FINAL BLOG!!!

I cant believe I am writing my final blog for the semester. Time flew by so fast. At first I did not think I would like doing blogs after every class period. This was not the case though, I found them easy to do and nice to reflect on what we were doing in class. I also liked that we could pretty much write whatever we wanted to on here. I would not mind having to do this again. Writing on a blog does not take much time or even much thought when you just go with it.

Writing workshop!

I feel like the the workshop's that we did in class did not help me that much. When we read our stories out loud that helped me a little because I was able to catch a few grammatical errors that I didn't catch by reading it in my head. I didn't seem to get much feed back from the other students so that made it hard to find it worth while. I went to the writing center and looked over two of my papers after class and that helped, I was able to get help thinking of ways I can add onto my papers to make them longer in order to reach the length requirement.

Thanksgiving!

I am heading to Chicago for Thanksgiving tomorrow to see my family! Im not exactly excited, I am driving there not flying so I have about a 9 hour drive. Not only that but I have a large family and it gets kinda boring at times considering I am the oldest girl and then its my sister who is a junior in high school. I guess the only part I am really excited about is seeing my older brother who goes to Creighton in Omaha. Although he lives pretty close to vermillion I have only seen him once for about a day sense school has started. Sense all my family is in town it makes it hard to get to spend time with my friends, and that kinda stinks. Oh well, after this week we only have about three weeks left of school and then we are off for christmas. :) This semester has went by so fast!!!

The outline

The outline helped a lot and I think made my paper easier to write. The only thing I didn't like about it was that we had two days to do that and also the first draft of the paper. I feel like I had to rush to get the outline done and start the paper because I was so busy and didn't have much time. Although over all it helped keep my paper more organized.

New Thesis

Ursula K. Le Guin's " The Ones Who Walk Away from Omelas" those who walked away feel uncomfortable with the situation in front of them and walk away.

The Ones Who Walk Away from Omelas.

Ursula K. Le Guin's "The Ones Who Walk Away from Omelas" the town people who walk away do not agree whit what is happening but yet are not strong enough to stand up for what they believe in, so they walk away without saying a word.

Reading Critically

I've never exactly read anything this way, so it was a bit difficult at first. I started to get  a bit better as I went on. I found myself highlighting a lot of key ideas through the stories and then writing in the margins what each paragraph is about so it is easy to go back and find what I am looking for. I also found it a bit easier to find symbols in the stories. This is something that is going to take work and practice but will be extremely helpful in the future and for other english classes. From now on I am not going to rush through my readings, it makes more sense to get it done the right way the first time. :)

Symbolism

The White Hero
   The color white- This represents purity and also innocence.
   The Tree- This symbolizes the extremes measure that the girl went to in order to find the bird, and then           realized the importance of the life of the bird over the reward for finding it and revealing this to the hunter.
   The Hunter- This man represents today society and what people will do in order to have something that they cant have or that many people do not have.
   The cow- This represents the milk for the grandmother and young girl.

The Yellow Wallpaper
   The wallpaper- This shows how the women is stuck and cant seem to find a way out of the life she is in.
   The baby- The reason the women is depressed and acts in this way.
   The journal- The women writes in order to express herself, another way she is trying to get away from the reality of her life.
   The Husband- The way he treats his wife is the way women were treated during that time period, they were not treated with much respect or dignity.

Women in the 1900's

18.8 percent of women were working during this time period. They were treated poorly, had poor working conditions, and un fair wages. These women started up groups to fight the un fairness in the work field. Some of the occupations of this time are sales clerk, nurses, teachers and typists. Other women may find jobs in factories and mills. This also is when the start of women having jobs that traditionally only men would hold, such as law and medicine.

"Decade by Decade: 1900s -Women of the Century- DiscoverySchool.com."Discovery Education          Classroom Resources. Web. 1 Nov.2010. http://school.discoveryeducation.com/schooladventures/womenofthecentury/decadebydecade/1900s.html.

The interesting readings!

humm.. I read The Most Dangerous Game first and it freaked me out. Hunting for people? I was in shock. What would drive someone to really want to hunt a person. Another reason this freaked me out is because it is now hunting season in South Dakota and I sure hope the hunters that come here don't come up with the crazy idea of starting to hunt people. I was not very into this story, mainly because Im not much of a mystery reader.

An Occurrence at Owl Creek Bridge was very interesting. Although I was surprised I got into it, considering I was so appalled by the first story I read. The ending was a bit of a twist that was very un expected. I was shocked that he was dreaming. The story really makes the readers mind travel.

The Ones Who Walk Away from Omelas.

Reading this story tonight was and eye opener. I could not believe this town would kill a child for their own happiness. At the start of the story the town seemed like a cute perfect paradise like place and so as the story went on it socked me. As i was reading the rest I really thought about how selfish and self centered people can be in the world, this includes me. This story kind of gave me a reality check to think about the fact that I could be very selfish in certain situations and this is defiantly not a good thing.

Research paper

This weekend while writing my research paper, I found it very difficult. My paper seems to be a bit all over the place and needs to be organized. I had a hard time meeting the length requirement. This is the hardest paper I have ever written and needs a lot of work done to it. I also need to work on my citation of my sources. There are so many rules and different ways of doing it. I will need to work really hard on my second draft of this paper.

This Semester!

This semester has been interesting. I feel like we have done so many things in class. But yet the only thing I do not like about this class is that its at eight in the morning. I feel like I am becoming a better writer. All though I do not like writing I feel like i am some what able to write a paper now. I didn't learn anything in my high school english class, so this class is helping me a lot with my writing. This last group project we did was a bit hard but it was okay. I have enjoyed this class and feel like it is well worth my time going.

topic for essay

I have already blogged on my topic last week but ill talk about it again. I found interest in childhood obesity and did a web and seem to have plenty of points i can talk about on this subject. My last essay was on mandating physical education in to all school k-12 so this is something I will be able to add into my essay.

Topic for research essay.

I think I will do my topic on children and obesity. I did my proposal on mandating physical education in grades K-12. I think i could expand this essay and make it into a research essay and add in the rise of children and obesity rates. I am interested in this topic and think that there would be plenty of research on this topic and i would have fun doing it.

Presentations

I thought that doing our presentations helped a lot. I found it easier to learn ways to revise our papers by listening to the ways the other students described them.  My topic was cutting clutter and I learned a lot by reading up on my topic. I now know how important it is to keep my writings clear and to the point. The book gave good examples as to what are some phrases that should not be used in writing. I had fun listening to the presentations and they were well worth our time.

Cutting Clutter!

In my project this week i learned a lot about ways to improve my paper. I went through my paper and found lots of clutter to eliminate. This was a helpful activity and made me really analyze my work. I will hopefully remember these rules and use them through out all my papers from this point on. My writing can use as much work as possible so learning these skills came in handy.

Thesis for my Proposal Paper.

For my proposal paper I decided to write on the importance of physical education. I believe that in every school grades K-12 should require the kids to take physical education. Many children are lacking in physical activity and making them do a bitch at school each day will help with their over all health. By showing kids how to live healthy lives when they are young, you will find that they will be more likely to stay healthy as they get older. We must require  all school to have physical education in there curriculum.

The 100 People Screwing up America

I enjoyed this weeks reading. Many of the points made I had never even thought of before. The one that touched me the most was about September 11th. I remember that day and exactly what I was doing when I heard the news about the towers. I found it very interesting how the writer pointed out how many of the people who were killed that day didnt even vote for our president and how he said had to end there lives because of his mistakes. Not that that really matters because none of those people should of had to end there lives that day. But, I found it interesting the way he stated that. I am enjoying these short readings we do for homework, I seem to be learning a lot and thinking deeper on things I never really thought of before.

Peer Review

I found the peer review to be helpful. In high school I hated having other students look at my work and try to correct it. I never seemed to get anything out of it because most kids would just simply say good job. This week when we did it I found small simple errors that I didn't catch that will be easy to fix. For instance I did not have a title on my paper and I also did not have clear topic sentences in every paragraph. The peer review did help me and i think it was well worth my time.

If you were to die today would the world be different?

I was thinking about this question for a long time. I came to conclusion that I think many people strive to leave this world and leave something on earth that made the world a better place. I personally fell like this is important. When your day comes and you are to leave the world, you want people to be able to look at your life and think about how good of a person you were and also admire your life. People who live there lives to make this world a better place are truly genuine people. I think it is important we all try to leave the world in a better way than it was when we were born.

Being Random

So i didnt exactly know what to blog about this weekend and thought about it a long time. I came to conclusion that i felt like just being random and writing about whatever comes to mind. Right now im sitting in my dorm and doing homework. It has finally hit me on how much more work college is then high school. I like it though and seem to work harder and want to do better than in high school. In high school I did everything last minute, but now I find myself spreading my homework out and doing it well before it is due. Except i guess this blog because its 10 pm and this is due tomorrow  by 8 am, but i did get the rest my english done earlier in the weekend and did a bit this morning. :)Yeah so anyways college is a lot of work and ill have to apply myself a lot this year and also down the road. Im a bit excited for this class because I feel like I will become a much better writer. I did not learn much in high school about how to write a good paper so this class should help me a lot. :)

The notebook -Nicholas Sparks

 When i saw that we were going to be reading part of "The Notebook" I was very excited. I loved watching this movie and have also read the book. Many times i find that I like the book better than the movie when it comes to movies made into to a book or vice versa. The short section i read for class was the part that i didn't get at the start of the movie so it helped that i now have read the book and seen the movie. I find older people very cute and this part is absolutely adorable. I feel bad for the old lady but she is very lucky to have someone care for her that much to come to her bedside and comfort her. Reading this short passage made me want to read the rest of the book again. I may have to run home this weekend and pick up my book. :)

Me Talk Pretty One Day -David Sedaris

While reading this short passage this weekend I found it to be very interesting. I felt sorry for the forty-one year old man. This passage made me think back to years in school when you would come across that occasional teacher that didn't seem to care if you understood the material or not. The teacher in this passage came across to be extremely stern and strict. I personally know that if I was in that class I would have a hard time having much success. Although this professor came across very strict I'm sure in some cases it helped students reach there full potential. I found this passage to be very eye opening and made me think about the teachers I have had in the past.

About me.

Hello,
   My name is Alyson Spencer. I was born in Sioux Falls, SD. I have an older brother and a younger sister and also two dogs. I went to high school at O'Gorman. In high school i was a cheerleader for sideline and also did comp squad. I ran track and cross country in high school as well. I love playing sports and also watching them. My favorite thing to do is to go running. I plan on studying nursing while in college.
-Alyson Spencer