My view on my reviews....

Looking back on my reviews on my group members papers I can see that I ask lots of questions but don’t really give reasoning to asking these questions. I looked at one paper from each of my members and can see that I need to give more in depth explanations to why I asked a question or even made a suggestion.  I try to make friendly suggestions to help them make better improvements to their papers. I try to focus on things that will make their paper stronger by letting the writers know where I’m confused in some places and to get to the main point of the paper. For example, in the argumentative paper I wanted to see more facts in Danny’s paper because I believe when your arguing about something having facts to back up your papers always strengthens it. I think my comments like that speak more to the situation and style of the paper. When I ask questions for clarity or when Danny mentions his teacher that helped him with tutoring I asked him to include more information about her so that the audience could really understand her impact on him and feel like they know exactly who he’s talking about. Another example of speaking to the audience is in Ryan’s argumentative paper is when he used some medical terms that everyone might not be familiar with. I guess one could say that my comments show a pattern of curiosity and lots of questions.  What I value in writing would be clarity in a paper along with plenty of details and a paper that supports the overall situation presented. I’ve learned that myself as a writer need to go back through my own papers and give myself many of the suggestions that I give my peers because a lot of the things I ask them to do is exactly what I need to provide in my own papers; I need to go more into depth, add more details and also need to make sure my own paper possesses the style that I need to be writing to. 

Virtual Museum

I remember reading an article on the Google art project in school last year. The project is basically virtual museums and you get the feeling that you’re at an actual museum. The purpose of the web site is to “Explore museums from around the world, discover and view hundreds of artworks at incredible zoom levels, and even create and share your own collection of masterpieces.” The website functions amazingly. You use your mouse and cursor to walk through the hallways of all of the major museums. You can just browse through the artwork and once you find one you would like to view you can click on it and zoom in. When zooming in you can get so close that you see the actual stroke marks of the paint brush. I personally think this aspect of the website is better than going to the actual museum because you can’t get close to the art work in museums to see these details in some paintings. The website has countless features my favorites are seeing the floor plan to know exactly where you would be located, they include history on the museum itself, videos on the painting and essentially a visitor’s guide. The website could easily be directed at art lovers because some people might not have the financial stability to be able to travel around the world to view these historic pieces but get the pleasure and convenience of viewing artwork with the click of a mouse. This reminds me of the virtual temple and church because users/worshipers liked the convenience of being able to perform their rituals online when they could find the time. Yancey said “…the portfolio hypertext- usually, the linear arrangement of the book argues for a beginning-to-end reading.” Like e portfolios you can go from one tab to another tab, the museum websites offers you the experience to jump from one picture on one floor to a whole different picture on a completely different floor without having to get on an elevator or walking up stairs like we normally would have to in actual life. Another great thing about this website is that it’s free! Imagine that.

http://www.googleartproject.com/

Meta-Blogging.

Blogging has to be one of the best experiences I have ever had with writing. I get to write the way I want to write. I don’t have to be formal or write a specific way. I don’t have to use paragraphs, write a works cited but I do have a set minimum. Usually when I have a set number of words, pages or even paragraphs it drives me nuts because I feel like I’m just writing to get to that number and get it done. But with the blogs it doesn’t seem like that, I start just writing of the top of my head and not thinking about errors and grammar and sentence structure but just writing what I’m thinking or want to say and I exceeds that minimum. Sometimes I struggle with coming up with my own topic to write about especially since we had that whole discussion on having a point when you write. Thanks to Ms. Wright now I have alternative topics to write about if I need them. I think I am growing as a writer because I’m learning to take chances with my writing and not worry about what’s wrong with what I’m writing because I can always go back and make it better. My first blog was on my first week of school and how hectic it was but I know the experience in the end will be worthwhile. I know that this will be one of those blogs I’m going to look back on in the future and see how much everything has changed and laugh about it. Best experiences. Blogging will be one of those experiences I will look back on. 

Peer Reviewing...

Peer review this week has been going great to me. I can admit I was extremely nervous at first, not only about my peers reading my papers but knowing that I was going to have to be the judge of someone else’s memoir. Then I thought about it, I’m not there to judge anyone’s paper but to help them build a stronger paper. I remembered the article we read on Really Responding to Other Student’s writing. Once we got into our groups in class, my group decided that it would be best if we just read through the first paper together and then go over any comments we had to say, which was not what we were assigned to do. So we started over having to read our own paper out loud to everyone else and that made a massive difference. Reading out loud made me realize some of my mistakes in my memoir, listen to how my paper sounded to others and allowed them to hear how my paper was meant to sound. That was something I wish I would have thought to do many times in high school.

After reading the papers I was given all kinds of comments and feedback from my group members. The comments they gave me were more than what I expected, more than the usual grammar errors. They told me where I need to elaborate on things because to me I already know the people in my paper or the point I’m trying to get across in some sentences but that wasn’t coming across in my memoir. The homework that night, adding our comments on Microsoft word, gave me a chance to really say what I didn’t get to say in class and what I didn’t know how to say. I added anything I could think of in my comments that wasn’t clear, what I would like to know more on and where they were trying convey. When I was finished with my margin comments, I took the advice from the assigned reading and added a final mini paragraph at the end to summarize up my thoughts and add one final question.

The hardest struggle for me this far is coming up with the point in my own paper. I didn’t want a point that just summed up my memoir but a point that I could state and everyone of my examples lead back to that specific point. I’ve got somewhat of an idea and think I’m on the right track but I’m sure after these peer reviews I’ll have a pretty concise point in the end. 

Why i'm still here...

Why I’m here continued…..

For today’s blog I wanted to continue on the free write from earlier because well I liked the topic or point!

I choose to come to college because I want to want to better myself in every way possible. Of course my mom played a big role in pushing me in this direction but it was ultimately my decision. Not many people in my family have graduated from college and I would be one of my grandmother’s first grandchildren to graduate. My parents would be beyond proud of me especially since my mom’s still in school furthering her degree and it’s inspirational to me. My dad never finished high school actually I think he dropped out his freshman year and I know me graduating from college would make him feel like he’s done something right. My closest friend just graduated last year from UNC Charlotte with superb grades and seeing the pressure he took on makes me have ten times more respect for him even if I’ve never told him that. I know I can do it and there’s no reason that I cannot. I have more than enough support.

College is suppose to help you get the better jobs and make more money and experience things you can only experience in college. I came to college to get all of that. I came to college not only for myself but for my family too. To make them and myself proud. I’m hoping that college will help me get far in life to where I won’t have to struggle as much. This should be an interesting couple of years. 

Health Care....Ha

So in my liberal studies class we were required to watch a video called “Sick Around the World”. The video discusses the different successes and failures of healthcare in five other capitalist democracies and maybe figure out how to help us here in America. The five countries included Germany, Japan, Taiwan, Switzerland and the United Kingdom.

Not sure if I’m going in order but I will start with Japan. The Japanese go to the doctor’s office three times more than Americans, use more drugs, and have no waiting times. Yet they still they spend half per person on health care than we do here in the States. In Japan, the government regulates the prices healthcare facilities are allowed to charge and unfortunately about 50% of doctor’s offices are in major debt. The people love their way of things and couldn’t imagine receiving a doctors bill.

In Taiwan, they took the time to research other countries to see what system would work best for them. They settled on one that uses “smart cards”, which is looks like a debit card and includes all of your past health information and then pays your bills automatically. Since everything’s left up to the market, Taiwan’s finding their borrowing money from banks to pay to providers.  

Germany offers universal health care. The healthy basically pay for the poor people over there. Doctors and other medical physicians earn less than American physicians, about half or if you’re lucky two-thirds, because they have regulated prices as well.

The Swiss are all about universal health care. In the United Kingdom, everyone pays through taxes. No one is ever presented with a bill as long as they’re with the National Health Service. Hospitals compete because people are allowed to go where ever they want to take their service and doctors get paid more based on their performance.

This video was way better than I expected it to be, check it out at:

Sick Around the World

My Talk.

Most people say I’m country. Others ask me where I’m from because I don’t sound like I’m from “down here”. Truth is I’m from right here, Charlotte North Carolina (well close to it anyways). I grew up in the small town known as Harrisburg right outside of Charlotte, about ten or fifteen minutes from UNCC. When I think of Harrisburg I think of true country folks or most of Concord for that matter. My mom was also born and raised in Harrisburg along with majority of the rest of my mom’s side of the family so we all got a little bit of that southern dialect. My dad is from another small town called a Monroe and I couldn’t tell you how far that is from here but it can’t be more than an hour, and to my disadvantage or advantage they’re pretty country there too.  Actually I think they may have a thicker southern accent down there than my family in Harrisburg, but that’s just my opinion. I noticed in one of the videos a woman pointed out that you will automatically know where a person is from when they say the words “street” or “straight” because of the way they pronounce it. I laughed when I heard this because they way they say it is the EXACT way I pronounce it as well as everyone else I can think of in my family. I can be having a conversation with someone and as soon as I say the word “street” the way I’ve always pronounce it, they’ll stop the whole conversation and laugh at that. That gets old real fast though. When someone points that out I try to correct myself the next time but it’s extremely hard. I guess the two videos I can relate to the most would have to be of course be “Dialect in southern cities” and the other “African-American English”. I understand the dialect in southern cities because I grew up and still live in a southern city. The terms the man and children were describing in “African-American English” I definitely knew because I think I use some of those on a daily basis. I believe that some people look down on southerners because they think we’re uneducated, they think we just sit down here drinking whiskey and moonshine sitting on some porch jibber jabbing eating fried chicken and farming all day. But that’s not true, well in most parts anyways; we’re just as educated as the rest of the nation. Those people just haven’t been to the south or been too deep in the south.