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.

The Choice

I use the Internet almost daily.  I think it's a wonderful thing and has opened many resources for us.  Like my last post, I don't necessarily surf the web or check my emails everyday, but I mostly use it for school.  I have to have a full-time schedule in order for me to get all my GI Bill benefits and with online classes that SEMO offers, I can do that while working full-time. 

In some ways, I think the Internet is great, but there are ways that it can be bad.  For instance, you can pretty much find anything you want to online.  You can type in a math problem that you are having trouble figuring out, or don't want to spend the time trying to figure it out, and more than likely someone else has posted something about it.  I don't feel like that's really learning, because you may find the answer for that problem, but will you remember how to do it on a test. 

What I do like it for, is if someone can sing just a little bit of a song, you can type that in, and it will tell you name of that song.  If you can name some characters in a movie, but can't remember the movie, just type in that character's name and it will tell you all of their movies. 

I haven't really seen any changes in the way I think or my behavior when it comes to technology.  I have an Iphone and I love it.  It allows me to keep in touch with whoever I want to keep in touch with.  Facebook allows me to see how my old friends are doing, or family members that live far away. 

I don't let the Internet control my life, and if you do, well that's ok to, I don't see anything wrong with it.  Some people can sit on the computer all day long, and have a great time.  Me, I'm just an outdoorsman. 

 

This picture doesn't reflect how I feel about technology, just made me laugh.

Just a Country Boy

I use my laptop/Iphone for a lot of my school work.  Rather it be online classes, can't remember the name of a movie that someone is describing, or just general information, I'll look it up on my phone or on the computer. 

As far as the "Alone Together" goes, I live out in the country and I'm outdoors most of the time.  When I wake up in the mornings, I'm not thinking about who posted on Facebook or did I get an email from someone?  None of those things are really important to me, but I'm not saying I don't look at Facebook or check my email, I'm just saying it's not a priority to me.  Now, I have been at a retaurant and see an entire family ( mom, dad, brother, sister) on their smart phones.  My wife and I make it a point to leave our phones in our pocket/purse and actually talk, and I'm not saying that anything is wrong with doing that, we do it because, in a way, my wife and I are a bit old fashioned. 

The Filter Bubble and the Trackers, now that is a different story.  The filter bubbles, I have noticed, I can check out Google on my laptop and search the exact same thing on my Iphone (not logged in) and find two completely different results.  I didn't know it had a name for it, but I noticed it, and even showed my wife a couple times just thinking it was "weird", but thought nothing of it.  The trackers freak me out.  I had no idea that so many web-based sites can get my information just by going to one site.  After I watched that video, I showed my wife and we just looked at each other like a deer in headlights, mouths wide opened. 

I'm pretty knowledgeable when it comes to technology, so I thought.  We don't buy stuff online or do online banking because we have both heard too many stories, and I watch a lot of television.  I have found some other "ways" to block this from happening because of my computer buddies advice. 

Let The Research Begin

All that is on my mind at the moment is the filter bubbles and trackers.  I have been an internet user since dial-up and I had no idea that this stuff was happening.  The filter bubbles, I spotted, I didn't know there was a name for them, but I could tell that my google searches were different.  The trackers, well that's another story.  My goodness, I had no idea.

As for Essay 3, I believe the videos were a demonstration, an example in a way.  The videos were a speech and obviously, ours will be written.  The two speakers found a topic, did their research, and then informed their audience of what they found.  I can only hope that mine will be as good as theirs but I feel like I get the picture.

We will "synthesize" a topic by taking different things and combining them into our own informative paper.  As usual, we will be thinking of our audience when we write the paper.  The reader should easily understand our topic without doing the research that we did.  Basically, we do the hard work, they get to sit back and relax.  In all seriousness though, it's always about the reader.

SearchPath...check

I recently did the SearchPath tutorial for my UI100 class, but I honestly did it just to get the credit.  I passed the quiz at the end but I forgot about it as soon as I was done with it.  Now that I've related it to my English class, it has become very useful.  It was more of a refresher for me personally. 

When I first visited the Kent Library website, I tried using it like I would Google, just typing in a broad subject and expecting thousands of results to pop up and look on the first page and see if anything stood out at me.  In my blog about using the Internet and using Kent Library, I found the Internet to be more useful.  When I read the comments from my peers, I learned that I did need to be more specific while doing my search on the Kent Library website. 

The essay I did my rhetorical analysis on was about Quality Deer Management, a pretty common topic, especially in Southeast Missouri.  It wasn't hard to find information about the history, success and fail stories, and any other general information that I was curious about.  What I did find out was that the essay I was analyzing was not too far off, but there were some discrepancies that I needed to work out.  The Kent Library website, along with some .edu websites, put me on the right track.

To Believe, Or Not To Believe....That is the Question

While doing the rhetorical analysis of my essay, I found some numbers that seemed shocking to me.  My essay states that before settlers arrived, the white-tail deer population was approximately 30 million.  By 1900, the population had decline to 400,000.  That's a heck of a lot of deer that were killed.  This was before hunting regulations, but to me, that's just an insane amount of deer. 

After reading an article (31 pages) by Thomas E. Almendinger, he believes that most of the white-tail deer population was "taken out" by harsh winters, wolves, mountain lions, and the several million indigenous people that used deer for sustenance.  The second stage of white-tail deer loss was when European settlers arrived.  Large-scale forest clearing by the logging industry caused drastic habitat alterations driving wildlife away from civilized areas.  The numbers were slightly different but for the most part, was in the vicinity of what the essay stated. 

I've got to be honest, I didn't find much from Kent library.  There were some articles on white-tail deer habitat, but as far as the 1700's to early 1900's, I didn't find very useful information.  It could be me, not ruling that out. 

I'd have to say that the article by Thomas E. Almendinger, was more useful.  I'm not saying that it is all true, because let's be honest, you can't believe everything you see on the internet.  It seemed to be pretty in depth on the history of white-tail deer.  Thomas E. Almendinger is the Senior Ecologist at Rutgers University-School of Environmental and Biological Sciences, needless to say I half-way trust his article.

Quality Deer Management Analysis

I will be doing my rhetorical analysis on an essay titled: Quality Deer Management.  As a landowner, I am in the process of introducing more deer to my land.  This essay really caught my attention and I am generally excited about doing an analysis on it.

Before settlers arrived, an estimated 30 million whitetail deer inhabited the United States.  By 1900, only 400,000 whitetails remained.  A massive effort made by hunters and wildlife managers began to improve wildlife habitats.  These efforts increased the whitetail population to around 20 million.  To maintain buck (male) to doe (female) ratio, quality deer management must be practiced.  Three things needed in order for Quality Deer Management to work is a quality deer habitat, quality deer hunting, and quality deer hunters.  Brian Murphy, executive director of the Quality Deer Management Association, uses this definition," Quality Deer Management can be defined as a management philosophy/practice that unites landowners, hunters, and biologists in the common goal of producing biologically and socially balanced deer herds within existing environmental, social, and legal constraints."

I will analyze this essay by basically, remembering everything we've learned so far.  I will use the resources from the Writing book, online, and tips from the professor.  Essentially, I'm going to try and persuade my audience that Quality Deer Management is cooler than the other side of the pillow.

 MLA Citing:  EssayMania.com. Retrieved on 04 Oct, 2013 from
                      <http://essaymania.com/78990/quality-deer-management>
 

Fix This Sentence....Stat!

The Paramedic Method is quite the tool to have in a writer's arsenal.  Ultimately, using this method will make sentences easier to read.  Sentences that are easier to read will be more persuasive.  Most of the research that I have done recommends seven steps to improve one's sentences.  The first step is to circle the prepositions (of, in, about, for, into, unto.)  Next, draw a box around the "is" verbs forms.  Ask, "Where's the action?"  The fourth step is to change the "action" into a simple verb.  Fifth, move the doer into the subject ( Who's kicking who.)  The sixth step is to eliminate any unnecessary slow wind-ups.  The final step is to eliminate redundancies. 

I've found some very long sentences ranging from 100 words to an impressive 40,000 word sentence.  By impressive, I mean why is there a 40,000 word sentence?  I choose one that was long but not too long.

The point I wish to make is that perception is the process of extracting information from stimulation emanating from the objects, places, and events in the world around us. 

The revised sentence using the Paramedic Method:  Perception extracts information from objects, places, and events.

Excessive writing can be good for getting ideas out and for rough drafts, but for the final paper, I will be using the Paramedic Method.  I feel that I have a decent idea of how to write using this method. 

Searching for CLTs

When I first read Tom Collin's analysis of Marie Fatayi-Williams's speech, I was in awe of his descriptive wording and how well he was able to pull the reader in.  After learning about logos, pathos, and ethos, PEE structure, and content lexical ties, I am beginning to "pick apart" peoples writing.  This has given me a whole new perspective of how people write and how I read or analyze. 

In the first paragraph Collins uses direct repetition to focus the reader on the point of Marie's speech, her son.  He also uses related words like stirring and heartfelt.  The second paragraph he emphasizes the events that has led to the speech by mentioning the bombings (direct repetition).  In the third paragraph Collins focuses on superordinate and hyponyms by saying her speech was like that of great orators, statesman, and playwrights, of Shakespeare, Churchill, or Lincoln.  He used categories (orators, statesman, and playwrights), then named them (Shakespeare, Churchill, and Lincoln).  Collins, being a military man, is able to use and war and violence throughout his analysis, because he has actually been there and knows they are alike (synonyms).  

I can read his entire analysis and see in almost every paragraph how he used context lexical ties.  In the beginning, seeing the words context lexical ties scared me.  I had no idea what they meant or how I was going to handle this assignment.  After watching the required videos and reading the assigned reading, I was able to really put what I learned to good use.  I didn't analyze the entire reading of the rhetorical analysis, and I'm sure I missed some, but I have a better understanding of the rhetoric of Collins analysis and also, how he uses certain writing methods to bring in his readers.

Mr. Collins, Job Well Done

In my opinion, Tom Collins did a great job analyzing Marie Fatayi-William's speech.  He states in the first paragraph why the speech is being made and notes that Marie had an affect on the audience of that of a stateswoman.  He finds the logos, pathos, and ethos in different parts of her speech.  He also notes that Marie's speech was spontaneous, only 4 days after the bombing that her son was involved in.  Collins also relates to Marie by his own experience of speaking with no plan, no notes, and basically, they both spoke from their hearts.  He pulled specific examples from her speech and elaborated in his own words.  I don't feel that Collins was biased in his opinion of Marie's speech, even though he has been in a violent area, terrorism is something that we can all relate to and should hope stops.  He expresses her views and then explains what he felt about the speech.
Tom Collins, although I don't know much about him, seems to be an excellent writer.  I hope that I can learn from this analysis and try to come close to what he has done.  With such a major event happening in the bombing, I can only assume that he reached many different audiences with his analysis. 

Analysis of Essay 2

Since all the assignments are for us, the students, we get to analyze how another writer writes.  We will be looking for logos, pathos, and ethos, the "flow" of the paper, and sentence structure.  As students, we get to act like the teacher.  We will need to summarize the topic so that our audience knows what we are analyzing. 
Our essay will, of course, have an introduction, supporting paragraphs describing how we fill about the essay, and a closing statement.  The point of the essay will be to persuade others to agree with our point of view.  It does not matter if we agree or disagree with the topic, we need to convince the reader to agree with us. 
I feel that the assignment is fully directed towards us, the students.  We are not being told what we have to read, we get to choose.  That in itself, should help us succeed in this assignment.  We get to be the teacher, analyzing what someone else wrote, and being able to put our opinions about the subject.  Ultimately, we will be graded for grading another paper. 

Self-Review, Not to Bad

In my opinion, the self-review assignment went pretty well.  I printed off the self-review questions and had them close by, as a rubric for writing my rough draft.  I hope I didn't defeat the purpose of the assignment, but I figured if I had questions, why not use them as I write?  I'm not saying that I did everything right, but it helped having the expectations on hand.  I still need to fix many things in my essay; vocabulary, run-on sentences, grammatical errors, etc., but for the most part, I wasn't too worried about the self-review questions.
I recently had to do a UI-100 class with the new librarian at Kent Library, so I was pretty fresh with the resources on the library website.  I found some very helpful papers on writing a good thesis statement, and writing an all-around good essay.  Also, I found a website that helps with standard MLA formatting and style guides. 
When it comes to writing an essay, I tend to make it harder than what it has to be.  Some of the self-review questions were challenging to me, there's things that I did do right, and there's things that I didn't do right.  Having the self-review questions are really going to help me write the final draft of my essay.  Of course, I won't know how well I do, until it's graded, but I feel like the self-review questions were there to help. 

Organized Chaos

After going through some of my classmates blogs, I can relate to a lot of them, which makes me feel much better about my writing process. 
While reading Ashley Borgfield's blog, I actually felt like I was reading my own blog about my writing process.  I haven't been out of school for 11 years, but I have been out of school for 8 years, and I almost feel like I've forgotten everything that I learned.  Ashley and my writing process are very similar, both of us start by writing as much as we can on paper, and then moving to the computer.  I also have trouble coming up with topics to write about, usually it takes me hours before I actually get done.  Like her, I to, have to get away from all distractions.  It seems like the simplest things can get my attention off of my assignments.  She does brainstorming with webbing or mapping, which I honestly, need to start doing.  It would save me hours of time and would have a more balanced essay. 
I had a chance to read Ronnie Illert's blog, and his writing process.  A couple words to use are "wow" and "jealous".  He seems to make writing an art, while listening to blues music.  I can't even fathom the idea of listening to music, while writing.  He's very well organized and after reading his other blogs as well, he seems like a very talented writer.  Ronnie states that his writing is eclectic, I had to look it up to see what eclectic meant.  Eclectic is deriving ideas, style, or taste from a broad and diverse range of sources.  I never was a very talented writer, I just seem to "get by", but he is someone that I could really learn from.  Ashley and Ronnie both use the webbing and mapping, I will use these methods to enhance my writing process and fine-tune my writing skills. 

Motivating Speech

I am a big movie guy, if I could somehow transfer all my knowledge of movies to my classes, I would be valedictorian of my class.  One of my favorite movies is 300, just an all around, great movie.  The speech at the end of the movie always seemed to make me feel like I was about to go to battle with them.  It's not very long, and I hope you don't mind that I put the whole thing on here.  Dilios was a spartan warrior, and the only one to return out of the brave 300.  Leonidas claimed that Dilios had a talent greater than any other Greek, referring to his great ability with words.  This was his speech.

Dilios: Long I pondered my King's cryptic talk of victory. Time has proven him wise.  For from free Greek to free Greek, the word was spread that bold Leonidas and his 300, so far from home, laid down their lives; not just for Sparta, but for all Greece and the promise this country holds. Now, here on this ragged patch of earth called Plataea, let his hordes face obliteration!

Spartan Army: HA-OOH!!

Dilios: Just there the barbarians huddle, sheer terror gripping tight their hearts with icy fingers -- knowing full well what merciless horrors they suffered at the swords and spears of 300.Yet they stare now across the plain at 10,000 Spartans commanding 30,000 free Greeks: HA-OOH!

Spartan Army: HA-OOH! HA-OOH! HA-OOH!

Dilios: The enemy outnumber us a paltry 3 to 1, good odds for any Greek. This day we rescue a world from mysticism and tyranny and usher in a future brighter than anything we can imagine.

 Give thanks, men, to Leonidas and the brave 300.

This speech, in my opinion, has more than enough of an emotional connection (pathos).  Watching the movie, you could easily understand what I mean by wanting to go to the war with them.  Dilios, a spartan warrior, is avenging the 299 soldiers that passed away, his credibility is more than enough (ethos).  They are fighting against the Persians, who tried to take over Sparta, and killed King Leonidas, which caused the rest of Sparta and the Greeks to battle against the Persians (logos).  Dilios is "hyping" up the armies and his argument is to battle the people who just killed their King.

Again, if you get a chance, watch this movie, it's a bit violent, but a very inspirational movie, as far as defending what you believe in.

The Art of Persuasion

Logos, pathos, and ethos are a writer's way to persuade an audience into believing what the writer is saying.  Logos are considered to be logical arguments.  Formal arguments are based on syllogisms, for example:  People are mortal.  I am a person.  I am mortal.  In ordinary conversations and writing, an argument called an enthymeme is commonly used.  An enthymeme is an argument with some of the premises being unstated.  Often times, the premises are just assumed, for example:  People are mortal.  I am mortal.  Nobody would think that anyone else is immortal, so we would just assume that people are mortal.

Pathos are appeals based on emotions.  Concrete language is a technique used to create vivid and emotional imagery.  Stories with emotional content, such as sadness, anger, or happiness, can easily levitate an audiences opinion of what you're trying to accomplish.  When the school shooting at Sandy Hook Elementary happened, people jumped on the bandwagon of banning assault rifles.  While several emotions arose during this tragedy, the arguments for banning assault rifles had not changed, but people engaged emotionally after the event, and wanted to do something about it.

Ethos are appeals based on credibility or character.  The power of persuasion is convincing the audience that you belong to the group that you are discussing.  Having experience with your topic, and stating it in your writing, would help the relationship between your story and the audience.  First impressions of a writer, influence how an audience is going to react to the writing.  If I were to put on a white coat, with a name tag saying Dr. Bowman, M.D., and began to talk about research in the medical profession, the audience would be more apt to believe what I was saying. 

All three modes of persuasion can help my skills at constructing a good argument, so that my writing would be taking seriously.  Also, all three will help me identify a weaker argument.  Once I can recognize the modes of persuasion, they would help me relate to whatever audience I was writing to.  Having logos, pathos, and ethos in my arsenal of writing would put me head and shoulders over other writers.

Right to Serve, Serve to Write

When I think of writing, I think of the reader or audience's expectations.  I determine what kind of audience I'll be writing for, either a specific audience or possibly, directed towards an imagined audience.  As a good writer, you need to have the element of surprise.  If a reader knows what's going to happen, your paper goes to the back of their mind.  The point is to tell them something they don't already know.  It's good to have supporting evidence and testimony from experts.  A thesis statement that isn't too obvious will catch an audiences attention.  Think about how you want your readers to view you, as the writer.  Do you want them to view you as fair, ethical, or considerate.  These are all things to remember while writing a paper or doing anything that involves others taking you serious. 
Thesis statements and PEE structure are vital tools for an academic audience.  Thesis statements need to be true and proved.  It can be one or two sentences that summarize your paper.  A strong thesis statement has a clear, detailed, and specific message.  PEE is an abbreviation for point, evidence, and explanation.  The point is the main idea of the paragraph that correlates with your thesis statement.  The evidence supports your point.  An explanation explains to the reader how the evidence supports the main idea.  The PEE structure is used to construct effective paragraphs.  Some writers are naturally good at organizing paragraphs but this helps keep structure in your writing.

Engaged

Engaging in an online course is no different than an on-campus class.  Attending class, to me, is logging in often and of course, submitting my assignments on time.  Since, I was back and forth on English classes, I feel like I'm two months behind, trying to do all the assignments in one night. 
Luckily, I printed the class syllabus before I dropped so I've been studying that like it's a final exam.  I've been reading the assignments and taking notes, trying to be prepared. 
I've tried to distance myself from distractions.  I am easily distracted and when the television is on, I tend to take hours to do a ten minute assignment.  In a class room setting, I sit towards the front.  Also, I try to find a left-handed desk.  I only write left-handed and to be honest, left-handed desks aren't very popular. 

My Introduction

My name is Tyler Bowman and I live in Bell City, MO.  It's a small town with a population of 428.  I work in Cape Girardeau, at Lemons Coin Machines.  My major is Biology: Conservation and Wildlife.  A challenge I overcame is probably at the beginning of this semester.  I was originally enrolled in EN-100 and after getting an email from the English Department, I was informed that I needed to drop to EN-099.  I attended the first class in 099 and after a placement essay, I got to come back to EN-100.  That's why my blogs are coming a little late.
My goals for this class is to obviously pass with an A or a B.  Also, I feel like I can always improve with my writing and I believe I am in the right place to learn.  I would love to make Deans' List and getting an A would help me get there, along with my other classes.  I haven't been to school in a long time, I need this class as a refresher and to learn what I didn't in high school.

My Usual Writing Process

When it comes to my writing process, I had to sit back and think for a while about how I start writing.  I try to seclude myself from noise because I am easily distracted.  I can't watch a movie or a television show, because even though I'll get the writing done, it will just take me more hours than intended.

I would call it borderline writers block because I don't necessarily write topics down and determine which ones to choose from.  I like to sit back and literally brainstorm.  I think about what would interest others and hopefully, it's something I like to write about.  It's all a learning process for me.  I have my wife sit down and read what I wrote, make some suggestions, and then do a final draft.   It's always nice to have a second set of eyes looking at my own work.  

I'll be the first one to admit that my writing process is not the best.  As this class goes on, I plan on really focusing on changing my whole process of writing.  I feel like if I get a "game plan" and start with a topic, branch off from there, I'd be a more efficient writer.  I can tell after writing this blog post that it would save me time, if I had an idea of what, or how, I was going to write papers.