Writing is not my forte. I don’t exactly enjoy it, and I’m not always very good at it. This week consisted largely of writing, particularly writing group essays. I am not always good at working in groups for projects or things of that nature either. So, basically, I thought this week sucked. I mean, I enjoyed it because I’m forever up for a challenge, but it was still lousy. The people I was in a group with have totally different voices and writing styles than I do. I’m also a bit of a control freak, so it was difficult for me to cope with the style of writing that developed from combining all of our own personal styles. On top of being a control freak, I am a very detail oriented person. The others in my group were not as much. That wasn’t working well for me. I wanted every sentence to be just right; utilize synonyms so that the essay would not be repetitive, have correct punctuation, take advantage of different paragraph structures, things like that. My group members weren’t too concerned with those things, and I think they got tired of me rewording and rewriting things. I feel like it helped to improve the essay though, so hopefully my critiquing actually did something good for us. I found a website from The Writing Center at UNC-Chapel Hill and the first, most important advice it gives for writing a group essay is to have a good attitude, because if there are bad vibes within the group, writing becomes even harder. We also peer edited a little bit this week, but I only did so for about ten minutes on Thursday, therefore I don’t have a whole lot to talk about. I did learn, however, that it is more important to help the writer get their point across clearly, and really give the reader a good understanding of the paper, than it is to correct their grammar, spelling, etc. This website provides some good tips about peer editing. P.S. This week was also super enjoyable because of homecoming. I love the chaos and stress that comes with being in the business leadership class at this time of year.
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A full week of school. The first full week of my senior year. I did quite a bit this week, not only in this class, but in the other aspects of my life as well. Focusing on AP Lit, I was very pleased with what I learned. I had never heard of TPCASTT-ing before, but now I have done it and I actually feel pretty good about it. Here is an example I found online. I found it very interesting and kind of fun. It really opened my eyes to how immensely different every person’s interpretation of the same poem can be. As well as learning how to TPCASTT poetry, I was given some good pointers on how to write a compare and contrast essay. Within my group of three people (put together according to summer reading) we finished our prewrite for our essay and began writing. I think it’s going reasonably well considering the amount of time we have spent on it. We've started with our body paragraphs, and left our introduction and conclusion until the end. One of the last things we did this week was a Poem of the Week forty minute write. I was not very confident in what I wrote, and I am a little bit scared to have anyone read it. I felt less confident in it than I had on any of the college application essays I have written prior to this, and I was not extremely happy with any of those either. I found this to be helpful with my applications. I am a little worried about going to college now, but with the help of this class and the amount of practice I am likely to get, I think it should be very helpful. I can’t wait to see what the rest of this class has in store for me. This week was a little bit odd because it was the first week of class. The first few days were spent as an introduction to the course, going over classroom rules and expectations, and various other “housekeeping” items. Friday was the first day I felt as if I actually learned something. Prior to watching the video about the study done at Harvard, I did not realize the vast differences between high school and college writing. Some of the differences discussed in the video that I felt were most important can be found here. I realized that I am probably a very poor writer by college standards. I have always received decent grades on my high school papers, but I am by no means an excellent writer. Some terrific points were made in the video. I was very happy with the information and advice that I took from the people interviewed. Points and advice such as always be comfortable while writing; different people will write the best at different points during the day; if it’s obvious, don’t bother saying it; there is always room for improvement; and a multitude of other things, some of which can be found on this website. Not only did this video supply me with advice and a new outlook on writing, it made me think about what other differences there are in transferring from high school to college. Things like the way your classes will be taught, the number of students in your classes, the difficulty level, and how assignments and things will be scored. I found this article to be helpful in that it offers a side-by-side comparison of college and high school in an easy to access and convenient format. I look forward to seeing what else I can take from this class in the upcoming weeks. |
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April 2017
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