Beginning to Write Essay #2

(Overheads from the In-Class Lecture)

Example

1.) I started with a tentative thesis statement:

• It seems to me that Barbara Ehrenreich made a lot of poor choices and decisions during her “experiment” in low-wage work and living in the Twin Cities, and I wonder if she made these poor choices and decisions deliberately knowing that they might make for more entertaining reading when she finally wrote her book.

2.) I went through the book in search of support for the thesis statement:

• B.E. never considered getting a roommate -- not advertising for one or asking other people about being a potential roommate.
• B.E. only focused on finding a furnished apartment that rented by the week or month -- she did not consider other living situations like renting a room/part of a house or staying in a shelter -- however, she did temporarily consider that YWCA-type thing with dorm beds
• B.E. never got a second job -- she mentioned a bakery in a supermarket but did not ever get it -- her hours at Wal-Mart changed and the supermarket wanted her for more hours
• B.E. chose Wal-Mart over Menards even though Menards paid more
• B.E. let herself get sucked into the Wal-Mart orientation session which led to this choice
• B.E. tried to plant the seeds of getting a union started at Wal-Mart even though she knew her days there were numbered

3.) I thought more about the thesis and what it might “promise” or “predict” or “forecast” or “blueprint” about my essay:

• Main point #1 -- Poor choice #1
• Main point #2 -- Poor choice #2
• Etc.

4.) I decide on the following order of ideas for my essay:

• Finding a job -- choosing Wal-mart over Menards / the orientation
• Finding a job -- never got a second job (couldn’t, schedule conflict)
• Finding an apartment -- only looked at apartments (dorm beds?)
• Finding an apartment -- never considered a roommate
• At the job -- planting the seeds of a union

5.) I go through my list of “support” (details and examples from the book) to reorganize them based on my tentative outline and to remove anything that doesn’t seem to closely fit.

• (Imagine me doing this -- see below)

6.) I decide which part of the paper I want to tackle first.  Which paragraph seems most fun to start with and write?  I want to get into a rhythm of writing.  Writer’s block is a mind-set.  Writer’s block comes from NOT WRITING.  You don’t always have to start at the top of an outline and work your way down.

7.) I decide I want to start my draft by writing the paragraph about planting the seeds for a union.

8.) I keep my thesis in mind.

• It seems to me that Barbara Ehrenreich made a lot of poor choices and decisions during her “experiment” in low-wage work and living in the Twin Cities, and I wonder if she made these poor choices and decisions deliberately knowing that they might make for more entertaining reading when she finally wrote her book.

9.) I review ALL the support I’ve gathered, knowing that I will NOT be able to use all of it.

• p. 143 -- “But I decide, in the spirit of caution and inquiry, to attend the Wal-Mart orientation anyway.”
• p. 144 -- “The theme of covert tensions, overcome by right thinking and positive attitude, continues is the twelve-minute video entitled You’ve Picked a Great Place to Work.  Here various associates testify to the ‘essential feeling of family for which Wal-Mart is so well-known,’ leading up to the conclusion that we don’t need a union. . . .”  (there’s a bunch more here)
• pp. 179-181 -- Discontent with Wal-Mart – B.E. and others
• p. 181-182 -- “Then I get a little reckless.  When an associate meeting is announced over the loudspeaker that afternoon, I decide to go . . . ‘You know what we need here?’ I finally respond.  ‘We need a union.’  There it is, the word is out. . . . But no one has outright banned the word union and right now it’s the most potent couple of syllables at hand.”
• p. 182 -- “After that, there’s nothing to stop me.  I’m on a mission now: Raise the questions!  Plant the seeds!  Breaks finally have a purpose beyond getting me off my feet.”
• pp. 182-183 -- Gripes about Wal-Mart
• p. 185 -- “All right.  I’m not a union organizer anymore than I’m Wal-Mart ‘management material,’ as Isabelle has hinted. . . . Someone has to puncture the prevailing fiction that we’re a ‘family’ here, we ‘associates’ and our ‘servant leaders,’ held together solely by our commitment to the ‘guests.’ . . . And someone has to flush out the mysterious ‘we’ lurking in the ‘our’ . . . It might as well be me because I have nothing to lose, less than nothing, in fact.”
• p. 187 -- “Yes, I know that any day now I’m going to return to the variety and drama of my real, Barbara Ehrenreich life.  But this fact sustains me only in the way that, say, the prospect of heaven cheers a terminally ill person.”
• p. 187 -- The hotel workers’ strike.
• pp. 190-191 -- Her final chat with another coworker about unions.

10.) I understand that I do not have to include the support in the order it appears in the book.

11.) I want my paragraph to be a BLEND of (1) support from the book (details and examples) and (2) my own opinions, explanations, and interpretations of that support and how it relates to my thesis.

Sample Rough Draft Paragraph

          The last poor choice or decision that Barbara Ehrenreich makes during her “experiment” of working at Wal-Mart is her choice to plant the seeds of a union among her coworkers.  From her own work experience there and from talking to her coworkers, she realizes that the wages are not adequate for a single person to live on and that the various working conditions there are somewhat dehumanizing for the employees.  She already knows that Wal-Mart doesn’t want a union.  When she attended the orientation session, she had to watch a video in which leads up to “the conclusion that we don’t need a union” (144).  When she later goes to an associate meeting, she realizes that “no one has outright banned the word union” (182).  However, to me, this is wasted effort, because she knows she’s not going to be there long enough to carry it through.  In fact she says, “It might was well be me because I have nothing to lose, less than nothing, in fact” (185).  Sure, she doesn’t have anything to lose, but her coworkers who will remain working there might have something to lose.  Her coworkers don’t seem entirely inspired when she brings it up, and since Wal-Mart doesn’t want a union, for her to bring it up and then leave is not only wasted effort but might also get someone else into trouble for talking about it after she’s left.  So she would escape any punishment.  She even admits, “Yes, I know that any day now I’m going to return to the variety and drama of my real, Barbara Ehrenreich life” (187).  But her coworkers don’t have that option.  They might really need that job and if they get in trouble for something she started, it is not really fair.

Quotations

Quote as few words as possible -- avoid many “long quotations” (4 or more typed lines)

Alternatives to quotation are summarizing (condensing information in your own words) and paraphrasing (restating information in your own words)

Quotations must be completely accurate

You can use ellipses (3 spaced periods) … or square brackets [like this] to insert something into a quotation

Example

“People working more than one job -- and in effect I would be doing that for a day by going from my three-to-eleven stint at Wal-mart to a day at Menards -- have to take sleep deprivation in stride.  I do not.  I am shaky, my brain fried like that egg in the Partnership for a Drug-Free America commercial.  How am I going to master the science of plumbing products when I can barely summon the concentration required to assemble a breakfast of peanut-butter and toast?  The world is coming at me in high-contrast snapshots, deprived of narrative continuity.” (148)

According to Ehrenreich, “People working more than one job … have to take sleep deprivation in stride” (148).