My experience at SFSU

So far my experience at SFSU has been ok. My main focus in this school is to get an education. Since I live close by, most of my friends are still the same ones from high school. I go here for school and leave. I don't participate in any of the school activities. I think its a lot different for the people who dorm or come to SFSU from far away. I have classes everyday and I drive here everyday.
The application process for SFSU was very easy. My SAT scores were high enough and my GPA was above the average acceptance rate so I didn't worry about getting accepted. After I found out I didn't get into the UC schools I wanted to, I felt a lot of stress about getting into SFSU because that was my only choice. I wouldn't be able to afford to go into any other state school and community school was not an option for me. Blum described the application process for Notre Dame to be very stressful. I could compare to this because the application process for UC schools were a lot more stressful for me because of the Personal Statements required. I also felt a lot of pressure and stress for applying to college because both my parents and grandparents all went to college in Ukraine.
When I go to parties its not really celebrating for sports victories. The parties around here are mostly held because people want to have fun with each other. I think Notre Dame is overall a more conservative school because it's private and catholic. SFSU is liberal and a public school.

Readings

I like to read a lot of things about medicine and technology. I go online and look up diseases and I read everything about them. I learn all the symptoms, how to diagnose, and how to treat. This interests me a lot and its why I want to go into the medical field. I also read popular science magazines, Popular mechanics magazine, and Times magazine. I do not read a lot of novels or stories because I dislike it. For my other classes I read a microbiology text book, a chemistry textbook, and psychology text book.

"Inventing the University"

In Bartholomae's article, one of the main ideas was the difference between "reader-based" writing and "writer-based" writing. I think that "writer-based" writing is more of an authentic-self because the writer is not writing for a specific audience. He or she is writing to show what knowledge they have or to express themselves. "Writer-based" writing is not written to a commonplace. I think "writer-based" writing could also be general knowledge.

I think reader-based writing is intended for a specific audience. "Reader-based" writing is more of a performance-self. The results are important in this kind of writing because you are giving it to a specific audience that probably already has some knowledge about your subject. Its more difficult to write reader based than writer based because you have to know more about the audience and figure out how to relate to them. Reader based writing has a lot to do with audience awareness too. You have to know who your writing is meant for.

My way of "inventing the university" is by going to class and getting an education. I am creating or "inventing" my own career at SFSU.

Chapter 3 of "My Word"

I definitely agree with Sarah Blum on her descriptions of the authentic and performance self. People who are more authentic do things for themselves. People who are more performance self tend to do things to prove to people how good or smart they are. I agree with Blum that the inspiration of authentic self people come from themselves. I believe they try to make themselves better people. Performance self people are inspired by other people and want to become better than them . I found it interesting that performance self people would do a lot to get the result they want . People would go as far as plastic surgery or even changing the color of their hair, like Madonna. I think of authentic self people to be more humble about their achievements while performance self people would probably brag about their accomplishments more.

I consider myself both an authentic self and a performance self. In sports I am an authentic self because I play for my own fun,exercise, and health. If I win its great, but if I don't...well at least I got some exercise out of it and I stay healthier. In school I am a performance self because I need to impress my teachers and the result is the only thing that matters and gets me ahead of others. You can try as hard as you can but fail because of the result wasn't what the teachers were looking for. In the long run I am studying for myself to become something in life, but the path to become an authentic self involves a lot of performance.

People who are performance self are probably more prone to plagiarism because they are more likely to go to farther extremes to get ahead of others. According to Sarah Blum, authentic self people are characterized by solitude. There is no point for them to teach because they are only doing thing for themselves. They don't care about the result as much as performance self people do.

Something Borrowed

Byrony Lavery was very wrong to copy from Dorothy Lewis's life, but I think this is a different type of plagiarism. I found it interesting that Dorothy Lewis was in a way proud that her story became part of Broadway because she would not be able to do what Lavery did. Lewis was still upset that Lavery did not give any credit at all. I think Lewis would have been happy if Lavery's play at least included something like "Inspired by the true story of Dorothy Lewis". Lewis would have been more than happy to give Lavery permission to use any part of her story to make such a great play. I think it made Lavery sound like an inexperienced writer when she said that she thought it was ok to use Dorothy Lewis's life story in her play. Plagiarism includes copying ideas as well, she should have known that. A lot of movies are based on true stories. If all those movies didn't include "based on the true story of...", it would make a lot of people angry because the moviemakers stole a part of their life and made their own story from it. In Lavery's case, I think it's as if she stole a part of Lewis's life. Of course without the things that happened in Lewis's life, a great play like "Frozen" would not have been created. I don't think Lewis ever had any intention on making the events of her life into a play. Lewis and Lavery should have worked together on this play.

I thought it was very interesting how Gladwell showed all the different songs that are similar. I decided to listen to a couple of them and I found some of the similarities that Gladwell was talking about. Of course it would make the original writer of a song mad if someone copied part of it and made more money off of it. Copying a whole guitar riff or base line and using it throughout the song would be wrong. I agree that copying something like Beethoven's 4 note "da da da duuuum" is ok because those notes could be played on different chords and they could be changed into different tonations.

What is an essay?

An essay in its noun form is a piece of writing used to express someone's opinion on a certain topic or their opinion. I think you can tell a lot about a person from the way they write their essays. This is why I think a lot of higher level universities require an essay to be part of the application process. Interviewing every single student applying for college would be a very long and annoying process. An essay is an some way a written form of an interview. I think more jobs should require some kind of essay to be part of the application. It angers me when I don't get a job over someone who is less suited for the job just because of the application he or she turns in. Essays are a great way to tell people apart.

My Word! Intro and ch. 1

The first chapter and introduction of My Word! was very interesting. I didn't know that people would go as far as writing on their underwear in invisible ink to cheat. I found it very interesting how figures like Martin Luther King Jr. would plagiarize. I agree that a lot of Plagiarism comes from not enough education on citing other people's work. I didn't know until high school that you have to cite someone else's idea. In middle school my teachers told me that its ok to paraphrase, so I thought paraphrasing someone's ideas were OK. Teachers should inform students thoroughly about plagiarism as soon as they start writing essay.
As Susan explained, plagiarism is very vague. So vague that I'm sure almost everyone has plagiarized in their life. Most plagiarism is accidental too. I agree that a lot of people view plagiarism differently depending on their profession. As Susan stated, Doctors think of plagiarism differently than writers. I took a Critical Thinking class last semester. Briefing cases was a big part of our grade. Our teacher told us it was OK to copy everything word for word because its a brief. So I do believe that different professions have different view on plagiarism. This book is interesting so far, and as much as I hate reading, I don't think it'll be too bad .