What the fuck even is English Comp 1? I had 99s on Reading and

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why didn't you just take one of the AP english exams when you were in high school, like everyone else?

anyway stop whining and get to work.

You know they make you take these sorts of classes to round out your skill base, right?

>>17655224
I don't even know what exams you're talking about.
My shitty ass rural HS didn't even offer many AP classes.
I don't even know HOW to get to work.
How do you make sources from thin air? How do you make arguments out of non-arguments?

>>17655230
That's why I cited my fucking perfect scores on the reading/writing exams. Maybe YOUR skills need "rounded out", but I can write a fucking paper.

The problem is, how the fuck am I supposed to write about irrelevent bullshit?
How the fuck am I supposed to write an argumentative paper on something as vague and broad and flaky as "culture"?
How the fuck am I supposed to find decent sources when 99% of them are STEM papers on CELL CULTURES and the other 1% are SWJ bullshit on cultural appropriation?

That's my fucking assignment. 5 pages on "culture". Argumentative. Toulmin Method. Claim, Backing, Warrants. Easy, formulaic shit. BUT THE FUCKING TOPIC MAKES IT IMPOSSIBLE.

I can write fucking 20 page papers for Engineering. I've already had to do that this semester. It was a piece of cake because there's actually something worth talking about and writing a paper over there. But this bullshit? How the fuck do I write about nothing?

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>>17655292
so you're being asked to pick a cultural topic and you can't decide on one? you're making this so much harder than it is. shut up and get to work.

>>17655315
There isn't anything to fucking decide on.
"Culture" is a stupid topic. I have nothing to say on the topic. I could write down literally every opinion I have on culture and the disjointed, uncoordinated mess would STILL not meet the 5 page requirement.

But I've got a topic. It's cultural appropropriation. I ended up stuck with it because it was the one single topic of culture that had specific sources I could find, even though they're all SJW garbage.

I've spent HOURS searching research journals and indexes and have found 0 (zero) (ZERO) useful sources.

I have HOURS in this fucking essay and this is literally all I have written:
>"appropriation" proves assimilation isn't a one-way street, that the majority can change to reflect the interests of minorities. discouraging cultural sharing increases the chances of accidental abuses or misuses of another culture. elements of minority culture are less likely to be shunned if more people participate in it. Accusations of appropriation diminish the impact of real racial injustice.

Just scribbled notes. AND I CAN'T FIND ANY FUCKING SOURCES ARGUING FOR OR AGAINST ANY OF THIS.

>>17655330
Culture as a topic is broad as fuck. If you can't write five pages about it, you can't write. Part of being able to write well is being able to construct arguments about whatever you want and being able to find sources to support any argument. Apparently you don't know how to do that. Get over yourself and stop thinking you're hot shit. There's a reason you can't do this assignment, stop thinking that you're above it. Figure out what you're doing wrong and fix it.

>>17655124
>Can I just fucking CLEP out of Comp 1 and 2?
You should have looked at your school's credit by examination policy BEFORE starting college or at the very least your class.

>>17655292
>Maybe YOUR skills need "rounded out", but I can write a fucking paper.
Jesus, projecting much? You don't need to bite the guy's head off for telling you every college's (stated) rationale behind GEs.

>>17655124
because it's welfare for retard cunts who got english degrees

you are literally paying for someones bad life choices and being forced to kill trees and write bullshit for no reason

>>17655230
no. like i said before, these 'core' classes, or whatever your school calls them are just welfare for idiots who got worthless degrees. All the english classes I took could be condensed into 3 google searches, the world affairs classes are completely unneeded antiwhite propaganda. Modern american university is such a disgusting shitshow. I got to go for free so I got my degree, but my brother eschewed the whole thing to go into programming

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>>17655330
you're acting like a child desu. if you hate the paper so much don't fucking do it. maybe drop the course and take it again another semester, with a different instructor.

though i think you should still just stop crying and do the damn thing. even if you end up using shit sources just get it fucking done and get credit for your work so you can move on with your life.

>>17655292
>How the fuck do I write about nothing?
By inventing stuff. Go full SJW

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>>17655393

>>17655124
>I had 99s on Reading and Writing on the Compass exam.
Compass is a joke exam designed to prevent your school district from getting buttfucked by NCLB. If you're educating kids within two standard deviations of the national sample you're golden. Your 99th percentile means that you're high average, nothing more.

>What's the point? I can write an essay. I can write a reference page. I can do in-text citations. I can follow fucking style guides.
You're going to complain about how its hard because its easy, aren't you?

>SO WHY THE FUCK am I being forced to write essay after essay after essay on topics that I fucking hate?!
Because, statistically, your classmates cannot. Thank social promotion, teaching to the test, and this recent fetish for STEM.

>How do people survive this shit?
The same way we survive work: by slogging through, having a cup of coffee, and moving on with our lives because we aren't children.

>Everyone in my class is 100% lost on how to write essays on the super vague and boring topics we keep getting assigned, to the point that the professor has had to push the deadlines back constantly.
Which suggests that everyone in your class is unable to write an essay, write a reference page, do in-text citations, and follow fucking style guidelines.

You think this shit is bad? Wait until you've got two 15p papers as the entirety of your work output and they're going to be graded by a professor who considers himself a queer Marxist and only gives you eighteen words as a prompt so as not to oppress you or artificially limit your thinking.

Welcome to the academy.

>What the fuck am I missing?
Grit and resiliency. Perhaps patience, as well.

>How do colleges manage to turn the easiest fucking thing into the hardest?
By getting 18 year old Dunning-Kruegers who have spent the last twelve years being coached by people paid by their parents to tell them they were special.

Cunt.

>>17655405
if it's too deep for you, ask your mom to explain it

>>17655292
>BUT THE FUCKING TOPIC MAKES IT IMPOSSIBLE.

A vague topic means vague expectations. Write on whatever the fuck you want, follow the format, use whatever sources you find first, and go.

All this bitching suggests you're not as good at it as you think you are. This is the kind of thing I did in grad school in an hour for a quick $80 in drinking money for some desperate freshman.

>It was a piece of cake because...
...you were actually engaged. Stop whining.

op post the prompt

>>17655368
This is advice. Why don't you fucking tell me what I'm doing wrong? I laid it ALL out for you.
I've got a topic. I've got ideas. I could write 5 pages of personal monologue on the topic. But I cannot, no matter how much I dig, find any sources to back up what the fuck I'm saying. And I think, because it's Toulmin, that I have to justify EVERY major point with citations.

The professor made it sound like every paragraph has to have an assertion, a citation to back it up, then some supporting argument.

I can make claims and support my arguments, but searching all of the university's scholarly resources, I can't find fucking anything to support the few ideas I do have to argue with.

>>17655384
>Jesus, projecting much? You don't need to bite the guy's head off for telling you every college's (stated) rationale behind GEs.
I know the rationales and they're bullshit. Everyone knows the Humanities are garbage now that the student loan bubble is about to pop and 99% of those trapped in it are Humanities kiddies.
These fields don't have corresponding careers, so colleges fluff themselves up with Humanities courses so they can hire their own grads to give them jobs. Jobs that the colleges then use to justify offering Humanities degrees that students go into debt pursuing.

>>17655395
I've got a fucking 97% in the class right now. I'm a straight-A student on 15 credit hours of Engineering Major. I am not skipping a paper or dropping a class because of one shitty assignment. And besides, if I take English Comp again it's just going to be more of this bullshit.

>>17655511
>Why don't you fucking tell me what I'm doing wrong?
You're here instead of banging out five pages of BS.

> I can't find fucking anything to support the few ideas I do have to argue with.
Then go the other way, find citations and argue from there.

Fucking whiner.

>>17655511
post the prompt you nigger

>>17655511
>The professor made it sound like every paragraph has to have an assertion, a citation to back it up, then some supporting argument.
That's pretty standard for good academic writing. The fact that you're surprised by that shows that you don't know about much about writing (and that you're not as good at it) as you think. Learn how to be humble about shit and be open to learning. Again, you're struggling with this because of weaknesses as a writer.

Also, instead of getting mad at me, think about what you've said in this thread so far. You haven't actually told us what you're supposed to write about. Just that it has something to do with culture, and that you can't think of what to write. That gives us absolutely nothing to work on. Tell me what your prompt is and I might be able to help out.

>>17655412
>You're going to complain about how its hard because its easy, aren't you?
The process is effortless. It's the fact that I'm FORCED to write about things I give zero fucks about, that sources don't exist for. I've worked on papers for publication in science journals on behalf of the people personally doing the research and done fine. It's these fucking backwards, idiotic English majors and professors forcing me to write about the stupidest fucking topics instead of shit with actual sources and shit that actually means something to me that's killing me here.

>Which suggests that everyone in your class is unable to write an essay, write a reference page, do in-text citations, and follow fucking style guidelines.
Except I'm right in there with them. I can do ALL of those things. The dude next to me wrote 20 pages for a 4 page assignment last month. He's lost on how the fuck to write a paper on "culture" too.

>You think this shit is bad? Wait until you've got two 15p papers as the entirety of your work output and they're going to be graded by a professor who considers himself a queer Marxist and only gives you eighteen words as a prompt so as not to oppress you or artificially limit your thinking.
>Welcome to the academy.
I'm not a retarded piece of shit so I will never take such a class. My courseload is 90% physics and math. I'm never going beyond Comp 2.

>Grit and resiliency. Perhaps patience, as well.
So I'm over 20 hours into this piece of shit assignment with nothing to show for it. How much more fucking "grit and patience" before it magically completes itself? How many more times can I search ebscohost and britannica and scholar.google before relevant citations coalesce out of the ether?

>got a 34 on both english and reading section of SAT
>28 on the writing portion
>dumb cunt english comp 1 feminaxi 80 year old teacher fails me by literally just picking apart my word choice on my essays

I agree. The class is cancer.

>>17655531
english comp is about bullshitting
come on son it isn't hard

>>17655531
>sources don't exist for
Newsflash, anthropology is entire (and pretty big) academic field that's entirely devoted to the study of culture. If you can't find sources, you're an idiot.

>>17655426
>A vague topic means vague expectations.
Except every single class period since the assignment was put up has been over the exacting standards of the style we're using.

>This is the kind of thing I did in grad school in an hour for a quick $80 in drinking money for some desperate freshman.
Still waiting on your dumb nigger ass to explain how the fuck to do this sort of assignment if it's so easy.

>...you were actually engaged. Stop whining.
The topic existed. It was REAL. Facts existed for it. Hundreds of papers existed to cite. That's not the case here. NOT ONE OF YOU INBRED PIECES OF SHIT CAN EXPLAIN HOW YOU'RE SUPPOSED TO DO A PAPER IN THESE CIRCUMSTANCES.

>>17655452
It's literally just a 3-5 Toulmin-style argumentative essay on culture or a facet of culture. 3-5 pages of claim-evidence-supporting argument. 3-5 pages of making some claim about culture, backing it up with a citation, then expanding on that claim, possibly acknowledging some counterclaims.

I can think up a few good claims and supporting arguments and counterclaims, but I cannot find any sources on the topic. I have ONE scholarly source against cultural appropriation and one "periodical", really just an op ed on a website, defending cultural sharing and criticising appropriation. And that's it. I have 1.5 decent sources, worth 2, maybe 3 paragraphs of the paper.

And I'm so pissed at this assignment that now every time I start to work on it my blood just boils and I lose focus.

>>17655531
>The process is effortless.
And yet...

>FORCED
Complain to the dean about the liberal arts education you're paying for.

>20 hours in
Its nobody's fault but your own that you chose to have a temper tantrum for half a work week instead of saying some bullshit, dropping in some sources they won't check, and moving on with your life.

>>17655532
>Talking about SAT
>Uses scored from ACT

I'm drunk and I caught that.

>>17655552
wow that's so easy

fucking pick a facet of culture to write about. it isn't hard. maybe pick something related to your ancestors.

the only sticking point is 'scholarly' articles, sonce the only difference between a fluff peice and a scholarly article is whether it's gotten some kikes stamp of approval

>>17655552
>culture or a facet of culture
Do you not realize how broad of a subject culture is? Jesus Christ, you could spend three pages talking about a holiday celebration as a cultural practice and still be within the guidelines of the paper as you've outlined it.

Stop being such a whiny baby about shit because you're being challenged and you don't know what to do with something new.

>>17655552
>exacting standards of the style we're using.
If you cannot follow the letter and ignore the spirit by now I'm not sure how you'll survive in the real world.

>Still waiting on your dumb nigger ass to explain how the fuck to do this sort of assignment if it's so easy.
Already been done before by plenty. Also, for accuracy's sake, I'm either a dirty slav or a gyp if you want to make this about race.

>That's not the case here.
Kinda is. If you cannot find an academic source about cultural appropriate you ought to just move on over to plunging toilets or putting down taproots in your mother's basement.

>INBRED PIECES OF SHIT
God, you're mad. I'm more of a poorly bred mongrel than anything.

>>17655576
>I'm either a dirty slav or a gyp i
which one, then? gyppo cunts are not slavic

>>17655519
>You're here instead of banging out five pages of BS.
Because taking a break to post on 4chan every 30-60 minutes is really cutting into my work time, right? I woke up this morning, did my Calc homework, and then started on this fucking assignment for the 20th time, and now 12 hours later I've made zero progress.

>Then go the other way, find citations and argue from there.
I've been trying to do that but I can't find any arguments to steal!
The few good resources on the topic all take the exact same fucking position, a position I strongly oppose and explicitly declared I would be disputing in my topic proposal.

>>17655529
>The fact that you're surprised by that shows that you don't know about much about writing
Where the FUCK did I say I was surprised by this? You're just fucking digging for reasons to fling shit at me, you subhuman piece of trash. Take your fucking pointless trolling back to /b/ or /pol/.

>>17655529
>You haven't actually told us what you're supposed to write about.
See:
>>17655292
>>17655330

>>17655529
>Just that it has something to do with culture
THAT'S IT. THAT'S THE ASSIGNMENT. THE UNIT IS LITERALLY LABELED "CULTURE". We are assigned to write about culture or some facet of it. Period. But it must be an "argumentative Toulmin-style essay". I must be making some kind of factual, definitive, value, etc, type claim, supporting it with warrants, and mentioning counterclaims.

>>17655532
That's actually close to my story. 31 on ACT for the reading/essay. Got a D in HS because my teacher hated me. She failed one of my essays for having 6 sentences in a paragraph when she thought it only needed 5. She just stopped grading halfway in and counted me off for every point on the rubric beyond the point she stopped grading at. I got every single thing right up until then point.

>>17655581
argue that white supremacy is the correct way forward for the USA

>>17655577
Kinda both, depending on if you believe the family lore.

>>17655581
Excuses excuses.

You're being rigid.

>>17655581
>Where the FUCK did I say I was surprised by this?
The way you phrased it made it sound like it pissed you off that you were required to make arguments and back them up within paragraphs. Why even bring it up as something that offended you if you you were expecting it?

You keep getting mad about this stuff, but remember that you're the one who is asking for help because you can't write what is probably the easiest prompt in the world to write. Just admit that your ego is bigger than your skill on this one. Numerous people in this thread have given you some pretty helpful tips (including me, in a few posts), and you keep ignoring them and talking about how much you hate the assignment. Try listening for once. The reason you're having a hard time is because you're not as good at this stuff as you think.

>>17655542
It has to be a paper on "culture", broadly. Or "cultural appropropriation", specifically, if I do a paper on that. I'm finding <20 papers per resource I search on the topic. I managed to scrounge up ~6 total that looked promising but after reading and re-reading them they had absolutely nothing of relevance to my points. They were all mostly just SJW rants about how sharing culture erases minorities and enforces hegemonic white culture. So I could use them for a few counterclaims and that's it.

Why don't you tell me how you'd find better sources, if it's so easy? This is /advice/. It's why you're here.

>>17655554
>Complain to the dean about the liberal arts education you're paying for.
Like hell I'd pay for this shit. I'm only going to college because I applied for financial aid for months to make sure I could go for free. I filled out 5+ applications a day for most of 2015 before applying this spring after securing enough to cover 2 semesters.
No fucking way would I spend a dime of my own cash to take this course.

>Its nobody's fault but your own that you chose to have a temper tantrum for half a work week instead of saying some bullshit, dropping in some sources they won't check, and moving on with your life.
That's fucking reprehensible. I'd rather take a 0 on the fucking assignment than fill a paper with bullshit I don't believe and pray they don't read it too closely or check the sources.

>>17655563
>fucking pick a facet of culture to write about. it isn't hard. maybe pick something related to your ancestors.
It has to be an argument. I can't just write an educational paper on something like hotrod culture or native american dance circle traditions. I have to make an argument and then back it up with a series of supporting arguments with sources behind each of them.

On a fucking subjective topic.

>>17655613
>argue that white supremacy is the correct way forward for the USA
do it

first start with the 88 precepts

>>17655568
>Jesus Christ, you could spend three pages talking about a holiday celebration as a cultural practice and still be within the guidelines of the paper as you've outlined it.
No, I couldn't. That sort of thing was used as an example of what we COULD NOT write about. Someone wanted to write about the culture of Halloween and its origins and its symbolism and got shot down in the middle of class.

>>17655576
>If you cannot follow the letter and ignore the spirit by now I'm not sure how you'll survive in the real world.
The fuck does that even mean? There's no "ignoring the spirit" here. I have to make a series of claims, support them with citations, then expand on them personally, over and over, for 3-5 pages, on this topic.
There's no wiggling out of it. It's literally the entire point of the paper.

>Already been done before by plenty. Also, for accuracy's sake, I'm either a dirty slav or a gyp if you want to make this about race.
You're a dumb nigger until you prove otherwise.

>Kinda is. If you cannot find an academic source about cultural appropriate you ought to just move on over to plunging toilets or putting down taproots in your mother's basement.
I can find sources. They just all say the same thing, in nearly identical language, and it's a position I oppose. I can't stretch it to 3-5 pages.

>God, you're mad. I'm more of a poorly bred mongrel than anything.
I am so mad at this piece of shit paper that I now feel physically ill and immediately get furious whenever I start to work on the assignment again. In psych it's called "flooding" and every time it happens I take a break and do something else to cool off. I've taken like 10 breaks today as a result.

>>17655613
>Why don't you tell me how you'd find better sources
EBSCO has a specific anthropology filter. Use it. Or chose a different topic if you're having trouble finding sources you want to use. Culture is an incredibly broad topic. You could basically write about anything and argue its status as a cultural practice. If you really need to beef up your source count, find some theory heavy articles that talk about what culture is and how it manifests in practice, then use articles with a different point of view to articulate whatever point you want to make.

This is pretty basic stuff, man.

>>17655613
>I'd rather take a 0 on the fucking assignment than fill a paper with bullshit
Then do it and stop bitching. Be a fucking man, make a decision, stop acting like a victim because you have to write an essay and don't like the context.

>>17655588
One thing I was going to argue in the essay was that some white supremacist groups oppose appropriation because they claim it subverts white culture, which is superior.
TOO BAD THERE'S NOT A SINGLE RELIABLE SOURCE WILLING TO MAKE THAT CLAIM. JUST DUMB NEONAZI BLOGS.

>>17655611
>The way you phrased it made it sound like it pissed you off that you were required to make arguments and back them up within paragraphs. Why even bring it up as something that offended you if you you were expecting it?
Because the topic is so vague that it's fucking impossible to do this with it. Everyone, in all of the professor's classes, is expected to argue SOMETHING about culture, and every paragraph aside from the opening and conclusion are expected to have a citation in it somewhere. It's expected to make a claim or counterclaim and then cite support for it.

>but remember that you're the one who is asking for help because you can't write what is probably the easiest prompt in the world to write.
Remember: You are the scum of the universe for completely failing to give any reasonable advice here. If it's so fucking easy, how come NONE of you have anything better to say than "hurr just do the assignment"?

>>17655623
>3-5 pages
Wait...you could get away with 750 or so words? Seriously?

>You're a dumb nigger until you prove otherwise.
My, the internet has made you bold, hasn't it. Perhaps you can talk about how shouting nigger at the kids you play CoD with represents the appropriation of traditional southern culture?

>They just all say the same thing, in nearly identical language, and it's a position I oppose.
What a hard problem. If only one had access to some searchable and centralized repository of knowledge with which they could discover critical responses to a given source...

>In psych it's called "flooding" and every time it happens I take a break and do something else to cool off. I've taken like 10 breaks today as a result.

Well, no. Flooding would be systematic desensitization. Thanks for playing, though.

>>17655638
reliable sources exist, including you're 'neonazi' blogs

you should have been taught what a reliable source is anon

>>17655638
>expected to argue SOMETHING ... every paragraph aside from the opening and conclusion are expected to have a citation in it somewhere.

Yes, that's how academic writing works. Ever pragraph is supposed to present an idea, and you're supposed to have some kind of citation to back that idea up (or to present what you're arguing against and how/why). You're taking the class because you didn't know this beforehand.

And gain, a bunch of people have given you advice. You've just ignored it and bitched more about how hard this incredibly easy assignment is for you.

>>17655659
Let's e real here, nearly all academic writing is bullshit piled on bullshit. Anything not STEM is bullshit by design. If OP had balls he would start his own journal so he could arbitrarily decide whatever he wants is scholarly.

But he doesn't, so he's whining on /adv/

>>17655624

See:
>>17655531
>So I'm over 20 hours into this piece of shit assignment with nothing to show for it. How much more fucking "grit and patience" before it magically completes itself? How many more times can I search ebscohost and britannica and scholar.google before relevant citations coalesce out of the ether?

>How many more times can I search ebscohost

Been there. Repeatedly. Been all up and down that piece of shit website.

>Or chose a different topic if you're having trouble finding sources you want to use.
Been there too. Can't find a single fucking topic in "culture" to argue about that has any fucking sources.

>>17655625
>Then do it and stop bitching. Be a fucking man, make a decision, stop acting like a victim because you have to write an essay and don't like the context.
Why don't you stop fucking bitching at me and go the fuck back to /b/ if you're not going to post advice?

>>17655648
Yeah, and random, no-name, 2-subscriber blogs were listed as NOT valid sources.

>>17655645
>Wait...you could get away with 750 or so words? Seriously?
No. The minimum is listed as something like 1000.

>My, the internet has made you bold, hasn't it.
I'd say the same to your face if you tried to feed any of this bullshit to me in person.

>What a hard problem. If only one had access to some searchable and centralized repository of knowledge with which they could discover critical responses to a given source...
If only this were the fucking /advice/ board and someone could post that. Assuming you're not referring to the mountain of previously mentioned resources.

>Well, no. Flooding would be systematic desensitization. Thanks for playing, though.
Well no, flooding can manifest as rage or a shut-down and in my case it's always an outburst, not a walling-off. Way to keep wasting both our time, though.

>>17655672
ask your teacher for help

i am enjoying your paroxysms of rage tho

>>17655659
>You're taking the class because you didn't know this beforehand.
Except I fucking did know this beforehand. I'm explaining to you why it's fucked here and why I can't get away with not doing it because you retards keep getting it wrong.

>>17655659
>And gain, a bunch of people have given you advice. You've just ignored it and bitched more about how hard this incredibly easy assignment is for you.
SHOW ME, NIGGER. LINK ME THIS 'REAL' ADVICE. SHOW ME WHERE ONE SINGLE PERSON POINTED ME TO A REAL RESOURCE OR GAVE ME A REAL TIP BESIDES "JUST DO THE ASSIGNMENT HERPADERPA".

>>17655671
That first part is true. Holy FUCK are STEM papers easy to write. All facts. No bullshit. Sources out the ass. A fucking chimp can churn out STEM papers on a daily basis, I'm sure. That's what sucks so much here.

All of my Humanities classes feel like they just pile on the workload to make up for how fucking useless they are.
"hurr let me tell you why the mexican civil war was super important, and then assign you a 5 page paper on the war because fuck you, that's why."

Meanwhile my REAL classes give me 20 calc problems to do a night or 10 complex physics problems.

>>17655672
>Can't find a single fucking topic in "culture" to argue about that has any fucking sources.
Nothing. At all. In the entirely of EBSCO, which, as I said, has a specific anthropology filter. Not anything about practice theory, cultural change, linguistic features, agency, world systems theory, globalization, or any other huge topic in anthropology. None of these things have any sources attached to them. It's entirely the assignment's fault that you can't think of a good topic or find sources related to this ridiculously simple prompt.

>>17655691
OP has to write an argumentative essay

that requires facts, and a field like anthropology has precious few of those when compared to a real science.

>>17655672
>Why don't you stop fucking bitching at me and go the fuck back to /b/ if you're not going to post advice?

I would prefer not to.

>No. The minimum is listed as something like 1000.
So is it 3-5 pages or 4-5 pages? You're going to need to stay consistent, here...

>I'd say the same to your face if you tried to feed any of this bullshit to me in person.
K. Would there be eye contact?

>If only this were the fucking /advice/ board and someone could post that. Assuming you're not referring to the mountain of previously mentioned resources.
Thank god for GPAs and test prep courses, right?

>Well no, flooding can manifest as rage or a shut-down and in my case it's always an outburst, not a walling-off.
You're talking about being overwhelmed. Words mean things.

>Way to keep wasting both our time, though.
Shit, I'm barely even warmed up.

>>17655683
I plan to go talk to him tomorrow during office hours. He's honestly the nicest, coolest, funniest professor I've ever had. He just teaches the shittiest fucking class.

>>17655691
I'm not writing an educational paper on any of those topics. I'm writing an argument paper making a values claim. I've spent more time on ebsco than any other resource. I've find next to nothing usable.

Were I explaining to a reader about what culture was or how culture changes, yeah, I'd be fucking golden. I'd have been done with this paper in 3 hours the evening it was assigned, when I started on it. But I'm not. I have to make an arguable claim, with opposition, and then I have to support it with a series of supporting claims, and I have to bring up a few counterclaims, source those, then refute them.

>>17655701
>So is it 3-5 pages or 4-5 pages? You're going to need to stay consistent, here...
The assignment page says "3-5 pages, something like 1,000-1,5000 words".

>K. Would there be eye contact?
There might even be foot-to-ass contact. Call me Red Foreman.

>You're talking about being overwhelmed. Words mean things.
My source is John Gottman. He calls someone reaching an emotional extreme that overwhelms their self-control "flooding" and asserts that it can manifest as an outburst or docility. That it can make someone get up and run away or appear comatose or even start throwing punches.

In my case, it makes me want to throw punches. What do you do when this happens? You stop what you're doing, take 30 minutes to relax, then try again.
I've been doing this all fucking day. My fuse getting shorter and shorter every time I attempt this stupid piece of shit assignment.

>>17655715
>The assignment page says "3-5 pages, something like 1,000-1,5000 words".
15k would be a lot...

>There might even be foot-to-ass contact. Call me Red Foreman.
This makes me smile. I wonder what would happen if I slipped you some tongue?

>My source is John Gottman.
I'll see your John Gottman and raise you a Thomas Stampfl. Then again, I could bullshit five pages on things I don't care about so I've got a whole course of CBT to dick around with here for shits and giggles.

>>17655726
I've been in CBT for years for other shit. It's nice. I'd rather write a paper on that. Maybe compare it to Buddhist Mindfulness as well as Stoicism.

But nope. Still got a cover page and abstract with literally nothing inside of it.

>>17655733
>I've been in CBT for years
That would explain the lack of progress.

ITT: OP thinks he's too smart for a entry level filter/barrier college course. Is actually vapid, sophomoric, and has an altogether shallow understanding of higher education and complex thought.

>>17655739
I went from living in a cabin in the woods to being self-sufficient, living in a city, and going to college for free in that time. I've made tremendous progress.

>>17655742
Prove it. Show me how easy this shit is. Go find me ONE good source on my topic that's not SJW garbage about how cultural appropropriation is literally a hate crime.

You all like to run your idiot mouths but as soon as I start calling you out like this you go silent. Because you couldn't write this fucking paper either and you know it.

>>17655742
>Is actually vapid, sophomoric, and has an altogether shallow understanding of higher education and complex thought.
then he's perfect for uni

>>17655715
>I'm not writing an educational paper on any of those topics. I'm writing an argument paper making a values claim.
The thing is, every academic paper is essentially argumentative in nature. Whether you realize it now or not. In every paper you write, you're taking a position and arguing that it's right. Even something entirely descriptive, since you're arguing that your findings are accurate and explaining why.

The same goes for any topic relating to culture, since theory in anthropology is largely people arguing about whose arguments about culture are right. Take for example the incredibly vague topic of cultural change. You could say that "scholar x argues that cultures change because of historical circumstances," then explain the arguments that person made, and "scholar y argues that cultures change because of environmental reasons and a drive to conserve energy output," and then explain those arguments. Then pick a side and explain why you think one is right. That will take five pages easily (especially with supporting arguments from other people), and give an "argumentative" essay. Again, you can do this with any topic that has to do with culture.

>>17655748
I just found 5 in 20 seconds

http://www1.udel.edu/educ/gottfredson/30years/

The irony of this post is if OP spent half as much time writing the assignment as he did on this stupid fucking thread then he'd already be done.

You're trying to approach this assignment from a STEM standpoint. Don't. Trying to force through this via a technical writing standpoint isn't going to get you anywhere.

Of course you won't be able to write subjective cultural argument exactly how you want to and find half a dozen scholarly sources that agree with you wholeheartedly. That's not how the humanities work, you aren't putting the work in if you think it's that cut and dry. You need to find several sources that very loosely align in your general direction (each covering a different dimension of said direction) and weave your own argumentative narrative through and between them. At least, that may be a digestible way to approach this with the right mindset.

Yes this is a braindead simple assignment, you aren't being asked to analyze Foucault here. But you need to come at it from a different angle.

>>17655752
>The thing is, every academic paper is essentially argumentative in nature. Whether you realize it now or not. In every paper you write, you're taking a position and arguing that it's right. Even something entirely descriptive, since you're arguing that your findings are accurate and explaining why.
Oh, so you don't know shit about anything then. Thanks for clearing that up. You're just gonna play semantics and move goalposts, huh? Why even bother replying to my thread, then?

>You could say that "scholar x argues that cultures change because of historical circumstances," then explain the arguments that person made, and "scholar y argues that cultures change because of environmental reasons and a drive to conserve energy output," and then explain those arguments. Then pick a side and explain why you think one is right
This is the dumbest thing I've ever read because A: Both sides are correct, and B: It has nothing to do with my own topic.

>>17655755
One actually looks useful. Thanks. But how do did you find them? None of those come up when you search for the key terms of my paper. Those are all tangential to my paper. I'm supposed to "ask questions, then use the answers to find more questions to answer", to quote my professor directly. None of my questions lead to these sources or to questions that would lead to these sources.

>>17655770
As I've said more than once, I've dedicated LITERALLY 12+ hours of work to this today and gotten nowhere.

>>17655748
If you dismiss everything as SJW bullshit and refuse to explore any of the ideas that lie deeper in then you won't get very far. Would you give up on drafting plans for a hydroelectric dam just because the levees of the ancient world were laughably simplistic? No, you'd shake your head at the trial and error of early engineers and crack open a more complex textbook, confident in knowing that dried mud is shitty at holding water.

What I mean by this is that, in the humanities, you need to cut thru the whiny pop culture aspects to get to the actual academic and substantial content.

>>17655798
>search topic
>go to wiki
>scroll to bottom of page

>>17655780
>You're trying to approach this assignment from a STEM standpoint. Don't. Trying to force through this via a technical writing standpoint isn't going to get you anywhere.
As you might be able to tell, I am probably literally autistic. Like full blown autism. I don't think I can turn off the technical part of my brain.

>You need to find several sources that very loosely align in your general direction (each covering a different dimension of said direction) and weave your own argumentative narrative through and between them.

This was the most helpful reply in the thread by far. I appreciate it.
I just don't know how to follow it. I've got an outline of basic points I want to make. I've got the facets of my argument laid out. I go looking for sources and they don't exist.

>>17655800
>If you dismiss everything as SJW bullshit and refuse to explore any of the ideas that lie deeper in then you won't get very far.
I don't think I'm doing that. I'm reading the papers, several of which are about, for example, SJWs lecturing Japanese people that Japanese people offering to let white people try on Kimonos is literally destroying traditional Japanese culture even as the Japanese hosts try to explain to them that Kimono culture is dying in Japan as well and that they just want to keep their traditions alive by sharing them with anyone who wants to learn.

That's the level of "SJW garbage" I'm talking about.

>>17655806
Wikipedia is owned by SJWs. The citations are often to books or inaccessible articles. Try again.

>>17655814
nah

it's what i used my entire undergrad
kikes or not, wikipedia is your best source

>>17655822
Did you get your undergrad from Hamburger University?

>>17655822
It's a source I explored last weekend. There are, iirc, nearly 100 sources on the appropriation page and half are garbage sources like salon.com, and most of the other half are books and papers that I couldn't access. And nearly all of them were anti-appropriation.

>>17655827
pick a better subject then

like maybe one that isn't a fluffy bullshit one by sjw's?

i had zero troubles getting sources for remote sensing, GIS or geography

>>17655798
>This is the dumbest thing I've ever read because A: Both sides are correct, and B: It has nothing to do with my own topic.

Well, it speaks to culture pretty broadly. You say that they're both right, end of story. Which one is "more" right? How do they relate to one another? These assignments are designed to spur dialogue and arguments, things aren't so cut and dry outside of stem, which is kind of the point.

It sounds like you're trying to structure this too closely and are trying to come up with the "correct" answer, as opposed to compiling a compelling argument. You're clearly capable of putting together a paper but it sound like you are putting arbitrary restrictions on it's content and structure, wanting to put in a factually airtight piece of text instead taking a position and exploring it, picking it apart, and making an argument towards new ideas.

File: download.jpg (7KB, 224x225px) Image search: [Google]

7KB, 224x225px

>>17655831
I have a set prompt. I must write an argumentative essay on culture or a facet of culture and fill it with claims and counterclaims. I'm not allowed to do a paper on remote sensing or geography, as much as I'd fucking LOVE to do a paper over how aerial drone courses are charted or how they can be used to produce composite maps of broad regions like national parks or a farmer's ranch.

I know an 80 year old rancher that has a drone he sends out to circle his property every once in awhile. He sits in his comfy recliner in his living room and watches the livestream from the done as it circles his property while he looks out for broken fences or eroded hillsides or evidence of trespassers.

I'd love to do an essay on anything related to this topic.

But I don't get to. I'm forced to write about "culture".

>Well, it speaks to culture pretty broadly. You say that they're both right, end of story. Which one is "more" right?
Neither. Both are 100% true. You can't deny in any way that both of the given factors drive cultural change and nitpicking over which is a more prominent driver is not only pointless, but entirely subjective. You won't find any source for that so it'd have to be the central point of your paper and that's retarded.

>wanting to put in a factually airtight piece of text instead taking a position and exploring it, picking it apart, and making an argument towards new ideas.
If this is an error on my part, you've just made me hate the Humanities even more. Of course it must be factually airtight. I refuse to put my name on some vague, subjective garbage when we're supposed to be writing for academia. I'm physically repulsed by the idea of spending hours to write a paper but not make sure withstands all scrutiny.

And now I'm just confused. How many fucking papers have I read these past two weeks? Easily dozens. And of those dozens, how many could've been used in this way? Probably several. But which ones? God dammit.

>>17655839
Misquoted. >>17655864

>>17655864
Well first your best bet is to stick to that advice on structure: finding several sources in alignment, but each of which explore a different aspect of the direction in which you're arguing, and weave your argument through that.

If you get *too* caught up in specificity you will wind up paralyzed. If you go all cavalier and don't defend your argument then you'll have a flimsy POS paper.

BUT you won't ever have a 100% airtight paper, not like writing about the effectiveness of aerial agricultural drones, because there are thoughts, theory, and values at play. Which is precisely the point. Anyone can absorb and regurgitated facts. Here, you need to put your position out there, and in some way someone will find a way to pick at it. It doesn't mean it's a failed paper, it in a way succeeds in that it spurs discourse. This is why academic journals exist. This is what defending a dissertation is (again over much more complex and substantial content). Outside of the applied sciences, this is why academia and universities exist. Arguments and discourse. It is in part subjective, but you can defend that subjectivity, and through the resulting arguments knew knowledge is formed. The kinds of ideas that are important, but can't be immediately tested in the field.

Welcome to university.

>>17655894
Apologies for the typos, on mobile.

You're going to need to get comfortable with the fact that in university you are going to be producing a lot of content that won't be invulnerable to potential scrutiny or error. These practices are there to encourage creative and critical thinking and how to think outside the box. What gives you the confidence and intrigue to test radically new approaches and deviating from the textbook norms. This is what separates the Technicians from the actual Engineers.

>>17655894
>Well first your best bet is to stick to that advice on structure: finding several sources in alignment, but each of which explore a different aspect of the direction in which you're arguing, and weave your argument through that.
Trying, but I don't know what terms to use. I only just now came across "cultural anti-essentialism", which is apparently a strong buzzword for talking about cultures changing. 20 hours in, and only now am I finding this. I may have a lot more sources now. But I have to read them all, the assignment is due Wednesday, and now every time I start on this assignment I get sick.

>Welcome to university.
I now understand why so many people "not everyone should go to college". It's because letting idiots flood the place has devolved chunks of it into this. I came here to study fact and build models of reality with predictive quality. I came here to learn physics and math and engineering. And my heaviest workloads all come from fucking humanities classes trying to overcompensate for being shit fields.

If I wanted to "push the envelop" I had damn well better be able to back it up with fact. I should not be able to run my idiot mouth on a topic, only loosely support it, then hand it off to the rest of academia to "spur discourse". If you don't have shit to say with real backing, it shouldn't be placed in the literature. It belongs on your personal blog or in your private studies.

If you're telling the truth and academia really is about pulling literal shit from your ass and calling it "speculation" and "creative thinking" and leaving it up to others to refute and correct, academia is trash and deserved to die.

>>17655864
god you're fucking retarded

you can pick something besides cultural appropriation, you stupid cunt

I'm a little confused. You said your paper had to address cultural appropriation specifically, but the way you're talking now makes it sound like you just need to pick a position on any "facet of culture" and argue for it. Which is it?

If you don't have to write specifically about "cultural appropriation", which I agree would be pretty hard to find citations for, this shouldn't be difficult. A lot of bullshit gets published in cultural anth., no argument there, but there are lots of fascinating questions about culture and a lot of empirical research has gone into answering them as best as we can.

>>17655918
Well that's the difficult part of it. If someone were pants on head retarded in their writing then it belongs in a conspiracy blog, not an academic journal. You're jumping to extremes.

Facts exist as a result of theories that preceded them. I get that you want to cut right to the testable predictive good stuff, I studied math in college, and am a data scientist, but it was my humanities courses that has the biggest impact on me - particularly the philosophy of science. If you're willing to accept this flexibility in your thought process this is going to go a lot more easily.

>Hur dur I'm so clever
>"Think outside the box"
>OMG DADDDD EDUCATION IS SO SHIT

>>17655922
I can't think of anything else related to culture that can be argued. Political topics are also taboo in class. No arguing about gun culture. No religion. etc.

>>17655923
>the way you're talking now makes it sound like you just need to pick a position on any "facet of culture" and argue for it. Which is it?
It's culture, generally, but I chose cultural appropriation for the above reasons.

>>17655949
What flexibility? That I should run my mouth over a topic I know nothing about?
I STILL have to have a citation for every single goddamn claim I put to paper. I STILL have to have a source in every damn paragraph supporting what I'm saying before I can expand on it or present my own theories.

>>17655967
Go into detail, you mongoloid fuck.
Come on. Surely you can break this down. Surely you can explain this in detail.

That's the most disappointing thing about this whole thread. Most of you are just mouth breathing idiots saying the same thing over and over, and NOT ONE of you has explained HOW to solve my problem. HOW do I come up with these extra angles? HOW do I find more and better sources? I have simple, practicle fucking problems concerning procurement of sources and no one can fucking tell me how to fix it.

Props to the dude talking about being vague and subjective like those are good things in an academic paper, but that doesn't fuckin tell me how to produce enough sources to fill a paper even if I were willing to bullshit my way through it all.

>>17656029
>Political topics are also taboo in class. No arguing about gun culture. No religion. etc.
cultural appropriation is a political topic

you fail

>>17656031
I got permission for it.
After getting denied permission to do my paper on Islam, then Evangelical Christianity, then gun culture. Every topic I thought up got rejected for being too political. Cultural appropriation got a pass even after I revealed that I was going to argue against the idea that it was evil, which surprised me. Professor is a bleeding heart liberal dude.

>>17656051
your prof sounds like he needs to get shot in the dick

>>17656051
Gun culture is an actual subculture in America. It's less political than appropriation.

Man, Hitler really was right.

I question your professor's judgment if they're making you write a paper on "culture" and forbidding anything political or religious. I would argue that anthropology is always political, and I wouldn't be alone.

Here's some examples for you in re: anthro. problems that I happen to know you can find hard data on. You could pick a given social institution -- marriage, or the family unit, for instance -- or a social problem, violence, sexism, racism -- and look at whether it's largely innate to our species or societal. Obviously volumes have been written on the nature vs. nurture debate in re: almost every aspect of our society, but there's still a lot of unsettled issues. For instance, my favorite: is warfare a natural behavior for humans? You seem to have decided that the social sciences are all largely bullshit, that they're all a mass of speculation and opinion with no evidence for any of it, but good anthropologists absolutely do bring in evidence when they argue for something like that (unfortunately there are a lot of bad anthropologists).

With the warfare example, they look at the evidence from primatology (how do other great apes behave, particularly our closest relatives, chimps? do they evince warfare?), psychology (what do we think we know about human aggression patterns?), biology (do our bodies seem like they're structured for interpersonal combat?), the archeology (is there evidence for warfare before the agricultural revolution?) and cultural anthropology (is warfare a universal behavior in the modern world, or are some cultures largely peaceful?) Books have been written about that, the scientific consensus has largely shifted from one side to another depending on who's able to argue their case more effectively, just like in the hard sciences. Such things will never be as clear-cut as they are in the STEM fields, they'll always be fuzzier than "what are the effects of citrate on these bacteria cultures" or whatever, but it's not all bullshit.

Like I said you can do that for literally any aspect of our society. Here's one that I occasionally see brought up on here -- polyandry. It's really, really rare. It's rare historically, there's only a few societies that evince it today, and many more where it's explicitly taboo. Why? This is a place where the shit you were talking about above, "do historical events or environmental factors influence culture more" is an entirely appropriate question to ask, because many anthropologists have argued convincingly that polyandry is a response to environmental/economic stress. The few cultures that practice it tend to be disproportionately concentrated in pretty harsh areas, and have other similarities as well. Plenty of papers have been written about that, and again, they do *usually* try to move in the direction of actual science whenever possible, although their conclusions, if they draw any, will never be quite as rigorous or falsifiable as e.g. a paper in a physics journal.

Another example -- some cultures develop really strong taboos that aren't present in ours. In a lot of N. American Indian cultures (particularly Arctic ones) it's absolutely taboo to interact in any way with your mother-in-law. Weirdly, that's also a trait shared by many Australian Aboriginal cultures. Even weirder, in many of these cultures there's also a really, really strong menstrual taboo, i.e. menstruation is really stigmatized, even more than it is in our culture. Can it be possible that these shared features are an adaptive trait? Or is that absolutely ridiculous? How about other unusual cultural features? In each case, the question "Is this even something we can scientifically study, or is the data too scarce/the question to subjective?" is also absolutely a legitimate subject for an opinion piece.

>>17655124
>I'm fucking Calculus and Engineering classes and they are a fucking BREEZE compared to these stupid little 5 page essays!
if the essays are that hard, then it probably means you need more practice in writing.

Obviously all that shit I just wrote is a bit much for a (I presume) pretty short paper in a class you're taking for your general requirements, but I wanted to give a couple examples of "culture"-related problems that anthropologists HAVE studied with actual rigor (and that's cultural anthropology, the floofiest branch of anthropology by far; archeology is a bit better and hard data & falsifiable conclusions are the norm in linguistics and physical anthro). I realize it's not much help with the topic you've chosen, but that's SUCH an opinion piece that I agree it might be hard to find appropriate academic citations. If online articles are acceptable then you're fine.

If you're interested in Islam and evangelical Christianity, then if you're allowed to change your topic, you could consider writing about the effects religion tends to have on a population's birth rate (since as I'm sure you're aware particularly devout Muslim and Christian communities tend to have pretty high birth rates, and secular communities often have lower ones). That seems like a topic you might find interesting, it's appropriate for an undergrad essay and general enough that maybe your professor would let it slide (esp. if you don't explicitly mention Islam or Christianity in the proposal) and there's certain to be oodles of sources on it. Hell, if you tell /pol/ about it I bet they'd practically write your paper for you, although some of the sources they dig up for you might be ... questionable.

Sorry for writing so much. If it wasn't clear I do like listening to myself ramble about this shit, which is a really obnoxious habit, but I hope it helped, at least.

It's 4 fucking am here and I can't sleep because of how damn mad I am at this paper.
I think it gave me an ulcer, too. Every time I lie down I get a stabbing pain just under my diaphragm.

>>17656095
>but good anthropologists absolutely do bring in evidence when they argue for something like that (unfortunately there are a lot of bad anthropologists).
Do they? All I have to say is: Gombe Chimp War. Whoops. Non-human animals engage in warfare. War is just a systemization of conflict. Therefore warfare is innate to humans and only unusual in the rest of the animal kingdom because most other animals do not engage in extensive systemization, something humans are supreme at.
Not much to debate there. The subjective nature of the humanities is just a circlejerk. They keep issues around decades longer than they should because bullshit is what they're built on.

>>17656114
To digress again: Polyandry makes no logical sense. Humans are both hierarchical AND gynocentric. Meaning women are essentially prizes for high-performing males. Monogamy developed to support this. Why share trophies when we usually have 1:1 male-female ratios? Even in stressful environments, men are more likely to die because they're the laborers and front line defense against those environments, leading to polygyny, not polyandry. Which is why harems of women for men are super common but the inverse are not.
Seems clear cut to me.

But I get your point. It's part of a cycle. Theorize, test, theorize, test, theorize, etc. In Comp 1 we're supposed to be drawing from multiple theories and tests and synthesizing new interpretations for consideration.

>>17656124
I write fine, thanks. If anything I need someone to explain how to find better sources.

>>17656158
I appreciate the effort. It helped me.
But the culture topic is supposed to be personal. Another topic I was raised was the influence of Greek and Roman cultures on modern Western Culture. Rejected as too impersonal.

>>17656190
>Non-human animals engage in warfare. War is just a systemization of conflict. Therefore warfare is innate to humans
This is patronizing but merited: you need to drop the know-it-all attitude if you're going to get through your college career. Because you don't know it all. This would have in fact been a dead issue decades ago if it were as simple as you're claiming. Against your single data point (the legitimacy of which was itself questioned for a while) there's plenty of evidence: the fact that many other primates do NOT practice warfare (all of whom are about as organized as chimps), including bonobos, our other close relatives; that until recently the archaeological evidence for pre-civilizational warfare was EXTREMELY scant; the fact that tribal warfare of the type practiced in e.g. New Guinea, such as probably was evinced by hunter-gatherer bands before the agriculture revolution, seemed very ritualistic and nonlethal; and that there are several legitimately peaceful human cultures in existence.

Further, and I'm not trying to insult you, your definition of warfare as "systematic violence" would be regarded as pretty crude by most anthropologists. It doesn't differentiate warfare from other forms of systemized violence, e.g. organized crime, raiding for resources, feuding between families, capital punishment.

I'll save you the suspense, the current thinking is that humans do naturally practice warfare (and other kinds of organized violence) but if anybody had tried to argue that two decades ago, with nothing to back it up except "the Gombe Chimp War", they'd have been laughed out of any anthropology department in the country, and rightly so.

cont'd again below

>>17655124
I just Googled "minority influences on majority culture" and "resistance to minority cultures" and the first thing to come up on each was a list of scholarly articles on each subject.

So much for the impossibility of finding sources

>>17656190

>Another topic I was raised was the influence of Greek and Roman cultures on modern Western Culture. Rejected as too impersonal.

>Another topic I was raised was
oh and the golden one;
>I write fine,

Okay now that I'm nearly done;

>the influence of Greek and Roman cultures on modern Western Culture.

Fucking hell boy, you couldn't have picked a fucking more boring and generic subject. Your essay just be like "Omg like plato exists and now I eat my dinner off a PLATE".

"How did Greek and Roman cultures influence modern Western culture?"

Oh, I don't know, MAYBE THE FACT THAT NEARLY EVERY BUILDING FEATURES COLUMNS WHICH REFERENCE THAT HISTORY (THOUGH THE COLUMNS ARE OFTEN BRIGHT WHITE WHICH IS A MISREPRESENTATION AS THEY WERE ORIGINALLY PAINTED).

Other breathtaking essays by OP include

"The effect of rulers on straight lines."
"The influence of speaking clearly to sales assistants"
and importantly the golden one;
"Has toilet paper made asses cleaner?"

>>17656190
>If anything I need someone to explain how to find better sources.
>implying that's not part of writing

>Polyandry makes no logical sense [...]
Let me restate: the question wasn't "Does it make sense for our species to practice polyandry?" (it obviously doesn't, although the reasons are a little more complicated than the ones you gave) but "Since some societies DO practice polyandry, can we identify any reason for it? Do environmental factors play a role? If so, which ones?" Let's pretend, before you fire back a quick response, that I know what I'm on about here and that simple answers like "All the men starved because it sucks in the Himalayas" have already occurred to me and to others before me. I'm not trying to be petty here, I'm not insulted because of your contempt for anthropology (I was never in cultural anthro. and anyway I'm not in academia anymore, most of what I do is way more stemmy these days) but your quick responses to me have a lot of logical leaps and factual mistakes because you're unfamiliar with the subject matter despite clearly feeling informed enough to talk about it, and that's not good.

A lot of people certainly go into fields like cultural anth. because they can't handle the math needed for STEM fields, but they're not all utter idiots, and you can't assume that you can waltz into a field you're unfamiliar with and tear it to shreds because you've mastered fluid dynamics and fluid dynamics is hard. I know it's hard; that's why there are more humanities majors than physics majors. But even in the social sciences there's a base of knowledge you need before you can start talking about them, and, when possible, they do rely on actual inquiry and data (which needs to be reproducible), their theories need to be falsifiable, and that's all stuff you should care about if you have the intellectual integrity you claim to.

Obviously that should say "all the women starved", it's also very late here, so I'll be getting to bed soon.

If I do before you reply, good luck with your paper, and sorry it's a PIA; it doesn't sound like you have a very good professor, his specifications for this paper sound extremely narrow.

>>17656205
>Further, and I'm not trying to insult you, your definition of warfare as "systematic violence" would be regarded as pretty crude by most anthropologists. It doesn't differentiate warfare from other forms of systemized violence, e.g. organized crime, raiding for resources, feuding between families, capital punishment.
Deliberately so. Those things have all been labeled "war" at many points in the past. "Turf war" is a term that exists. As does "Clan war".
But good post. I wrote most of this thread late last night after hours of frustration so my replies were very sloppy and angsty.
Doing better today. Now that I've found these other terms to search for, I'm seeing a lot more promising sources. I just have probably 2 3-hour periods in which I can write this entire paper by Wednesday.

>>17656210
Thanks. Those search terms helped a lot.

>>17656213
>>Another topic I was raised was
>oh and the golden one;
>>I write fine,
Timestamp:
>0/10/16(Mon)04:03:51
At 4:03 am after returning to my PC after finding myself too angry to sleep because I started working on this assignment at noon yesterday and 16 hours later had nothing to show for it, absolutely nothing, I failed to write perfectly. Therefore I'm a bad writer. Period. Ok.

>Fucking hell boy, you couldn't have picked a fucking more boring and generic subject. Your essay just be like "Omg like plato exists and now I eat my dinner off a PLATE".
I never said it was a great topic. I was actually going to zoom in on the Stoic and possibly Buddhist influences on Christianity and how Christianity, using ideas borrowed from the Greeks and early Romans, diverged from Judaism and how it pushed Western civilization one way while Judaism went another way that more closely resembles the Middle East today.

>>17656214
>implying that's not still my #1 problem and the one thing /adv/ really could've delivered with little effort but mostly didn't

>>17656237
>your quick responses to me have a lot of logical leaps and factual mistakes because you're unfamiliar with the subject matter despite clearly feeling informed enough to talk about it, and that's not good.
I didn't know this was an interview. I had no idea that posts on /adv/ had to be supported rigorously. I'd never write a paper the way I responded to you. I'd start off by reading the basics, adjusting my opinion as I went, and then set about writing. That is, I wouldn't even approach the paper with my original opinion at hand. I wouldn't go to write a paper on polyandry from the opinion I posted. I'd table it, go read, and if by chance my opinion were still valid I might use it, but as you said, it's unlikely it would be. I'm saying I wouldn't take that opinion and go looking for sources to support it if I knew nothing about it.

I'm opposed to the idea of cultural appropriation. I think sharing culture is good. But I told my professor I had no idea which side I would be taking because when I started I hadn't yet read the SJW side so I was prepared to take in their merits.

I appreciate what you're doing here, though. It's solid advice.

>>17656248
>Obviously that should say "all the women starved", it's also very late here, so I'll be getting to bed soon.
herp gess u dont rite so gud neither.