Where is me?

This is an interesting blog assignment, because this is usually the weakest or hardest part to fix about my research papers. I rely very heavily on my sources and end up paraphrasing and restating their ideas, expounding only a little. For our second paper, I started to write from my own ideas which made the writing more enjoyable and easier.

What I'm trying to say is that my own voice has very little prominence in my writing. This might be because I do not feel my vocabulary is academic enough, but I think it is mostly because coming up with new ideas and analysis is very hard for me for some reason. I am constantly hitting blocks while writing my own words, not knowing what to write next. I want to write well which makes me critical of my own thoughts and words, insomuch that I don't want to write them.

I will have to work on this with my revisions of this paper.
How do you think of new ideas and analysis to write about?
How do you write with an academic vocabulary?

This is actually something about me which applies to many parts of my life. While speaking, it is hard for me to talk for very long, because I end up not conveying the message I am thinking. I simplify and have to pause a lot to think about what I will say next. Things make sense in my head, but I can not express myself very well, especially when speaking.

Writing this blog is not too hard because I can (and do) constantly stop in the middle of sentences to think about what I will write next. It is also simply me talking, not analyzing other things. I notice that I have an idea, then lose it. I have to pause to think about what that idea was, because it was only there for a few seconds.

I hope this stream-of-consciousness blog made sense. I think this is a big problem with my writing. I don' trust myself enough to let the writing come from myself.
How can I work on this?

Peer Edit?

Though he has not sent me his essay, I know Brandon has a great Thesis, backs up his argument, and has some intense, in-depth analysis. I can just tell, without even reading it. That's how good it is.

Researchin'

For my research, I have been looking up articles on the internet written on the subject of music piracy. This seems to be shaping my argument because I am taking bits and pieces of their argument into mine. I get facts and statistics from their arguments mostly, though I might do some more research on my own. This is making my research much easier, that someone else has done most of the research and analysis already; I just need to find those arguments and use them to form my argument.

Research Paper Ideas

After asking myself what I'm interested in, what I do for fun, what I know a lot about, and what I want to know more about, I came up with a few ideas for my research paper.

One idea is to research and explain why we should/shouldn't change to the metric system. It's interesting to me because I use it all the time in my classes, It's definitely related to globalization, and it might be fun to argue against it, to have something interesting to talk about.

Another idea I am thinking about is how music influences emotion, and how different cultures have different music which makes emotions among teenagers different in effect. I think this is very interesting because I like many different kinds of music and it really affects my mood, depending on what kind of music I listen to.