"That's what she said"

Writing with quotations in college is much different than in high school. In high school I usually looked for a quote that kind of related to what I was talking about and just wrote it in my paper. This is much different in college. In college the quote should help enforce what you are writing.

In high school quotations were mainly used to fill a quota. Our teachers said that we were required to use at least three quotes per paragraph. We never really understood what we were supposed to be using them for. I would just write a sentence, then the quote, and then another sentence linking it to my thesis. Looking back on papers I wrote in high school, I see how poorly I used quotations.

In college, the usage is much more beneficial to your writing. When you use a quote, you should make sure it enforces your point. Quotes should be used to help your paper, not just prove that you read the book. In college I also learned that you should analyze the quote as well. After you write the quote, don't just say how it relates to a thesis, but explain the quote in your own words. What is Plato trying to say? Why did Darwin use those words?

I have only written one paper for core, and I hope I have used these things. I have not yet handed it in, and I am going to fix all the quotes I used. I need to make sure I analyzed the quotes and not just summarize them. I will know how well I did next week when I get it back.

Photo Hunt!

I was given an assignment to go on a scavenger hunt in Second Life. Everyone was given a list and we had to go and take pictures of the different places. This taught us more about SL, the SL camera tool as well as basic photography.

The first place I went to visit was Ireland. I was very impressed about a lot of things there. The streets and signs and buildings were so detailed. I have never been to Ireland, but i would assume that it looks much like this. I want to travel to the real places and do a side by side comparison to see how realistic Second Life really is. I would like to see if the "Uncanny Valley" actually exists. The picture I uploaded was taken when I was in the bottom of a river of some sort. I was at first in the middle of the sidewalk, and I wanted a picture of that as a glitch. The bottom of the boat I thought was very interesting so this is the one I picked.

The next place I was very impressed with was the Sistine Chapel. I have been to the real Sistine Chapel, and this was a very good representation of that place. I did not see a sort of "Uncanny Valley" though. It felt as though I was looking at a picture of the Sistine Chapel. It did not have the three dimension feel as many of the other places in SL had. It was also really hard to line up a good shot of this place because it was in the middle of a small building. Every time I tried to fly to a better spot I would find myself in a wall or completely outside of the building.

Finally one of my favorite pictures was taken in Harlem. I was walking around and i found this really cool looking old car. So I hopped in the drivers seat and took a picture of it. Shortly after I posted this picture on Koinup, I got a comment by some random person saying how he liked the car. Knowing that I got a comment by someone not in my class was a good feeling.

Who Am I?

Who is Eliot Ellisson? Right now he is my Second Life avatar. Eventually she will become my Second Life avatar. We were required to pick a gender neutral name, and Eliot from Scrubs was in my head at the time. In a later post I will change sexes and see how the world is different in a new pair of shoes. I also chose the last name because I like double letter initials. EE

When I first made my avatar, I did not really customize him as much as I could have. I changed a few things about him, but I won't forget the first comment i got from one of my friends. She took one look at Eliot and said "Wow, you're tall!" In life I am about 5' 10" but in SL I guess I am about 6' 2". I need to walk around more and compare my height and other characteristics to non-noobs.

As for how I feel about having a virtual self in another world, I am still undecided. It is not so much unsettling that a somewhat realistic me in pixel form, but it is some kind of uneasy feeling. I will have to explore more of the world and then pass a judgement whether I like it or not.

Death to one draft

As a high school student, I grew accustomed to writing a paper in only one draft. I was able to sit down in a night or two and simply churn out an essay start to finish without much problem. Given the topics we had to write about, this was always possible. The topics were very straight forward and did not have much depth to them. This is why the "sit down and write" approach worked.

In college I know that this will no longer work. The topics, and the works they are on, are much more in depth. They were crafted with some degree of skill that takes at least some thought to create a decent thesis statement.

So far I have had two opportunities to write papers for my core class, the material too was Plato. The topic on top of that was very in depth, as Plato would deserve. I am going to have to start refining a writing process to pass these papers and my classes from here on out.