Chapter 6 The Family as Community

Case Study Barrie Jean Borich

“When I Call Her My Husband”

 This case study is about two women who are in a relationship together living in Minneapolis, MN. The writer is confused and asks, “Are we married?” She goes into description of their home, stuff they own, and first things they have bought together. She wonders does this make us married. Technically no, but wouldn’t you consider this to possibly be a marriage? I believe that’s what this case study is trying to prove. If two people can love each other so much and own things together, what makes them different from a heterosexual marriage? Another part of this study I want to point out is when they were discussing on whether to call each other wife or husband. Linnea, her lover, calls her wife and she feels it fits for her. She says the same to Linnea and she feels her tense up not liking it. Than she says, “You’re my Husband” and she instantly feels Linnea relax. She goes on to say that she isn’t called her Husband because she looks manly or acts like a man, but simply because she’s the one to lead her when dancing. Stuff like that. A quote that I thought was interesting was when the writer says, “When I call her my husband I mean that she’s a woman I saw dressed seriously in a skirt and hells just once, early on, when she still tried to cross over for job interviews.” I just thought it was interesting how she says “crossed over” meaning to show she looks straight. That’s what I got from it anyway. I personally think that it shouldn’t be a problem for same-sex couples to get married. It doesn’t hurt us for them to be happy.

Composing A Civic Life “A Rhetoric and Readings for Inquiry and Action” 2nd ed. New York: Michael Berndt & Amy Muse, 2007. 265-68. Print

To think we are already half way through the class is crazy! I like it though. I have always been fond of 8 week courses. I have gotten a good refresher on writing research papers and the MLA documentation. I’m not confused in any way and like all the assginments we have gotten. It makes the class interesting and fun. I am new at using the blogs and MyCompLab, but I like it! I feel real comfortable with the work in this class and I hope to keep my grade where it’s at!

In Chapter 5 it gets more into developing your research paper. A part that I thought was important was “forming a research question.” This is key because you need to know what your writing about and where you want to take your paper. It gives you an ending point to your paper and you knowing you answered your question. It keeps you on track and stops you from going off on ideas that don’t pertain to your paper. Another important thing about this is that it keeps your paper honest. It does this by having many sources to this one specific idea making it more credible.

Now citing your sources is just as important as keeping to your topic. In order to have a credible research paper you need credible sources. Citing them is very important. Its good to have so people know if they want more on this topic or to just see if its true. If not cited its pretty much saying that everything in your paper in your knowledge and words. Also known as Plagiarism, which is something you can get into a lot of trouble for.

In our exercise that we did in class I believe I came to figure out who actually went to Hawaii. I believe that Alex was the one who actually went to Hawaii. Even though they both seemed really unsure of their answers, it seemed to me that Alex’s answers were more correct.  A couple things that Maggie said made me think she was lying. One would be how she said she was in Hawaii for 2 weeks and only spent $400. To me that doesn’t seem possible considering you have to pay for food, things to do, and other things. Being a tourist I’m sure it would be expensive. Another thing that was kind of weird to me was that she flew there on her own at the age of 16. She said she was meeting a friend there which could be true, but if I was her parents there is no way I would let my daughter at that age go alone to Hawaii. My last reason that gave it away for me was actually my question I asked. I asked her, “What were the people like in Hawaii?” She just gave me an answer stating, “They all were nice, very nice.” I know a couple people who have been or lived in Hawaii and I know that the Hawain people aren’t fond of the “mainland folk”. This is just what I have heard from a lot of people. They kind of have there own language.

When I read Chapter 4 a lot of things stood out to me. One  major part I want to write about is the Ten Point Plan. The Ten Point Plan was to stop African American oppresion. I thought there claims were important. It shows how differently the African American people were treated only 40 years ago. I just think its absolutly ridiculous that they had to go through all they went through. How unfair! It makes me mad at times to think that people thought they could get away with such cruel punishments.

Another part of this chapter that caught my eye was when they talked about appealing to emotion. It states in the paragraph that a lot of our reasoning has to deal with our emotion also. They say that when faced with a decision, your emotions direct you in cosidering your options. Either positive or negative feelings, either one will help you decide. For instance, lets say your going to buy a home. One house is in the neighborhood you want and the other one isn’t. Considering how you feel about one neighborhood your going to pick that one not the other. Emotion in papers can be a good thing in relating your readers to you.

When reading this chapter a couple ideas or sentences stuck out for me. One would be this sentence, “You might find writing most useful because it allows you to build on the ideas you have in front of you.” I thought this was interesting  just because I believe this statement. If I have a topic I believe in I can just type away with my ideas and thoughts of it. Writing can be a really great way to express yourself.

The other part of the chapter I want to talk about is developing a research plan. This whole section really is important on discovering what your going to research about and where you are going to go with it. Like it says it has to be something your curious about or have some interest in looking up. If you have no interest in it, you can just stop now. Otherwise you won’t excel in your paper. Thats what I think anyway. I know when I write about crap that I could really care less about I don’t put as much effort into it as I should.

 Soo it took me a while to come up with an idea that I could actually do quite a bit of talking about. So I decided to take up an issue that has been brought up before. The topic is how cell phones can give you brain tumors. I have looked up information on this just to make sure there isn’t anything that could make this possibly true and I came up with nothing. I know there have been research done, but they came up with nothing. So I think that I could really make people believe my research paper on this topic. Also to me, I think its absurd that people think that we can get brain tumors from our cell phones. It has a very low radio frequency that isn’t harmful by any means. So thats the route I’m going to take!

When doing my paper I actually learned things I didn’t know about our school. I would have never of know either to be honest I probably never would have read it. So this paper was overall a positive things for me and probably the class also. While reading the other papers of my peers I really thought most of them covered their topics very well. A little grammatical errors every now and then, but I did too.  It is kind of hard to review someone elses paper too. I mean I know what they are trying to cover, but I’m not a teacher so I don’t want to give wrong advice which I don’t believe I did but still. Overall though my comments from my peers were helpful. I like how I was able to just speak in this paper and be myself.

As I was reading the virtues that Benjamin Franklin discussed I figured out what was my strength and weakness. My strength defiantly would be cleanliness. I have no problem being clean.  I can be kind of a germ freak ha.  And I work at Bath and Body works so I have all the good smelling, clean stuff! Now one that would be my weakness would probably be Industry. This is because I have a job but I can’t work all that much because of school.  Plus I’m currently waiting to get into my program, so I’m basically wasting time to get into that! Thats the best one I can come up with.

Your values defiantly keep track of your behavior in life I think. It makes you who you are.

When I read this story about Dr. Paus coming a U.S. Citizen it got me to think a little bit. She stated some of the things that she had to go through and her trying to think of what a citizen should be. It seems like us Americans can sometimes take for granted that we are an American Citizen. Like it stated in the story, “We live in a country where most people know more about the Simpsons than the Constitution…” Which sadly in most cases this is true. People from other countries work so hard to become citizens of the U.S. and lets just say its not to easy. In ways reading that qoute it made me kind of mad being protrayed as a dumb American and that someone from another country knows more than I do. But they are right. I don’t know a lot of things that I probably should know. Its kind of a reality check.