roundtable discussion

ok. so for class on monday we had a discussion where everyone said what they were going to write about, then the rest of the group gave feedback. i have chosen to (somehow) write about why school districts should teach manual driving skills instead of just automatic. they need to teach kids how to drive both stick and automatic basically.
so, as for the feedback i got for acknowledging the other side... well, to be honest, anything i got from my peers was really the same thing i had gotten when thinking about it myself. as for what i'm going to use, well, i'll probably use the ideas of the differences in keeping the car running, how its better for fuel costs, but how it also is more likely to have clutches burn out faster if students were learning how to drive on them. i will use how even though these kinds of cars get better control while driving, and less maintaining, there is also less stick shift cars made, so this is probably partly why not as many people know how to drive them.

*ANY OTHER FEEDBACK FROM ANYONE ELSE ON HOW TO DO THIS PAPER WILL BE GREATLY APPRECIATED!!!*

questions from 365

well... i actually figured out what my topic would be pretty much at the end of the class... and it was from my classmates helping me figure it out. but after looking at the questions now, i think that the problem of people not knowing how to drive stick realy exists now. i'm a living proof of it. this has been caused by drivers ed teachers only teaching kids how to drive automatic cars, and not having the two different kinds for access. the history... well its been going on forever far as i know. the bad effects are that people don't know how to drive stick, and can actually cause some people to get hurt, or in a bad situation if they don't know how to drive stick. if people knew how, this could solve people from being in a dangerous situation like stranded on a mountain with only a stick driven car. everyone who drives is affected by this problem... and that's basically it.

two topics

OK...to be honest, I'm (again)struggling on coming up with a topic or in this case, two topics on what we have to write about for this solutions paper. i guess some of my ideas would be animal restrictions in neighborhoods, but as to how I'd propose a solution for that, i have no idea. i can't think of anything that's a problem, or at least one that i could fix with 4h or gas prices, even though gas prices is a big problem in my book. another idea i guess is that the little league baseball fields need to have more bleachers or seating for families and friends to watch the kids play. this would help have support for the players from their parents. i can think of plenty of problems, but i can't think of any way that i could fix them... i guess I'm too easy going of a person!hopefully, I'll think of something fast, so i don't have to struggle as much with this paper as i have with the last ones.

catching up/ interview day

ok, so i'm going off of memory here, the blog for friday was i believe that we had to talk about what we thought of the interview day, and how it went. well, i really liked the activity, i got to know the person i interviewed a lot better. i did find however that the questions i had planned to ask, i didn't get to ask all of them, and the ones i did ask, we ended up going way far off subject from them... So i didn't get to ask all of them that i wanted to. i did find out a lot about my person though. though, as to if i have enough info to write a paper about that person.. i don't know. we mostly just talked about random stuff and things we had in common, or stories about what our family and friends have done. at any rate, it was still nice getting to know that person. i know for my actual interview, i will have to make sure i stay on subject more so.

Delving Deeper

I think its important to not just all of a sudden jump into really deep personal questions. because of this, i plan on asking a few questions to break the ice, like where they are from, what their familiy is like, and what they like to do in thier spare time. to add a little depth to my latter questions though, i might ask things like how their family has influenced their beliefs in certain matters. what's important to them. if growing up where they did influenced how they look on life, and if they could change where or how they grew up, would they? i also want to ask a few silly questions, because i think that in order to really get to a person's true self, you can't ask all boring deep questions. they have to be fun too. so one question i would like to ask, is if they had an extra hour in a day, to use however they wanted to, what would they use it for, and why? i think this activity will be quite interesting for us to find out about one another, but i will admit that i am a bit intimidated by the idea. i don't like to speak to people i don't know very well, especially about matters that i feel are somewhat personal. anyway, i guess we'll just have to see how tomorrow goes!

comparison/contrast

the car i am driving now is a Lincoln town car, with a v8 engine with horrible gas mileage, whereas my new car is a Pontiac, with a 4 cylinder engine and great gas mileage.the paint on my new car is coming off, while my old car's paint is almost like new. the seats are really comfortable in my old car, but my new cars seats are kind of dirty and not comfortable at all. no work is needed for my old car, but my new car has a few things that need to be fixed before it can be registered. there is heat in my old car, and no heat in my new car. both of the cars are good cars, even though they are different brands. they both have radio, and both will last forever if i take good care of them.

Struggles with Research Paper

ok...struggles? haha where do I start?? i've had so many problems writing this paper... i swear it just hates me or something. first of all, the bibliography was extremely hard for me to do. i have no idea why... i realize it shouldn't have been as hard as it was, but it was for some reason. i couldn't get the right format going... or the right kind of sites, or really just understanding how it was done. i hope i did it right now. ok... but for this actual paper?? well, finding the stuff wasn't so difficult.. there's plenty of stuff supporting homeschooling. only thing is, i'm not exactly sure how i'm supposed to show the opposition. what is the opposition in my case? am i supposed to show why homeschooling is bad? or why public schools are good? either one of those options kinda just takes away from my entire paper... so i guess that maybe i just don't understand this concept... or whatever. like i said, i think the whole thing just hates me or something. so i guess that's the really big struggle i'm having. finding the opposition. that's what my peers told me from the peer review too. i need to have the opposition side showing... but i don't see how i'm supposed to do that exactly. this whole thing is just really confusing!! it also doesn't make sense to do research on something that the info has already been researched... like if your trying to make a new discovery or something, so you create your own new experiments or something, i'd understand, and this would make sense to me. but being as anyone can go find this info online, or read about it where ever they want to... it doesn't make sense to me why we should be writing a whole new paper on it. what's the point really? anyway... that's my rant for this post. hopefully i'll just get this whole paper over and done with and i can forget it. haha heaven knows i procrastinated enough already for this paper, so i'm glad its almost done and over with.

Class Discussion

ok... so this is supposed to be on what help we recieved from the discussion we had in class? i really liked being able to discuss everyone's papers by the way. it seemed like we were an actual group of students with the same goals... instead of just a class. anyway... umm...lets see... i don't remember anyone giving any specific help to my papers exactly... from what i got from the discussion on my paper, was everyone was just trying to figure out what i was really writing about. and we had to leave by the time everyone finally got the idea. so... as to exactly how they helped me... i can't say. because i don't feel as if i really got any help. :S So...i guess that doesn't really answer the question for the blog entry... but that's all i got.

research peer review

well... being as i didn't have the first three pages of my paper done on the peer review date... i guess this blog entry is useless. but just in case i can get extra points for actually doing this...i'm all for it :)
i came and asked how i could actually write my paper without quoting every site i find...which honestly seems like the most logical thing to do. but, being as that would make no sense to write a paper in the first place, i'm going to do it using my own words how the teacher suggested. i can take from my own experiences, and write a paper like that, without it seeming like a personal paper. i will then add a few quotes, and perhaps statistics, and information that i have found in my sources. this whole thing should be able to create my paper.
i know this isn't the actual assignment that was specified, but it was nice to get my thoughts down in here anyway.

Three FOR Reasons

my three reasons for picking the side that i did are hard for me to say actually. i really don't care that much either way about obama, and i try to be as little involved with his politics as possible. i will say that his idea to reform the health care is kinda stupid in my opinion...because the system is already abused enough. if this reform goes through, then the entire medical feild will be abused even more by those without insurance. second... i think he's trying too hard. you don't have to make peace with the whole world for your country to like you. third, i think you should be paying more attention to the country you're a president of, before you start sending people off to a different country especially when you said that you'd bring the troops home. pay more attention to your own country before you go off fraternizing with the other countries.

Obama debate

this debate thing was good because we were able to look at both sides of the table. this is very important because in order to have an argument about anything... you have to have something to argue against.its really important also to acknowledge the other side to make sure that your argument is not just biased based off of your own personal beliefs or interests.

argument activity

i learned from the activity in class about picking a side for an argument that in some topics, there can be many different sides to a specific topic. some may be good, or bad, or even both, but they are all still reasonable arguments for each topic. picking a topic is still going to be hard for me though. i thought i did have a topic, but now that i have looked more into my topic, i have realized that it probably isn't a topic that i could have a good argument. so... i need to figure out a completely knew topic now, and make sure that i can have a credible argument for it. so being as if this activity actually helped or not for writing my own research paper... i can't really say. i might say no, simply because now i'm even more confused about which topic i should find/pick. but then again, i can say yes, because now i have more of an idea on what to look for- something with an easy argument from both sides that i can model to my own side and argument.

In text citation fears

so this entry is supposed to be about how we aren't scared anymore about adding our in text citations... I guess this entry is kinda pointless because my paper is already done at this point... but i will say that before i was done i was still really nervous and worried about doing them, even though we had talked about them in class. my problem was that each citation we used in class seemed to come only from an article or book, and i used some sources that were not talked about, or even used as examples in our textbook. i guess that was stupid on my part and i should change that for when i do the research paper, but that was my problem. now i only hope that i did the citations right in this paper!

advantages and disadvantages of topics

well, first of all, the substitute never said anything about a blog entry... so i guess this is just going to be a shoot from the hip kind of entry since there was no forewarning or anything about this blog entry...
OK... i guess this is also going to be a bit of a venting entry so i apologize beforehand. it almost seems unfair for us to have to know what our topic(s) would be after only the first day or two talking about research papers. i know that this is probably just my opinion on the matter, but i have a really hard time coming up with ideas in the first place, so to require us to state what topics we are thinking of, as well as the disadvantages and/or advantages about each one seems a bit unfair to me. i know that this is to help get our creative juices flowing and get more ideas into our heads... but its still really hard for me to complete.So, I'm sorry but that's how I feel. i still feel that these are a good thing, even though its sometimes annoying.
OK. now to my actual blog: some possible ideas i guess would be to look into perhaps the origin of pianos and who first invented them. i could also go off into the early versions of pianos, like the harpsichord. i can see of some advantages because there are probably a lot of information in databases specifically in music, but some disadvantages might be that it might be hard to narrow to a specific topic. i could also maybe write about birth order. i could go off into this like talking about how certain children may show certain qualities or characteristics based off of the order in which they were born. i guess the same advantages and disadvantages would apply to this topic as well.

Computer Lab

going to the library and learning about how to use the databases was fun. i already knew most of the stuff simply because i am taking LIB 1010. it was however a good reminder, and it was nice being able to see and work with the real live examples we researched in that class than just seeing it on a video that is hard to understand sometimes. i think that this workshop thingy will help me in writing my research paper because i will now have a better understanding of how to use the databases and such for when i need to write my paper. it was also nice finding out that my paper does not need to be on some big important topic and that fun topics are OK too.

Peer Review for Concept Paper

i really liked this peer review compared to last times. it was a lot easier to finish all of the essays, probably mainly because we only had two to read instead of three like last time. I think that it was much more effective than last times. last time's was good, but i think this was better because we could actually read through everything instead of merely skimming through. i was able to give better comments to my peers, as well as i also received better comments on my essay. comments i received were very helpful. i can now consider adding definitions to my concept( such as what an oldest child is actually defined as) that i would not have considered before. my peers also caught small grammatical and spelling errors that i happened to miss in my read through before i printed. Thanks everyone! :)

Thesis Statement

ok... this blog is supposed to be my thesis statement. however, i have a problem with being able to come up with what i'm writing about first, and then being able to write about it on demand. i understand that these blogs are supposed to help get the juices flowing and a way to record our ideas, but i usually don't write my thesis statement until the very end of my paper. i usually just tie my thesis statement into what my paragraphs will be... so, i apologize that i don't have a thesis statement to put on here.i really am enjoying this class, and i have learned quite a bit so far. and i honestly am trying to follow the class and do the assignments. but i also think i need to be able to write my paper as best as i can, and in order to do so,i need to follow the usual plan for me. i'm sorry.

i am planning on writing about how to survive being the oldest child, possibly adding in a large family. so, i want to have possibly a list of ideas to aid in that survival,possibly a story or two from others, or myself explaining the difficulties, and possibly some questions in which i'll answer. i imagine that i will probably use the essay about how to survive zombies as a guide, and the structure will most likely be very similar.

Concept Examples

so... being as i just barely have figured out what I'm going to be writing about... i don't know how great these examples are going to be... we'll just have to see i guess. well, being as my idea is going to be like the paper we read in class: how to survive a zombie attack, I'm going to write about either how to survive little brothers, or how to survive being the oldest child. being as I'm the oldest of 8 kids, i can use my own personal examples, examples from my friends, aunts and uncles, and other people i know who are also the oldest child in their families. i am sure that i can find some quotes or reflections on being the oldest, and possible advice for other oldest children from famous people. i hope to be able to create a list from my own ideas, and advice from others on some precautions to take, things to have, and methods to use words and such, to ensure safety and sanity while growing up with siblings and/or little brothers. like i said, i'm still not sure what i'm going to write about, being as i could go either way with this.

i'm not exactly sure what concepts i could write about for this paper... there are so many things to choose from! i could write about the concept of the difference between homemade wheat bread, versus store bought white. i could write about the pros like why it is healthier than processed bread. how you can eat it warm, fresh from the oven. though some cons would be that it tends to be more flaky than store bought bread. it falls apart easier if not made right. it also doesn't keep as long, because no preservatives are added to ingredients.those are just some ideas about one subject that i could possibly do. i'm still deciding what i want to write about. who knows? maybe it'll be about bread! haha

Make up entry for Jan 22

an object that has had real importance to me in my life would probably have to be my car. i havn't had this car for very long, but this is my first car and is really important to me because i use it to get to school and to work. my car is an old, 4-door, white, 1989 lincoln town car. although it is white, it has a sort of cream colored top that is flaking off in some parts from sun damage. the car is very long in length. about 18 ft and 3 inches to be exact. probably longer than most cars and even some trucks one sees nowadays. it has fake fur seat covers that are maroon in color. the passenger's seat cover is losing some of its "fur" and there is a white bald spot where the fur has come off. i find maroon fuzzy pieces all over my car, and around my parking spaces whenever someone gets out of the passenger side of the car. the back seat has no seat covers; it is simply pure leather seats. the interior is very large inside the entire car, and the seats are very comfortable. the steering wheel is very small and thin. the radio is old. no cd player. as well as the seat covers being maroon, the rest of the apolstery of the car is maroon too.

adding to my ingredients

hmmm... how am i supposed to add to ingredients B and C? well, first i should make sure that i have what i learned from my experience loud and clear, and then make sure that my readers know what they should learn. i want them to learn something from my essay, without me actually telling them what they should learn. the activity we did in class on monday really didn't help that much for me because i had improved my rough draft and did not have the new copy with me in class. so, my partner had to review my old rough draft, so most of his suggestions were ones that i had already made myself.

#6

wow. i think that the peer review workshop thing was awesome! i got some really awesome feedback that will really help me in finalizing my essay! i really liked how much of the comments i received were positive. my group members weren't negative at all. they also offered realistic suggestions- ones that can improve my essay's quality, instead of just random things that wouldn't help at all, and are just a waste of time reading. the only way i think that the peer review might have been more helpful, is that if we had maybe only had two other people's essays to read instead of three. having three people's essays was really hard because we didn't have enough time. other than that, i really liked having the workshop thing. i have had other peer review things, and i was not impressed at all. i received no helpful feedback whatsoever.but this time, i really got some awesome feedback. thank you fellow students! :)

describe a key person... ok, well now that i finally know what I'm writing about, i can do this! my key person would be Daniel. He's tall, about 6'4", big guy. he's not fat though, just big. He's Caucasian skin tone, with light brown hair, with a slight wave or curl to it. His smile is very sincere, and you know just by looking at him that he wants to help everyone, but also is a little bit of an imp- he likes to tease other people a lot. the feeling of being incredibly safe takes hold of me, whenever i am with this person. ...... i can't think of much else to say about him, so...yeah.

ok. so.. for this next blog I guess I'm supposed to be writing about what my analytical narrative is going to be about... thing is, I've been trying to think ever since Wednesday what to write about... and I have NO IDEA!! I can't seem to think of anything either great or small, that has changed my life... my life has been extremely dull and just really easy going. I have had several events happen in my life,some that are quite traumatic actually... but there's not enough info about them that I could write a 4 page essay! I always take a longer time brain storming for ideas... but usually I come up with an idea within a day or two... then the rest just flows really nicely. sigh... it just hasn't happened so far. I know I probably failed this blog assignment, but I can't write about what I don't have.

1. Writing is like swimming laps... you have to do the right strokes in order to keep the flow going.

2. Writing is like taking out the garbage... It's not the funnest thing in the world, but sometimes it needs to be done.

3. Writing is like practicing the piano... even though practicing is time consuming and sometimes a bit of a drab, the end result is always worth it.

(1). Writing is not always the easiest thing to do for me... I haven't always- and still don't- known the rules. taking english classes helps me get m ore of an idea... but its still hard to sometimes keep the flow going. I get writers block at least some part of each assignment i have to write. but, if i keep going at a certain pace needed to keep my ideas coming smooth, i can usually accomplish my assignment and usually do fairly good work.(in my opinion anyways)

(2). like i was kinda mentioning above, writing is not always the funnest thing for me to do... but, i've also realized that in order to succeed in any of my English classes, as well as other college classes, I need to learn how to write, and to write well. so, even though its not the funnest thing to do, it needs to be done in order for my success.

(3). i began taking piano lessons when i was about 7 years old... for a while, i was really good at practicing my lessons, but as the years have gone on, i've gotten really lax in doing so. its almost painful to practice sometimes, simply because i feel i have more pressing things to do at the moment - like writing an english paper. but i have found, that as i have continued to practice, i have gotten better and better as time has gone on and if i continue to practice even more, i can become even better than i am now. the same applies to my writing... the more i practice it, the better i have become. also, the more i continue to practice, i hope to become even better.

Ok, this is my first blog, so this whole assignment will be interesting throughout the semester. Alright... Here we go!

From the time I was really young, I have always tried really hard to keep a journal; I would use this mostly to get rid of my feelings that I was experiencing at the time. One time in particular, I was really frustrated with my parents. I felt like they did not understand me or my feelings, and expected far too much from me. I didn't feel it was acceptable for my parents to require me to clean the bathroom before I was allowed to read a book that I had been looking forward to reading. Who wants to clean the bathroom in the first place? Let alone having to do it just to stay home! If I was wanting to go somewhere, like to go play with my friends, I would have understood, because it would have made sense. But cleaning the toilet did not seem like a fair exchange to me... I was just going to be staying home after all! Well, I don't remember what happened, but I know that much yelling and crying came from my parents and I... Well, I guess that was all from me. Anyways, after all this, I ended up storming too my room to "yell" at my parents everything that I was not allowed to say in front of them, by way of my journal. My journal entry then consisted of several...probably not that nice thoughts of frustration directed towards my parents. "I hate you!!" "You don't love me!" "I wish I was dead!" were just a few of the things I wrote. After writing my feelings, I re read my entry just to make sure I got it all down when I realised something: Maybe my parents had a reason for making me learn to clean and not let me do whatever I wanted to do... And it was probably so I wouldn't become a spoiled brat. As I was re reading what I had written, I had realised that thats exactly what I sounded like: A spoiled, selfish, brat! Well... I later wrote a note apologizing to both my parents and left it on their pillows so they would see it before they went to bed. Everything was good between us after that, and I never...well... I can't exactly say never... but I tried really hard to not act like a selfish brat when it came to my chores again. Even if I was simply staying home all day.