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I noticed last night when I was doing my last minute revisions on my Reflective essay and my Interpretive essay that when you read it over and start doing some revisions you can really make your paper more clear and easier for others to understand. Also it made my paper significantly longer and allowed me to do what was asked for the assignment.

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So I was thinking of how I could relate my class (English 101) to the Thanksgiving break. I wanted to show my love for the holiday season and English. I thought of some creative ideas; for example, over thanksgiving everybody is sharing their food with others to help out other people and it relates to English because when you work in groups and you have an idea that your group is responsible for brainstorming ideas for that particular idea.

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yeaaa sooo i haven`t been totally diligent about doing a weekly blog but when i remember i do it.

i have been feeling aside from my normal self these past couple of weeks... personal reasons. so i`m getting myself back on track! i just put my revised essays on d2l & i feel pretty confident. why idk. prior to break, i can`t say how class was because i was there physically but my mind was else where. this week is a new week & i`m feeling good... right now. hopefully no one screws this up. =D

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today i realized that our generation created the word "texting" before there was only the word text, used to decribe letters and nouns (jon says). I found this quite interesting.

Good news everyone!

1) Im having a great Thanksgiving break
2) I revised my papers this morning and i think i found the "formula" to add qoute onto the bad date essay!

I qouted my friend in the stoy and elborated on how there point of view changed my may own. Im not complete sure if this was the goal at hand but its got to be close

Weekly Blog #15

As i have been revising my essays I am noticing that I think i have the majority of the assignment done right. So that is a good sign. I think that if I just keep revising and getting new eyes on my essay that I might just be able to pass portfolio. I guest what I realized will hopefully motivate me to revise closer to make sure I do well.

Hi everybody,
I just wanted to say happy thanksgiving and i hope everyone is enjoying their break so far and revisons... see you on monday

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Tonight I decided to start on my second interpretive essay. I decided to write about a current event that really interests me. I thought I could turn it into an interpretive essay by giving detail and depth to my essay through incoporating differnt resources and then adding my personal opinion on it. I can't wait to get started.

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Doing peer edit today really helped me see things from a different perspective. Getting feedback from a peer is always important because they will see things that you over look. I still have a lot of work to do with my interpretive essay but I think I can start heaading towards the right direction. Thanks Becky!

Hooray! Another succesful revison! with this essay from last night that gives me my two interpertive essays and my refeltive essay for protfolio. Thank god because no offense I am so tired of writing papers! This one was on my worst date ever and if you was to ask me i think its a decent paper except it seems a liltle choppy at times and because of it may be confusing. Well we will see what happens in class today, hopfully its okay so i can just spend the rest of the semester revising and studing for my finals. See everyone at class and if i dont Happy Thanksgiving

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Right now i am going through some tough personal times, and it is affecting my writing and how i think about my writing. I am seeing the world a little different and how things are viewed. I noticed this quite frankly in my memory essay, i went deep into what memory was, and as i was writing with my new knowledge i thought about how our memories impact our daily lives.

Where does it not, we remember where to go and what to do and bring each day, it affects our conversations, like when you bring up past events to talk about and discuss and laugh about. Creating new memories off the old ones, we all do it, and as i thought about this i wrote it in my paper. How even when there are parts we miss or skip we fill them in with what me believe that they should be. But why do we do this, what makes this a recurrence of our lives everyday. Sometimes I really wonder how people work each day.

HELPP

Does any body know where we posted our worst date essays? because i apparently didnt save it on my computer, and i cant find where we posted them. thanks
Heather

Weekly Blog #13

Today in class we went through our essays and somewhat revised them. I think this was very helpful class period. I like to receive criticism from other writers in the class because i know they know exactly what i am going through so they can help me understand what needs to be changed and why. Receiving a new view of your own writing always helps you improve.

Don't worry Becky. You will do just fine. I have read some of your papers in the in class packet and your essays are consistently in the top 5. And even if you don't think your prepared then you should still see improvement in the right direction to meet your goals for portfolio.

Weekly Blog #12

We have been finally starting are revisions and I am quite worried that i am not prepared. I believe that I can write pretty well but i honestly feel like i have no idea what the panel of judges or the criteria are looking for. I am suddenly becoming very stressed about this class that I though I had under control.

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Reflecting upon my essay was very simple. I made sure to show in detail the process in how we wrote the essay. I also touched on what we talked about in my conference and how i understood the paper more after. I am a little unclear why we have to do another page for the essay because I seemed to touch on most of the things we listed in class on Wednesday.

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Revising my reflection essay was a success. I understood exactly what I wanted to go back and fix, which made the process easier. I added a lot more detail to add depth to my paper and I feel it is much better than it was before. Adding a page went quickly and I feel made my paper better. I'm hoping this took my paper one step further to being one of my portfolio essays.

For the first time im no waiting untill the last hours to do my homework assignment! I know i still waited until the last day but i technecly started yesterday. Although im finding it hard to correct my paper it seems like writing in general for me has improved

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We just wrote collaborative papers in this class. I think that it helped our social skills. And made it easier to work with others. I think that it is nice that English 101 is not only helping us with our writing, but also helping us to work well with others.

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This week we had to make corrections to our reflective paper. After making corrections I was much more satisfied with the out come. Which got me to thinking that maybe we should start writing our essays for Portfolio. That way we could start making corrections and make sure that our end product is something that we can be proud of. I think this would make every one much happier. And it would be all and all better for everyone.

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In class we have been writing reflective essays. And I began to realize what I can do better in writing. But it also has me reflecting on my decisions and things. Thank English 101.

sorry about the last blog being muti colored... i dont know why it did that

So to make up for some of my missing weekly blogs i thought i might tell you a little about myself. So i thought i would tell you the most recent weekend. I bought Call of Duty Modern Warfare 2! I know that most of you dont see this as a big deal but this is supposed to be the higest grossing video game of all time with a groundbreak 500,000,000 dollars made in the first month! Did anyone else buy it??? If so let me know so we can share out experinces

Although my essay wasnt essay #1 I found that both of our essay were very similar. In both our papers we could use more qoutes. Even though we both have lots of details and example it seems like they are more from a experince viewpoint other than a context viewpoint. I think if we both used more context that both our papers would be great!

Weekly Blog-12

We had to write a reflective essay on our experience working together in groups. It was difficult trying to write 4 pages reflecting on the experience and I thought the length was a little long. Most of the essays I read through in the sample packet are repetitive, but have a lot of really good and strong information. As always, some are much better than others.

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We have all picked our topics for our individual essays and have completed them. We then met with our groups twice and came up with a 3 page introduction and conclusion, and added all of our 3 essays into one huge collaborative essay. My group worked extrememly well together, and I think we created a really good and strong essay. We worked really hard at it, and it was interesting working together in groups while writing an essay. However, this is good practice because this is what we will be doing in our work fields.

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We have now all picked questions and groups and are all going to write individual papers in our groups, then make a big collaborative one. We are working on picking topics and questions that are papers are going to be about this week.

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We are flying through this semester and everyone is working hard. We are yet still working on the goals and following the course reader. We have had more assignments dealing with this as well. Everyone seems to be doing well in the class.

Weekly Blog-8

We have written several papers now, and have tried to improve our writing. We are still focusing on portfolio goals and have a much better idea of what those goals include. Everyone is much more comfortable talking in class and we are working on giving each other positive and negative feedback on all of our work trying to make everyone better writers.

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We had a week off of class and had conferences to meet and talk about our personal essays and get feedback.

It's always nice to know how you are doing in a class and if your work is right. We are still focusing on portfolio goals and relying more on the course reader to base all of of writings off of.

Weekly Blog-6

We have been working hard in class and still trying to make sure everyone knows all of the portfolio goals. We are trying to incorporate those goals into our writing and make sure that everything we write includes the goals and does it right.

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We have been writing a lot and working on portfolio goals even more. We are trying to make sure that everyone is prepared and passes portfolio and follows all of the guidelines. There are a lot of expectations in portfolios and they require a lot of goals to be followed. We all all helping each other with revising papers.

Weekly Blog-4

The first month of English went by extremely fast.

We focused a lot of the TV shows and the aspect of Judging.

We wrote a few small assignments, but no major papers at that point.

We had the blog all set up, and everyone was getting used to D2L and posting on here as well.

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We continued to discuss judging in class and all of our assignments had to do with judging. All of our assignments again have focused on judging and the guidelines in the Student Handbook.

We are learning how to incorporate these rules and guidelines into our writing so we can pass portfolio.

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We continued to still talk about Project Runway and Top Chef and had to watch 3 episodes for class for our homework. We again discussed the episodes and how that relates to our own English class. We also discussed how the judging is similar and different between TV and English class as well.

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We started outt he year by watching Top Chef and Project Runway and relating that to almost everything we did in class. We watched an episode in class as well and discussed how that relates to our classroom.

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Reading over my individual paper that was incorporated into the collaborative essay I found multiple corrections. I feel that although I added a lot of information, my thoughts became unclear. I feel that when revising my paper I should look for the main thought and make sure it is clearly conveyed. Then I should add detail that pertains to only that thought. Finally, I feel that I just listed off a lot of information rather connecting everything I mentioned to the main question. I have a lot of revising to do but now that I know specifically what to look for I'm on the right track.

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I really wish i would have done these blogs from the start, and not misunderstood that we needed to do a blog in additon to the assignment, because then i wouldnt be so far behind! also im running out of stuff to write about. In additon to being behind on these blogs i cant shake the sniffles off soo fusterating!! I know we were all kind of getting sick of top chef n project run way.. but i kind of miss it! yes this blog jumps around alot but im out of stuff to write!

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I felt that English went fairly well today. I really feel that we're taking off and heading toward the right path for portfolios, and I finally see where everything is coming together. I really hope my relfective paper turned out okay, but if not theres always time to revise it. Im getting nervous about the fact, that our fate of the class lays in some strangers hands.

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During the course of this semester we have written a lot of essays in English 101. This class has truly made me realize how difficult it is to write a paper. First one must struggle with coming up with enough ideas to make the paper as long as it needs to be. Then they must struggle to come up with enough detail to make it as long as it needs to be. At the same time they must come up with quotes and details to support their topic. All while worrying about grammar and spelling. Over all writing papers is extremely difficult.

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Looking over my reflective paper there were things that I found that I liked, and things that i didn't like. I liked how I explained what the assignments were. Although I feel that I could've used more detail and more quotes. I also feel that my topic sentences could've been stronger and more interesting.

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While reading my reflective essay I noticed a few things that I would like to revise. I found that I need to add more supporting detail to further explain to the reader what the assignment is. I would also want to incorporate more detail and quotes to support each topic in my group member’s essays. Another requirement that I failed to meet was explaining the ethics and politics of an interpretive essay. I found that going into more detail will lengthen the paper and further explain and meet the guidelines. Ultimately, I touched on the surface of reflecting but I need to go into more depth. It is nice to have a clear understanding of what I need to work on and the next step is to put it into action and revise my essay.

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This week we are figuring out how to write an outstanding reflective essay and how to incorporate the goals into it, whihc include talking about the choices you made in your interpretive essay.

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last week we looked at how to make each paragraph stronger by changing the introductory sentence in your paragraph so it helps answer the big question you are trying to answer as well as it giving insight to what the paragraph is going to be about.

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2 weeks ago we worked in groups to put together a collaborative essay, which we found was much more difficult than we thought because everyone in the group had there own way of writng an essay.

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3 weeks ago we wrote an interpretive essay about a question we picked in our groups that would help answer a much larger question that we would have to answer in our collaborative essay.

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4 weeks ago we focused a lot on key terms and distinctions within papers and how a key term or distinction can sum up what the whole paper is about.

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5 weeks ago we were assigned to write a paper incorporating quotes form "texts" or 3 stories as well as to interpret the details form all 3 stories.

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6 weeks ago we had confrences about our writing and other peoples writing where we focused on analysing data and wheater the writing was vivid and detailed and if it answered all 6 questions form the DK handbook.

Reflection Essay

Reflection Essay
Many college students often work in groups on projects and papers. This is because it is proven to help them to get used to real world and learn to cope and work well with all different kinds of people. For example in English 101, students are asked to get in groups, choose three questions in which all have a common theme and each person write a paper answering the question. Then the students will collaborate there papers to answer a bigger question they think of that has to do with all three questions. The collaboration process seems to be somewhat tedious. It can take a while to come up just with ideas and titles then the writing process can take even longer.
I am in English 101 and asked to do the collaborative essay. The initial paper was not that difficult. The question I decided to answer was, “How can making up the truth be a positive thing?” and the two other questions in my group all had to do with what is true and what is not. When it came around to the collaboration process, it took quite a while to think of just the question which we decided was, “How does one’s recollection of an event shape what is true in history?” Once that was out of the way we had to decide what points in each of our own essays were strong and how we could use those points to help answer the bigger question. The rest of the paper consisted of us attempting to make the points flow and explanations strong enough so the paper was readable.
The way that we were able to find common ground worked out very nicely. We were able to brainstorm what we were doing and come up with the best way we thought we could write a collaborative essay. We understood what we needed to have in the essay to make it the easiest to follow without being the class. Our collaborative essay was made of all of our ideas and main points in our papers. We tried to be as detailed as we could without repeating what was in our three individual papers. We tried to come up with a title that would help readers get an understanding of what was going on in the entire essay. We also tried to think of words that would get our points across more effectively which we found made out paper a lot more entertaining than before and not as repetitive as it would have otherwise been.
As a group, we decided that the best way to help our readers fully comprehend our main points was to incorporate the facts from our paper that seemed to have to most value. We used details from essays and short stories in our class book, “The First Year Composition Reader.” Our group thought that with examples from a text, quotes and explanations we were able to put our point across. Our points were stated and we tried not to give too much away from each of our individual papers. The collaborative essay is explained well and fully.
There were some decisions we had to make that we knew could either make or break our essay. Some points we decided to change around a bit so that it would make more sense to the readers. One example of this is when were attempting to state how each person has their own different interpretation on an event. At first we had four or five different sentences in which when we read it out loud just did not prove the point we wanted it to make so we had to do a lot of revision while writing the paper. The whole decision process can result in making the paper a terribly under explained answer to a question that has to do with nothing, so we attempted to brainstorm as much as we could before we actually started writing. Our paper would have turned out completely different if we did not do this. We probably would not have explained anything as much and our paper would have been very choppy. When we sat down and started making these decisions we were unsure at first how detailed we should be. I feel that we were detailed enough for having to write an introduction essay, however after talking with our teacher, I realized we could have gone in to much more detail so that all points expressed in each of our individual papers would have been touched on and understood, instead of just the main points in each of our papers.
The paper we wrote as a group has a sense of worthiness when answering the question. It might not be a professionally written piece of work, but it does have points that are explained well. They probably could be a bit more developed but for a first draft of a paper it answers the question at hand and does a good job at it. The readers will be able to understand the answer to our main question, maybe without even reading it. The reader may say we could use a bit more, however overall it does answer the question and explains our main points with detail and example.
There were some parts of the process where we needed to remind each other what the main question actually was. There were parts in the writing portion that we sometimes found that we were starting to drift off and were not fully on topic. It is easy while writing an essay to find yourself way off topic and having paragraphs of nonsense in which you will then have to cut and basically start all over again.
The collaboration process has given me the time to work with others and see how my peers write. This has helped me somewhat improve my own papers by showing me ways that others answer the same questions. I feel that with the whole collaboration process I have become a better writer and the process has forced me to understand that my papers do not always flow well and do not always explain themselves the way I though they did while I was writing them. The idea of working with people who have a different sense of writing styles can help students think outside the box the next time the write a paper. It helps to allow students to experience a variety of ways to help explain their points in different ways instead of just writing the same repetitive papers.

Topic Sentences

Topic sentences are critical in a paper. They tell what the paper will be about or even what the paragraph will be about. My topic sentences give information as to what the following paragraph will be about, but I could make them more interesting. All my topic sentences sound similar and don't really hook the readers attention. This is bad, because topic sentences also pose as attention getters. If my topic sentence is not interesting then the audience won't want to read what follows it. This is why topic sentences are so important.

Assignment 8 Reflection

A necessary aspect of attending college or any school for that matter is that you are going to get homework. No one likes to do homework but it is essential if you want to learn anything new and advance in school. Occasionally you will also be required to write an essay or a report for your classes. It can be very difficult at times researching information and then ultimately writing the paper. However this can usually be completed within a couple days of working. Although every once and a while there is a twist thrown into the directions for the essay that may make it more difficult than normal, in my English class we received such an assignment.
In my English 101 class we were instructed to write an interpretive essay that addressed a question chosen from a list. This may not sound so difficult, which it was not. The question I addressed in my essay was; “What is the fine line between arguing on behalf of the truth and making truth up?” We were instructed to refer to and quote in detail three essays from our textbook, which applied to our topic.
Personally I thought this part of the assignment was fairly simple. I was able to find three essays that applied nicely to my topic, and was able to receive a lot of good information from them. A major point of my essay was that everyone looks at things differently, so something that may be true to one person may not be true to another. Everyone has a different upbringing and comes from a different background so we all look at things differently. In my essay I quoted from an essay in our text book called They have a Different Idea About That. I stated, “Each perspective in its own environment, or circumstance, will be true or valid-in that environment, in those circumstances. One statement that may be true in one person’s circumstance may be making up the truth in another circumstance.”
As stated earlier I felt that part of the assignment was no different than any other assignment. The more difficult part came when we were instructed to work on a collaborative essay with other students in the class. We were required to use each of our own individual essays together to address a broader question. We were then instructed to get into a group of two or three people and work on this collaborative essay together. For my group I only had one partner, which believe did make it slightly easier for us since we did not have a third question that had to be addressed within our essay.
My partner for the collaborative essay was Katie and the question which she was addressing was; “How might making truth up be a positive thing?” Our topics were fairly similar to one and other which I believe also made it slightly easier on us to form a collaborative essay around our two topics. A major point of her essay was that leaving out information is not necessarily lying. As well as if you are making up truth to help or protect someone it can be a positive thing. In her essay she states, “If someone thinks a different way than someone else, if they make the truth to get their point across I believe it is ok. In the end I think as long as you are doing it to help someone and you are not hurting anyone I believe it is a positive thing”
As a group we were instructed to write an introduction to our collaborative essay tying together each of our topics and addressing a larger question. Within our introduction we stated “There is a fine line between arguing on behalf of the truth and making the truth up, but when? In this situation it may even be acceptable to leave information out. How can making the truth up be a positive thing?”
I believe trying to combine our two essays into one that addressed both of our topics was the most difficult part of the assignment. Not only were we trying to make two completely different papers sound like one. We also had to work together on an introduction and conclusion to the paper. This is what caused most of the problems for us. As we stated in our essay everyone has a different way of looking at things and everyone has a different way going about their work. This is why it was such a challenge for us to complete our work as we each had a different idea about how it should sound.
Everyone has their own way they like to go about writing an essay, and their own particular word choice. Writing a paper with someone else can be a bit of a challenge sometimes, as one person thinks it should be written they way they normally do it. When the other person thinks that it might sound better written they way they like it.
Overall the assignment we were given in my English 101 class was challenging when we got to the end and to find some way to make our topics work in conjunction. I do believe it was a good experience for me, as I was able to receive feedback from one of my peers on my writing. I was also able to provide feedback to her as well, which I believe strengthened our essay in the end.

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The hardest part about writting a collabartive essay to me was the fact that we each had different ideas and since all our paper were on a different topic we all wanted to put different stuff into the introduction paper. also trying to meet as a group was almost impossible since we all had such different schedules. but im glad we made it through and its done and over with and im pretty dang happy with the out come of our over all papers.. thanks ladies :)

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I am getting a little worried that my reflective paper wasnt done right, and if it wasnt ill cry becuase i dont want to rewrite it. everytime i ever had to write a reflective paper it was only like a half page but to stretch something out for four pages was a little difficult. I am glad i accomplished it though i just hope its done up to expectations!

reflective essay

Have you ever had to write a paper that really stumped you to the point you didn’t even know how to start? The paper I had to write did exactly that. This wasn’t your however wasn’t just your ordinary English paper. The challenge to this assignment was that it was an interpretive essay. Therefore there was no right or wrong answer, or way to go about it; thus making it a very complex essay.
This assignment derived from my English 101 class. For this particular project we were instructed to organize groups containing three members. For my group I selected Katilin, and Becky to work with. We were then given a sheet of paper which contained a series of different ideas and questions of which we were to form a bigger question pertaining to three of those ideas/questions on the sheet. From the three base questions we were then each assigned one that we had to compose a four page paper, using three stories from our composition reader as references. After each individual paper was constructed we then had to combine the three separate papers into one large paper. Each of the essays’s had to collaborate to answer the big question for the final paper. Our main question that assembled, from the smaller questions, was “Do one’s own experiences and the history we read in textbooks influence the way we would solve a social demographic situation?” The three questions in which this question was created are as follows: What makes differences in social demographics (race, economic class, gender, nationality, ethnicity, etc) so difficult to resolve? What does memory have to do with making an argument? And what relationships do myths have with memory and history?
As a result of the three small questions getting divided amongst us, I was designated to write on the topic of “What does memory have to do with making an agreement?” So once I started to dissect and pick apart my question I had to determine what was the question really saying/asking; who would be reading my paper, and what details would be most fitting to put in. After I determined that my paper would directed towards readers not in my class; I decided to stay away from referencing the actual assignment in the essay. I also prepared it for a more mature audience by expanding my vocabulary, and including questions that would really make the reader think, such as “how can you base an agreement off a memory if memories can’t be held accountable for being truthful?”
The toughest part about composing my individual paper was trying to contemplate how to write it, and where to even start. I decided the easiest way would be to pick a side of the agreement and take it from there. My main choice of topic was that memories cannot be the only thing an argument is based off since memories are often altered. I then went on and explained how memories are often altered, what happens when a memory is altered, and how people tend to fabricate their memories in their minds, but believe that it’s the truth. The three sources that I received information from for references were: The Method of Memory, by Jonah Lehrer, My Father’s Brain, by Jonathan Franzen, and A Photograph Is Not an Opinion, Or is it? by Susan Songtag.
I set my paper up by first explaining my take on the topic, and then continuing onto why I thought this using the details from my resources. I made the paragraphs flow into each other by taking the topic of one and slightly altering it and forming it into another question which would then be a new paragraph. To grab and keep the reader’s attention and really make them think, I threw some questions in some of the paragraphs, with the intent that they would have to stop their reading and think for a minute about the question proposed. Even though we did have to use three resources, my topic was broad enough, and opinionated enough that I could take my own ideas and conform them into the same ideas of the writers from the composition reader, so most of the paper was indeed using my own ideas. While thinking about my own paper in its entirety, I also had to remember that my paper would be combined with the other two papers so I had to maintain a theme so that the papers would easily fit together.
When the time came to combine all three papers, we were then stuck with the predicament of how we would get these entirely different papers to conform into one. We wrote an introduction for the large new paper, that used the idea that myths are derived from memories, since information can be added to memories making them false and fabricated thus turning them into a myth, and from these memories which are turned into fabricated myths, social demographics are formed. We formed our introduction in a way that we felt best represented all of our papers as a whole. We started the introduction paper out using three questions that we pulled from each of our papers. We then took those questions and made three separate paragraphs giving a brief overview of what each paper would be about. Following those paragraphs we continued to write about how these papers tied together to form one, and answer our main topic question. Once the intro was done, we then just used title headings to transfer from paper to paper.
The most difficult part of writing the intro as a team was just that. We had to work as team, not individuals. Everyone has different writing styles, different vocabulary, and different ways to go about writing a paper. The hardest part about that for me was the fact that we would be stumped on how to go about writing a sentence and they would just want to skip it and come back, and for me I need everything to go in sequential order. Also I like to try to expand the vocabulary of a paper, but they didn’t agree on some of the words I suggested to use. It was also difficult because we all had such diverse schedules we had a rough time finding enough time to meet in a group making it very rushed to try and achieve a good paper.
Although it was a new experience writing in a group, which got a little stressful at times it was also very beneficial. I took away different ideas of how to go about writing a paper, like waiting until the end to turn the format to double space instead of doing it right at the beginning. I also gained new vocabulary from them, and different ways to proof read a paper. I learned that team work can make a project easier in the fact that you have other people’s opinions, and ideas to use, or give you ideas. It makes you look at a project in a new light, it brings more enjoyment out of it knowing you have teammates to support you and cheer you on.
Over all, this assignment turned out to be very educational. I learned how to go about writing an interpretive essay, how different people write papers, and most of all that team work really is the key to success. If we wouldn’t have collaborated together and made compromises here and there we would have never been able to compose a paper. So even though it got tough at times and I wanted to cry, it was all worth it for the sense and feeling of accomplishment.

Reflective Essay

Becky Fellows
English 101
The Difficult Process
Writing an essay is never easy work, having to write an essay collaboratively with two other idea driven girls is much more difficult. “The Explanation of Social Demographics” is the collaborative interpretive essay that Heather, Kaitlin and I cohesively wrote. We each had our own individual essays about somewhat similar topics and we needed to bring each of our essays together and make them into a cohesive essay. Writing an interpretive essay “Myths, Memories and History” was difficult to make the many choices. Then to have to hope that the choices one made would condense well with the other two in the group.

Each and every author approaches an essay from a different direction, some come at it head on, start from the beginning and end at the end. Others just write their ideas and elaborate and make the order more defined after they have completed the essay. The focus of an essay is really the defining aspect, without the purpose behind the essay there is no real determining factors. Looking back each decision that was made within both, the individual interpretive essay and the collaborative essay, from the purpose, and the context, all the way to the audience that is being targeted, are what drove the essay to its focus.

While writing the interpretive essay “Myths, Memories and History” there were many different directions to go to depict the relationship that memories and history shared with myths. Initially it was difficult to determine who was going to be the target audience for this essay. To completely understand and comprehend the connections that are being made in this essay the readers must be of a certain age. Above the age of 17 years would probably be best. Not that the essay is a difficult read but the contexts used could be considered confusing at points. The diction, context, purpose and connections that were used in this paper could have been the factors that made this essay more advanced and difficult to read. The collaborative essay was targeted to approximately to the same audience, generally my two group members and I had the same target audience.

As my interpretative essay was developing it was difficult to see how the contexts would connect the interpretation. In this essay specific word choice and concepts were utilized from other essays. The essays that were used were “The Gospel of Consumption and the better future we left behind” By Jeffrey Kaplan, “Marcel Proust: The Method of Memory” by Lerher, and “The Future of the American Frontier” by John Timran. Theses essay were chosen to be featured in the interpretative essay because they all had topics which correspond to the topics that were being used in “Myths, Memories and History”. “The Gospel of Consumption and the better future we left behind” discussed facts and history which was easily tied into the history portion of the interpretive essay. Also Kaplan’s essay used descriptive words which were perfect to describe the relationships that myths shared with history and memories. For example “conjured” and “reviving” were some of the words that allowed many connections to be made. “Marcel Proust: The Method of Memory” obviously focused on memories, this essay not only helped develop a basic knowledge on memories but also gave a different look at exactly how myths and memories are connected. This essay created some thought provoking concerns and ideas, “One could say that Marcel Proust had a myth on his hands, a concept which he conjured up about the origin of memories that he was attempting to prove to a disbelieving public.” Finally “The Future of the American Frontier” gave an example that coincided with the interpretative essay perfectly. While attempting to prove to connection of history and myths Timran’s essay was easily explained in “Myths, Memories and History”, “This myth is all about the outlook on the future of America. The “Frontier” the horizon where everything is better, this is a myth because no one person knows the future of a country or the world so to assure and promise to anyone that everything will be fine is pretty much impossible.” The context of “Myths, Memories and History” is what made it interpretive, utilizing outside sources to develop the argument of the relationships between myths, memories and history.

In the collaborative essay used the context of each of our own essays. We each had a quote from ourselves that help support our argument, by utilizing our own work I feel it helped us to become more involved to our topic. For example “Everyone has different memories of different situations, some good and some bad, and in situations people tend base their view of something off that one memory.” (As quoted by Heather in her essay, "Memories") I believe that by utilizing our own interpretative essays which have already been affected by other authors we included some of the most in-depth though provoking ideas into the collaboration.

The purpose of “Myths, Memories and History” is to compare the relationships of memories to myths and history to myths. These relationships are quite important to the outlook of the world. Memories are difficult to distinguish between false and true, they can diminish over time and can become hazy and difficult to remember. This being the problem with memories is what causes the relationship with myths, my being unable to recall every aspect of a scenario each memory become very unreliable. These unreliable thoughts and stories will suddenly be turned into myths “Myths are hard to define; they are invented stories, ideas, or concepts. Myths are typically a traditional or legendary story, with or without any proof of fact or a natural explanation.” As stated in “Myths, Memories and History”. History is typically considered to be fact and of course true because that is what the majority of the population believes, by having theses loop holes in history there is room for myths. Myths in history are usually just another view of an event, but also myths can make history what it is, as discovered in “The Explanation of Social Demographics” “Without these myths, facts couldn't be considered true because one would have nothing to compare them to.” This is displaying the connection of history and myths, and the way they depend on each other for their credibility or lack thereof. Within the interpretive essay “Myths, Memories and History” the intent was to carry the purpose throughout the essay. Dividing the paper into sections of introduction, memory verses myths; history verses myths, and then concluding with myths and a restated purpose. The layout and elaborating that was included in the interpretative essay was intended to clarify the intent and purpose.

Within our collaborative essay we wanted to have a cumulative larger thesis question to tie our entire individual essay together. A question that could and would be answered by reading each of our essays, from the essay ‘The Explanation of Social Demographics” our thesis question “Therefore, is it fair to say that one's own experiences and the history we read in textbooks influence the way we would solve a demographic situation?” This statement is what lead to our purpose to give knowledge to the reader to answer this question.

While I was writing this interpretative essay I attempted to take the less popularized side to each argument I made. The main idea I kept returning to was to make the connections clear, using my own words and my own interpretations of the sources I used and the questions I answered. For example in “Myths, Memories and History” I stated “Each one of these so called historical “facts” that everyone assumes is the truth could really just be yet another myth that someone tells you to make everything seem to be O.K.” by giving my audience something to think about that in the end the will hopefully come to a conclusion about. I struggled always having to keep my group members in mind as I wrote and I feel it went quite well. The many hurtles my group and I were forced to overcome will in the long run help us to become much better authors.

The collaborative essay “The Explanation of Social Demographics” which I wrote collectively with two other classmates was an elaboration and connection of all of our personal interpretive essays. We each had a question that we were to interpretative, in this collaborative essay we used all of our ideas and research to come together and give reason to the questions we were trying to answer. Some of the difficulties that my group had was our combination of layout, while we each wrote our essay the way we normally do weather that be traditional or not, bringing everything together was difficult due to the fact that we all too different views on essay writing. Also each group member came with their own idea of what is the most important aspect of an essay. I feel that the content and diction are the most important aspects to an essay they give the information and create an easy to read intelligent essay. Whereas it seemed to be that the rest of my group felt layout and sentence structure should have been taken into top consideration. It was a difficult process to work through having many ideas being discussed it was hard to keep track. Many times it took much convincing and possibly some majority rules to make a decision, but I believe along with my group members that we, in the end, had an informative combination of ideas which is “The Explanation of Social Demographics”.

Weekly Blog #11

I am now quite worried about the collaborative essay it is always hard to share ideas and views with a group but now in this case we are all going to want the essay to go our way because we all want good grades. Coming together with my group and discussing wasn't the easiest thing. I felt like there were a lot of great ideas that were lost in translation.

Weekly Blog #10

It is difficult to use sources in my writing having to try to use essays from the First Year Composition reader is going to be hard for the interpretative essay. I know that actually in the long run for the well being of my essay it will be much easier to interpret my question if i have other essays to back it up. I will just need to focus on incorporating the sources well enough.

Weekly Blog #9

Writing essay make me think of how much i don't really like the process of having to come up with ideas for essays. Also how much i dislike trying to have enough information to make a long enough essay so that I can be taken seriously as an author. I hope that i will fill the requirement for portfolio even though I don't know what that is.

Topic Sentences

The topic sentences for my essay seem to be generally on topic, I rarely steer away from the focus. My topic sentences sometimes will b more focused on what is in the paragraph to come rather then the overall essay.

The talk of topic sentence was very helpful this week. The most helpful thing i got out of it was that a topic sentence should be concise but detailed at the same time. By making the topic sentence concise it make it easier for you to stop run-ons in what your going to write about in your paper. The other thing i saw that was important was to make sure you give small detail. This means that you tell the reader about the assignment but your careful to leave out key point so that they have a reason to keep reading. Just make sure you give an answer at the end

When writting a paper, your topic sentence says a lot. After writting the first sentence in each paragraph of my paper out. I could tell cearly what the general idea of the paper to follow would be about. They all relate in the sense of theyre talking about memory. I did notice that I did have a few run on sentences. Another thing i could work on for my paragraph topic sentences would be to better transission them, because even though I know what the paper will be about so it makes sense to me, the reader of the paper may not. However over all i think my sentences were fairly good.

First Sentences

AFter looking at the first sentences in my paper, they all seemed to be pretty similar. Many of them simply included the title of the article i was citing from. While most of them did address what the following paragraph would be about they were vague for the most part and did not address the question of the essay.

First sentence

By reading the first sentences I realized that most of them were very similar and broad. They were very boring and not attention grabbing. Looking back there were a few things that I would change about my paper. I feel that some parts were rushed. The first senctence to many of our paragraphs did not best suit the rest of the paragraph. There are many corrections that I would make.

First Sentences

After reading all the first sentences of the essays, I concluded a majority of them were structured fairly similiar. Although most of the first sentences introduced the topic, they were vague and for the most part boring. I also noticed the word choice of the essays were vague, making the sentences generic and repetitive. Some strategies to enhancing the first sentences and even the introduction as a whole would be to incorporate quotes and ask specific questions to give the readers something to think about and develop an analytical standpoint.

First Sentance

After reading my first sentences of each paragraph I have determined that I could not make out what my paper was really about if I combined them. I think the reason for this is the fact that I did not have very much description in my first sentences and I was way too informational and limited to whom my audience could be and who would actually understand or be interested in actually reading this paper. I think for future papers that I right I am going to start off my first sentence of my paper with my thesis statement and then my first sentences of my paragraphs after that not be about what I read but about what was in the readings and what I was hoping to find in those readings.

first sentence

From what i was told the assignment was sense i wasnt able to make it to class wensday i went through my paper i wrote and looked at each of the sentences that started off my paragraphs and i noticed that even though they let you understand what the up coming paragraph was going to be about and they helped answer the main question at the end of the paper i believe I could have spiced them up because they were very repedative and started to bore me. To do this i could have used quotes to grab the readers attention or i could have worded them differently so it didnt sound like i was mono-tone and boring.

first sentences

After reviewing all of my topic sentences on a different sheet of paper, I realized they all need a lot of work. First of all, I start three of the topic sentences in the same way by saying what the title of the article I read was. I could have started the paragraphs with a quote or something different to make my paper more interesting. In other words, I directly stated what I was going to talk about from paragraph to paragraph. Also, my topic sentences don’t relate too much to the question I’m trying to answer. By making them go with the question will further help me answer the question in as much detail as possible. All in all, I need to work on making my topic sentences go back to my thesis and having different structures for each topic sentence to avoid repetition.

First Sentences

I wrote down each of my first sentences and evaluated how well they supported and connected to my paper in its entirety. When I looked at my essay from a different perspective I noticed an important flaw. Although my topic sentences seem to set up what is going to be in the paragraph – by directly relating to the topic – I didn’t do an adequate job of connecting my ideas throughout the paper. Instead I just switched from one idea to the next. While revising my essay I need to work on fluency between my ideas and the first way I can improve on that would be by insuring my topic sentences give both a clear understanding and a direct relation to each thought.

First Sentences of my Essay-

You look at your paper very differently when you are reading all of the first sentences of each paragraph together. It gives you a completely different outlook on your paper and topic. When I looked at all of the first sentences in my paragraphs, I realized that some were too short. In all my sentences however, you could tell what the paragraph to follow was going to be about, but in some I needed more detail and more of a solid idea about what was going to be in the body of the paragraph. You never want the first sentence to be too wordy, or too short, and it's sometimes difficult to find exactly what to say without doing that. I realized that some of mine were in fact, too short or too long, but otherwise I think they were pretty solid sentences. When you separate all of the sentences from each paragraph and put them all together, it's easy to see when the entire paper is going to be about, because you get a little preview about each paragraph that is in the paper. It's important to make sure that all of the first sentences make sense, and in some way relate to one another. These should be some of the strongest sentences in the paper, so I realized that I need to go back and do a little revising in my paper and the first sentences.