1984 Journal Reflection

I was expecting my peers to criticize my entire essay. I should be more comfortable with sharing my writing; I sometimes lack confidence in my writing, I feel as if my viewers are not impressed with my writing skills. After participating in our class workshop, I will continue to ask my classmates to analyze my essays in the future. Skipping peer revision may lead to a lower grade on an essay; therefore, I consider getting multiple opinions to edit my writing. All writers should consider peer revisions to their own writing

This summer, I was presented with the opportunity to read a classic book that goes by the name of Ethan Frome. At the beginning of the book, I was very lost and did not understand much of it because of the dialect that was being used in the book. As I kept reading it, I learned to accept it and I actually started to understand it a lot more. While reading this book, I had many thoughts about Ethan’s behavior, but my main thought was why would Ethan go and try to be with somebody else while he was already undoubtedly committed to a woman named Zeena? There are no exact reasons for why he did what he did but we can at least study the conflict and go deeper about the story as a whole.

Good Morning, Hope Germany has been going well for you so far. When you eventually get back stateside we need to hangout sometime with Derrick and Gibby. Classes and life have been going pretty well. In my Ag Economics class we had to read a book by John Steinbeck called Winter of Our Discontent, it’s like high-school all over again, here read this book and after you’ve read it let’s analyze it and talk about how it’s relevant to us. I honestly didn’t find the book to interesting and knowing you, you probably wouldn’t even finish the first chapter since the beginning was pretty confusing to try to read and make sense of.

The fact that we wakes “at the least of sound” relays the magnitude of his fears. Like many other teenagers, I have experienced heavy stress over a wide variety of issues although I have not encountered insomnia. When the narrator reveals his concerns about “[his] life and [his] children’s lives,” I can empathize with those feelings due to my stress over my impending decisions about college. My major decisions over the next eight months will not only have an impact on my life but also my future wife, so the anxiety of making a miscalculation or mistake in deciding has slowly grown on my over the last few weeks. Later in the poem, the narrator also implies that, at times, he “taxes” himself with “forethought of grief,” which reminds me of something that I once heard or read about stress.

Since I am not regularly seeing what she is working on, we have not been able to do much direct application to what is going on in the classroom. She does try to fill me in on what they are working on and has so far seemed comfortable with what the class is doing. We have also been working on building Ashley’s vocabulary. In order to add new vocabulary in context, I have been reading Ashley high interest books with challenging vocabulary. We discuss the story and new words and review both content and language as we go.

My Relationship with Writing The relationship I have with writing is that of a love and hate theme. Throughout elementary, middle, and high school, I developed a veiled understanding of what writing would relinquish if only I would take the time to learn to do it correctly. Even though I wrote in a journal as a child, and still do as an adult, there is no rhyme or reason to the writing. There were highs and lows with regards to my attitude about writing during my younger years. As a working adult, I write with a simplistic style about experiences at work and with family, as well as now with school.

Over the course of English 1302 at Texas Tech, I feel that my skills as a writer improved significantly. When beginning the class, I knew little about writing a literature review or researched argument. With the help of my instructor’s lectures and the University Writing Center, I was able to effectively get my point across effectively while forming a well developed and well spoken manner. The advice given to me about argumentative essays and integrating sources helped significantly over the course of this class, and the skills learned in English 1302 helped me in other classes this semester when writing as well. One of the things I have learned that influenced me the most was my professor’s advice about an argument.

The Harry Potter series have been an interesting series for me ever since I have enrolled in Professor Fox’s class. I personally have not read any of the Harry Potter series during my childhood, but once I have enrolled in Professor Fox’s class I have recently just finished Harry Potter and the Philosopher’s Stone. Throughout my readings of these two books I have had many observations on certain aspects of the story that I would not have noticed when I was younger. These three aspects that I can’t imagine as a child noticing is how the Dursleys abused Harry, the stance on gender, and prejudgement based on appearance. In the first book, Harry Potter and the Philosopher’s Stone, Harry first lives his life as a muggle not knowing anything about

When I first came into English 1101, I had no confidence in my writing. I didn’t know if I was writing correctly or even forming an essay correctly, also I had trouble with research papers and the process of writing these kinds of essays. I would often feel overwhelmed and embarrassed because I was never taught how to write any essay correctly. I thought to myself, how could I have not known how to write? Writing should have been something so first nature to me, but through the help of Mrs. Hermanson and her positive attitude, eager teach, and nurturing nature, I felt unafraid to make mistakes, I became more confident in my writing and ready take on the world of writing.

As you moved from story to story you were still left with the presence of the one before. When I first read the first story “Basement Magic” it took me while to get used to the writing language. Klages use of imagery and metaphors was abet different from what I am used to but is a strong component in supporting the story. I agree with Publishers Weekly when they say “this collection will linger in the memory long after reading” because after I finished the book, my mind was still replaying the stories. I was envisioning the characters over again, their actions, their emotions until it was far into my mind that I was thinking about it for days creating my own twist and sequels of those

I usually prefer writing papers either about myself, someone I know on a personal level, or about a book. This paper was an experience that I have never encountered before and I feel like it pushed me to be a better writer. When I was first assigned this essay, I was disappointed because I did not want to observe anybody, especially for an hour. As I began to narrow down places to look, places like the Fairmount Park area near Sedgley Avenue came to mind, as well as the 30th street station. I originally planned on observing at the 15th street station due to its closeness to my house, but instead decided to observe at the Board Game Park which is located very close by.

There is an article that helped me learn to truly revise my essays, the title is, “Revision Strategies of Student Writers”, it is by Nancy Sommers. It is about different strategies students can use to revise their paper. She stated in her paper that for many students the idea of revision makes them uncomfortable and can lead to them not spending very much time working on it. She found that the students were never taught how to truly revise their essays (Sommers 380-382). After reading and