Holiday Activity

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It's beginning to look a lot like Christmas: Up on the Housetop.

I'm dreaming of a White Christmas; Let it snow, let it snow, let it snow!

Up on the housetop, I heard the Bells on Christmas day.

Baby it's cold outside, so chestnuts roasting on an open fire.

Deck the halls: It's beginning to look a lot like Christmas.

Write a Letter of Encouragement to Yourself

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Dear future self,

You are capable of everything.  You have made it this far without too many issues.  Sure, you have gotten some less than desirable grades, but you have done amazing on a lot of school work.  Every struggle you have encountered, you have overcome; therefore, you have nothing to fear next semester.  You have learned a lot this semester and have grown in your talents as a writer and college student.

Next semester you will face challenges, but you can overcome them.  You are taking a lot of classes I know you will enjoy; you just have to go in with an open mind.  Do not make hasty judgments about classes because they might end up becoming your favorite class.

Always remember you are an awesome person and your grades do not define you.

You're amazing,
Me

Online Course Evaluations

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Dear Self,

When you write your first essay, write it in a quiet study room.  If you write it when you are with your friends, you will not do as well.  Also you should consider doing prewriting exercises, like outlines, to improve your organization.  I wish I had reread my paper more times and gotten more people to proofread it.  I wish I had considered going to the Think Tank.

Also, do not stress.  It is going to be okay and you are going to be able to finish all the papers on time.    However, do not leave everything until the last minute; it is never fun to stay up late working on a paper.

Just relax.  Blogs are not that bad.  They are actually sort of fun and really help with writing essays.  Put your full effort into them because they will save you time in the long run.

Good luck,
Me

Reflective Essay Organizing Idea and Thesis

Focus on a specific assignment, experience, or concept 

As I revised my QRG, I realized that I oftentimes lack clarity in my writing, and my organization could be improved with the usage of prewriting exercises, such as outlines or SOAPSTones, which my teacher and peer editors pointed out.

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Compare your experience writing in this course to past experiences

When writing previous essays, I rarely used prewriting exercises, such as outlines and SOAPSTones, which resulted in weaker, unclear essays with lacking organization.  In high school, it was feasible to write a well written essay without prewriting; however, I learned in my college English essay class that it is necessary to use prewriting exercises in order to write a well organized paper.

Reflect on strengths and weaknesses 

Even though I had good evidence and analysis, my arguments were weakened because I did not use prewriting exercises, like outlines, to organize my paragraphs into a cohesive order.

Focus on course objectives

Over the course of the semester, I developed my rhetorical analysis to recognize rhetorical strategies and use them as pieces of evidence in my paper, while also recognizing that I need to improve in my organization and clarity, and using this to improve subsequent essays.

Focus on your writing process/self-perception as a writer

I did not write my first essay with a lot of confidence, but as the semester progressed I learned what my faults and strengths were, and how to improve upon my faults, like focusing on organization, and how to use my strengths, like concrete evidence, to improve the quality of my paper.

I chose to use the thesis where I focused on a specific assignment, experience, or concept because it allows me to focus specifically on the QRG essay and to reflect on what my faults were and how I am going to improve them in my rewrite.  It is easy to integrate specific evidence from the original essay and the improvements in the rewrite using this thesis.  

I looked at Laura Shoemake's and Lekha's blog.

Audience and invention for reflective essay

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As we near the end of the semester, I would like to reflect on the development of my writing.  I did not start as the strongest organizer because I underestimated the importance of prewriting activities, like outlining.  I want to express my newfound affinity of bare bone outlines and SOAPSTone.  My primary audience for this essay would be Dr. Bell, my teacher, while my classmates would be my secondary audience because they will be peer-editing my reflection essay.  Dr. Bell has read my previous essays, so she knows how my paper has developed over the course of this semester.  I have taken a lot of her comments and tried to improve my essay using them as guidelines as to where to improve.  I will focus on specific examples in my essay and go into detail reflecting on what was wrong with the initial paper and how I improved it in my rewrite.  I will provide sufficient evidence and analysis of how I improved my essay.  Since I am writing how I improved my paper to my professor, I will write in a persuasive, mostly formal tone.  I plan on adding an anecdote from the struggle I had in rewriting to make it more personable and interesting to read.

Discovering Your Writing Process

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I would mostly consider myself a sequential composer.  Before this class, I rarely did any prewriting exercises because I just wanted to go straight into the essay and thought they were a waste of time.  However, I realized that outlines help a lot, but I still do not think I will use a detailed one; although, I realize the benefits, I will continue using my simplistic outlines because they do help gather my thoughts for organization.  I also thought that SOAPSTone was very helpful, and I will continue using this prewriting strategy.  I think I have developed more into a heavy planner over this year, but I still will start writing once I have rough idea what I am going to say. I tend to revise the paragraphs as I write them, so I tend not to rewrite substantial parts of my essay.  Overall, I have grown to appreciate the necessity of prewriting, but I still do not spend copious amount time of preplanning.

Refugee Rhetoric

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     Lately there has been a lot of unrest in Syria with the ISIS bombings there and a lot of Syrians have sought refugee in places like Europe and America.  However, many of these countries are closing their doors to Syrian refugees because they are concerned that terrorists will get into their country under the false pretense of needing shelter.  Even though America has always been seen as an open door to immigrants, they are closing their door on Syrian refugees.
     This cartoon is addressing American's against refugees coming to America, which is against American philosophy.  It is also shows how the country was founded by pilgrims escaping religious persecution, yet now we are not going to accept Syrians who are also suffering from religious persecution.  This is exemplified with a differing message and purpose.  The message is that we are restricting refugees from the Middle East because of terrorist attacks and subsequent threats.  The purpose wants us to rethink our attitude towards accepting refugees and consider our history and wonder where we would be if Indians had not accepted the first pilgrims when they were escaping religious persecution.  The reader must understand the story of Thanksgiving and what is happening in the Middle East right now to fully understand the cartoon and the purpose of it.