Essay #3 Lecture Notes

Wednesday, March 1, 2006

Process: Start with a tentative thesis / Go to the book in search of support for the thesis

Step 1 -- Key Question from the Assignment Sheet:

• “Do you think Barbara Ehrenreich made good choices and decisions about looking for work and a place to live during her stay in Key West, Portland, and the Twin Cities?”

Step 2 -- Basic “Answers” to the Question – which will/can become your tentative thesis:

• Yes, I do think Barbara Ehrenreich made good choices and decisions about looking for work and a place to live during her stay in the Twin Cities.
• No, I do not think Barbara Ehrenreich made good choices and decisions about looking for work and a place to live during her stay in the Twin Cities.

Step 3 -- Other Possible “Answers” -- Variations -- which will/can become your tentative thesis:

• Barbara Ehrenreich’s stay in the Twin Cities was marked by a series of _____ choices and decisions.
• Barbara Ehrenreich’s “experiment” in low-wage work and living in the Twin Cities contained a mixture of _____ and _____ choices and decisions.
• While Barbara Ehrenreich made some _____ choices and decisions during her research in the Twin Cities job and housing market, what eventually mattered more were the _____ choices and decisions.
• Barbara Ehrenreich’s experience of job and apartment hunting in the Twin Cities contained more _____ than _____ choices and decisions.

Step 4 -- Decide on 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.

Step 5 -- Decide on your main ideas:

1. Not taking the Hopkins Park Plaza apartment
2. Going to the Comfort Inn
3. Working at both the Hearthside and Jerry’s in Key West
4. Choosing Wal-Mart over Menards
5. Not getting a second job in Minneapolis

Step 6 -- Decide on a tentative order for your main ideas:

1. Choosing Wal-Mart over Menards
2. Not getting a second job in Minneapolis
3. Working at both the Hearthside and Jerry’s in Key West
4. Not taking the Hopkins Park Plaza apartment
5. Going to the Comfort Inn

Step 7 -- Write tentative topic sentences for your body paragraphs:

1. One mistake that Barbara Ehrenreich made was in choosing to work at Wal-Mart instead of at Menards.
2. A second mistake that Ehrenreich made was not getting a second job in Minneapolis after she chose Wal-Mart.
3. An earlier mistake that Ehrenreich made was in trying to work at both the Hearthside and Jerry’s in Key West.
4. A key mistake in finding a place to stay in Minneapolis was not taking the first apartment at the Hopkins Park Plaza.
5. The final mistake Barbara Ehrenreich made in Minneapolis was in deciding to stay at the Comfort Inn.

Step 8 -- Go through the book and look for things that support your thesis:

• Examples, Scenarios, Situations -- with details -- which you can summarize
• Comments, Explanations, Interpretations -- by Ehrenreich herself -- which you can quote
   
• p. 129 -- first mention of supermarket job
• p. 169 -- her “plan had been to add a weekend job” -- Rainbow
• p. 170 -- “Rainbow also falls through” -- they want her PT, 5 days a week
• p. 170 -- she has “no control at the moment over what [her] days off will be” at Wal-Mart

Step 9 -- Begin to draft your essay:

• You don’t need to start with the full introduction
• Perhaps only include your thesis in your introduction for now
• Perhaps draft one body paragraph at a time
• Begin with the topic sentence
• Try to blend material / information from the book with your own comments, explanations, persuasive points, etc. -- point out the significance of each event; answer the “so what? question
• Be sure everything in each body paragraph relates to its topic sentence
• Be sure to keep your thesis in mind as you are writing each body paragraph
• Arrange your supporting points and evidence in the way you think is best.  (It doesn’t necessarily have to follow the order of the book.)
• Revise thesis and order of supporting points and evidence as necessary.
• Go with your instincts.  If something seems wrong, go in a different direction.  If you feel pulled in a certain direction, even if it is not what you originally intended, follow it and see if it goes anywhere.
• Don’t stop the momentum!  If you have a question, turn on the bold, type the question, and then keep going.

Step 10 -- Sample rough draft body paragraph:

          A second mistake that Ehrenreich made was not getting a second job in Minneapolis after she chose Wal-Mart.  In fact, earlier in the chapter, even before choosing either Wal-Mart or Menards, Ehrenreich was already looking for a second job.  When she went to a supermarket to get a Sunday newspaper, she took the time to apply for a job (129).  This is a good move on her part.  But when she took the Wal-Mart job over the Menards job, she knew she’d be making less money at Wal-Mart [look for the page with the wages for W and M].  So she should have immediately intensified her search for a second job.  But we don’t hear anything about a second job for another 40 pages.  At this point, Ehrenreich is realizing that working at Wal-Mart alone cannot help her pay her rent, and it is here where she says, “My plan had been to add a weekend job, which I have been tentatively offered at a Rainbow supermarket . . . at close to $8 an hour” (169).  At this point, she seems to know what she needs to do, but on the very next page she tells us that “Rainbow also falls through” because they want her to work part-time on weekdays rather than just on weekends (170).  In addition, she says that she has “no control at the moment over what [her] days off will be” at Wal-Mart (170).  So at this point, the initial decision to work at Wal-Mart over Menards has not only backfired, but it has also led to her failure in Minneapolis.  One can’t help but wonder if she, perhaps subconsciously, chose the Wal-Mart job know that it would lead to failure [I need to do more here to make this clearer and more persuasive].

Thesis Statements:

• Are normally statements of FACT (but be very careful of how you define “fact”), VALUE, or POLICY.  Our thesis statements for this essay will most likely be statements of VALUE.
• Should be arguable and debatable, and should be worth reading and writing about.
• See pp. 15-16 (tentative focus), 20-23 (thesis), and 343-350 (arguments) in RFW.

Quotations:

• Quote as few words as possible.  You do not have to quote complete sentences if you only need part of a sentence.  Avoid using too many “long quotations” (4 or more typed lines).
• Quotations must be completely accurate.
• You need to clearly introduce all quotations, and you need to “comment” on each quotation after you’ve given it.
• You can use ellipses (3 spaced periods) … to remove unnecessary information from a quotation -- but do not omit words which alter the meaning of the quotation.
• You can use square brackets [like this] to insert something into a quotation or to change something within a quotation.
• Alternatives to quotation are summarizing (condensing information in your own words) and paraphrasing (restating information in your own words)

Summaries and Paraphrases:

• Summaries and paraphrases are written in your own words and sentence structures -- do not rely on the words and sentence structures of the author you are summarizing or paraphrasing.
• Summaries condense information from another author to put in your own writing.
• Paraphrases restate or “translate” information from another author to put into your own writing.  Paraphrases are roughly the same length as the original material.
• Summaries and paraphrases must be accurate and objective.