Author: Odeica (Page 3 of 13)

Annotation:

• “To produce a progression of drafts, each of which says more and says it more clearly, the writer has to develop a special kind of reading skill. In school we are taught to decode what appears on the page as finished writing. Writers, however, face a different category of possibility and responsibility when they read their own drafts. To them the words on the page are never finished. Each can be changed and rearranged, can set off a chain reaction of confusion or clarified meaning. This is a different kind of reading which is possibly more difficult and certainly more exciting.” As scholars when writing whether in or out of school, we often submit our initial draft or writing as our finished product without revision as we were taught. However, professional writers do the complete opposite. From a professional point of view only when the first draft is complete then they can begin their writing process. A finished piece of writing to a professional comes after lots of re-reading and re-writing, closely looking at each page, paragraph, sentence, and word to find other alternatives that will best get their message across to their readers and intended audience.

• “Then the writer, counsels novelist Nancy Hale, “should be critical of everything that seems to him most delightful in his style. He should excise what he most admires, because he wouldn’t thus admire it if he weren’t…in a sense protecting it from criticism.” John Ciardi, the poet, adds, “The last act of the writing must be to become one’s own reader. It is, I suppose, a schizophrenic process, to begin passionately and to end critically, to begin hot and to end cold; and, more important, to be passion-hot and critic-cold at the same time.” When professionals look over their first draft, they become critics of their writing. The writer must then revise their writing as a stranger so they can identify some of the flaws in their writing and how to best revise and alter said flaws ultimately making their writing easier for their audience to read and comprehend.

• “The first thing writers look for in their drafts is information. They know that a good piece of writing is built from specific, accurate, and interesting information. The writer must have an abundance of information from which to construct a readable piece of writing.” A good piece of writing must be informational, one’s readers or audience must obtain some sort of information or knowledge about whatever the author is teaching. The foundation of a first draft is information that allows one’s writing to be readable.

Annotation:

• “That difference in attitude is the difference between amateur and professional, inexperience and experience, journeyman and craftsman. Peter F. Drucker, the prolific business writer, calls his first draft “the zero draft”–after that he can start counting. Most writers share the feeling that the first draft, and all of those which follow, are opportunities to discover what they have to say and how best they can say it.”

• “To produce a progression of drafts, each of which says more and says it more clearly, the writer has to develop a special kind of reading skill. In school we are taught to decode what appears on the page as finished writing. Writers, however, face a different category of possibility and responsibility when they read their own drafts. To them the words on the page are never finished. Each can be changed and rearranged, can set off a chain reaction of confusion or clarified meaning. This is a different kind of reading which is possibly more difficult and certainly more exciting.” As scholars when writing whether in or out of school, we often submit our initial draft or writing as our finished product without revision as we were taught. However, professional writers do the complete opposite. From a professional point of view only when the first draft is complete then they can begin their writing process. A finished piece of writing to a professional comes after lots of re-reading and re-writing, closely looking at each page, paragraph, sentence, and word to find other alternatives that will best get their message across to their readers and intended audience.

• “Then the writer, counsels novelist Nancy Hale, “should be critical of everything that seems to him most delightful in his style. He should excise what he most admires, because he wouldn’t thus admire it if he weren’t…in a sense protecting it from criticism.” John Ciardi, the poet, adds, “The last act of the writing must be to become one’s own reader. It is, I suppose, a schizophrenic process, to begin passionately and to end critically, to begin hot and to end cold; and, more important, to be passion-hot and critic-cold at the same time.” When professionals look over their first draft, they become critics of their writing. The writer must then revise their writing as a stranger so they can identify some of the flaws in their writing and how to best revise and alter said flaws ultimately making their writing easier for their audience to read and comprehend.

As a kid, I have always wanted to be an Aerospace Engineer but as I got older and started to see the world from a broader perspective, my interest drastically shifted as I thought that people who look like me were not meant to be Engineers, so I was just something impossible for me to achieve. As I started to notice that there were not many people in STEM careers who look like me both female and African American and I soon realized my limitations. Looking back with a more worldly and mature perspective, I started to question what caused my interest in STEM to change and what could have and can be done to ensure that little girls who look like me and people of color as a whole are not only represented in STEM but also given adequate STEM opportunities in and out of school to further their interest in STEM.

The purpose of my project is to not only highlight the effects of gender and racial inequalities in STEM but to also provide strong and sufficient resources to people of color of any age and gender who are interested in STEM which in return could possibly eliminate said inequalities and permanently close the racial and gender gap in STEM.