I choose this topic because it captive mi attention of find out in what conditions is we are giving up to protect our privacy. “The Year We Give up on Privacy” by Sara Morrison. Honestly, this article makes me remember who people were aware of their personal information being on the web, including myself. Especially with my children, I like to know how much information they are sharing with the entire world on social media. Yet the pandemic abruptly flips our regular way to do things and moved everything online. Work, school, shopping, specials event are now transmitted online, for example, my friend just last week told me that she is getting married and she will be transmitted her wedding through. Before the pandemic hit us, the article refers to the polemic case about privacy in Facebook, and how the Trump administration was taking this information to track people. Nevertheless, being lacking in homes, the use of websites and the internet was vital in order to survive. The question is where our information is ending? Politicians are delivering a bill to protect people’s privacy. It is crazy how due to the fact of the coronavirus we have to give up and everything changes.

In contacts to that,  personally know some people,  how to refuse to use Zoom because they saw in the news the hackers were joining meetings and appearing naked on videos. Another friend that she missing a lot meeting with her friends and religious services because she does not want to make her information public. The funny thing is they are giving information in other ways that they don’t realize.

This is our reality, before the pandemic I was very meticulous about letting companies have my personal information because those companies sell individuals’ data to other companies. Yet, people share too much on their social media that it is easy to find their preferences, birthdays family member, and more in their accounts. But, do we have another option? Unfortunately, we don’t have too much power on it. During the first four months of the quarantine, for example,  I was cooking with my children different plates with my children and posting on my social media. Sometimes we make our lives public. Our children are spending so much time sharing Tictoks videos, sharing Facebook Live from their rooms, and making their self “Youtubers”. We are yield our personal information more than ever.

I think the idea of making a law to protect individual’s privacy is vital, because now than ever online environment is a wide-open door to harm the users. This article provides me information that I did not know before and refreshes my mind again. I like how the author develops the topic and adds extra information to support his argument, but a little too much in my opinion, at some point, I was kind of lost in this particular genre.

Dirk’s “Navigating Genre.” 

I like how this writer used many examples or quotes from people to make the article more informative, understandable, and interesting. As the writer mentioned a quote from others he will explain the quote after in a more simple way. But it had something that confused me, and it was about the author’s reference to “location” as the writer stated, “You probably had an idea of what that paper should look like, but you also needed to consider the location of the assignment.” The authors explain it by considering how the expectations of a particular instructor will help shape the assignment, as well as considering the context in which it will be used.  I’m wondering if this is similar to using the appropriate vocabulary for each different writing topic and considering the intended audience. Besides, I want to know more examples about how different situations arise in life about the genre that everyone can be in contact with, and events that happen in life. As I know more examples that will show up in daily life, it will give me a better understanding of the role of the genre.

The Cut: “Is Marriage Obsolete?”

I chose to read “Is Marriage Obsolete?” because I felt that of all the titles, it was the one that made an impression on me, one that intrigued me and made me want to understand why that title was used and what the content was that supported the title. It lived up to my expectations because before I started reading it, I expected it to talk about things like how people no longer consider marriage to be an important thing in life and how ideas and perceptions about marriage have changed. In the reading, it has mentioned that “more than half of Americans surveyed said that getting married wasn’t an important part of becoming an adult,” and that “Whereas marriage was once seen as a joint effort to achieve the good life, these days marriage looks more like a joint attempt to live your best lives.” From reading this article, I learned the reason why people get married, even though there will be endless arguments, but when the most discouraging moments, he/she will always be there and will never leave even after seeing the worst of you. When the author wanted to show the research she would use parentheses and say that according to some studies and provide some data such as “40 to 50 percent of all marriages in the United States end in divorce.”The author also uses personal experience by talking about how her daughter feels about marriage and why she doesn’t want to be married. Also, the author uses her own experiences with her husband and how she feels about marriage, and what she thinks should be in a marriage. I gravitated towards this piece because of its genre since as a woman, I have a lot of thoughts or ideas about marriage. This reading is in the romance genre, which interests me because as an 18-year-old girl, I just can’t say no to anything in the romance genre.

The article, “Is Marriage Obsolete?” by Heather Havrilesky, from The Cut, questions whether marriage is obsolete and investigates the steps of what goes on in a marriage. It states that marriage has changed from the 1950s considered as the good all days to questioning if marriage is essential to living your best life. What I like about the article is that the author chooses to share her marriage experience and include her personality, giving us her twist in the writing. Also, she goes on by stating that her daughter prefers to not get married and grow up in a tiny house with a subcompact car and a mini Australian Shepherd. There’s nothing wrong with wanting to live that way, as she states “It doesn’t sound bad compared to the slowly unfolding garden of horrors inherent to aging sync with another human”. The statistics that she shares in her writing are the 2017 Census Bureau report that states “45% of all Americans, that are 18 and older, are now single and more than half of Americans surveyed that getting married wasn’t an important part of becoming an adult”. This statistic defends the argument that marriage is going obsolete because many people are not gravitating towards the decision of marriage as a goal in their life. Learning the fact can definitely influence many individuals into possibly changing that report by their own actions and starting to increase the rate of marriage or it could encourage others to not find a reason for marriage to be essential. I also learned that married men live longer than single men however, married women don’t live as long as a single woman. That statement made me reflect and try to understand why that is. The typical standards that old fashion men still have are to worry about only stabilizing a family financially. However, women’s stereotype is to clean, cook, take care of the kids, and be the typical housewife, which all of that has changed now. Women are empowering, growing into job industries, and making it stressful to complete these so-called roles. This is why it could be that married women don’t live as long as a single woman because they have to care for not only their responsibilities, such as their job but their own family as well. The author chooses to share that her partner has seen her worst and states that nothing is more divine than being able to say that out loud in comfort. She states that it somehow feels like grace to be able to do that and links it with the marriage vows that state until sickness and death. It was kind of confusing because she was going from one experience to another but in a way, it kind of connected all together in the writing. The genre of the article did gravitate me into reading it because I like romantic, fantasy, and mystery genres, and the title of marriage seemed to interest me. In my opinion, the author chooses to write a specific way based on the genre because the author knows what type of people will be interested in reading the writing. The topic interests me because I like learning about different perspectives of people and the question of, is marriage obsolete brought to my attention. I chose to read this article because I never thought of marriage as obsolete. In my opinion, marriage is not a “trend” for it to go unwanted or considered old fashion. My perspective is that you would want to get married to make a solid law commitment with the person you love the most and share the experiences that come with it.

Reflective writing or metacognitive writing allows the writer to focus on the audience and finding potential issues with your writing process. It’s critical how the motives of the writer towards the audience are, and how we need to focus on our work to ensure that we express the message that we want to tell. By using this approach writers will improve their writing by remembering their mistakes and thinking about how they can improve in the future. This will help writers to gain more insight and control over the revision process.

Reflective writing has opened my eyes to my strengths and weaknesses. In high school, I wasn’t taught this skill and because of that I didn’t structure my writing pieces correctly. I didn’t understand what I was doing and I wasn’t meeting the criteria the teacher required. My writing process used to be just making one draft and improving the grammar. I was focusing on the body paragraphs and ignoring the introduction and conclusion. This made my the focus of my writing piece confusing to others. I was focused too much on the body instead I should have focused on it as a whole. During my first semester in college, I was taught this skill and it stuck with me as I progressed throughout college. My last English teacher taught me have to structure my writing correctly and he helped me fix my drafts. This skill has helped me perfect my writing and organize my thoughts correctly. My paper doesn’t have to be perfect during the first draft but I should do my best to work my way up to that level.

Before I start writing, I brainstorm ideas and then organize them in according to essay format. I put together the reasons and the details I am going to use. Then I start the introduction with a question to pull the readers attention and then I put the introduce the topic. I put the body together with details matching the reasons. Afterwards, I summarize the entire piece in the conclusion. Finally, I reread the draft to see what needs to be improved and what needs to be deleted.