Q: How does the project relate to concepts from my previous classes?

A: Despite the petition from CSPI and many medical studies proving the health effects of carmine, the food industry continues to use carmine. One of the main reasons for this decision is the money. It costs less to use carmine for the coloring purpose compared to using fruit. Carmine coloring also has a longer shelf life and doesn’t fade away as fast as real fruit. By using carmine, the industry makes more profit and that’s the reason why they will continue to use it for as long as they can. It reminded me of a concept that I’ve learn from sociology, political science and history last year. Money is almost always the motive behind our actions. From the government to the people, one of the main goals was always to make more money. The food industry is just another example of this concept.

I love my group. This is one of the best groups that I got to work in so far. Everybody is working well with one another. I know each of us also has been working very hard this quarter on this project so we all deserve credits for the work that we each has done. Personally, I think all we need to work on this quarter is the communication. Sometimes, we have the tendency to forget things, especially when there are five millions things going on beside the project. There are things that we were supposed to say but we forgot to. Things go wrong at one times or the other. Someone got sick, someone freaked out over college application, and someone just felt overwhelmed by everything sometimes, you know, unavoidable stuff. However, I believe that we are more than just group members, we are friends. And once we got over the bump on the road, we will be on the same page again and everything will be just fine.

The final product of our project finally came out! Our Thunderword article was published on the lastest issue of the newspaper, which came out last Thursday. I was really excited when I saw it under the opinion section. However, when I took a closer look at the article, there were some mix feeling I had for this piece. First of all, the title was messed up grammatically. There was a missing letter. You know what, that's not even the point here. That wasn't our title!!! Sarah showed me the original title that she sent them in her e-mail and it was not the same one. If the paper's editor was going to change our title, that person could at least do it right. Just a letter "R" is not going to take up that much ink!
For the rest of the article, I know there was also some editing, mainly to make it shorter since there is a limited space for our article. I don't know about the rest of my group's sections, but my part of the article looked good overall. However, there was a little change that I wasn't very happy with. The first sentence of the carmine part was like this in the paper. "Carmine is the additive that makes yogurts, such as Yoplait and Dannon, that delicious, creamy-looking, pink color" I was not happy with the word "makes" in that sentence because it makes the sentence sounds weird to me. It was supposed to be "gives". But other than that, I'm quiet happy with my part of the article.