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!!