Thlog #1

This week in class we talked a lot about different genres and some of their typical conventions. I thought it was very interesting how when we talked about country music as a genre we realized that quite a few of the conventions we originally suggested could be broadened to be applied to even more  country songs. When we started thinking in terms of more broad characteristics, such as going from banjos and lap steel guitars to string instruments in general, our ideas began to connect with more songs. For the journal responses this week we wrote about which genres we are familiar with, and one of the students wrote that the genres they are familiar with are novels, short stories, poems, research papers, and argumentative essays. A few of the other journal entries also suggested similar categories, and I think many of us in the class did not realize that these "genres" we know are very broad. After the explanation that Zack gave about the Russian nesting dolls, I know that in order to accurately understand and identify the conventions and characteristics of a genre we have to be as specific as we can be. We learned that certain genres can fit within even larger categories in a sort of hierarchy and discussed the example of academic writing being a broad category that research papers can fit into, which chemistry lab reports are then a part of, and that chemistry lab reports about certain topics (such as thermodynamics) is an even more specific genre within the rest. Another topic we talked about this week was the difference between first order and second order thinking. We discussed how first order is much more creative and unfiltered, whereas second order is more structured and controlled. First order thinking is a good way to get your thoughts onto the paper without feeling pressure, and we learned it is a good idea to use this method to brainstorm when starting a more formal paper. This basically goes against what a lot of us have been taught to use in school for most of our lives. We are usually told to use second order thinking so that we can be rationalize and outline a structured paper rather than just using it to review and revise our papers later. I think it will be an interesting change to practice using this method in my future papers.