Thlog: Week 5

I can't believe how quickly we are moving (haha) through this quarter!

As soon as we came into class on Monday, Z introduced the IMRAD acronym. IMRAD explains the conventions of a scholarly article. Interestingly enough, each segment of IMRAD was present in the scholarly article I analyzed for PB2A. As a class, we discussed why IMRAD is a thing, and how it applies to the scholarly article. Sam made the great observation that “for someone to understand a segment, the IMRAD acronym must be in order, because otherwise the following segment won’t make sense.” For instance you can’t have the method and then the introduction; they need to be in the specific IMRAD order.

Another sweet writing tip Z gave us was when and how we use italics. Even though I already knew this *hair flick* it was good to revisit and refresh my memory. The major aspect of Monday’s lesson was the notion of MOVES. So what are moves? In my initial first-order brainstorm, I defined moves as being “someone’s signature action or quote that someone recognizes and replicates. My example of this was Miley Cyrus’ “twerking”” move. 

I was rather confident with my answer to what moves were, but when Z made us google the word moves in titles of articles, I was surprised. When the class shared their individual findings, I was intrigued to see the multiple possible definitions of moves, and the variations in contexts the word moves was used in. So this led me to the conclusion that moves can be conscious and deliberate, but can also be beneath the radar: sometimes we don’t even know we are making moves. 

I loved then investigating this notion of moves in a different light. Z showed us a video of The Rock’s “People’s Elbow,” and made us really detangle and break-up the many aspects of the move and what we saw. This made me realize that short-sequential moves can formulate into a much larger and prominent move.

For Wednesday’s class, I read “How To Read Like A Writer” (Bunn), which was a really interesting read. He introduced to me a completely new idea of reading. I don’t read often, but perhaps when I do read it will make me a better writer if I “read like a writer.” It’s actually super weird, and I’m not sure that I would enjoy reading if I constantly read in the way Bunn suggests. Still — it’s an eye-opener and something to think about.

On Wednesday, we visited WP2 overall. I’m really glad we went over disciplines in-class, because that was the only preliminary question I had asked about WP2. I’m not too sure what I’m going to do for WP2 yet. I’m going to stay away from the tennis topic for the time being, and perhaps focus on another topic I’m interested in — maybe something I want to learn more about.