Reading, “Four Things Social Media Can Teach You about College Writing—and One Thing It Can’t” really contextualized how I make decisions and how I structure my writing. The term that sparked this was “interdiscursivity”; the implicit mimicry of another writer or text. Having the concept explained to me led me to ask myself, “Huh, do I do that?” To which the answer was a resounding, yes. I tend to write in a way that will be deemed appropriate or professional, but the truth is I don’t just know what “professional” and “appropriate” are. So I always modeled my writing after “appropriate” things; readings, writings, sample papers, and peer reviewing. Heck, I didn’t start injecting humor into my writing until very recently. All in all, it’s easy not to realize how much we absorb and integrate, in an attempt to make good writing.
“Multi-tasking lowers IQ”, this statement from Travis Bardberry’s “Multitasking Damages Your Brain And Career, New Studies Suggest” got a good chuckle out of me. Other than that it’s a statement that logically makes sense. If you divide up your energy, the result of your efforts will turn out poorer than if you had just given it all your attention (it reminds me of this old episode of Dragon Ball, where a fighter splits himself in four and accidentally divides his strength four ways instead of making four perfect copies of himself). In my experience, multi-tasking has never been an option; my already short attention span can barely handle keeping on task with one assignment, so trying to split my focus between two would lead to disastrous results. And, considering the other detrimental effects of multitasking on the human mind (brain damage, impaired learning, etc.) it isn’t something I’ll be rushing to engage in any time soon.
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