My Future Writing

I didn't realize so much went into writing a paper.  I knew about an introduction, body, and closing, but I had no idea about thesis statements, PEE structure, the paramedic method, or having a good "flow."  Before this class, I had no idea that writing a well planned and thought out paper, could be so rewarding.  I never had much confidence in my writing, and while I'm still "slowly but surely" getting more confidence with my writing.  Honestly, I did better in this class than what I thought I would.  This boosted my confidence and I hope I can maintain it.  Also, I will make more of an effort to have better time management.  It gets overwhelming at times between work and school, but as long as I have good time management, then eveything will work out.  Again, when I write a paper now, I will know a lot more about the process. 

Self-Review

After filling out my self-review, I feel pretty confident with my essay.  From the beginning, my problem with my own essay writing is my confidence.  Every time that I write an essay I am weary of how it will be graded.  For example, did I do a good job, is my grammar right, will I get a good grade?  I guess you could call it "writer's anxiety."  When I follow the self-review prompt, it does help me "fine-tune" my essay. 

A strength that I can count on would be my titles.  I wish I could make the rest of the essay as easy as it is coming up with a title.  For some reason, I can think of an interesting title in about 30 seconds.  Of course, that's only a couple words, whereas the essay should be about 1500 words.  With strengths, there is usually weaknesses.  My weaknesses so far, would be the overall "flow" of the essay.  I've been struggling in my previous essays with transitioning from paragraph to paragraph, while still focusing on the "point" of the essay.

Hopefully, for this last essay I will get it right. 

Appearance is Everything

Let's be honest, when anyone looks at a paper, website, a person, anything really, you're always looking at the appearance, how does it look.  The same thought should go into writing a paper, good flow and rhetoric are a must when writing a good paper.  You could spend hours, even days when writing a paper, in school or newspaper articles, etc., but if the appearance of the paper doesn't catch the reader's attention, it will all be for nothing.  The article C.R.A.P. explains just that, with repetition, it will be almost an instinct to write an effective paper. 

Although, I'm not quite there yet, I feel that the more times I write a paper, the better each one will be.  While our papers aren't for "big" audiences, the feedback we get, will only help our future writings.  In my personal experience, if I see a news article, a magazine, a webpage, and it doesn't catch my attention when I look at it, I pass it up and don't think anything else about it.  That's how we should think of our own writing, maybe an interesting title that immediately brings the reader in.  Like I've said before, in writing it's not about the author, it's all about the reader. 

Student-Selected Reading

After doing some research on-line and talking to my co-workers, I decided to do my Informative Research Paper on workaholics in America.  The article is titled: A Field Guide to the Workaholic.  I currently work full-time and go to school full-time, along with many others who do the same.  As long as I remember, it's always been about work, work, work.  I'd rather not work, but I have a family to support, hence why I'm going to college, to get a better paying job.  It seems that there are those who don't have jobs because of the "tough" times, and those who do work, work too much. 

In "A Field Guide to the Workaholic," it gives "pointers" to not become a workaholic, and if you are considered a workaholic, ways to better your working habits.  I don't consider myself a workaholic, but some of the points the article was making, I thought to myself, "That's a good point!"  I like a lot of things about the article, it brings a person's feelings into the equation.  It brought a lot of statistics to attention, that I never knew about.  It really made me sit back and think about my own work experience and ethics.  I agree the general idea of the article, to do what makes you happy.

You Can't Handle the Facts!

This is a pretty simple topic for me personally.  I don't fully understand politics but it reminds me of high school.  From what I gathered from the assigned reading is that you try and find out all of the "bad" things that your opponent has done, will do, or even thought about doing.  It's basically high school drama.  Girls/guys will try and find out everything they can about someone else and spread as many rumors as they can about that person.  While the "outsiders" are tyring to put together the facts about the first rumor, there are already seven more going around.  I may be way off on this, or dead on, but it seems to me like with elections, the candidate will try and find out everything they can about their opponent.  While the candidate/opponent has many more people working for him/her that is more qualified than a bunch of high schoolers, they try and sort out the truths.  But for us we get so lost with everything that happens, we don't know what to believe, and before we can figure out what's going on, something else has happened that all we can remember is that one of the candidates looks extremely bad among the voters. 

As far as the causes and solutions go, well it seems to me that whoever can come up with the most wrongs the other person has done, will have the advantage in the election.  Sometimes I believe this can backfire.  My wife and I, well I should say my wife watches the show Scandal, it's a political based series that is about political wrongdoings.  There are specifically hired people to get elected officials, upcoming candidates out of messes that could hurt their appearance in the voter's eyes.  I believe this isn't too far from what happens in todays politics.  It's a shame that our elected officials "battle" it out like this, but I guess whoever wins, wins.

Anything To Win

After reading Kruse's article "The Real Loser," I believe the article explains how politicians will do just about anything to gain an advantage.  Many examples were given but from what I got out of it, are that any words, actions, anything can be twisted to give the opponent an advantage.  The article brought us from past "political tactics" to modern "political tactics."  Also, how the media can twist things to make it seem like things are not that bad, or terrible.  Some tactics were used to "blind" the voter, no matter how many were fooled by it, just as long as it was enough.

 My reaction to the article is "not surprised."  Everyone always hears things, we just don't actually know the truth.  I can't help but think of the movie "The Campaign."  While the movie exaggerates quite often, it's actually not too far from the truth, according to Kruses's article.  In the movie, every time one of the candidates does anything that is out of the ordinary, the opposing candidate would make a commercial about it, etc.  I believe the article is very truthful, and I also one hundred percent believe that candidates would and will do anything to win.

The Terminator

When I think of technology controlling us, I think of the movie Terminator.  If you haven't seen it, basically we as humans take technology to a whole new level and create machines that look, move, talk, just like us.  They take over and don't like humans anymore.

I feel like we control technology, for now.  I use technology everyday but not too much.  I do believe that the younger generation relies very much on technology.  Smartphones, for example, when I was two or three years old, I'm sure I was eating dirt or bugs, trying to figure things out.  Two or three year olds now can unlock an Iphone, download apps, and navigate an Iphone rather well.  Even online gaming, to me, is technology.  You can sit at your house and play a game with people that live across town, a different state, and even a different country. 

I'm a big movie person, I watch movies all the time, and I've seen my fair share of "technology gone bad" movies.  I feel that if we really solely on technology: computers, smartphones, google glasses, this new mcgyver talking watch thing?, and all of the sudden, all those quit working, I feel some people would have a meltdown.  We, as a nation, rely on technology quite often.  I hope that we don't take it too far and end up causing a nationwide black-out and have to start all over, without technology.