PB2A

A scholarly academic publication is typically a formal and professional publication written by researchers or subject experts. The article that I chose for PB2A is titled "Alzheimer's vaccine: a cure as dangerous as the disease?" and was written by G. Münch, a researcher at University of Leipzig, and S. R. Robinson, a researcher at Monash University. The title poses the question that drives the purpose of the article: is the Alzheimer's vaccine, a supposed cure, as dangerous as the disease itself? 

The article is headed by the title of the piece followed by the names of the authors and their credibility. The article began with a brief summary of what was to be discussed in the full article and provided the main points of the t­ext. The summary informed that there were studies done on transgenic mouse models that supposedly verified the potential for this vaccine's development, but that once the vaccine was used on Alzheimer's patients, the vaccine showed to negatively affect a small number of its recipients with symptoms of brain inflammation. The summary was followed by a short list of key words – “Alzheimer’s disease, vaccine, inflammation, auto-immune disease” (1) –, which, assuming this is an online article would make it easy for people to find this article is they are looking for an article about any of the key words. Following the list of key words is the main body of text in which the authors go in depth about how the studies conducted on the transgenic mice suggested that the vaccine would be safe to use on humans and would not cause any harmful side effects, but when some patients developed unwanted side effects such as ventral nervous system inflammation, brain inflammation, and meninoencephalitis, the use of the vaccine was temporarily suspended. The article was then concluded with acknowledgements and references that listed the authors’ sources of information.

Because this is a scholarly academic publication, the authors use formal, professional language, and as this is a research paper aimed toward the scientific, and more specifically the medical community, the article is written with scientific jargon. The article is also relatively brief – 4 paragraphs long – as it is meant to provide information and educate its readers on the progression of this vaccine. The authors do not include any unnecessary information or any information unrelated to the study done on the vaccine or on how the vaccine was problematic.

The part of the article that seemed the most important to me was the discussion of symptoms of brain inflammation that affected certain patients, and the explanation of what could have caused the brain inflammation to occur, as they address the main question that is posed in the article and is the driving force for the article. Another reason I found that part of the article important is because thee symptoms and side effects related to the vaccine is that the vaccine are what affect the real life patients of these trials. The article explained that the side effects that have thus far affected the patients of the trial have been irreversible, and are potentially life threatening. Even for people who are not apart of the scientific community and do not participate in research for Alzheimer’s, it should be important that more people be aware of life-threatening symptoms from certain vaccines as to be wary of taking and vaccines or forms of medication that could be dangerous.

As this is an article about a trial vaccine that ultimately failed to serve its purpose, the last paragraph of the text include ways in which scientists are trying to improve the vaccine as to reduce and minimize the unwanted side effects produced by this vaccine. Most research articles conclude with a statement about how researchers either have found new advancements, or of how they are trying to improve their methods and studies as to find new advancements.

Works Cited

Münch, G. and S. R. Robinson. “Alzheimer's vaccine: a cure as dangerous as

the disease?”. Journal of Neural Transmission, 2002. Print.

IV. Thlog

The classes this week have, in my opinion, been the most interactive classes thus far. I really enjoyed the Mark Smith murder activity that we did on Wednesday. I thought it was cool how each group had a specific role that no one else in the class knew, and that we all had to guess each other's roles. Through that activity I learned how distinct textual genres are and how easy it is to distinguish these genres from one another. After reading the genres conducted by each role, I noticed how easy it was to guess the roles of each group. 

I really appreciated having the extra time to work on and improve my paper. If I hadn't had the extra time to think more about my ideas and revise my format, I don't think I would have been as happy with the paper as I was when I turned it in. It was also really nice to see that we are going to be slowing down a bit with the pace of the class because before the adjustments were made to the syllabus, I felt really overwhelmed by the amount of assignments that we were going to have. 

But, with all that said, I'm really glad to be done with WP1. I enjoyed the assignment and I feel that I learned a lot through the PBs, activities, and WP1 itself, so it's almost bittersweet moving on to a new assignment, but I'm looking forward to learning new things from WP2.

III. Thlog

Although our class only met once this week, that one meeting was really helpful as we focused on peer revising our WP1s. Through the peer revising, I was able to get a feel of how much of my paper I needed to change or what I needed to edit or add into my paper. It was also nice being able to read other classmate's papers so that I could see how others structured their essays and see what ideas different people had. The most helpful part was probably getting feedback from the peers my group. They were able to read my whole essay and were able to gauge what my ideas were and could then better give me tips on how to revise my paper. 

I also thought that the first part of the group activity was really helpful because it allowed us to take an introductory paragraph and dissect it into different parts that we were looking for. When I write my papers, I don't usually take a lot of time to think about the so-what and who-cares so it was helpful to be able to look at other peers' introductions and look for different aspects in their paragraphs and for them to help me out and let me know if they found those aspects in my introduction. 

One thing that I had a hard time with this past week was actually picking a topic for my paper and then starting the paper itself. I found myself changing ideas pretty often and every time I would change my idea I would have to start the paper over again. But eventually I did manage to find a genre that I wanted to write about and was able to stick to that one idea. 

II. Thlog

Week 2 has just ended, but I can already sense how stressful and busy this quarter is going to be. I found it hard to even find time this past week to keep up with the readings for this class, but I managed. With that said, I did really enjoy the readings that were assigned this week. I especially enjoyed reading "So What? Who Cares?--Saying Why It Matters because after reading it, I felt that my perspective on writing had changed quite a bit. I never realized how important it is to specifically address why the subject matters to the audience and to identify the audience that the subject could potentially matter to until I read the different examples of sentences with the so-what and the who-cares and then sentences where they were omitted. While reading those sentences it became clear how important it is to directly address the readers and inform the readers of why they should care about said subject. One thing in particular that I found interesting was how the so-what aspect is in a sense more important than the who cares aspect of writing. But it makes sense that telling a wide range audience why they should care rather than telling people about a subject matter that they most likely care about is more effective and more appealing to a general audience. 

Something that I learned from out exercises in class is that it is important to support your thoughts and ideas with facts and evidence. In the exercise that we did where we argued for the best restaurant in IV, we realized that the arguments that we chose as our favorites were ones that had a lot of points to back up the argument. 

I fell that I've a learned a lot in these past 2 weeks in this class that will guide me in writing a successful paper for WP, and I'm excited to see how my writing and thought process has changed thus far from the things that I've learned from this class, and how it will continue to change as the quarter goes on. 

PB1B

When I initially read the prompt for this assignment, I was a bit confused as to how I should go about doing this assignment, but after experimenting a bit with all of the generators that were provided, I understood that genre generators simply take conventions of certain genres and generate articles, comics, essays, etc to fit particular genres. The piece that is produced can be completely made-up, but it will still follow the basic conventions of the chosen genre, such as the pieces produced by SCIgen.
The first genre generator that I dug into was SCI gen. With SCIgen, the articles that were generated were all computer science research papers. They all consisted highly of scientific related vocabulary and were all written in formal and informative language. I noticed after generating a few papers that I usually didn't know what most of the articles were about as I don't study computer science. For example, some of the papers that I generated were titled "An Investigation of RAID" and "A Case for DHTs". All of the papers were also structured in similar ways. They began with an introduction the the research, followed by the actual methods for the research itself, and usually ended with the evaluation and conclusion of the research.  
The next generator that I used was the comic generator. After experimenting with Pandyland, I saw that the comic strips were consistently 3 panels long and didn't consist of much text per panel. The characters were also drawn very comedically and a lot of the comics made fun of the characters or had cruel language that was meant to be sarcastic or ironic. The comics were also simple, but colorful as to make the comic more lighthearted.
Among the provided genre generators, I would have to say that the meme generator was the most amusing to experiment with. Some common features among the generated memes were simplistic, comical, or easily recognizable images or people that had a short sentence split between the top and bottom of the image. The memes seemed to mainly serve a comical purpose, as they were typically sarcastic, or witty. A lot of the memes also use a play on words such as one particular meme read "If they are called apartments, why are they all together?".
Among all of the genre generators that appeared from my Google search, I chose to explore the depths of a plot generator (http://www.plot-generator.org.uk/). The plot generator was a bit different in that plots are a genre in themselves, but the user can pick a genre within the genre of plots. I chose to generate 3 different plot genres: Fantasy, Mystery, and Science Fiction. For each of the chosen genres, I was able to fill in information for the plot, such as location, different nouns and adjectives, etc. or I could press on the "suggest" button and the website would randomly generate the information. With all three of the plots that were generated, the website would also include a book cover with the title of the generated plot and the pen name that the user provides/ The plots were all relatively short, relative to the length of a plot summary, and they were all written in a comical way. Most of the plots weren't cohesive and they seemed as if they were written through a series of mashing nouns, verbs, and adjectives together. In the Science Fiction plot, the last written line read "Superhulk must fight to save Gremlin Mike but when he accidentally unearths a dirty piano, the future of the brown, handsome galaxy is at stake".
Thinking about what's happening in these websites can help people better understand the conventions of different genres. If one were to continuously generate and explore genres using these generators, over just a short period of time, they would begin to see patterns and common features among the same genres.  These genre generators show its users that genres all have very particular structures and functions to their own respective genres. In using these generators, people would be able to see different genres in their perspective websites and be able to more specifically comprehend what conventions belong to which genres and what affordances and constraints there are to each particular genre.

PB1A

It's been one of the toughest first weeks of college, but I'm so glad I have this writing class to break the cycle of constant math and science classes trying to drill information into my brain. So, as I said it has been a tough week and my favorite way to unwind after a tough week is sitting down and watching some of my favorite TV shows; having a good laugh. I like watching comedy cause I find it easy to digest and just a fun and light-hearted way to end a long day or a long week. I find that watching comedy shows is easier to watch than watching action, horror or drama because it doesn't cause me to feel any intense emotions like fear or sadness or . It simply makes me laugh and lightens the mood after a lot of frustration and stress of a day or week of hard work.

With what I have learned about genres in this past week, I have been able to better understand genres; particularly I've noticed more of the conventions of genres of TV shows and movies that I have been watching recently. Some of my favorite TV shows such as Modern Family, New Girl, and 2 Broke Girls fall under the genre of comedy. Comedy is one of my favorite genres and is a genre that I have become familiar with as I’ve watched comedic movies and TV shows for as long as I can remember. Some of the conventions of comedy that I've noticed as I watched these shows is the bright environment, the witty, sarcastic characters, and the types of language that is used. The bright lighting gives the show a more realistic and happy environment and the witty and sarcastic language allows for jokes to be played into the dialogue and usually is what causes the audience to laugh. These shows are mainly meant to make their audiences laugh and feel a sense of happiness. I almost feel that comedy is supposed to be therapeutic for its audience as laughter (as I’ve heard before) is supposed to be a form of therapy. There are different types of comedy that appeal to different audiences of different ages, but I think that the type of comedy I watch appeals more to young adults because the language can at times be vulgar and the language can be explicit and sometime the shows or movies make fools out of certain types of people which is not the type of comedy that most parents would allow their young children to watch. The type of comedy for children is usually more innocent and light hearted.

I realized as I thought about the conventions of comedy that the conventions of genres don’t change much over time. Most of the conventions that I have noticed of the comedic TV shows that I have watched recently can also relate to the conventions of comedic TV shows that I used to watch when I was young; the only difference being that the language of the shows I watch now appeal to an older audience than the language of the shows that I watched as a little kid. But the bright lighting and the silly characters are common conventions of comedy for adults and children.

I. Thlog

This past week has been much tougher that I had expected that it would be, but besides that, this writing class has been a nice break in between all of the math and science classes that are constantly trying to jam factual information into my head. I honestly thought going into this class that I would have a hard time getting back into the swing of reading and writing as it's been a while since I have taken a writing class or even any GE's classes that have writing assignments. But through this first week I've realized that I think I'll be okay, and I'm pretty excited to see what else I'm going to learn this quarter. 

Having said that, I've already retained quite a bit of information from classes and readings. One of the exercises that I enjoyed the most this past week was naming conventions of horror films and watching the films to see which ones had the conventions that the class came up with. It was interesting to me how movies in the same genre could be so similar, but so different at the same time. Some of the horror films had the same conventions as others, but there would also be differences. I also found it interesting how some people would name certain conventions of horror movies that I would never thought of, such as the "pre-murder uh oh pause" or the "narrow, tough to escape hallways/rooms". They were all conventions that I recognized as horror film conventions once they were said, but that I would have never though of on my own if someone were to ask me to name horror film conventions.

A Little About Me

Hi! My name is Deanna and I am currently a second year biology major (I know, ugh). I was born in Whittier, California and I grew up, and currently live, in Temple City, California which is in LA. I love it in LA, but after starting school here at UCSB I've fallen in love with Santa Barbara and can safely say it's one of my favorite places to be. Because I have lived in sunny California all of my life, any other types of weather really aren't my cup of tea. Most things I like doing are "nice weather" events like hiking, swimming, going to the beach, etc.

I'm also big on traveling and doing adventurous things. Some of my goals for the near future are to go bungee-jumping and skydiving! I also like experiencing living in new places so I also was to travel to places for months at a time and experience the lifestyles of the area.
Some things that are really important to me are my family and friends. I find it really important to surround myself with people who are positive influences and and supportive of me and my endeavors. I also find my education really important, but i like living by the motto "work hard, play hard".
Speaking of my education, in the future I want to use that bio major that I'm currently working on to pursue a career in physical therapy. I've wanted a career in PT for as long as I can remember. I'm constantly having people tell me that I'm crazy for being a bio major, but the idea of having that career in the future drives me to stay in this major, and makes it that much less difficult. There's a stigma behind PTs - that they can be rude and that some don't care much about their patients - but I aspire to be a PT that really helps and cares for people.