Friday the 13th does not define our society or have a large effect on us, but it is a part of us. It is a quirk and an idea that someone would not be able to laugh about or understand from the outside.
Once again I tried to address what we would lose without cultural superstitions. I still did not have a full understanding so I gave what I could and left it as something the reader could think about, but without directly pointing it out with a question
For example, I have never had anything bad happen to me on Friday the 13th. Yet every time it happens, I am just a little more cautious and think about it more than any other date. But then I can go and laugh about how strange of an idea it is to believe that a date can cause bad things to happen. I think that it persists easily because it is a part of my life and feels wrong to not react to it. I may never truly experience something that I can attribute to Friday the 13th to explain it, but I also may never experience anything to make me stop thinking about it as different.
This section was partially here before, but lacked a clear idea and lacked the personal view. I added more details and a personal view to make the essay feel less research heavy and give my view that could help people have an easier time connecting to what I write. I also was attempting to get at an idea that was brought up in conference: what we lose if we lose cultural superstitions like Friday the 13th. I was never really certain of what that lose would be so I tried to provide information and examples so that a reader could see everything I see and try to understand that idea as well.
C is this mental part of the placebo. It is the change in the brain brought on by the physical placebo that causes a change in performance.
This is another spot where I brought "C" in to tie the essay together better. Previously everything around this was here but there was no direct connection to earlier parts of the essay. By adding these ideas about"C" I created that connection.
Megan Wall, a college volleyball player says she bounces the ball twice and rotates it to the left before every serve. I asked her about why she does this and her answer helped to understand exactly what C is: “It helps to clear. I stop doubting and questioning little things and just play to the best of my ability.” C is the relaxing of the mind and the clearing of any doubts.
This is the new interview I did to try to find out what "C" is. I only asked a few questions that were very directed towards what "C" is so I did not have anything else to add from her in the essay. But I do think that this was a good answer to the C question and having it in a quote from another person helps to prove its legitimacy as something that is not just created by me.
found the best way to understand this was to put myself in their shoes. Imagine you are a professional athlete. You are supposed to be good at what you do and you do not want to fail at that. Things go well when you wear a certain shirt or when you listen to a certain song before a game. So you keep doing it to make sure you keep playing well. On the other hand, if you are playing in your towns recreational league you may have a superstition or two, but you also know how good you are. You know that you are not a world class athlete and do not have to perform at the highest level.
I'm not sure I love how this turned out but I kept it in anyways. I needed more things to really help the reader connect to the paper, and using second person was a way we had seen in an example that I liked. So I added it in here to help explain this idea that did not seem to come across clearly. Once again though, I'm not sure it came across great but I wanted to keep it so there was a little more connection between the reader and the essay.
A contradiction between what counts as a “causal link” arises here that I had to work through. To me, the link needs to be a direct physical effect while in a superstition there is an indirect change. I find it easiest to understand in equation form: A to B is a causal link but A to C to B is not. A is the action and B is the increased performance, but C is tricky to define. It is a change in mental state that occurs because a superstitious ritual was performed and that leads to increased performance. I decided that in order to understand C, I needed to look into the effects of performing superstitions.
This entire paragraph was added based off of an idea that came up during conference: What is the difference between a causal link and a non causal link? Based on a drawing in conference I used C as the unknown and then used it as a guide for my research and essay. I also did a little more research and did another interview with an athlete to get more information about my unknown "C".
, Hall of Fame NHL player Wayne Gretzky always shot his first warm-up shot wide right of the goal. He has a specific action — shooting wide right — that he repeats — before every game — and that does not have a causal effect on the event — one wide right warm-up shot would not change anything
I changed this example from one about Sydney Crosby wearing the same hat after every hockey game. It was an example I had heard about before and I may have left out him wearing it before but I was not sure so I changed it. I found that my new example was clearer and I could still analyze the three parts of it. I also think that Gretzky's name is just a little more recognizable than Crosby so that could help people understand the example just a little easier.
And many are more personal: someone may use the same pencil for their exams or a hockey player may wear the same shirt to every game. Yet these things do not physically change anything, so why do people do them? And what about when they do not provide someone with success:
I changed the examples here from someone eating a specific food before a test or a game just to make these examples a little clearer. I also added the lines about nothing physically changing and the situation where success does not occur to make a clearer connection to my questions. Previously the example jumped directly to the question without much of a connection. i think I could have made a stronger connection than I did but it is still better than before.
A writers style can totally change a piece
Another note about all the questions relating to style: I had just written my writers statement in which I discuss style and that was definitively in my head still. So that caused some of my thinking and definitively influenced the questions I pulled from the ideas that had been there since my original.
But it also makes me wonder how many times he rewrote parts of this essay? What lines did not make the cut? And what lines only made it after being molded into something completely different?
My original essay also ended with questions. I like these endings because I know I do not have the materials to answer whatever questions I end with but I still put the ideas out there so that a reader could think about them as well. These questions are completely different from my original's questions. I honestly think the questions in the original which were about Dick and how Wallace tells stories and describes things to get us to understand. And I think I addressed those ideas in this essay and created a possible answer.
Another thing Wallace does that makes his writing so enjoyable is his diction
This rewrite did end up (unintentionally) being somewhat similar to the first essay I wrote about this class on DFW's essay "Authority and American Usage". I focused on my enjoyment of Wallace's writing and what he does that I find enjoyable. I think I came back to these ideas because they relate to what I originally had in this piece and because I feel so strongly about them since they are based on my enjoyment.
His rambling,
From here on in the Essay the entire thing has been deleted and rewritten. In my original essay I had brought up Wallace's descriptions but then had focused on when he wrote about meeting Dick. The ideas I had tried to portray were similar, but the way I tried to portray them (through Dick's description) was very confusing and occasionally contradicted itself due to my wording. My ideas were not contradicting so I knew I could still use those as long as I changed how I went about explaining and showing those ideas. I wanted to make sure these ideas were clearly shown through this piece and no longer accidentally and incorrectly contradicted each other.
I quite enjoyed reading David Foster Wallace’s essay “Consider the Lobster”
This piece was a reflection to reading David Foster Wallace's essay "Consider the Lobster"