Quick Write

He that wrestles with us strengthens our nerves, and sharpens our skill. Our antagonist is our helper.

– Edmund Burke

Write for two minutes on this quote.

Egocentric Thinking

Egocentric thinking means that we think through our own perspectives. We only have our perspective.

Egocentric

  1. having or regarding the self or the individual as the center of all things
  2. having little or no regard for interests, beliefs, or attitudes other than one’s own; self-centered

Intellectual Empathy means being able to think through other peoples perspectives. Seeing an issue through more perspectives than your own. This is very important for critical thinking since we want to consider an issue from as many perspectives as possible to better see and understand an issue.

We only have our perspective and experience informing how we perceive issues. Critical thinking requires that we get as many perspectives in order to become more informed. We need to place ourselves in others perspectives in order to see if our perspective if fair, just, or biased.

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Photo by Todd Robertson, courtesy of the Southern Poverty Law Center

Our perspective might be biased, racist, prejudiced, incorrect, or ignorant of facts.

MLA Style

Why do we cite sources in academic writing?

  1. Establishes credibility.
  2. A road map. Scholarship is an ongoing conversation.
  3. It gives credit. Acknowledges those that contributed to your ideas.

We will be going over the 8th edition MLA citation Style. You can look under our resources page for MLA or APA guides. There are three things to consider for each style guide you use:

  1. Page Formatting
  2. In-Text Citations
  3. Works Cited/References Page

In-Text Citation

Also called parenthetical citations.

One Author: (Ramos 1)

Two Authors: (Smith and Ramos 1)

Three or more Authors: (Ramos et al. 1)

 

For the Proposal, make sure you:

  1. Define the problem
  2. Recognize an audience
  3. Create, explain, and justify a plan of action.
  4. Persuade readers of the problem and proposed solution.

Problem Solution Example

Victory Gardens, The Sequel – New Urban AG, Scaling Locally Grown Food | Jeff Olson