What I learned from the Issues Paper

I learned a lot of things from doing the issues paper. For one I learned how to do effective and valuable research, rather than just searching through google. This should help me throughout the rest of my college career and beyond.  Another thing I learned that was really frustrating for me is that issues are always extremely complex. There is good in bad in each side, and there is never one right answer. It was really irritating to me that I couldn't pick a side and stick with it. This paper also helped me learn to view issues from different points of view. This paper helped me be more open-minded. I feel like before this class I was very close-minded and this class has helped me view things from a different point of view. Specifically this paper helped me learn how lucky I am to live where I do. I am so blessed to be where I am. There are so many people all over the world that are living in poor circumstances. I hope that through my education I can make just a small difference in this world, even if I don't solve some complex issue.

Audience

My issues paper is on micro finance and why it is better than other donation programs.The audience for my issues paper is: middle class Americans that have the desire to help the impoverished. I think that they value helping people out. They realize that they are very fortunate and that there are a lot of people around the world that do not have it as good as they do, so they want to help. Their counterclaim would be why is micro finance a better option than just donating straight to the people. My claim would be initially disagreeable to them because they might not understand exactly what micro finance is, and they might also think that it doesn't help poor people as much as a straight donation. I am assuming that they want to find the best option that will truly help the impoverished improve their standard of living.

Issues Paper

I thought I would write a little post on how my work on the issues paper is going. It is definitely a lot harder than I anticipated. 10 resources didn't seem too difficult at first but... it is a lot! Especially when most of the sources should be scholarly. The scholarly articles are really long and often times a lot harder to understand. Obviously, the researching has been pretty difficult for me, but now that I have gotten a lot of research out of the way I decided to start writing. Something I have learned this semester is that free writing is a great pre-writing activity for me. So today I decided to take the plunge and just start rambling about my topic with things I already knew and my findings from my research. I found this to be really helpful. Now I have at least a starting place for my paper and I now have an idea of where I want to go.