Midterm

Letter to a Friend:
Dear Friend,

This English class is not exactly what I expected. It's not a bad thing though. After last semester with Mr. Borrero I didn't know how English classes at UNCC were going to be. But I have enjoyed this class so far. The topic we are learning about is "What does it mean to be healthy?" With in this topic I feel like I have learned a lot. I am researching the effects on diet pills and what they exactly do to your body. And to say the least, it is interesting. The pills are not monitored as strict as I thought they would be. The FDA isn't even aloud to regulate them until they hit the shelves for consumers. I thought that was just crazy. Some of the pills can be addictive both physically and mentally. However, I am not only learning about my topic but I am also learning about health in general. Our class read a book that talk about how to be healthy and what it means to be healthy. I did take some things away from the book that made me think about my health. I kind of want to get into yoga to increase my flexibility and endurance. The reason I mentioned this is because the author of the book talked a lot about yoga and how it has helped him with staying healthy and happy. It is important to learn and talk about these things because isn't that something everyone wants to achieve? To be healthy and happy.

Well I have to get back to writing this midterm so I'll talk to you later,
Jake Goodrum

Assignment Reflection:
The assignment that I have enjoyed the most is the Annotated Bib/Blogger assignment. This one is something that I haven't had much experience with and has pushed me to do something different. By doing the annotated bibs it made you research your topic to where you had to know the debates and controversies about your topic and what was being said. Blogger was something I have never done before. Not only Blogger but blogging in general. Although this is not something I will probably keep doing it has helped me with the assignments. By blogging it forces you to think about what you are doing with in your research. You think about what is next and reflect on what you have already discovered. Also, it keeps me on tract with the assignments and is a reminder that I have something to do. I decided to write about weight loss drugs because of personal experiences. I know people that have had surgery to remove excess weight and the struggles they had to go through with the recovery. There are also people I know that have tried to loose weight but have been unsuccessful for whatever reason. I wanted to know if taking diet pills or weight loss medicine would help them loose weight with out harmful side effects. My audience for this piece was anyone who is considering taking or is already taking this medication. I wanted to inform them of the different aspects of the drugs, all of them; the good, the bad, and the disturbing. So during my annotated bibs I tried to remain factual and report the information that was current and dealt with different opinions. The skills that I tried to improve were my research methods and actually being able to write an annotated bib. I didn't want the information to just support my previous judgement. I wanted to expand my knowledge on the subject and see if my prospective about the topic should change. So I researched different sides and tried to get close to equal amounts of information and rebuttals on the main discussions. Not only did I expand on my research, but I also gathered a greater knowledge of how to write an annotative bib. I am more confident in my ability to compose one on a unusual medium. This piece was more easy to write for me. I was interested in what I was writing about so it made the time spent researching not feel so much like work. I reworked my annotative bibs to include my opinion of the source. It was something that I was lacking in the original that needed to be included. Doing different sides of research was something different for me. It was not a hugh risk but was something that exceptionally helped me. Reading about the different negative effects on what these pills can do to your body made me want to report the information that seemed to be most urgent, that many people may not know. From this assignment I have learned that researching topics from all sides is the best way to get a well rounded understanding of your subject. By doing an annotative bib you are able to organize your work and look at the credibility of your sources. I hope that the reader of this piece will learn the different effects weight loss drugs can have on your body. For my final revision I want to tell more about the source and why I chose to do an annotative bib on them instead of some of the others I looked at. I want to expand on why I considered them a valued source of information.

Peace Butter & Jelly "Jumpstart":
I did like the theme of the book. It went along very well with what we were going to be doing with our writing. It did give some ideas on what does it mean to be healthy and provided different aspects of health. He talked about spiritual health and yoga. And his different eating habits. The book made you think about what you could write about for your topic. I think it is a good choice for you spring class to get started with.

Haiku:
Learning about health
Researching different topics
Can be exhausting.

I never have really been into blogging. At first I thought it was just something useless that celebrities and teenage girls did. But through this process I did find it to be different then what I thought it was going to be. Blogging can be an important method to share academic findings and keep the community up to date on what you are discovering.

Blogging has helped with my research process by allowing me to write down what I am finding and how how I can connect it to what I am currently doing. I have been able to write out where I am and where I am going with my paper and plot out the end results. Keeping up with the evolution of my process has been easier due to the use blogging.

I did have to alter some of my original research intentions such as my inquiry question. My original topic was going to be how well does the FDA do at protecting the population from harmful substances we consume. But I found it hard to find information that was current. Many of the articles were published before 2000 and talked about the problems at the beginning when the organization was still young. So because I could not find any current information I had to change my topic to How does weight loss drugs affect your health and do they work? I have been able to find more information the the topic and different view and subjects. A lot of the information was surprising to me and I have grew in knowledge regarding my topic.

The audience I am writing to will be people who are taking, interested in taking, or just interested in general about weight loss pill. My topic is very current. If you watch tv Im sure you have seen commercials advertising these pills. Many stores we visit every day carry them. I picked this topic because I have friends that have talked and seriously considered taking them. I do not know if they have or not. But I am curious about the health risk that go along with these pills.

There are different viewpoints with my topic. Some people say that they have taken the pills and it has worked out great for them. The companies that make and manufacture them say they work great and will do little to no harm. But other sources have a completely different view point of weight loss drugs. They say the ingredients that are used can cause serious negative side effects and some of the chemicals used are not approved in the US.

Something that I found out that interested me was that some of the ingredients used in some of the smaller namebrand diet pills are not approved substances in the US. And some of them are just straight illegal.

I posted on Andrea Jones blog.

After looking into my topic some more I decided to change my question. My original question was; How safe and effective is the FDA's regulations on the food we eat? After doing my research I found that most of the information I could find on the FDA was out of date. Many of the current articles were government issued and I could not get access to the information they held. So do to the fact that I am having difficulty finding up to dat information on my subject I've decided to change my question. I now want to know how safe are weight loss drugs? And what exactly do they do?

While researching this new topic I have found some interesting information. I found this source on the internet while searching for information. It is The Daily Beast. The Daily Beast is a news report that is televised, put on the internet, and is also apart of Newsweek magazine.

The article I read entitled "Too Good to Be True: Why some over-the-counter diet diet pills aren't just a sham, they're downright dangerous". This article covered many topics about diet pills but the thing I found most interesting was something it stated about the FDA's involvement with the corporations that produce the drugs. They said that the FDA's ability to regulate the production of these drugs are limited. They are not able to require safety and efficacy test until the drugs are on the shelves. Once there they can require them to be tested and and if they find something wrong the FDA can have them recalled. But that really shocked me to find that the diet pills aren't really regulated until they are in your hands.

I want to know how safe or harmful the additives and FDA regulations are. This topic is interesting to me because we are eating things every day that we may know nothing about. The FDA has made many changes over the years from its development. I want to know how much safer they are making the things we eat, or if it's just fat cats getting richer. While conducting further research I expect to find that many reforms have been made but there is still many improvements that need to happen.

It is harder finding research than I thought it would be. A lot of the documentation on the subject is either government documents or stuff that was published prior to the 70's. Some articles are talking about the reforms that were made. I'm not finding a bunch about the other side, but I'm sure I will if i keep looking.