When approaching my writing I always have approached writing head on. I never really had a proper writing process. When beginning writing I didn’t look at structure and focused on trying to put my thoughts on paper. This process has changed over the semester because this semester I have been able to improve my writing by breaking down my writing into parts and not having to deal with the panic when writing essays.

When writing essays I try to do lots of research before beginning my writing. I usually try to have various sources/cites so I can have a solid idea before I even begin writing. It gives me ease having something to work with before I begin to write. When given a assignment I try to go through the criteria quickly and create a question that needs to be answered. As I go through the process of writing I tend to start with the body paragraphs and basically throw all my thoughts on the paper. After I’ve put all I could on my topic then I go back and revise.

After this I work on my introduction. I usually spend the longest time on my introduction as it is the beginning of the essay. I usually rewrite my introduction multiple times before I look back at the body paragraphs and the word vomit I wrote. Through this class I became more aware of my structure and if what I’m writing ties back to my thesis. From writing essay #3 I realized I focused a lot on context and summarizes my sources not adding enough of analysis/my voice. Writing essay #3 I became more aware of trying to connect and compare all my sources instead of just talking about them.

Reviewing the essay “How Individual Upbringing Affects Young Adult Romantic Relationships” I would overall give the essay a total score of a 90. This essay has a coherent structure with a strong introduction by beginning with a statement from campbell university. The essay compares and makes connections between his sources tying them back to his topic and triangulates data between sources. This author elaborates on his ideas and effectively summarizes his sources ideas and cites at least 5 sources.  This essay does give analysis but could have provided more of there voice in the body paragraphs. The essay overall is well-constructed and throughout the  has smooth transitions.

Reviewing the essay “When Words do More Than Just Hurt” by Ramandeep Kaur I would give the author an overall grade of 87. The author provides relevant background information as she discusses the K-pop star Sulli who committed suicide due to the hate she was recieving through her career. The author makes a compelling analysis of the online community following the hashtag “Sulli” and her fanbase as they mourn over her loss. The author paints a portrait of the community giving quotes on different members tweets in the community t. Overall the essay is well constructed and well worded. It starts off with a strong introduction and ends with her thoughts. The essay does address social and cultural norms giving multiple scenarios on how others responded to Sulli’s actions before and after her death. I would have liked to see more of the author’s subjective commentary throughout the essay and see how the hashtag Sulli used on other platforms besides twitter. The author focuses a lot on the direct observations and needs to note more on different trends/patterns noticed in their research.

Incel short for  “involuntary celibacy” is a group that formed into a community. The author discusses this group of noting the members all having the specific pattern of facing rejection in their lives from women. The members of this community, majority male range from the ages of 16-30 sharing their hardships from things like bullying, autism, anxiety, and unacceptance from others that have caused these men to feel unvalued and unattractive. These men are introverted and turn to the internet to seek refuge from their isolation and rejection. 

The author provides a context of the origins of Incel showing the insider experience through the altering of this community. This once small group that began from a shy lonely teenager evolved in two decades after the death of Sohe Chung beginning a trend of violence and hate towards women. This open-minded support group for those are lacking in dating and sex had degenerated into a place where praise for hate, mass killers, and ideas of this like rape has become normalized. 

The incels have this inside idea of “sexist ideology” which is a belief known as “black pill” having disrespect towards women labeling them as shallow, cruel creatures who will choose only the most attractive men. This tells us that the rejection these men have faced from women has caused them to blame women for their problems. From this community, we see constant loneliness these men feel has evolved into rage towards women. In this community, they all share the same feelings of misfortunes but don’t work in any way to empower or find a more positive outlook. 

The author’s analysis of this community relates to a wider context as he talks in the end about how all people can relate to members of Incel’s feelings of rejection and loneliness but this community takes their common misfortunes and has turned into misogynistic rage towards a gender. 

Social Privilege is “an advantage that only one person or group of people has”. Privileges that a person can have are advantages that can be based on aspects such as age, education level, ethnic or racial category, gender, religion, and social class. To a certain extent everyone without even realizing has privileges in their lives. I am lucky enough to have many privileges in my life that others don’t have.

I grew up in a home with both of my parents and being the youngest of three siblings I never had to carry any financial burdens even though both of my parents are lower-middle class. I go to a college and receive a free education from financial aid. I’ve grown in a supportive environment and being born as an American citizen I never had to deal with the same struggles my parents had. I was privileged with the freedom of speech, practice my religion, vote, and raised in a household that has made me bilingual.

The online community I chose is the Bardigang which is Cardi B’s large online fan-base. Being a fan of Cardi B since the beginning of her career when she was in Love and Hip Hop and just starting music, I have a bias towards the Bardigang. I have been a fan of the female rapper for a long time and I appreciate how outspoken she is as a person. Cardi being a New yorker and a woman of color has allowed me to have a strong bias towards her. My opinions can influence the way I do research on this online community. My fixed and subjective positions are affected as I already have a background knowledge of her. I will also have a connection as the majority of the community are minorities and I will carry my views as being part of an insider into this research.

In Elise Wu’s study, “Out Patients”, she portrays the community of a medical condition called factitious disorder (FD) and her experience before and after her self-diagnosis of the illness. FD is defined as deliberately creating physical or psychological symptoms simply to take on the role of the patient with extreme cases being Munchausen syndrome. She describes herself as a member of the culture/online community telling her story of herself going into emergency showing some presumably symptoms of appendicitis and “the most acute years of the near decade I spent faking illness”(143).

She creates a verbal portrait of this community through imagery when describing her own experiences and by describing the posts on the thread. Wu did research about the patients, their contact with therapists, their families, and their doctors.Through her research she found an online community in the form of a visual discussion group for people interested in the disorder. She explains her anxieties and fears for herself and other members of the FD community. When researching FD she creates a verbal portrait as she gives an abundance of information she learned that allowed her to self-diagnose herself with FD and give the audience an understanding of the condition. She uses multiple online sources including the Cleveland clinic foundation website, Dr.Feldman’s website, and Munchausen library.She also presents statistics from professionals like Dr. Feldman. 

Wu triangulates the data, research and findings she discovered with her own personal experience with FD. Wu’s footnotes play a role in her text by providing an organized in depth background information. Her footnotes show directly where her information came from and upheld the credibility of her text on FD.

The public place I decided to observe is the New York Presbyterian Hospital lobby. Due to my schedule I was only able to visit at night on Mondays around 11 pm. I walked into the large lobby where there were small tables for people to sit on the left side and took a seat in that area to begin my observation. In the lobby on the right side there is a store where one can purchase food/snacks for people who want to eat. In the middle there’s a large desk where 2 security guards were sitting behind the desk.
Though it was late there were more people than I expected. On the tables there were 10 people sitting eating food from the cafe. Most of the people were sitting alone eating as they quietly looked through their phone. The patterns I noticed were that people were constantly moving in and out. The people in the cafe were constantly walking in and out with paper bags in their hands while there were people entering and leaving the elevators. Another pattern was that most people were alone, keeping to themselves as they traveled out or in the hospital. The few people who were in groups looked like family members who were pushing out the former patients in a wheelchair.
Even though it was so late people were walking in and out the lobby, the doctors/nurses were all in lab coats/scrubs. The doctors/nurses walked quicker than the other people who were moving through the lobby. Each person who entered had to go through a quick security check then go to the security desk where they had to get a visitors pass to go further into the hospital. Due to it being so late you could tell the doctors were going due to their quick steps and happy goodbyes to security as they left.
In the lobby you could only hear the steps of people and the voices of the security guards talking and laughing. Due to me constantly being in the hospital to take care of my grandma the security guards greeted and spoke to me. The security guards were going on a discussion about the coronavirus virus and how quickly it was spreading. Overall, I observed a very fast paced setting even when it was late at night on a weekday where there was just continuous movement of people except for the few who were eating on the tables.

In the article “The Hustlers at Score”, Jessica Pressler does multiple interviews on the charges of former strippers drugging and swindling hundreds of thousands of dollars out of wealthy New York men during the 2010’s. Throughout the article, Pressler exhibits the cultural information of the stripper subculture describing the behaviors and insider language of strippers such as Samantha being “too ancient” in the stripper world only being 30 and how strippers work together in groups to gain a larger profit off men. Strippers live in a disadvantageous field having rules to pay the clubs to work, tip the bartender, DJ, house mom and the hosts and are looked down/degraded by their clients.

Cultural information is also given on the “wall street men” who spend strainious amounts of money on these strippers. Rosie and Samantha discuss the shared belief for strippers on these “clean-cut family men” who work on Wall Street making millions that they would spend in these strip clubs. The men are described are “mostly assholes” who “party so hard …make money, but you’re not happy, so you go out and splurge on strip clubs and drinking and drugs, then the money depletes and you have to make it again.” The men are described are people who have no value of money and spend it without any care.

The background information provided in the article gives the readers information that allows further comprehension of the stripper subculture. Pressler gives context on the era in where stripping was no longer degrading but sexually liberating and financially empowering. The market collapse in 2008 had left half of Wall Street unemployed gives a better understanding of the economic recession that affected the strippers financially. The information about the Wall Street men provides an explanation on how the women were able to execute their plan so successfully. The ability to gain a great profit by swindling these men by drugging and maxing out there credit cards ultimately leads to her becoming addicted to stealing money.

Pressler describes her informants thoroughly bringing her informants back to life. She interviews multiple people and giving many perspectives from the strippers to the police. She gives Keo’s life story describing events such as her parents abandoning her to raising a child alone at a young age from her past bringing more emotion to the story and allows the audience to be more connected to the informants. Rosie’s story allows us to feel sympathetic towards her even though she did illegal crimes like drugging and robbing men. Pressler provides descriptive language that allows the readers to create images by using metaphors such as “Her body was Jessica Rabbit curvy, her lips Angelina Jolie puffy.” She puts the story in a timeline that tells the story and all the circumstances that these women did to try an survive that ultimately led the girls to the end point of getting charged for there crimes.

In the essay “A Report from Occupied Territory” by James Baldwin he writes about Harlem during the 1960’s, in particular describes the case of The Harlem Six to try and give insight of the meaning of Harlem being a “occupied territory”. Baldwin describes a young salesman named Frank Stafford who wanted to know why the police were beating up the children resulting in him getting beaten and arrested. The cultural information this article is included through the experiences that residents in Harlem have to face. Whether it is the police brutality or the larger experience of segregation, it is not unique to Harlem. Baldwin points out that what is true of Harlem is true with every city with a large African American population. In these places the police ‘are simply the hired enemies of this population’. The police violate cultural information such as rules from the fourth amendment and the right to a fair trial that are common ideas with the residents of Harlem. The laws that are placed to protect black people are meant “to be my servant and not my master… to respect the law, in the context in which the American Negro finds himself, is simply to surrender his self-respect.” Baldwin notes that automation has rendered many people jobless and no solution to deal with the increasing unemployment rate has been given. Their present to keep the Negro in his place and to protect white business interests/ the white supremacy.

Fieldworkers will have to offer an insiders’ perspectives along with your own to translate the cultural data into ethnographic text. A fieldworker would have to adapt to non-biasedly look at the multiple perspectives of the people of Harlem. A fieldworker will also look at other sources of information that are part of the culture such as the police department.

• Questions a fieldworker would ask to uncover the culture of the article is:
• Who are the people living in Harlem ? What are the socioeconomic factors for those in “occupied territories” that are putting them at an disadvantage ?
• How do police officers act in Harlem versus other outside areas of Harlem? How would a police officer engage a black person versus a white person?
• What is the difference between a “Bad” Negro and a “Good” Negro? What are the set requirements that makes one a “Bad” Negro? How are the Bad and good Negro treated differently?