This has been a good quarter for me and Writing 101 is a big part of the reason. I came into class knowing how to write a good essay the high school way and now I am able to write a college level essay that even I enjoy reading to myself. After learning the basics, my essay’s got much better as the weeks went by. My first essay wasn’t horrible but I remember having a lot of revision to do. Now, I can write a good quality essay and revise it under a normal time and these essays turn out to be much better because of the skills I adapted to over the course of this quarter.
I think that there is something particular about my essays that I would to draw attention to. The final draft and rough draft of my essays stay somewhat similar. I revise the grammar, spelling and the other mistakes that I make while writing a rough draft. In the end though, both the rough and final draft are nearly the same essay. This can be looked at in two different perspectives. I look at it as; a good writer will freely write a rough draft and after that revise any errors, but if the writer is confident in his paper, then he will keep the essay in the voice that it was originally written in. I think that a common mistake made by many students is when they pick-a-part their rough draft and when they are done putting it back together, it sounds nothing like the voice that they had when they were writing the rough draft. I look at this as a strength that I have in my essays. My essays come out to be in my voice and my voice only.
I have a couple of other strengths that I tend to easily incorporate into my essays. As I recall, my essays have always had a strong introduction. I have a nice first sentence, thesis statement and hook. These three parts are crucial to have in the introductory paragraph. Without them, any essay can start out flat and boring. In my body paragraphs, I have pretty good topic sentences and in my opinion, really good commentary to back them up. I look at this as a strength in all my essays. Finally, good grammar, good word choice and nice sentence structures are some of the aspects that tend to be adequate in my papers. These can be fixed with some work and I am glad to say that they are becoming a smaller problem the more essays I write.
As I have strengths in my essays, I have a couple of weaknesses also. Transitions have always been a problem for. After learning that using high school transition phrases is not acceptable in college, I struggled to find a way for the flow of my essay get from one paragraph to another. I am working on this problem but it has become a bigger problem than I had originally thought it would. Also, having weak transitions takes a toll of the flow of an essay because when you can’t get the rhythm of an essay smoothly from one paragraph to another, it comes out sounding confusing. The reader ends up having to scramble thoughts around trying to make any sense of what is going on in the paper. This is a major problem but lately I have shown some positive progress.
To sum up a whole quarter of this Writing 101 class would take many sheets of paper. I learned everything I needed to know about writing to continue my journey through college and beyond. This class was a bumpy ride for me due to the problems that I had to overcome to write a successful paper. I am personally glad that I took Writing 101 in Highline Community College.
Wednesday, March 18, 2009
Portfolio: Essay of Choice
Schizophrenia is something that I used to have for a long time. I had it all through high school and even up until I wrote the first essay in this class. This is something that you get from writing a rough draft and instead of writing your ideas properly you stress out, you cough out your sentences slowly. These sentences tend to not make any sense at all when they are read out loud. There is no flow to this kind of writing. I’m still working on this aspect of my writing progress but it is getting much better than it used to be.
I compare this problem as a basketball player in a game. Some basketball players are wound up, stressed out or just in a bad mood. These kinds of players do not perform very well. The players that are more successful are the ones that are relaxed, calm and because of this, they allow the game to come to them. I relate this to writing an essay because to write a good essay, you need to let the ideas and words come to you instead of trying to reach out and grab them. For example, I love to play basketball with my friends a couple times a week. I used to come excited to play but when I we would start playing, I would miss some shots. Eventually, I would get frustrated, play bad defense and it would turn out to be a bad day for me. Also, if I miss a couple of shots, I would lose confidence and hardly every shoot again for the rest of the game. Writing has the same effect on me. When I would look at every word and sentence while writing a rough draft, I would get frustrated when something wouldn’t make sense. I would even give up sometimes not even completing the assignment.
This quarter started out quite well. My first essay was not too bad. I had a few glimpses of schizophrenia but I got through it. The second essay was a little better but I noticed that I kept going back to my old habits a couple of times. The good thing about this is that by the time I was at the third paragraph, I was writing freely without schizophrenia. Also, after writing a rough draft, I do go back and look at my essays. I can relate this to what Tobias Wolff said, “Later on, you have to look back at your work with a very cold eye, as if you were editing someone else’s”. I can see now that I am doing better and better as the quarter rolls on.
My instructor Craig McKenney has described how to write a good essay and shown us examples of good and bad ways to writing. All writing is writing and there is no wrong answer is writing but there are some aspects to writing that sound better in an essay. For example, Craig explained how we need to have the flow in our essays. I learned about the flow and I am now currently trying to incorporate this into my essays. It is still a problem but I’m working on it. Writing with schizophrenia results in an essay with no flow. It has pauses and sentences out of place.
Schizophrenia is a problem among writer’s who are just beginning and even the writer’s that have not been shown the way to write a rough draft normally. I believe that the foundation of an essay is the rough draft and if you have a bad foundation consistently, then your rough drafts will be bad, consistently. This can be fixed during editing but it becomes a pain fixing the parts of your essay that could be very well done in the rough draft. It makes writing easier, fun and better sounding.
I compare this problem as a basketball player in a game. Some basketball players are wound up, stressed out or just in a bad mood. These kinds of players do not perform very well. The players that are more successful are the ones that are relaxed, calm and because of this, they allow the game to come to them. I relate this to writing an essay because to write a good essay, you need to let the ideas and words come to you instead of trying to reach out and grab them. For example, I love to play basketball with my friends a couple times a week. I used to come excited to play but when I we would start playing, I would miss some shots. Eventually, I would get frustrated, play bad defense and it would turn out to be a bad day for me. Also, if I miss a couple of shots, I would lose confidence and hardly every shoot again for the rest of the game. Writing has the same effect on me. When I would look at every word and sentence while writing a rough draft, I would get frustrated when something wouldn’t make sense. I would even give up sometimes not even completing the assignment.
This quarter started out quite well. My first essay was not too bad. I had a few glimpses of schizophrenia but I got through it. The second essay was a little better but I noticed that I kept going back to my old habits a couple of times. The good thing about this is that by the time I was at the third paragraph, I was writing freely without schizophrenia. Also, after writing a rough draft, I do go back and look at my essays. I can relate this to what Tobias Wolff said, “Later on, you have to look back at your work with a very cold eye, as if you were editing someone else’s”. I can see now that I am doing better and better as the quarter rolls on.
My instructor Craig McKenney has described how to write a good essay and shown us examples of good and bad ways to writing. All writing is writing and there is no wrong answer is writing but there are some aspects to writing that sound better in an essay. For example, Craig explained how we need to have the flow in our essays. I learned about the flow and I am now currently trying to incorporate this into my essays. It is still a problem but I’m working on it. Writing with schizophrenia results in an essay with no flow. It has pauses and sentences out of place.
Schizophrenia is a problem among writer’s who are just beginning and even the writer’s that have not been shown the way to write a rough draft normally. I believe that the foundation of an essay is the rough draft and if you have a bad foundation consistently, then your rough drafts will be bad, consistently. This can be fixed during editing but it becomes a pain fixing the parts of your essay that could be very well done in the rough draft. It makes writing easier, fun and better sounding.
Portfolio: Essay 4
I choose to write about the subject of steroids in sports because I am extremely interested in sports and when something like steroids gets involved with sports, I like to know about it. Steroids are a certain drug that causes growth in a human being hormone when it is taken. That’s why they are sometimes called HGH or human growth hormone. They are illegal to high school students and players that are involved in any professional sports organization that does not allow their players to take steroids. Yet both students and players have broken the rules now and in the past. This is where we get the problem of steroids in sports.
Using steroids on any professional or nonprofessional sports organization classifies in the same category as cheating. This can be compared to any other interest one might have. For example, if someone is interested in cars, then someone using steroids in sports can be compared to someone stealing a car. Now that person has a better car than just like a player using steroids would be stronger than his opponent or competition. This is my opinion of course and because there is another side to this subject, using steroids in sports is an argumentative problem. I picked out three different articles with three different perspectives on steroids in a particular sport. I will show you what I thought of steroids before and after I read and analyzed these articles.
My view on steroids before I read these articles was laid back because I thought it was a minor problem that would be fixed immediately. One of the articles, “Sports and Drugs,” has a sub article that is focused on steroid use among younger teens. This article got me thinking that maybe steroids are becoming a bigger problem as time moves on. The first line just summed up the whole article. It says, “Forty percent of high school seniors say steroids are easy to obtain (618).” I think that in order to fix this problem, you must start at the beginning. In this case, the roots of steroids begin in high school. First, school officials or someone else needs to make it hard for students to obtain steroids and if they happen to use them, they need to find a way to catch these students. After that, they need to be punished enough so that the next time they will think twice before making the same mistake again. I believe that if you start in high school, the next levels will be easier to handle.
My view on steroids has changed considerably mainly due to a particular article. This article is called, “High School Testing Loses Momentum.” There are a couple of reasons why this article has changed my perspective on steroids. One reason is the fact that Texas, Illinois and New Jersey are the only states that currently have random steroid-testing programs. This article states that even these last three programs haven’t had much success lately. My opinion is that steroid users are getting much smarter. They are looking for the steroids that can’t be tested yet. To back my opinion, the article also shows that, “Texas reported seven positives out of 19,000 tests done through the school year.” Clearly, the reason all these programs are being thrown away is because they are not finding enough positive tests. Steroid users are still out there according to article, Sports and Drugs.” On page 618, it says, “The Centers of Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) says the number of boys who have used steroids at least once increased from 4.1 percent to 6.8 percent between 1991 and 2003.” Combined with the female steroid users, it comes out to roughly one million high school steroid users. A problem it certainly is, these steroid-testing programs need to toughen up and find some better ways of catching these illegal substance users.
“Poll: Economy Bigger Problem for MLB.” This is an article which shows the audiences’ view on steroids in Major League Baseball. According to the sources, “more than 80 percent of people who follow sports believed there is current use of human growth hormone in baseball, but those same fans perceive the economy as a much bigger problem for baseball than performance-enhance drugs.” This is the first sentence of the article and it nearly summarizes the whole article. They are saying that Major League Baseball needs to be worried about the economy affecting their teams rather than the players that are using illegal substances. I think that Major League Baseball officials have less control over the economy than they have over the players. The economy will get back up soon but if the officials ignore steroid use, than pretty soon everyone baseball player is using steroids just to be able to compete. I don’t think that the Major League officials, other sports organizations and even fans want this because it affects nearly everyone in a negative way. Baseball won’t be fun to watch because everyone is hitting home runs and the officials would have lost control of the league by then. I think that most people don’t want that to happen and the Major League Baseball organization needs to step up to this problem.
I believe I have shown what the people, experts and I think about steroids in sports. The people seem to looking on at this problem as something that’s not their business. The experts are trying to find bigger problems that professional sports organizations and high school sports programs need to be addressing before they start dealing with steroids. I think that everyone involved with steroids one way or another should be doing something to prevent it. Steroids are a bigger problem in sports than you might think.
Using steroids on any professional or nonprofessional sports organization classifies in the same category as cheating. This can be compared to any other interest one might have. For example, if someone is interested in cars, then someone using steroids in sports can be compared to someone stealing a car. Now that person has a better car than just like a player using steroids would be stronger than his opponent or competition. This is my opinion of course and because there is another side to this subject, using steroids in sports is an argumentative problem. I picked out three different articles with three different perspectives on steroids in a particular sport. I will show you what I thought of steroids before and after I read and analyzed these articles.
My view on steroids before I read these articles was laid back because I thought it was a minor problem that would be fixed immediately. One of the articles, “Sports and Drugs,” has a sub article that is focused on steroid use among younger teens. This article got me thinking that maybe steroids are becoming a bigger problem as time moves on. The first line just summed up the whole article. It says, “Forty percent of high school seniors say steroids are easy to obtain (618).” I think that in order to fix this problem, you must start at the beginning. In this case, the roots of steroids begin in high school. First, school officials or someone else needs to make it hard for students to obtain steroids and if they happen to use them, they need to find a way to catch these students. After that, they need to be punished enough so that the next time they will think twice before making the same mistake again. I believe that if you start in high school, the next levels will be easier to handle.
My view on steroids has changed considerably mainly due to a particular article. This article is called, “High School Testing Loses Momentum.” There are a couple of reasons why this article has changed my perspective on steroids. One reason is the fact that Texas, Illinois and New Jersey are the only states that currently have random steroid-testing programs. This article states that even these last three programs haven’t had much success lately. My opinion is that steroid users are getting much smarter. They are looking for the steroids that can’t be tested yet. To back my opinion, the article also shows that, “Texas reported seven positives out of 19,000 tests done through the school year.” Clearly, the reason all these programs are being thrown away is because they are not finding enough positive tests. Steroid users are still out there according to article, Sports and Drugs.” On page 618, it says, “The Centers of Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) says the number of boys who have used steroids at least once increased from 4.1 percent to 6.8 percent between 1991 and 2003.” Combined with the female steroid users, it comes out to roughly one million high school steroid users. A problem it certainly is, these steroid-testing programs need to toughen up and find some better ways of catching these illegal substance users.
“Poll: Economy Bigger Problem for MLB.” This is an article which shows the audiences’ view on steroids in Major League Baseball. According to the sources, “more than 80 percent of people who follow sports believed there is current use of human growth hormone in baseball, but those same fans perceive the economy as a much bigger problem for baseball than performance-enhance drugs.” This is the first sentence of the article and it nearly summarizes the whole article. They are saying that Major League Baseball needs to be worried about the economy affecting their teams rather than the players that are using illegal substances. I think that Major League Baseball officials have less control over the economy than they have over the players. The economy will get back up soon but if the officials ignore steroid use, than pretty soon everyone baseball player is using steroids just to be able to compete. I don’t think that the Major League officials, other sports organizations and even fans want this because it affects nearly everyone in a negative way. Baseball won’t be fun to watch because everyone is hitting home runs and the officials would have lost control of the league by then. I think that most people don’t want that to happen and the Major League Baseball organization needs to step up to this problem.
I believe I have shown what the people, experts and I think about steroids in sports. The people seem to looking on at this problem as something that’s not their business. The experts are trying to find bigger problems that professional sports organizations and high school sports programs need to be addressing before they start dealing with steroids. I think that everyone involved with steroids one way or another should be doing something to prevent it. Steroids are a bigger problem in sports than you might think.
Portfolio: Final Exam
Where have all the parents gone? It’s true that with each new generation, the child becomes more and more independent until eventually the parent is a merely a person they have to cope with and get on with life. The parental control over children is losing its grip fast and if nothing is done to prevent it, parents would lose their children who then have to live and learn on their own. I remember being scared to death of my father when he would take his belt out and punish me. Now, I see my little brother causing mischief and my dad is nowhere to be found. My dad has left the responsibility of controlling and teaching a child the proper way to someone else. Now the question is to whom did these parents leave this enormous responsibility to?
This quote gives us a theory on what’s happening with the parents and their control over their children. There is a shocking end to this quote. It states, “As a result, we ignore rather than address one of the most important changes in American life: The decline in the power and standing of the nation’s parents.” While reading this quote I thought to myself, “How could this be?” Further on, the quote tells us how, “Increasingly, kids are portrayed as standing alone out there somewhere, cosmically parent-free.” These two quotes summarize the whole quote in a simple way. They are saying that around a dozen years ago, the power of America’s parents declined which caused their kids to be seen as alone, almost parent-free. I agree with this statement because it is true in my personal life.
My personal life experiences are quite comparable to this theory. For example, I used to do everything my dad ever told me when I was younger. Now that I’m older, I watch as my little brother has a hard time listening to what my dad tells him to do. My dad is slowly losing his control over my brother because he neglected to raise him like he raised me and my older brother back in Ukraine. Living in Ukraine was tough and we worked hard as a family to get to the next day. My dad made us do plenty of chores around the farm. Now, here in America, my little brother never does any chores. He sometimes has trouble doing something as simple as taking something to the garbage. My father promises to punish him nearly every day but he would usually forget. This is why I think that it’s the true that as the generation becomes newer, the less control the parents are having.
My personal life experiences somewhat support this theory. This is true because in a span of 10 years of my life, my parents went from 100 percent control to about 75 percent. This is not good, but it does back the theory that parents are declining in power and standing. My parents went from having little kids doing what their parents told them to do, to little kids causing mischief, half-knowing that they will probably get away with it, punishment free. This is not good for the parents and their children because the children will be drawn to the evils of this world and by then it might be too late for the parents to fix their mistakes.
I have also heard of many experiences that show the consistent decline in the parent’s power. There have been many times where my cousin would come over to my house really mad. I would ask him what happened and each time he said he got in a really big fight with one or both of his parents. I know I get in a lot of fights with my parents but they usually end when they threaten to take my phone or one of my privileges away. My cousin on the other hand apparently has bigger fights with his parents. They have lost the control and power in his life because he currently has his own life and his parents don’t affect his life in a major way anymore.
This theory certainly doesn’t have a happy ending to it. If this theory were to be true, then the children of these powerless parents would be forced to find a different role model. This is not the way any parent would want their child beginning the transition into this world. This role model most likely won’t be very involved or positive for this child. I know this for a fact because my little brother looks up to me. He would always want to do what I was doing. I even got him interested in sports as much as me. I would have liked it better if my little brother looked up to both me and my father. This way he gets to choose whether he wants to grow up like his father, a reliable and responsible man.
In my opinion, a different way to help the parents help their children is to support the parents. This way the parents can use this support on their children and if a child is supported by their parents in all aspects of their life, then the parents have become powerful role models. A supporting quote says, “The best way to help our children tomorrow is to support parents today.” The problem is that the society does not support the parents because they draw the children away from them. For example, a child would rather stay inside and watch some cartoon than go outside and play. The society needs to change the way they communicate to the children. They need to find a way to show the children that they need their parents. The parents, of course, need to know the right way to raise their children also.
I think that there is a way for parents to start getting some control over their children’s lives. They will need to start at the beginning, the younger the child, the better. They also need to find a way of always incorporating their ideas and ways, so that the child may see a responsible and correct way to handle or do something. Also, parents need not to argue with their kids on a daily basis. It is hard to start making something positive out of a parent to child relationship when you are constantly in a fight. Start with these first couple of ideas and the rest will be history.
Portfolio: Essay 4
I choose to write about the subject of steroids in sports because I am extremely interested in sports and when something like steroids gets involved with sports, I like to know about it. Steroids are a certain drug that causes growth in a human being hormone when it is taken. That’s why they are sometimes called HGH or human growth hormone. They are illegal to high school students and players that are involved in any professional sports organization that does not allow their players to take steroids. Yet both students and players have broken the rules now and in the past. This is where we get the problem of steroids in sports.
Using steroids on any professional or nonprofessional sports organization classifies in the same category as cheating. This can be compared to any other interest one might have. For example, if someone is interested in cars, then someone using steroids in sports can be compared to someone stealing a car. Now that person has a better car than just like a player using steroids would be stronger than his opponent or competition. This is my opinion of course and because there is another side to this subject, using steroids in sports is an argumentative problem. I picked out three different articles with three different perspectives on steroids in a particular sport. I will show you what I thought of steroids before and after I read and analyzed these articles.
My view on steroids before I read these articles was laid back because I thought it was a minor problem that would be fixed immediately. One of the articles, “Sports and Drugs,” has a sub article that is focused on steroid use among younger teens. This article got me thinking that maybe steroids are becoming a bigger problem as time moves on. The first line just summed up the whole article. It says, “Forty percent of high school seniors say steroids are easy to obtain (618).” I think that in order to fix this problem, you must start at the beginning. In this case, the roots of steroids begin in high school. First, school officials or someone else needs to make it hard for students to obtain steroids and if they happen to use them, they need to find a way to catch these students. After that, they need to be punished enough so that the next time they will think twice before making the same mistake again. I believe that if you start in high school, the next levels will be easier to handle.
My view on steroids has changed considerably mainly due to a particular article. This article is called, “High School Testing Loses Momentum.” There are a couple of reasons why this article has changed my perspective on steroids. One reason is the fact that Texas, Illinois and New Jersey are the only states that currently have random steroid-testing programs. This article states that even these last three programs haven’t had much success lately. My opinion is that steroid users are getting much smarter. They are looking for the steroids that can’t be tested yet. To back my opinion, the article also shows that, “Texas reported seven positives out of 19,000 tests done through the school year.” Clearly, the reason all these programs are being thrown away is because they are not finding enough positive tests. Steroid users are still out there according to article, Sports and Drugs.” On page 618, it says, “The Centers of Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) says the number of boys who have used steroids at least once increased from 4.1 percent to 6.8 percent between 1991 and 2003.” Combined with the female steroid users, it comes out to roughly one million high school steroid users. A problem it certainly is, these steroid-testing programs need to toughen up and find some better ways of catching these illegal substance users.
“Poll: Economy Bigger Problem for MLB.” This is an article which shows the audiences’ view on steroids in Major League Baseball. According to the sources, “more than 80 percent of people who follow sports believed there is current use of human growth hormone in baseball, but those same fans perceive the economy as a much bigger problem for baseball than performance-enhance drugs.” This is the first sentence of the article and it nearly summarizes the whole article. They are saying that Major League Baseball needs to be worried about the economy affecting their teams rather than the players that are using illegal substances. I think that Major League Baseball officials have less control over the economy than they have over the players. The economy will get back up soon but if the officials ignore steroid use, than pretty soon everyone baseball player is using steroids just to be able to compete. I don’t think that the Major League officials, other sports organizations and even fans want this because it affects nearly everyone in a negative way. Baseball won’t be fun to watch because everyone is hitting home runs and the officials would have lost control of the league by then. I think that most people don’t want that to happen and the Major League Baseball organization needs to step up to this problem.
I believe I have shown what the people, experts and I think about steroids in sports. The people seem to looking on at this problem as something that’s not their business. The experts are trying to find bigger problems that professional sports organizations and high school sports programs need to be addressing before they start dealing with steroids. I think that everyone involved with steroids one way or another should be doing something to prevent it. Steroids are a bigger problem in sports than you might think.
Using steroids on any professional or nonprofessional sports organization classifies in the same category as cheating. This can be compared to any other interest one might have. For example, if someone is interested in cars, then someone using steroids in sports can be compared to someone stealing a car. Now that person has a better car than just like a player using steroids would be stronger than his opponent or competition. This is my opinion of course and because there is another side to this subject, using steroids in sports is an argumentative problem. I picked out three different articles with three different perspectives on steroids in a particular sport. I will show you what I thought of steroids before and after I read and analyzed these articles.
My view on steroids before I read these articles was laid back because I thought it was a minor problem that would be fixed immediately. One of the articles, “Sports and Drugs,” has a sub article that is focused on steroid use among younger teens. This article got me thinking that maybe steroids are becoming a bigger problem as time moves on. The first line just summed up the whole article. It says, “Forty percent of high school seniors say steroids are easy to obtain (618).” I think that in order to fix this problem, you must start at the beginning. In this case, the roots of steroids begin in high school. First, school officials or someone else needs to make it hard for students to obtain steroids and if they happen to use them, they need to find a way to catch these students. After that, they need to be punished enough so that the next time they will think twice before making the same mistake again. I believe that if you start in high school, the next levels will be easier to handle.
My view on steroids has changed considerably mainly due to a particular article. This article is called, “High School Testing Loses Momentum.” There are a couple of reasons why this article has changed my perspective on steroids. One reason is the fact that Texas, Illinois and New Jersey are the only states that currently have random steroid-testing programs. This article states that even these last three programs haven’t had much success lately. My opinion is that steroid users are getting much smarter. They are looking for the steroids that can’t be tested yet. To back my opinion, the article also shows that, “Texas reported seven positives out of 19,000 tests done through the school year.” Clearly, the reason all these programs are being thrown away is because they are not finding enough positive tests. Steroid users are still out there according to article, Sports and Drugs.” On page 618, it says, “The Centers of Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) says the number of boys who have used steroids at least once increased from 4.1 percent to 6.8 percent between 1991 and 2003.” Combined with the female steroid users, it comes out to roughly one million high school steroid users. A problem it certainly is, these steroid-testing programs need to toughen up and find some better ways of catching these illegal substance users.
“Poll: Economy Bigger Problem for MLB.” This is an article which shows the audiences’ view on steroids in Major League Baseball. According to the sources, “more than 80 percent of people who follow sports believed there is current use of human growth hormone in baseball, but those same fans perceive the economy as a much bigger problem for baseball than performance-enhance drugs.” This is the first sentence of the article and it nearly summarizes the whole article. They are saying that Major League Baseball needs to be worried about the economy affecting their teams rather than the players that are using illegal substances. I think that Major League Baseball officials have less control over the economy than they have over the players. The economy will get back up soon but if the officials ignore steroid use, than pretty soon everyone baseball player is using steroids just to be able to compete. I don’t think that the Major League officials, other sports organizations and even fans want this because it affects nearly everyone in a negative way. Baseball won’t be fun to watch because everyone is hitting home runs and the officials would have lost control of the league by then. I think that most people don’t want that to happen and the Major League Baseball organization needs to step up to this problem.
I believe I have shown what the people, experts and I think about steroids in sports. The people seem to looking on at this problem as something that’s not their business. The experts are trying to find bigger problems that professional sports organizations and high school sports programs need to be addressing before they start dealing with steroids. I think that everyone involved with steroids one way or another should be doing something to prevent it. Steroids are a bigger problem in sports than you might think.
Portfolio: Essay of Choice
Schizophrenia is something that I used to have for a long time. I had it all through high school and even up until I wrote the first essay in this class. This is something that you get from writing a rough draft and instead of writing your ideas properly you stress out, you cough out your sentences slowly. These sentences tend to not make any sense at all when they are read out loud. There is no flow to this kind of writing. I’m still working on this aspect of my writing progress but it is getting much better than it used to be.
I compare this problem as a basketball player in a game. Some basketball players are wound up, stressed out or just in a bad mood. These kinds of players do not perform very well. The players that are more successful are the ones that are relaxed, calm and because of this, they allow the game to come to them. I relate this to writing an essay because to write a good essay, you need to let the ideas and words come to you instead of trying to reach out and grab them. For example, I love to play basketball with my friends a couple times a week. I used to come excited to play but when I we would start playing, I would miss some shots. Eventually, I would get frustrated, play bad defense and it would turn out to be a bad day for me. Also, if I miss a couple of shots, I would lose confidence and hardly every shoot again for the rest of the game. Writing has the same effect on me. When I would look at every word and sentence while writing a rough draft, I would get frustrated when something wouldn’t make sense. I would even give up sometimes not even completing the assignment.
This quarter started out quite well. My first essay was not too bad. I had a few glimpses of schizophrenia but I got through it. The second essay was a little better but I noticed that I kept going back to my old habits a couple of times. The good thing about this is that by the time I was at the third paragraph, I was writing freely without schizophrenia. Also, after writing a rough draft, I do go back and look at my essays. I can relate this to what Tobias Wolff said, “Later on, you have to look back at your work with a very cold eye, as if you were editing someone else’s”. I can see now that I am doing better and better as the quarter rolls on.
My instructor Craig McKenney has described how to write a good essay and shown us examples of good and bad ways to writing. All writing is writing and there is no wrong answer is writing but there are some aspects to writing that sound better in an essay. For example, Craig explained how we need to have the flow in our essays. I learned about the flow and I am now currently trying to incorporate this into my essays. It is still a problem but I’m working on it. Writing with schizophrenia results in an essay with no flow. It has pauses and sentences out of place.
Schizophrenia is a problem among writer’s who are just beginning and even the writer’s that have not been shown the way to write a rough draft normally. I believe that the foundation of an essay is the rough draft and if you have a bad foundation consistently, then your rough drafts will be bad, consistently. This can be fixed during editing but it becomes a pain fixing the parts of your essay that could be very well done in the rough draft. It makes writing easier, fun and better sounding.
I compare this problem as a basketball player in a game. Some basketball players are wound up, stressed out or just in a bad mood. These kinds of players do not perform very well. The players that are more successful are the ones that are relaxed, calm and because of this, they allow the game to come to them. I relate this to writing an essay because to write a good essay, you need to let the ideas and words come to you instead of trying to reach out and grab them. For example, I love to play basketball with my friends a couple times a week. I used to come excited to play but when I we would start playing, I would miss some shots. Eventually, I would get frustrated, play bad defense and it would turn out to be a bad day for me. Also, if I miss a couple of shots, I would lose confidence and hardly every shoot again for the rest of the game. Writing has the same effect on me. When I would look at every word and sentence while writing a rough draft, I would get frustrated when something wouldn’t make sense. I would even give up sometimes not even completing the assignment.
This quarter started out quite well. My first essay was not too bad. I had a few glimpses of schizophrenia but I got through it. The second essay was a little better but I noticed that I kept going back to my old habits a couple of times. The good thing about this is that by the time I was at the third paragraph, I was writing freely without schizophrenia. Also, after writing a rough draft, I do go back and look at my essays. I can relate this to what Tobias Wolff said, “Later on, you have to look back at your work with a very cold eye, as if you were editing someone else’s”. I can see now that I am doing better and better as the quarter rolls on.
My instructor Craig McKenney has described how to write a good essay and shown us examples of good and bad ways to writing. All writing is writing and there is no wrong answer is writing but there are some aspects to writing that sound better in an essay. For example, Craig explained how we need to have the flow in our essays. I learned about the flow and I am now currently trying to incorporate this into my essays. It is still a problem but I’m working on it. Writing with schizophrenia results in an essay with no flow. It has pauses and sentences out of place.
Schizophrenia is a problem among writer’s who are just beginning and even the writer’s that have not been shown the way to write a rough draft normally. I believe that the foundation of an essay is the rough draft and if you have a bad foundation consistently, then your rough drafts will be bad, consistently. This can be fixed during editing but it becomes a pain fixing the parts of your essay that could be very well done in the rough draft. It makes writing easier, fun and better sounding.
Portfolio: Reflective Letter
This has been a good quarter for me and Writing 101 is a big part of the reason. I came into class knowing how to write a good essay the high school way and now I am able to write a college level essay that even I enjoy reading to myself. After learning the basics, my essay’s got much better as the weeks went by. My first essay wasn’t horrible but I remember having a lot of revision to do. Now, I can write a good quality essay and revise it under a normal time and these essays turn out to be much better because of the skills I adapted to over the course of this quarter.
I think that there is something particular about my essays that I would to draw attention to. The final draft and rough draft of my essays stay somewhat similar. I revise the grammar, spelling and the other mistakes that I make while writing a rough draft. In the end though, both the rough and final draft are nearly the same essay. This can be looked at in two different perspectives. I look at it as; a good writer will freely write a rough draft and after that revise any errors, but if the writer is confident in his paper, then he will keep the essay in the voice that it was originally written in. I think that a common mistake made by many students is when they pick-a-part their rough draft and when they are done putting it back together, it sounds nothing like the voice that they had when they were writing the rough draft. I look at this as a strength that I have in my essays. My essays come out to be in my voice and my voice only.
I have a couple of other strengths that I tend to easily incorporate into my essays. As I recall, my essays have always had a strong introduction. I have a nice first sentence, thesis statement and hook. These three parts are crucial to have in the introductory paragraph. Without them, any essay can start out flat and boring. In my body paragraphs, I have pretty good topic sentences and in my opinion, really good commentary to back them up. I look at this as a strength in all my essays. Finally, good grammar, good word choice and nice sentence structures are some of the aspects that tend to be adequate in my papers. These can be fixed with some work and I am glad to say that they are becoming a smaller problem the more essays I write.
As I have strengths in my essays, I have a couple of weaknesses also. Transitions have always been a problem for. After learning that using high school transition phrases is not acceptable in college, I struggled to find a way for the flow of my essay get from one paragraph to another. I am working on this problem but it has become a bigger problem than I had originally thought it would. Also, having weak transitions takes a toll of the flow of an essay because when you can’t get the rhythm of an essay smoothly from one paragraph to another, it comes out sounding confusing. The reader ends up having to scramble thoughts around trying to make any sense of what is going on in the paper. This is a major problem but lately I have shown some positive progress.
To sum up a whole quarter of this Writing 101 class would take many sheets of paper. I learned everything I needed to know about writing to continue my journey through college and beyond. This class was a bumpy ride for me due to the problems that I had to overcome to write a successful paper. I am personally glad that I took Writing 101 in Highline Community College.
I think that there is something particular about my essays that I would to draw attention to. The final draft and rough draft of my essays stay somewhat similar. I revise the grammar, spelling and the other mistakes that I make while writing a rough draft. In the end though, both the rough and final draft are nearly the same essay. This can be looked at in two different perspectives. I look at it as; a good writer will freely write a rough draft and after that revise any errors, but if the writer is confident in his paper, then he will keep the essay in the voice that it was originally written in. I think that a common mistake made by many students is when they pick-a-part their rough draft and when they are done putting it back together, it sounds nothing like the voice that they had when they were writing the rough draft. I look at this as a strength that I have in my essays. My essays come out to be in my voice and my voice only.
I have a couple of other strengths that I tend to easily incorporate into my essays. As I recall, my essays have always had a strong introduction. I have a nice first sentence, thesis statement and hook. These three parts are crucial to have in the introductory paragraph. Without them, any essay can start out flat and boring. In my body paragraphs, I have pretty good topic sentences and in my opinion, really good commentary to back them up. I look at this as a strength in all my essays. Finally, good grammar, good word choice and nice sentence structures are some of the aspects that tend to be adequate in my papers. These can be fixed with some work and I am glad to say that they are becoming a smaller problem the more essays I write.
As I have strengths in my essays, I have a couple of weaknesses also. Transitions have always been a problem for. After learning that using high school transition phrases is not acceptable in college, I struggled to find a way for the flow of my essay get from one paragraph to another. I am working on this problem but it has become a bigger problem than I had originally thought it would. Also, having weak transitions takes a toll of the flow of an essay because when you can’t get the rhythm of an essay smoothly from one paragraph to another, it comes out sounding confusing. The reader ends up having to scramble thoughts around trying to make any sense of what is going on in the paper. This is a major problem but lately I have shown some positive progress.
To sum up a whole quarter of this Writing 101 class would take many sheets of paper. I learned everything I needed to know about writing to continue my journey through college and beyond. This class was a bumpy ride for me due to the problems that I had to overcome to write a successful paper. I am personally glad that I took Writing 101 in Highline Community College.
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