...I have attended every class and I am confused about Paper #1. I guess I'm confused on how your premise, goal, "me" and "I" all have to tie into one paper. Can anyone help? I would appreciate it!
I am not quite getting the I, Me, thing either. In class we talked about the questions but then what she posted about the I, Me thing and the quads and all of that ..... I think it is just background so you get to know yourself a little better? And it is only a 2 1/2 page paper. So, what I am going to do is follow the guideline she gave us - just follow the questions about my social goal. MT, if there is something more than this, please let us know. Because I think that answering those questions is going to give me 2 1/2 pages easy.
Paint a picture. Draw a story. Allow the “sides” of the cube to illumine one another as you focus on each one and ask where the details came from and where they lead you . . . Beauty is truth; truth beauty. I learned that in college and it followed me here. Maybe I just liked it because I could remember it – and it made me feel literary. It also reminded me of Plato and Socrates and Aristotle and the big triumvirate: the true, the beautiful, and the good. The Platonic forms became meaningful to me early in college: I felt they pulled me up, up, up—up out of the humble beginnings from which I came. I had only a very small nuclear family network and its smallness seemed to make me want to form a totally new one, all my own. I embraced the term “family of choice;” I rejected the term family. I remember learning of “the golden thread of immortality” from Hesse and realizing that most of my “best friends” I had not and would not ever meet: they were far away and most were dead. He called them “the immortals”—the poets and philosophers with whom one communes. They were my family. Perhaps that background is what coaxes me to write . . . . when you write you are all one (alone) with the universe, perhaps out there with the others who wrote, searching, searching. Sometimes the community of intellectuals can become as smothering as an intense family, and then they serve not at all one’s explorations of the true, the beautiful, and the good. Since I lived all my life with the immortals “out there,” perhaps that explains why my current “best male friend” is NOT a reader at all since he has severe dyslexia. His explorations had to come all from himself, not from a community of intellectuals. And my dear departed husband, too—he was a rebel, not a reader, but spent two years once after school devouring every great book he could buy at the used book store, and he preserved each hard cover with loving cellophane covers which he would buy. Living a life alone, all-one as a philosopher-counselor once told me, leads me to seek other explorers who are not necessarily tied down to an earthly network. Perhaps my foundation, or launch pad, also helps to explain my subject matters. I never write stories or “plots” where people are caught in a network—perhaps because of my relative lack of an intimate network. I always write of concepts, ideas, and how they warm the shackles of my mind or expand it so it needs no warming but, rather, the coolness of reaching and letting go. No wonder, too, that my writing waited until the internet gave rise to self-publishing, again, a means where I could travel solo and not have an agent and publisher. As one who likes to work alone and then bring it out to the world, I always thought of myself as a “cat person.” That suited the solitude. Now I have a dog. Dogs bring us out to be social, so Cookie parallels my cat life with the present goal of getting all these books “out there” via self-publishing. One thing I like about a dog is that it is “always there”, like the self, waiting, watching. It says nothing, and simply is. And it always wants to get out, like our creativity. Woof.
What would be my title? What would be my beginning sentence and my end? I just wrote this as a “morning page”. Hopefully it gives you the idea of how quiet contemplation of a premise, a self, and a goal – where they came from in your society and where they lead you – can be used to formulate your creative sociological story. oh, I could also go back through and see how "I" "me" helps me. I think I got a dog partly to be more "me" (normal) and less "I" (always the odd one).
PS: notice how I did not say "I am a XYZ type" or "My goal is to ABC" or "My premise as we learned in class is Blah Blah" I just gently used those concepts and built a portrait of my social (or, in my case my non-social) self.
Really great. Thanks. This really does help. And, I was never going to write My goal blah, blah, blah ...... but what I meant is just use those guides to start writing. It helps to have a platform, a place to begin, when you are in a class with an assignment due. Happy to be writing something personal first without citations. YAY!!
glad this helped. one might start with one's goal, one's self (Raised in a large family, I am an outgoing person taught to have concerns for others . . . ) or one's premise, as I did. then you can move around on the first three sides of the cube: premise, self, and even networks. Remember Rule 17: cut excess words Remember BME and Title: Good title and captivating opening sentence and snappy final sentence. Remember each paragraph with at least three sentences (unless one has one, but none should have two) Remember a structured paper is nicely 5 paragraphs: opening, beginning of middle, middle of middle, end of middle, and close.
I was glad I wasn't the only one having difficulty with this assignment. This posting helped me to understand the assignment better. Now all I need to do is gather my thoughts and write. But right now my mind is going blank no clue how to start my paper :( Maybe I need to start tomorrow.
I am not quite getting the I, Me, thing either. In class we talked about the questions but then what she posted about the I, Me thing and the quads and all of that ..... I think it is just background so you get to know yourself a little better? And it is only a 2 1/2 page paper. So, what I am going to do is follow the guideline she gave us - just follow the questions about my social goal. MT, if there is something more than this, please let us know. Because I think that answering those questions is going to give me 2 1/2 pages easy.
ReplyDeleteThank you for your help! I really appreciate it!
DeletePaint a picture. Draw a story. Allow the “sides” of the cube to illumine one another as you focus on each one and ask where the details came from and where they lead you . . .
ReplyDeleteBeauty is truth; truth beauty. I learned that in college and it followed me here. Maybe I just liked it because I could remember it – and it made me feel literary. It also reminded me of Plato and Socrates and Aristotle and the big triumvirate: the true, the beautiful, and the good. The Platonic forms became meaningful to me early in college: I felt they pulled me up, up, up—up out of the humble beginnings from which I came. I had only a very small nuclear family network and its smallness seemed to make me want to form a totally new one, all my own. I embraced the term “family of choice;” I rejected the term family. I remember learning of “the golden thread of immortality” from Hesse and realizing that most of my “best friends” I had not and would not ever meet: they were far away and most were dead. He called them “the immortals”—the poets and philosophers with whom one communes. They were my family.
Perhaps that background is what coaxes me to write . . . . when you write you are all one (alone) with the universe, perhaps out there with the others who wrote, searching, searching.
Sometimes the community of intellectuals can become as smothering as an intense family, and then they serve not at all one’s explorations of the true, the beautiful, and the good. Since I lived all my life with the immortals “out there,” perhaps that explains why my current “best male friend” is NOT a reader at all since he has severe dyslexia. His explorations had to come all from himself, not from a community of intellectuals. And my dear departed husband, too—he was a rebel, not a reader, but spent two years once after school devouring every great book he could buy at the used book store, and he preserved each hard cover with loving cellophane covers which he would buy. Living a life alone, all-one as a philosopher-counselor once told me, leads me to seek other explorers who are not necessarily tied down to an earthly network.
Perhaps my foundation, or launch pad, also helps to explain my subject matters. I never write stories or “plots” where people are caught in a network—perhaps because of my relative lack of an intimate network. I always write of concepts, ideas, and how they warm the shackles of my mind or expand it so it needs no warming but, rather, the coolness of reaching and letting go. No wonder, too, that my writing waited until the internet gave rise to self-publishing, again, a means where I could travel solo and not have an agent and publisher.
As one who likes to work alone and then bring it out to the world, I always thought of myself as a “cat person.” That suited the solitude. Now I have a dog. Dogs bring us out to be social, so Cookie parallels my cat life with the present goal of getting all these books “out there” via self-publishing. One thing I like about a dog is that it is “always there”, like the self, waiting, watching. It says nothing, and simply is. And it always wants to get out, like our creativity.
Woof.
What would be my title? What would be my beginning sentence and my end? I just wrote this as a “morning page”. Hopefully it gives you the idea of how quiet contemplation of a premise, a self, and a goal – where they came from in your society and where they lead you – can be used to formulate your creative sociological story.
oh, I could also go back through and see how "I" "me" helps me. I think I got a dog partly to be more "me" (normal) and less "I" (always the odd one).
Thank you very much Professor Tabor! Your response has been extremely helpful and it is crystal clear to me now! :)
DeletePS: notice how I did not say
ReplyDelete"I am a XYZ type"
or
"My goal is to ABC"
or
"My premise as we learned in class is Blah Blah"
I just gently used those concepts and built a portrait of my social (or, in my case my non-social) self.
Really great. Thanks. This really does help. And, I was never going to write My goal blah, blah, blah ...... but what I meant is just use those guides to start writing. It helps to have a platform, a place to begin, when you are in a class with an assignment due. Happy to be writing something personal first without citations. YAY!!
ReplyDeleteGood to know i was not alone on this. Thank you Jabeaux54 for bringing up the question and thank you MT for clearing it up.
ReplyDeletehave you started your paper already?
Deleteglad this helped.
ReplyDeleteone might start with one's goal, one's self (Raised in a large family, I am an outgoing person taught to have concerns for others . . . ) or one's premise, as I did.
then you can move around on the first three sides of the cube: premise, self, and even networks.
Remember Rule 17: cut excess words
Remember BME and Title: Good title and captivating opening sentence and snappy final sentence.
Remember each paragraph with at least three sentences (unless one has one, but none should have two)
Remember a structured paper is nicely 5 paragraphs: opening, beginning of middle, middle of middle, end of middle, and close.
also see comment under Outline/Format above.
ReplyDeleteI was glad I wasn't the only one having difficulty with this assignment. This posting helped me to understand the assignment better. Now all I need to do is gather my thoughts and write. But right now my mind is going blank no clue how to start my paper :( Maybe I need to start tomorrow.
ReplyDeleteThe EOS for Alphas and the Premise paper are the only things due this week, correct? (Other than reading of course)
ReplyDeleteAlso, does anyone know how I would use a quote in the title of my paper?
ReplyDeleteThanks MT for the clarifications regarding paper #1, i was completely lost because i wasn't in class when you went over premise, self, etc.
DeleteMonica: maybe that's a good one to ask Christina, the Librarian - or are you in the Night Class?
ReplyDeleteI felt lost as well but reading this cleared up my concerns.
ReplyDelete