Comments

Conor:
1.Hey Conor, I like where you are going with your paper. I think it is a tiny bit similar to mine. I would suggest that in your thesis to state maybe why we humans have a need to feel important and memorable. I am not sure if the idea of "the wrong things" is your reason why people have a need to feel important or the empty feeling inside us? I am not a great editor or good and giving feedback and it was a little confusing but maybe you would want to write: We concentrate on the wrong things such as our desire to dress, appear, and react certain ways, which is a way to be cool to fill our feeling of emptiness inside.

2. I agree with our need to obtain attention. Although many of us try to pretend as if obtaining attention is the last thing on our minds. In high school there is a good type of attention and a bad type. You want to get the type of attention that makes you seem "cool", meaning you being recognized by a large population of teenagers in high school as well as being admired. And there is gaining the type of attention that is looked down upon such as "people talking smack" (I think thats how it is said) or gaining attention in a "fake" way by not being "real", whatever that really means. This type of attention is seen as uncool. Also there is a need for attention among families as well. Gaining attention is like a competition. Many of the youngest kids in the family gain the most attention from their parents because they are more innocent, cute, and more likely to not be a "lost cause". At least that in the majority families that I have seen, my family is the perfect example. Just between my brother and I, I manage to gain the attention of my parents the most because I did what they expected me to do, go to school, graduate (not yet), be social.

3. You might want to split up your arguments into bits:
-Role Playing (We all are writing our own scripts)
-The Cool Rules, Anatomy of an Attitude (One of the articles we read in class)
-Tattoos (Mr. Fanning, you and write about how we use tattoos as a way to gain attention)
-Becker's Theory of death (emptiness)
-Separation from the mother theory (emptiness)
-Whatever emptiness feeling theories you might agree with. I like Becker's Theory the most.
Good Luck :)

To Jin:
I hope you don't mind that I comment you because my other triangle partner failed to do her rough draft yet and you did yours most recently. :)
I am a little bit confused about your thesis, I feel like it cuts off a little but maybe it is just me. Are you trying to say that our need to be cool affects us mentally and physically? Maybe thats how I would have wrote it; our strong need to be cool affects how we act physically and mentally.

In the first paragraph, I think I see where you are getting at. You might want to include our need to be "unique" and "different" but not too different or it would be seen as uncool and weird. We take this idea and we formulate a character, when we have choosen a character we play the roles that this character would play out, kind of like a script. For example Stephanie Adames in our class plays the popular girl, Conor plays the comedian, I play the "who cares" role. The cowboy hat dude who you interviewed wanted to play the role of maybe a badass. In doing so he comes of conceided, being well aware that he is "obviously cool" and smoking a cigar. In result he is able to portray this badass cowboy image. I like that you put the little part about the effects of smoking. It kind of shows how his result of trying to come off so cool maybe not be very healthy for him, the results may not be good.

List of stuff you may want to include:
-Peoples stories (you can talk about the roles of different people and compare them, what really cool. What is "fake" cool.)
-Maybe talk about why Mr. Fanning got the Tattoos- trying to fill a certain role he was playing.
-How may these roles help us or not help us?
-Self Presentation- The Presentation of Self in Every Day Life (An article Andy passed out in class, this would fit well in your paper I think)

Keep it up, semesters almost over. ;)