Writing Center

           I made an appointment for 9:30 this morning at the writing lab. I was, honestly, not too excited about this, but now I am so glad I went. It turned out to be a great experience, and I would not even mind going back again before the final draft is due. Thirty minutes was a short time to go through my whole paper, but we spent the time well. First we decided on what we would work on because of our time frame.  I did not bring and introduction or conclusion, but we did work on those. She gave me some great ideas for both of them. She told me to go through my paper and underline the most important sentence in each paragraph. We started by reading through the paper and fixing errors that stuck out. She did some reconstructing and reorganizing which will definitely help my paper be clearer. I told her I was struggling with the counter-argument of the paper so she helped me with that as well. We came up with a clear argument that I am confident about. My topic was somewhat unclear, but now I know exactly what direction my paper will be going. Now I will go back and correct all of the obvious mistakes. I will then reorganize my paragraphs and do a little bit more research on my counter-argument. I also struggled with the tense that I would use because I was switching off very often. She explained how to fix that and what would sound best where. We added a few paragraphs so the word count should not be a problem. My paper went from around seven paragraphs to about twelve paragraphs. This is a huge improvement already. The only thing I am concerned with now is citation issues. She helped me get the right idea about that as well because my in-text citations were not looking so good. I definitely realized I needed to look up in-text citations on Perdue Owl. The writing center is most definitely something I will use now throughout my college career. It has improved my paper drastically. This experience has made me think about things I would have never thought about before. My writing is improving every day and the writing center is another great step in helping this process. I am excited about getting this paper written and seeing the improvement reflect on my grade.

Outline

Savannah Wiles

Outline

3/7/12

                                                                                Research Paper-Outline

   I.    Introduction

        1. Hook: A brief quote/statistic about fatal accidents involving alcohol.

        2. Thesis: While some may think alcohol does not alter their ability to drive, it is proven that  many fatal car accidents involve alcohol.

        3. Implications: Why does alcohol affect the ability to drive? Where does age and driving experience play into alcohol-related car crashes? Are teens more likely to be involved in these crashes than those above the legal drinking age-21? Do DUI laws effectively prevent people from drinking and driving or are they useless? 

   II.   Background on Alcohol

         1. Clarify what alcohol is and where it came from.

         2. Describe some background on the medical complications due to absorbing alcohol in the system.

        3. Explain what alcohol does to the brain and how it affects motor skills as well as other skills.

        4. State the drinking laws including DUI's and the legal drinking age.

        Sources: Phillips, David P., and Kimberly M. Brewer. "The Relationship between Serious Injury and Blood Alcohol     

          Interview with a state trooper- Ross Ragsdale 

    III.   Why Alcohol? - Counter argument

         1. Describe why people consume alcohol.

         2. Describes the risks they choose to take when they do so.

         3. Explain why someone might drink and drive. 

                 Source: Barbour, Scott. Alcohol: Opposing Viewpoints. San Diego, CA: Greenhaven, 1998.   Print.

   IV.    Alcohol-related, fatal car crashes

        1. Name statistics of car accidents, car accidents involving alcohol, car accidents that involve alcohol and are fatal.

        2. Compare statistics of alcohol related crashes above legal age with those who are below drinking age.

        3. How these crashes affect peoples' lives

        4. Analyze the photograph and how it uses pathos to appeal to your emotions

        5. Discuss what might have happened in the photograph and argue that point 

        Source: Ellwagner, Steven J. Young Driver Accidents and Delinquency. New York: LFB     Scholarly LLC, 2006. Print.

      V.  Conclusion

         1. Summarize the arguments of the paper

         2. Conclude why I believe people should not drink and drive

         3. Restate the evidence which supports my opinion that people should not drink and drive

Friday Research

My trip to the library was successful today. I actually have not been to the library yet this year so I did not know much on researching and renting books. I started by asking a librarian for some help on where to begin researching my topic. She was very helpful in assisting me and teaching me how to use the online library. She taught me how to look for opposed views when looking for an article and how to search for a book specific to my title. She also taught me how to limit my search so that I could retrieve information that would be helpful when writing this paper. I found many books and many articles on my topic. The first book I found was "Alcohol Opposing Viewpoints." This might help me get a better view on how everyone around us perceives alcohol, whether it is abused or not. I also got a book called, "Current Controversies in Alcoholism," because I want to be sure to make a fair argument on drunk driving. "Alcohol, young drivers, and Traffic Accidents," was another book that may be useful to me, but it could also be a little biased. I will have to be careful with this source. The last book that I will take a good look at is, "Young Driver Accidents and Delinquency." This book is another one that I might have to watch out for just because it could be biased toward young drivers. It could also contain some pretty good statistics that may be useful to me. When searching for articles I tried to be specific and found some interesting points. I will probably use an article called, "The relationship between serious injury and blood alcohol concentration (BAC) in fatal motor vehicle accidents." I think this will definitely be helpful in stating my statistics to help make fair judgments. One more article I found that may be useful is, "DUI Laws are Discriminatory and Do Not Prevent Drunk Driving." This will definitely give me a good view on the other side of my argument. During my research paper I realized I did not give enough views on "the other side" of drunk drivers. This time I will make sure to research both sides, the good and bad, of alcohol and make a clear point. Overall, this library trip helped me tremendously and I have all I need to write my annotated bibliography.

Extra Credit

Last week our English 105 class took a trip around campus. As a class we visited P211.T45, the Friday Flyers, and the Foucault pendulum. This was a great experience. We learned many things about each one of these important aspects of Clemson. My favorite was probably the Foucault pendulum. This was my group's task to research. Researching the pendulum was interesting to me because I have not heard of anything like this before. I really did not even know this was on campus even though I passed it many times. This shows just how little attention we, college students, pay as we are walking around and getting to our classes. The Foucault pendulum was created by Dr. Albert R. Reed who was a physics and anatomy professor at Clemson University. The pendulum bob is balanced by turning down a lead cylinder cast around a steel rod to a 9.5-inch diameter sphere. This is capped with two brass hemispheres, the lower of which held a permanent magnet. The magnet is a component of the kicker system designed to overcome the damping of the swing. We also learned, on our field trip, that the pendulum uses Faraday's Law. The precession rate can be calculated from apparent forces in the rotating frame on the surface of the Earth. The swing plane should make a complete rotation in 23.9/sin(latitude) hours. For Clemson’s latitude of 34.7 degrees, this is 42 hours. Typically, the precision rate for our pendulum is about 36 hours. We all learned a great amount on this field trip and had fun tricking people with our facts.