Hi My Name is Grace Madura and I Will be Presenting on....

To be completely honest, this past week was a really tough one for me, so I'm just now getting some motivation back. Which is simultaneously good and bad. I feel very behind, but I am gaining back that momentum to dive back into my project and finish off strong. For this reason, I will admit that I  have the bare minimum amount of what I need right now. On the bright side though, I have a lot of ideas and am planning on putting the effort into make this presentation bomb. 

Rubric Row 1: I literally have a slide for the question, method, and conclusion. I don't know if it is too explicit but for now I have them in there. Perfectly obvious. 

Rubric Row 2: I have to integrate evidence and implications into my presentation. Which I don't have but have commented on places that I need to include them. I also need to make more specifics in my conclusions. 

Rubric Row 3: This row is actually really cool for my project because I thought there would be more signs of Marx's structures in these movies. But guess what? There's not! So I was wrong partly. But that's where the discussion on the purpose of the movies to entertain and then get the audience hooked on the products associated with the movies comes in. And Bam there is still room to prove Disney is strongly promoting consumerism through further research. 

Rubric Row 4: In the middle of my presentation there are some pretty boring slides. So i'll work on that. I made a slide that has all of the movies in my sample, and I think it is really cool, but I would love to know if it is too overwhelming. To me, it seemed like a good way to say I had 13 movies, without having to take the time to verbally list them all. Is that crazy? I am also planning on taking the audience through an evaluation of Aladdin to make the research process and data analysis section more clear (and prove I actually did work to come to my results). I feel like this example makes the audience a participant in the research process, and is hopefully very engaging, without taking too long of my presentation. My fear is that I go through this and then do not have enough time to talk about the conclusions in enough detail. 

I know I still have a lot of work to do. But I have a goal. This will hopefully be me when I rock the presentation. 

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The Editing Process

Hi all! This week has been super busy! I started doing some data collection for a project at Mayo Clinic and it's really interesting to be a (small) part of another research project in a different field. I am loving working with adults too. While I feel naive sometimes, they've been very helpful and treat me with respect, an experience that has made me give myself more respect.

Now, onto my completely different research project.

The overall trends in the feedback I received included confusing sections and abrupt transitions. I also really valued Max's comment on restating my purpose throughout to remind the reader what I am doing and why. I think definitely at some points of my paper it seems to go down a rabbit hole of information and it is necessary to go back to the overall intentions of researching the structure of Disney movies to find motivations of the company.

Me getting comfortable in the Rabbit Hole

Most of the confusing logic or points was during the literature review. I believe this problem stemmed from the fact that Mrs. Haag and I talked everything out so when I wrote it, it made sense to me and Mrs. Haag, but probably lacked some of the previous knowledge and familiarity. Luckily, my fantastic peer editors were able to point out information that did not make sense so that I can hopefully connect everything. 

When grading myself using the rubric, I felt like I fulfilled the "understand and analyze argument" sections and also the sources and evidence section in my literature review. However, I can improve in the "research design" section since I have a clear purpose and all the sources, but I am lacking in some of the connections. Again as a consequence of the confusing parts, I feel like I am also missing points in the "establish argument" section where I need to take my results and thoroughly discuss the limitations. Luckily, I am actually doing well with the word count, so I can go back and make the connections more explicit. 

Another section I could possibly lose points on is distinguishing my voice from sources. I need to fix my credibility assessments to focus more on the writer's conclusions, as Max pointed out on my paper. This way I will be able to show their results, and the MY conclusions to how they fit in my argument. 

Finally, looking ahead to the presentation really scares me. I have a lot of information especially in my literature review that I am not sure how I am going to cut it down. I think once I am able to figure out the lit review part, the rest of the presentation should be okay. One trap I see myself falling into is only reporting the larger results, which I think could be a negative since it would not show the nuances to my findings. 

... I just finished the paper?

I know I am not completely finished, but it is honestly so satisfying to say I wrote the last section of the paper.

Overall, I think the strongest part of my paper is probably the lit review section. It took about three tries but... I finally got somewhere I was really proud of that actually flowed logically and justified all of my parts and focused on the deeper root of what I wanted to discuss, the cycle of parent and child in capitalism. Before implementing my methods, I realized that my lit review really was not aligned with the deeper implications of what I was trying to figure out. Shifting the focus ultimately lead me to adding the thematic analysis portion. This part was very transformative and therefore the pieces seemed to fall into place a lot easier, which I think is represented well in my literature review. I think there is a lot of theoretical information, but I was able to explain it in a way that makes sense to readers.

I think the weakest section of my paper are the transitions especially between sections like methods, results, and discussions. Luckily the subtopic of "methods" helps, but I still don't want it to be as shocking throwing information in there.

I also feel a little unsure about my discussion. More specifically, I feel like there is good information in there about the different parts, but again it is connecting all of the ideas. Also I almost feel like I am undermining my research because it feels like there are infinite ways to analyze Disney films. While my results were kind of anti-climactic, there is some interesting findings and I want the significance to be accurately shown.

Another huge thing, is that I am wayyyy over the word count. I still have to cut some parts like in my methods section I adjusted some of the way my numbers were analyzed, however, this will not entirely fix the problem. So if there are any sections that are wordy or seem aimless please comments so that I can cut down on some words.

I am pretty excited for peer review, not going to lie. I look forward to improving my own paper, reading my peers' papers, helping them improve, and learning from their papers. I know there is still more effort that I can put into my paper and I look froward to polishing the finished project!

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Let's Have a Discussion on Discussions

I can't believe we are almost done with our papers! It has been such a long process, but yet feels like it flew by. 

Last week was the results section, and now we have the discussion section to write. Since the sources I used last time have been foundational sources in the formation of my methods and results, I plan to analyze their discussion sections as well. 

I really liked that "Images of Couples and Families in Disney Feature-Length Animated Films," the thematic analysis of families, immediately related the results to real world applications. In this study they took each theme they found prevalent and talked about what that theme meant in terms of child therapy practices. This gives me the idea to separate my ideas based on theme, in my case I will probably do movies that fit the structure and cycle and movies that break it. Then I will examine why it is the case that these movies seem to follow or do not follow the cycle. Since the majority of movies broke the cycle I will focus on that, and talk about the changes and reasons behind rebellious characters and such. 

Similarly, "Post-Princess Models of Gender: The New Man in Disney/ Pixar" jumped right into the real world implications of their character analysis, focusing on how these lessons affect their son's understanding. They then brought in other stats and sources to talk about the broader influence Disney has on viewers. This was mostly what I did in my literature review. But, I think it is important to see that they brought in new information here to prove their point that the messages in Disney movies are being transmitted to a wide audience, and therefore need criticism. The new information was used as a way to transition into the broader implications of very intense character analyses. I plan on bringing in sources to prove WHY it is more compelling for Disney movies to not follow Marxist definitions and what about families have changed in time. This will transition from my specific movies to the real world implications and significance of my research in the field. 

"Gender Role Portrayal and the Disney Princesses" followed very similarly as the other two. One difference though, was that each section had a sentence that clearly answered the question/ addressed the hypothesis, a small detail, but helpful reminder. Since this is going to be read by an AP Reader it is very helpful to use precise language so that they know exactly where my "answer" is. I also liked how to answer their question, they first presented a broad statement, that gender was both stereotypical and non-steretypical, and then went into the nuances of this statement. To address the limitations of their study, they present some issues with coding complex behaviors and a select sample of movies, which is basically what I did so these are considerations I will take when writing my limitations. 

I'm still a little vague on what information specifically I am putting in here, but I am starting to research that tomorrow! This is one of my favorite parts relating information back to meaning so I am looking forward to it. See you next week!

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