questions are only a few.  I don't think any question is a "bad" question, but I believe that one worded questions are the worst.  I believe this because they usually don't require any thought when answering them.  I believe that a "good" question needs to make one think while they're answering it.  I also believe that a "good" question should be one that's able to talk to others about and one that can have differing view points.
Today we were also asked to describe our history with writing.  I haven't always enjoyed writing, but I became super fond of it when I got into writing, sophomore year of high school.  All four years of high school I was on the speech team, but sophomore year I was in a category that required me to write my speech.  I wrote about dreams and how different dreams have different meanings, something that I'm extremely interested in.  I enjoy writing when it's about something that I find interesting.  When I'm forced to write on something that I find boring, like most of the college and high school classes I've taken, I have a hard time focusing on the topic at hand and find myself drifting from the topic. Overall, though, I really enjoy writing.