Homework 1/29

Homework 1/29

Yesterday I had my first interview with my psych 301 lab TA, asking her a series of questions about her job and the nature of the writing that occurs in her line of work. She was very helpful in answering all of my questions about experimental psychology write ups and how writing plays a role in therapeutic psychology as well as experimental psychology. To summarize my findings, she basically stated that all lab work has to be completed with a write up including the analyzation of data and facts that prove that a hypothesis, or theory, was proven or disproven. One of the biggest papers she had to write as a graduate student was her honors thesis paper, which was her own experimental lab work and her own theories that she tested on her own and explained through her paper whether they were proven or disproven. Other than experimental psychology, writing can be included in theraputic and clinical psychology by the notes often taken during therapy sessions. Those notes are usually then transcribed onto a laptop and put into a patients folder for further review. The purpose of this would be incase something were to go wrong mentally with the patient, anyone can have access to the "records" or formal write ups that the psychologist has done for his or her patient.

Analysis of 3 other sources

3 other sources I have found are all academic write ups that I have found on the university site discussing experimental data and findings within the field of experimental psychology. Going along with the interview, I can follow along these write ups and see specifically what needs t be included in essays written in psychology about experiments that have taken place. In honors and graduate thesis papers, many people start off by describing exactly what they are researching and coming up with what they plan to prove or discover by conducting this research, whether it be through random sampling or people watching. It then discusses the answers or behaviors of the people being observed, and concludes what exactly each behavior or answer means to them through analyzation of data and critical thinking. Psychology write ups are proven to be one of the most revised and revisited works in any field of writing, do to the fact that human behavior and ideas are constantly being revisited and changed when usual behavior comes to different outcomes than expected.

Analyze two quotations 1/27

Exercise 2 on page 47
Analyze two quotes from essays you have written, basically stating what that quote means or is trying to say.

Quote 1: "America, known for being the “land of the free”, a capitalistic country where we have the freedom and equality that some countries lack and envy, but we are also known for other things." This quote is saying that although America seems to be this beautiful place where everyone is free to do what they please and everyone seems happy, there is an underlying issue that contradicts the claims that America is perfect in the eyes of the countries that envy us. 

Quote 2: "America as a whole is deteriorating into this society of counting-calories where everyone is weird about how much food we all consume and how much food we don’t, and for what, the pursuit of the perfect body image?" This quote is stating that America is too worried about body image since we are known for having the highest obesity rate, and we've become so accustomed to counting calories that we can't even sit down and enjoy eating anymore, because we have to be so careful of what we're consuming. We've become "weird" about food. 

I'm not really sure if I did this assignment correctly, I think this is the exercise you were referring to and I think this is what it's looking for? Let me know. 

Questions for the Interview

1. How long have you been working at the University of Louisville? How long have you been a graduate student at the University of Louisville?

2. What types of writing do you produce in the field of Psychology? 

3. In what circumstances would you need to use writing in the field of Psychology and your line of work?

4. How much time do you think you spend writing for your job/study?

5. What typical writing styles occur when you do write?

6. What do you typically write about and what does that writing look like ?

Source for paper summary

https://owl.english.purdue.edu/owl/owlprint/670/

The type of genre this source is would be an article. I think this is an academic source due to the .edu at the end of the link. This is an article because it was written with the purpose of informing others of something, like an article usually is written for. Since it is an academic source, that would mean that I would need one more academic source and two more non academic sources.
This will help me with my paper, because not only does it explain exactly how writing is used in the field of psychology, but it also gives steps on how to write in the field of psychology. By using this source I can fully explain exactly how writing plays a part in my major field. Although psychology is not exactly known for it's writing, this article helps explain the small part it plays in research reports. I think this is source will be very helpful when I'm writing my paper.

Reflection on Assignment 1

To reflect on assignment one, the purpose is to gain more knowledge about writers in my major field. I think it may be difficult to get in touch with writers in my field since experimental psychology is mostly graphs and statistics. Maybe if I interview my professors I can could those graphs and explanations of theories as writing. Therefore, my audience would be my professors. Also, I understand the nature of writing in my field so I also don’t think that will be too difficult. Usually I’m more into free writing than forced writing but because this assignment will be about my field in psychology it will sort of allow me to free write more than follow specific guidelines. 

Old English Essay and analysis

Two Sides to Every Story

            America, known for being the “land of the free”, a capitalistic country where we have the freedom and equality that some countries lack and envy, but we are also known for other things. We are known for being the country with the highest obesity rate in the world, we are known for the coined term “lazy American’s” and we are known for our fast food industries and unhealthy eating habits.

            “How to address obesity in a fat phobic society” touches base on the idea that most “lazy American’s” actually have genetic makeup that causes their bodies to gain weight at a more rapid pace than those without it, making it even more difficult to lose that weight once it’s gained. Doctors sometimes overlook this characteristic when patients come in complaining about weight gain. It’s, “cut the carbs” or “try this new diet,” never a conversation about how the patient may actually be genetically prone to this disease. 

            So if that’s society’s view on the American’s that even seem to be just a little chubby or overweight, how do they feel about those American’s who seem to be just a little underweight? Unfortunately, that’s an easy question for me to answer. If you’re overweight, you’re seen as lazy and undesirable, if you’re underweight, you’re seen as sickly, and some new terms start to bounce around in the mind’s of the people that think they get to decide whether your body type is desirable or not, like “eating disorder.”

            It seems that the perfect time to develop an eating disorder is at the age of fifteen. This was the first time I was called into my guidance counselor’s office. Imagine being a freshman in high school, lost, confused, trying to find exactly where you fit in and on top of all the stress of school work you are being accused of starving yourself in order to maintain a “skinny” body image. When I walked into my guidance counselor’s office, and saw the student assistance counselor and vice principal waiting for me, I thought I had done something awful. My mind was racing when I sat down in the cushioned chair across from these three big figureheads who all had a stern concerned look on their faces.

            The student assistance counselor was the first to speak. She asked me about my eating habits. Three square meals a day, etc., did I feel like I was gaining too much weight? Did I feel like I was fat? All these questions confused me, but at the same time made me consider the idea that I didn’t have the “ideal” body image for someone my age as I believed I had. Did I look fat? No, of course not, I was a skinny girl. I was 5’7 and only weight 110 lbs. I knew I was small. Apparently, no one else was blaming genetics. No one else considered my mother graduated high school at 100 lbs. It wasn’t addressed that I had been an active athlete since I could walk. All that mattered was the way I looked.

            When they first introduced the idea to me that I had an eating disorder, I was shocked. Me? Sure, I eat small portions, but only because I was skinny and didn’t need that much food to fill me up. I eat whatever I want whenever I want. How could these people, who barely knew me, think that I would be capable of such a thing? Concern for myself turned to anger towards my accusers. Are they serious? It turns out, they had begun an investigation on my “body image” in the first few weeks that school began. Watching what I bought at lunch, what I ate for breakfast, etc., like I was a science experiment. Taking notes on my habits like a guinea pig they kept in a cage. I have never been more furious in my entire life.

A teacher had brought this to the attention of the administration due to the fact that I had apparently been wearing a lot of “oversized sweatshirts” to school, in attempts to hide from my peers the fact that I had also been purposely losing massive amounts of weight, another assumption that disgusted me. I denied all the claims brought against me and left the office in a hurry, practically in tears. I was fifteen years old; all I knew about my body was that I liked it, in a time period when I should have hated it, like everyone else does for their teenage years. I didn’t want to hate my body, I didn’t want to have an “eating disorder” and I didn’t want my entire school to think I had one either just because I had trouble gaining weight when compared to anyone else.

            I can compare these feelings back to the anger and frustration that was felt by “Ellen,” Courtney Martin’s friend that was written off in her doctor’s appointment because she was overweight and her doctor decided she would just need to “cut the carbs” in order to maintain a healthy lifestyle, and completely overlooking the fact that she had a genetic history of obesity in her family.  Since I attend the local pediatrician in my small hometown of Basking Ridge, New Jersey, I feel like I’m one of the lucky ones. My doctor’s knew my family and I well enough to know that I had never developed an eating disorder, although I remained 20 pounds underweight until my senior year of high school.  They knew the right questions to ask that would put up any red flags, and they never reported me for anything, although my doctor did admit when I told her about my eating disorder accusations that she had been “worried” about my lack of weight gain for the past two years, but knew it was nothing that I had caused myself.

            It makes me wonder how many other children were accused of eating disorders because of their weight at my high school. Was every obese child called in for nutrition tips? Or were the children with the skinny body type who only ate small portions at lunch the only ones targeted. Here’s the difference between the obese and the anorexic children; we as a society have a sick mindset that basically states that eating disorders and underweight children can be “fixed”, all they have to do is eat a little more than usual, right? But the obese children, the ones that are “lazy” and “fat”, they cannot be fixed. If you’re lazy, how will you have the drive to workout? Fix your “problem”?

            I found myself at that young age of fifteen, completely exposed and somewhat insecurely conscious of the way my body looked, something that I had never experienced before. It never got to the point where I was wearing certain things to hide my body type from my friends, but I did start looking at my skin a little bit differently than I used to. My high school’s administration destroyed the innocence of a fifteen year old due to their impression of her body image, not based on facts they asked her doctor, or by confirmed rumors sent around by her peers. An oversized sweatshirt shattered my mindset that my body image was perfect and there was nothing wrong with the way I looked, which is the saddest thing of all.

            “Addressing Obesity in a Fat-Phobic Society” opened my eyes to the ideas that our society might not only be “fat-phobic”, but just plain “body image-phobic”. Even being on a college campus now, we have the calories of all food that’s served written on each station, a constant reminder of how much we’re consuming. We have our portions laid out for us to prevent us from “overeating”. I can’t sit at a table with my friends without someone complaining about how “college food makes you fat” and hearing about someone’s longing desire for that second slice of pizza that they’ll never get the courage to stand up and go get because we all have a deep anxiety that we’ll have to work out for an hour to replace the amount of calories we’re about to intake. If you’re a little chubby, you’re lazy, obese, and must have unhealthy eating habits. If you’re a little skinny, you’re sick, too thin, gross to look at, and you probably starve yourself.

            The assumption presented to us by our body image is what makes America a “body image phobic society.” It’s what creates the labels that describe the obese as fat, and describes the underweight as sick.  Doctor’s are starting to write us off as disorders instead of reading into our genetic history. America as a whole is deteriorating into this society of counting-calories where everyone is weird about how much food we all consume and how much food we don’t, and for what, the pursuit of the perfect body image? To run away from the labels of lazy just to fall into the labels of too skinny and gross? It’s time to start addressing the genetic heredity of these assumed diseases, rather than writing people off with label’s just because we did not take the time to consider a genetic explanation to their body image.

The rhetorical situation of this essay was the focus of eating disorders in the United States and to address the way we deal with these eating disorders amongst teens. My audience was generally anyone I had even come in contact with in high school along with my college peers, describing the hardships I wen through as an underweight teen  in an overly sensitive high school. These events led me to be able to write this paper with the amount of knowledge that I have on the topic, and how I can remember specifically how it felt to be targeted for absolutely nothing. The media also definitely influenced me. Many articles are written daily about eating disorders in america and how the percentage of young teens effected by these diseases are rapidly growing, but instead of saying it's because skinny youth are targeted they brush it off and say it's because of "bullying," not saying that that can't be a reason but I'm also saying before we point the finger at other teens with their own issues, we should be pointing the finger at ourselves for making these diseases so open in the media, almost making them famous. My example from the text that supports this analysis is "   I found myself at that young age of fifteen, completely exposed and somewhat insecurely conscious of the way my body looked, something that I had never experienced before. It never got to the point where I was wearing certain things to hide my body type from my friends, but I did start looking at my skin a little bit differently than I used to. My high school’s administration destroyed the innocence of a fifteen year old due to their impression of her body image, not based on facts they asked her doctor, or by confirmed rumors sent around by her peers. An oversized sweatshirt shattered my mindset that my body image was perfect and there was nothing wrong with the way I looked, which is the saddest thing of all."

Rhetorical Situation notes

• Rhetorical situation is the context of a rhetorical event that consists of an issue, an audience, and a set of constraints. 
• Bitzer first came up with the idea of rhetorical situation. 
• Bitzer described the rhetorical situation as "A complex of persons, events, objects, and relations presenting an actual or potential exigence which can be completely or partially removed if discourse, introduced into the situation, can so constrain human decision or action as to bring about the significant identification of the exigence. 
• Vatz responded to Bitzers theory in 1973. 
• Vatz believed that rhetoric defines a situation. 

About me

My name is Brigid I'm a psychology major, I live in Louisville Hall and in my freetime I like to write on my tumblr blog and study for my classes. On the weekends I like to spend time with my friends and go out to fraternity events with them. My favorite class is psychology and English since I love writing and psychology is my major. I grew up in Basking Ridge, New Jersey with my two parents and a little brother named Declan.