ria_oaks | (no subject)

Aaand I'm DONE! Woo hoo!!

Last exam was pretty easy; it wasn't even really an exam per se, just a test scheduled in the exam period. Think I did well on it, which is good because I got my paper back (on disaster films, and The Poseidon Adventure and Poseidon in particular) and only got 72% on it... he said it was 'too general' and that I shouldn't have used the first person. *eyeroll* The first criticism I'll grant him, but the second? Dude, seriously, the whole 'no using 'I'' thing strikes me as one of those stupid things they told us in high school that I've been trying to break from ever since. Plenty of academic essays I've read use first person, and I pretty much only used it to say "I will argue that..." They used to say that we weren't allowed to do that (in grade 12... -_-), but I was under the impression that that's a perfectly legitimate use in academic papers. Yeesh. I hope my TA for Theories of Pop Culture doesn't feel the same way, because my essay for that class (the fandom one) is very much from the first person and is based a lot on my personal experiences. Which, again, plenty of academic papers I've read do.

Anyway, I've got my stuff pretty much packed up and now have about an hour until the Niagara Airbus is supposed to arrive (and I'm trying not to stress out over that... I'm sure it will show up. And if not I'll call them and flip the fuck out. And demand compensation for missing my flight. Or something.) Just hanging out now getting last minute stuff packed and making sure the house is clean (though I'm pretty sure Lindsy's going to be back for a couple of days, so she'll be the last one here).

See you guys soon!! I'll post when I'm home.

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You could say "One might argue that..."

but yeah, my roommate got nailed for that whole first person crap on her human sexuality essay. I felt really bad about that because A) I wrote mine in 1 night and B) It was only the 2nd or 3rd essay I'd ever written in university and I had to borrow her books on APA formatting and crap and I got an 82% while she got a 62%.

It really depends on whose marking it but your best bet is to just avoid it.

I've taking niagara airbus before. They're totally reliable.

I suppose, but many of the academic papers I read use first person. It seems as though they're trying to enforce some sort of stupid school-based rule which has no resemblance to real academic work, and that irritates me. Meh. Plus, I think I recall the prof saying we could use first person, though she may have been referring only to the proposal that we handed in earlier.

Yeah, they turned out to be reliable, I was just being paranoid. ^^ There's just something about booking it online 2 monthes earlier, and being assured that it will show up at my front door at the exact right time, that freaks me out a bit.

I'm taught the same thing when it comes to science papers. Although I've read a ton of scientific journals and I've seen a lot of occurences of 'we' and 'our,' but never 'I.'

I would've thought they'd be more lenient about it since the arts leave room for opinion.

It seems that they tend to use 'I' when they're putting forth their own theory/argument, and I consider that perfectly legitimate. If an academic is raising a new idea, of course they'd want to talk about it from a first person perspective! And yeah, it's not like I'm suggesting some grand new theory or anything, but I think the same idea should apply... it irritates me that they're holding me to what seems to be a 'school-based' standard rather than how real academic papers are written. Shouldn't we have gotten over that in high school...?

Oh well, seems to just depend on the TA. I might ask from now on. And argue with them if they say I can't. XD I hardly used it in this essay, anyway. Hope he didn't actually take marks off for it, or not many at least.