Week 7

I am now in Week 7 of composition 2. This week has really focused on getting the midterm finished as well as our first draft of our constructive argument essay. Instead of self annotating our paper like we did last time, we had to revise somebody elses paper. It was a lot like when we had to annotate our own. We had to make suggestions, tell them what they did good on, and what I enjoyed about thier paper. Throughout this course I have learned waaaaayy more than I had ever expected. In my comp 1 class I didn't really learn much. We had to write 4 essays and that is pretty much what the class consisted of. In this class we do so many different things that really keep my interest. With all the different tools in technology that is at our fingertips it makes this class so much more fun. I have become a lot more tech comfy and am on my way to being tech savvy. I have learned how to construct essays but through a letter or an editorial. I have learned how to be more passionate about my thoughts and morals and how to stand by them as well as stand up for them. I have learned to analyze videos and relate them to essays. I feel as though by learning all of these things I am more confident in moving on in school. As though this class had really prepared me for the rest of my college career. We focused on a lot of real issues that go on every single day in this crazy world we live in. Reading and writing and talking about actual issues that happen around us is a lot more interesting than talking about a random book we had to read. I enjoyed being able to pick what I was going to write about rather than being assigned it. I honestly am very ecstatic with this class and never expected half of the things that I got out of it. This will definitely be a class that I will always remember.

Week 6

Week 6, We talked about very interesting topics. Not saying that the topics we discusseds in previous classes weren't interesting, but this seemed to really grab my attention. We read about the stereotypes of men and women and how the world around us effects each of them. We watched a video about how much the media affects females and had to submit a freewrite on how we felt about it. Being a female I am not very susceptible to the media. I am comfortable in my own skin, and all those ads don't really do a job on me. But some females are overly obssessed with wanting to look like the celebrities they see on tv. Males on the other hand never seem to be as affected, but in reality a lot of males are also largely effected by all this. We went over the different stereotypes of men and how people really define a man. we had find pictures that went along with each slide we put together and present. We also learned how to use google scholar which can be a very usefool tool. The last thing we did was talk about our midterm. We had to choose which method we were going to use for our midterm. At first I chose a loggel, which is like a diary entry, but it was very confusing for me. So I just decided to go with a blog instead. Besides who doesn't love blogging!

Week 5

Week 5, we finally had to turn in our final draft of our first paper. Not only did we have to turn it in to the professor, and turnitin.com but it was also suggested that we send it to our intended audience. Like I previously stated, I chose to write about the current sex education cirriculum in schools and how it needs to be changed. I also chose to put a little twist on it, and write in the form of a letter instead of an essay. This way when I sent it to the principal of the targeted school it would seem a bit more personal as well as professional. After submitting it the professor and receiveing a high grade on it, I still felt like I should email it to the principal. So I did. I chose the principal from my former high school. She considerately took the time out of her busy day and emailed me back in regard to my letter. She was very helpful and supportive in my issue and agreed to help. For her emailing me back, I received an extra 5 points on my final paper grade. Since our first paper was finally out of the way, we began to focus more on the next paper. We had to submit our claim for the second paper along with 2 or 3 reasons to back it up.

Week 4

Week 4 came around and we were instructed to read and annotate two different essays again but this time they were about morals and ethical issues. It was also time to turn in our first draft of our essays. We had to fill out a self-evaluation sheet in which we critiqued our own essays. We learned how to use the comments feature in Microsoft Word to help annotate our own papers. Once we finished annotating and finetuning our papers we had to submit them to the professor and she looked over our comments and made a few comments and suggestions herself. Everything was very helpful and really got me on my way to an excellent essay. Even though we were only turning in the first draft of our first essay, we were already talking about our second essay. The next paper we had to write was another argument paper, but this time it was a constructive argument. For Wednesday's class we had to read yet another essay about a man shooting an elephant. Although it may not seem like it, this essay was also about morials. The man did not want to shoot the elephant but because of the pressure he was put under he felt forced to do it. After reading it we watched a 30 second summary clip of the essay and had to respond to one of three questions about the clip and essay and respond to two other classmates. We also learned how to construct a wordle. This is a very creative and useful technique. We had to creat a wordle with a partner on ethics and morality and how we defined it.

week 3

In week 3, we learned more about how to construct a traditional argument and the guidelines we were to follow for our first paper. Where the thesis should be, how it should be formatted, and what it should consist of. We were given a link to a website where we had to look at a picture of a man falling from one of the twin towers on 9/11 and read about it as well. We then had to relate it to an essay we read and annotated from our textbook. In class we were insrtucted to get into groups and were assigned a 9/11 conspiracy theory that we had to debunk. My group was assigned the theory that the plane that crashed into the pentagon was not really a plane at all, it was a government sent missile. we had to go online and find credible sources that could assist us in debunking this theory. one person in the group was to be appointed the writer, which is what I did. Another person was to research and find the resources, and the last person was to be the presenter. For Wednesdays class we had to read two different essays about lying and values. then we had to watch a video about groupthink and find an issue in history where groupthink played a major role. I chose the the Bay of Pigs Invasion to write about because I think groupthink is responsible for this mishap. After writing this and replying to two of my peers I was chosen as the Creative Composer of the Week! and I was very proud! =]

week 2

In week 2, we began getting into the composition of essays and how to make a POW introduction and really grab the readers attention and make them want to read your paper. We also learned about our first paper that we were to write. We had to write a traditional argument essay in which we were writing to our intended audience. We had to pick a topic that was not too narrow or too broad and it had to be associated with education somehow. I was sort of stuck at first but then I decided to write about the cirriculum placed in schools for sex education. Professor Bolduc-Simpson helped me out tremendously with narrowing down my topic and finetuning the details of the essay. We also had to submit in the discussion forum and write your own definition of the word writer, find a quote about writing, rewrite the title to an essay and make the introduction into a POW intro instead. then we had to reply to two of our peers' response. Another fun-filled and interesting week.

Week 1

Week 1 of spring semester; my very first class. I walked into the classroom and took a seat up in the front row. I was somewhat shocked when I caught sight of the teacher. She wasn't dressed like any other professor I had. Especially nothing like my Comp 1 professor. She wore ankle length skirts that were up to her bosoms and a matching shirt that was tucked inside. But not this Professor. She was dressed very "hip." I had a feeling I would enjoy this class a lot more than Comp 1. As I listened to her introduce herself and tell us what we would be doing over the semester I realized how passionate she was about teaching us. Not only about literature or english, but about how to become tech savvy and how to become passionate about our ideals and thoughts and values, just like she was. She introduced us to surveymonkey and polleverywhere and even had us take out our cell phones and take a poll. What teacher asks you to use your cell phone in class! That's when I knew I would looooove this class. We then wrote our names on little sticky name tags and placed them on our shirts so that the Professor Bolduc-Simpson could begin learning our names. We arranged ourselves into alphabetical order, the best we could, and were handed a bingo sheet. This may seem silly seeing as we are adults in college and were playing bingo. But it was meant to be an icebreaker, and that is exactly what it did; it broke the ice. We learned a lot about each other and also learned the names of our classmates.