My research paper.

Deladan

https://www.dropbox.com/s/71ah0ty7mqpdj05/smith_christopher_task2.docx?dl=0


I failed the assignment, but I did learn a lot about the subject I selected. 

Deladan

And comments too, I failed and all so you can't really say too much too me to bring me down on it, I got a 0 because apparently I fail at APA citation. 

Herenicus

If we're just sharing our old homework assignments, here's a food column from 2001 days of yore. Didn't do much for me, either, but started me on a dark and bitchy road. Good luck on your next assignment.

With finals approaching and important work piling up, nothing’s forgotten faster than this poor, neglected column of mine. While I’ve never boasted of the quality of Masticating In Public, I still feel it necessary to pre-emptively beg forgiveness for the tripe to follow.

Mill Street Bagels operates two locations near campus. According to at least one self-described “Mill Street whore,” the operation on 5th Avenue is head and shoulders above the one at 3296 North High Street.
 
Unfortunately for the owners of Mill Street Bagels, the latter establishment is the one we’ll be examining today. 

My Co-masticators and I walked in and were nearly the only ones present. I mistakenly assumed that we’d quickly be able to put in our order, dine and get back to our group project. After watching the pedantic pace of the employees, I’m certain that nothing short of a loaded gun could convince them to throw a sandwich together in less than 10 minutes. So help me God, if I can’t get my ham, turkey and roast beef bagel quickly and conveniently, the terrorists have already won.

When we were finally presented with our overdue eats, I was miffed to note that our chips were forgotten. It’s not as if our orders were overly complex or the climate was at all busy. Perhaps we were supposed to get them ourselves, which is what I ended up doing. Reaching behind the counter to grab them made me feel like a thief, regardless. 

I walked back to my order after making the heist and reached for my latte, I found it disappointingly lukewarm. Just how do these people stay in business? I don’t care how high you are when you show up to work – when you hand someone a cup of coffee and it feels cold, there’s something wrong. If single-celled organisms can sense a temperature difference, I’d hope the employees of Mill Street could do likewise. Actually, with that in mind, I just might be setting the bar too high.

Co-masticator Doug ordered the Chicken Cordon Bleu and wrote, “While this sandwich is advertised as ‘served hot’ mine was at room temperature. I’m still waiting for an explanation for the unknown liquid that steadily dripped from the sandwich when I picked it up.” 

My knowledge of the ancient art of sandwichestry may not be encyclopedic, but I know enough to say something’s amiss behind Mill Street’s sandwich counter.

My Triple Decker was a barely-navigable pile of mediocrity. The bagel was nice and chewy, but the rest of the sandwich resembled something I could’ve thrown together myself. It’s not that it wasn’t decent; it was just too much lunch meat to handle with any semblance of human dignity.

Co-masticator Ben tried a salad and commented, “I enjoy the ability to choose my salad ingredients instead of a pre-made alternative. The salads here are huge, cheap and fresh. I ordered a bagel here as an afterthought, because I always come for the greens. The bagel was a bit old, but after all, it was 6 p.m.”
He went on to say, “The high school students working the Fifth Avenue location have their (expletive) together, which is more than the reefered-up college students working this place can say.”

As far as the atmosphere is concerned, I was pleased to see how clean and orderly things were. Evidently things stay neat longer without pesky customers walking in and tramping dirt around. Smoking is prohibited and the store is handicap-accessible. 

In closing, if you’re in the mood for a deli sandwich and insist on Mill Street, I suggest trying the Fifth Avenue location if at all possible. Good luck to all on their upcoming finals and Merry Christmas/Chanukah-/Kwanzaa.

Ruth

Another thing: Just because you are doing in-text citation does not mean that you should pull sentences wholesale from your references and paste it in your essay.

That counts as plagiarism and for these kind of research essays, there's a certain percentage that you will have to keep below to score decently. Try to reword the information that you've gotten from your sources and it'll serve you well in the long run too (in terms of improving your writing style).

Jules

Sorry to hear it, Deladan.  I've almost exclusively used MLA, but I'm almost positive I used APA for an Anthropology class that's part of the general curriculum.  Also, I've never completely lost my terror and blind hatred of both in text citations (they really cramp my style sometimes) and I hate doing the Works Cited page almost as much as writing my actual paper.  Almost. 

I deal with it by using our Writing Center.  I am a helpful stalker, and using the information you provided, it looks like you can request help.  Depending on how the person you end up working with has been trained, you may have to establish some ground rules, or even find another person.  The people I worked with had been trained to just ask you questions.  I wanted feedback on my actual writing and thesis from a critical reader's point of view, and someone to guide me through the awful process of citations.  It took a little bit, but the girl I ended up working with was great at pointing out places where the reader might not track easily, or that a professor might or might not consider sufficiently "Academic".  She does still remain faithful to her training, but in a much more useful way - the questions tend to pose a problem I need to solve and then I run with that until I hit something.  But really it's become more collaborative than that.  If I were writing a book, I'd certainly credit her with poking my brain in exactly the right ways - and I do, in my classes, to anyone who's struggling with their papers. 

It's so important to have that help if you're not just a whiz who can write perfect papers with no real critique in the process.  I've done really well through sheer hard work (very, very hard work) with an eye to make sure I'm delivering the product the professor expects.  By the time I'm almost done with a paper, I've probably put a total of 20-22 hours of solid work in (not kidding), because of the way my brain works, and I'm usually in what I've taken to calling a "paper rage".  I never realized how much I hate writing until I went to school  

Also, if no one has give these two sites to you, shame! 

http://www.bibme.org/

http://www.worldcat.org/

You do have to sanity check the fill-in fields it tries to complete, and the final citation product, but it's sure better than writing your own from scratch.  I don't think I've ever done my Works Cited page from scratch, and the thought makes me cringe.  I wasn't kidding when I said citations make me cry. 

Jacen

Microsoft Word has excellent tools to format, manage and organize your citations and references according to the format you are using.

Bluef

I'm a certified APA Queen and I got your back. I'd be happy to look at your papers in the future and offer some suggestions on better integration of source material and citations.  

Deladan

Yeah this is the last paper for my AAS, but then there is my Bachelor's degree which is a whole other shark tank. 

Kitiara

I prefer APA over MLA. If you need help feel free to message me. I'm very good at this type of thing.