Homework Assignment 4 is the first observation of Assignment 1. You can view it by going to the blog page where all the observations are.
Homework assignment one had some interesting implications. The big one I got was how everything thinks they are right, even though everyone could be wrong. I also got the idea that communication is a key part of everyday life, and can become even more vital in intense scenarios. Mostly, I just think this was funny as hell to read. Ultimately, our daily successes in society rest on how well we can naviagate a conversation and communicating our needs and wants to the person across the table. So it goes without saying that the most successful people are those who communicate well.
This is one of the assignments I had trouble with for a while. Eventually, I got the idea of doing observations on specific subjects and doing primary research, but also including personal words like "I" or "we" can be helpful in a research paper. This is different from what I was taught growing up, but it is nice to have that barrier lifted. It definetely helped me out when I did my assignment 2. Moreover, I learned a decent lot about Dark Souls and just how complex it is. Playing the game you wouldn't see it, but there is a whole lot more there than meets the eye.
HW assignment 3 helped me out with structuring the key talking points of my observation. Because I recorded my observation, a path in which I could follow made things that much easier. I wish I could go back and do a better job, I know that doing more of these sorts of things would have made it that much better. In the end, I learned a lot about my train of thought and about how I like to structure things mentally. That helped a bunch in later assignments like the research paper and some of the early assignment 3 recordings. Doing stuff like this will make my life a lot easier in any subject if I apply it well.
I have a cynical and satirical form of speech. This makes critiquing things a real weak point for me. Straub's article really helped as a gauge for me to check myself on. I have a tendency to go on for too long or go to far, but with this article it helped me keep things clean and concise. The idea of praise critiques was new to me and it made me want to go back in time and praise a lot of people for their work. It also helped me interpret some of the comments other people gave me, based on how they wrote and what they meant by it.
This is only my second annotated bibliography. It certainly is easier than the first, for sure. The thing I like about annotating my sources is that it requires me to analyze the information in them, even if it is a quick skim for the fiftieth time. It means I am that much more educated on what I am talking about. It also helps to keep a short summary of information in one spot, so in case I forgot something I could easily remember it by referencing this page. I do not like the fact I have to keep them so short, I could write a paper on every one of these articles. This particular activity makes me want to scream at the current intellectual property system. It could be so much better but no one wants the change.
Finding these sources took forever. I really don't like doing research on a topic like this because most of what I need I can figure out myself. Most of it is simple logical deduction, but I suppose some of it must be credited to someone. I would like to know how I can prove that I came up with an idea on my own that I can use in papers and not have to cite it at all. Most of the time I come up with my own stuff, then I just have to find a source that agrees and use it as "proof" which I really hate doing. Otherwise, reading new articles and sources really helps with leg work when writing papers. All the "filler typing" as I call it goes way quicker if you know what to say and how to say it.
I really went overboard with this guy. He took up two thirds of my assignment 2 until I made some changes in the final draft. I need to do more practice with this kind of thing, because I am still not sure exactly how it works, although I can come up with a passible idea. My main issue lies with my flaw of long wind-edness. All of my writing flows into the next bit when I type it, so it makes it hard to section them off so cleanly. I probably should try writing each section as its own paper and see how that goes.