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.

Literacy.......

Literacy…… This subject could go on forever. Literacy could be defined as being able to read, being able to write in one language but its soooo much more than that. Well that’s what I learned this week in English.  Literacy is hard to define in just one word or one sentence.  Just because someone cannot read doesn’t mean their illiterate.

We read memoirs about literacy issues two people encountered in their lives.  How to tame a wild tongue was interesting because the narrator explained the struggles she endured trying to please everyone but yet still couldn’t manage to satisfy anyone. No one should have to give up their heritage or language or anything for that matter to please another person. Those are the things that makes us who we are as people and without that we’re not who we truly are. The second memoir was about a man who was never really challenged in school and pretty much seen as below literate until one day he was finally challenged and one of his teachers saw his potential that he wasn’t “below average” and was an excellent writer. There are all types of literacy. Many levels of it. Everyone does not need to be mini Einsteins walking around and understanding how the universe works. If everyone was completely literate we wouldn’t have people to do the hard labored jobs that the “extremely literate” or college graduates don’t want to do.

Everyone has their own level of literacy and that’s a good thing. Not everyone needs to take a
standardized test to see what level of literacy on their own. Don’t get me wrong I think everyone needs to be able to read and understand something but not everyone needs to understand Shakespeare or be able to read like they’re trying to get into Harvard. Without basic reading and comprehending skills it’s going to be hard for people to really get anywhere in life. Literacy just has its own indefinable definition. If that makes sense.

100 years or and even older…..

Today in between my chemistry and liberal studies class, I went to the library and read an article on why women in certain countries have better overall health than women in other countries, like United States for example. The article was called “Secrets of the world’s healthiest women”. According to longevity researchers, the answer to living longer in America would be to act as if you were living somewhere else. An explorer Dan Buettner wrote a book called “The Blue Zones: Lessons for Living Longer from the People Who’ve Lived the Longest”. The book show that women who live in countries like Italy, Japan, Greece, California, and Costa Rica have traditionally stayed healthy and lived an active life to 100 years of age or older.
French women tend to stay slim because of their portion control. They tend to have small amounts of fresh food. They also have to walk places majority of the time because of sky rocketing gas prices and older buildings in France don’t have elevators so therefore they have to climb the stairs.
Scandinavians secret is to eat from the farm. Scandinavian women eat locally grown and fresh foods. The meats they eat are omega-3 fatty fish (which help prevent serious illnesses like heart disease, hypertension, arthritis, Alzheimer’s, diabetes, depression and much more) and lean elk and game birds.
Japanese in Okinawa practice eating until their 80% full also known as hara hachi bu. They use meditation to reduce stress. They also have lower cancer rates due to their diets of rice, soy and omega 3 fatty fish as well.
The article came with some health tips like, having a more plant-like diet, less sweet foods; take it easy to shred stress, eating 20% less than we do, and obviously exercising more. The main purpose of my blog today was all about being healthy!!

100 years and even older.....

Today in between my chemistry and liberal studies class, I went to the library and read an article on why women in certain countries have better overall health than women in other countries, like United States for example.  The article was called “Secrets of the world’s healthiest women”. According to longevity researchers, the answer to living longer in America would be to act as if you were living somewhere else. An explorer Dan Buettner wrote a book called “The Blue Zones: Lessons for Living Longer from the People Who’ve Lived the Longest”. The book show that women who live in countries like Italy, Japan, Greece, California, and Costa Rica have traditionally stayed healthy and lived an active life to 100 years of age or older.

French women tend to stay slim because of their portion control. They tend to have small amounts of fresh food. They also have to walk places majority of the time because of sky rocketing gas prices and older buildings in France don’t have elevators so therefore they have to climb the stairs.

Scandinavians secret is to eat from the farm. Scandinavian women eat locally grown and fresh foods. The meats they eat are omega-3 fatty fish (which help prevent serious illnesses like heart disease, hypertension, arthritis, Alzheimer’s, diabetes, depression and much more) and lean elk and game birds.

Japanese in Okinawa practice eating until their 80% full also known as hara hachi bu. They use meditation to reduce stress. They also have lower cancer rates due to their diets of rice, soy and omega 3 fatty fish as well. 

The article came with some health tips like, having a more plant-like diet, less sweet foods; take it easy to shred stress, eating 20% less than we do, and obviously exercising more. The main purpose of my blog today was all about being healthy!!

http://www.cnn.com/2012/01/13/health/secrets-worlds-healthiest-women/index.html?hpt=he_t4 

New to This.....

First week over! I’ve finally got to experience my first week of college and it was kind of what I expected to be. Nothing like high school. When I arrived on the first day I was already late. I left my house early just knowing that I was going to get there on time or maybe even early, but once I got off the University City Blvd Ramp all I saw was cars. Traffic was horrible. Seemed like everyone was trying to get to UNCC on January 9^th at 8am. When I eventually got to the school there was one more obstacle that didn’t seem to cross my mind until the last minute. Parking. I never realized how many people attend UNCC until I saw the parking lot and parking decks. It almost seems like everyone’s fighting to get into the same space. There was barely anywhere to park but in the nick-of-time I eventually got to squeeze my two door Honda Accord into one of the parking spots on the third level.

Once I got to class and meet my professor I realized that I might actually like this thing called college. As I went to my next class and on to the next each day, I’ve grown to like my professors because all of them seem like pleasant people. They all seem understanding and show that they are here to help us pass and grow with many resources.

Other than my first day, everything seems to be going smooth. I’ve got all my classes down packed by learning how to get to each one, well on time that is. I now know to remember to bring an umbrella when I see a chance of rain on the forecast in the morning time. But all-in-all I’m truly excited about being in college and getting to experience this, meet new people and watch them grow into their careers and eventually start into my own after all of this. I can already tell that college is a place where if you don’t know what responsibility is, you’ll definitely learn it.