Week 6 Blog

Part 1:

I cannot believe I have finally completed a full-length draft of my essay, as it has been such a long time coming to this moment. While I think all of the work I have done for this Writing 60 class has contributed to the way I have laid out my paper, some assignments have found their way back into my writing more than others. In week 1, we had a “Read and Annotate 3 TIME Articles” assignment, which introduced me to the scicomm article genre and helped give me a pattern to follow and an idea of what to look for. Without it, I wouldn’t know the basis of having a protagonist for my story, especially since I am only used to characters and arcs in writings like novels. From week 2, I looked at “Close Reading Practice: The Hummingbird Whisperer, Goldman” which I think was another great insight on telling a story from someone else’s research. But a defining moment for my research and this paper was watching the NOVA documentary Bird Brain. I did not go into the video thinking I would enjoy or get anything out of it, but I found it much more interesting and entertaining than I expected. And leading up to my decision to write about corvids, I also believe watching John Marzluff’s TedTalk had a big impact on my decision to choose the species. 

Part 2: 

My introduction is something I had really struggled with, in trying to tie together some interesting and relatable as the writer and finding a more universal experience or understanding with my audience about corvids or relating to the species somehow (although my title is one part I am very confident in). I found it hard and a bit awkward to shape my statement of explaining that my writing was going to be a literature review, so although it may seem clunky, I did throw that fact into the introduction. While I think I wasn’t able to fully capture the historical context, I did mention the abundance of research that my large scale literature review was based on, so hopefully some of that feeling carries through. I am not too confident in my thesis, but I think that there is definitely a central theme that is easy to follow and a good sense of flow and organization when I wrote it (the graphic chart that I was required to make actually helped a lot in writing my piece). 

I feel like the “So What?” Is a bit hard and tricky to differentiate from my thesis because when I read my paper it just feels like my paper is a poster that says “Corvids are really cool and here’s why!” and that obviously sounds like there is some author influence in there rather than being completely stoic and objective in interpreting the data but I also was grabbing that same sentiment from the conclusion of the authors of the research article I used, so I hope my main point comes across effectively. As far as the scholarly ethos is concerned, I am a little bit worried that I am not objective enough about my research findings, because in order to create a proper protagonist and narrative, I felt like it was necessary to add in direction through a bit of my own opinion. And while I do paraphrase and quote quite a bit, I am not sure If I listed my sources enough or too many times for the similar veins of topics, but I do put credit where credit is due, and I am quite satisfied with my annotated bibliography portions. 

Part 3: 

I know that persecution is still an issue for corvids living in urban environments, and so for my Social Media Campaign, I am thinking of seeking out why they are persecuted by humans and what exactly makes us more inhospitable towards these birds. Another problem they face is disease, but because this is a campaign, I want this to be something humans can change after learning about the effects, so it would have a more practical purpose to sharing how and why these creatures are impacted negatively by humans. I am a little worried about finding specific organizations for my issue but I hope to find a few that are if not about the ending of bird shootings, to at least find some that are focused around the preservation of birds. 

Till the next time,

happy birding,

Alicia signing over and out!