Learning Outcome #2 shows how I use sources as evidence in my Significant Writing Project. When writing a paragraph, I use my sources to contribute to the conversation, whether refuting, supporting, or helping to transition my argument and my idea’s. An example of this is best seen in the second paragraph:
“Marine Biology has advanced leaps and bounds over the centuries, the only way to continue this progress is to integrate artistic integrities of empathetic thinking into our scientific process. In Marine biology or in biology in general we can make guesses on animal instinct, but we don’t genuinely know. Animal intelligence isn’t really an area that has been explored or studied to a point that we can assess intelligence and consciousness in any animal. There isn’t really a set understanding of how an animal’s brain size relates to its intelligence or thought process, in fact this is a widely debated topic. Yo-Yo Ma an award-winning musician and S.T.E.A.M. advocate says in “Necessary Edges: Art’s, empathy, and education” that “to be able to put yourself in another’s shoes is an essential skill.” In the arts especially in the works of creative writing, the most effective way of writing is to place yourself into the characters’ shoes, to take on their traits. Novels force you to really put yourself in someone else’s shoes because “they capture a layer of reality that reductionism cannot” (Lehrer, Jonah). So, by using the artistic qualities of empathetic thinking we can, in Marine Biology, try to understand and animals’ impulses and instincts as if they were our own survival instincts. To place ourselves in their shoes, understand their strengths and weaknesses, and accesses what they may do.”
As you can see I use two quotes, the first one by Yo-Yo Ma helps introduce a new point and direction that I am going to bring my paragraph to. It begins a conversation between Yo-Yo ma and me about what skills science and gain from the humanities. The second quote by Jonah Lehrer doesn’t introduce a new direction but it supports the idea I have already presented and helps solidify my position.
My starting entry prompt didn’t connect my sources to my point of view as well as I should have. I separated my sources from my actual point of view, it didn’t create a conversation, nor did I use it to where it could support, refute or engage my ideas and points within the paragraph. My development from the beginning of the year has now made me capable of using sources to help develop and strengthen my stances within papers.
