Final essay

Here is a link to my final essay.

final blog

I would have to say that my writing has improved over this long, long semester. These blogs have annoyed the hell out of me and I have absolutely dreaded writing them. I have come to the long thought out conclusion though that even though I have hated just about every single blog that I’ve done, they have improved my writing not only in style but in complexity. I learned to communicate in the world of blogging and expressing my ideas with adequate information to back my character and expertise up. The multiple reading that we did, even though I never read one all the way through, helped in some way. It really wasn’t to improve my writing but rather to give expressions and ideas of what I already do in my writing. It’s nice to know what you are doing in your writing so that you can express why you chose to put down the words that you did. Back to the stinking blogs once again though. I absolutely hate the damn things. I understand that they helped us in class to express our thoughts on what we read and etc. However, we did this in class the next day. Now I know that not everyone had an opinion in class and some really never said anything in class, but if the discussions were more in depth and required more student involvement, more people may have spoken up. The essays were a very important part of the class that I strongly believed were needed for the class in order to judge and asses the improvement of the students. They were difficult but easily written if the student was knowledgeable in the subject area. They found out how much the student has been paying attention to the objectives of the class and are most of the grade[as they should be].

Essay

I would have posted my essay last night but it was late. Here is the LINK to it.

Pulling Your Hair Out.

I haven't gotten a full draft for my essay yet. I'm working on it and really thinking about it. I know the draft was due today but I have just ran so many ideas together and different thoughts that I have no place to start at. I'm working on an outline and should have a draft done completely tuesday.

Has anyone heard about the New Mexico woman's soccer player. I'm posting a link to her article on the NY Times, to the story on ESPN, and this odd video on the huffington post. This is going to be my story for the essay. It's been all over the internet and the blogs.

Taking an approach.

Hello Everyone. Sorry I missed class today but I'm still not feeling to well. This is my post from yesterday. I didn't have an internet connection or access to the internet so it is late plus my sickness didn't help anything whatsoever.
As far as taking an approach goes. It sounds a lot like a compilation of forwarding and countering to me. With forwarding you present your own ideas on a subject, while in countering you use the "Yes, but" method. Taking an approach is using a persons thoughts and ideas yet improving and expanding on them. There is no longer restating the same ideas as was seen at an elementary level essay. It's like using another person's ideas to prove your points and beliefs. I'm not an expert on this situation like Harris is but what I have picked up is the fact that it is expressing the ideas of another using your own ideas and thoughts on the matter and expanding those ideas, or it is the process of using the ideas of another person to contribute to your own ideas. I know I'm rambling on and on but I really can't find to much to say on the subject. I thought it was pretty straight forward myself. I can't really wright to much on a subject that I find as simple as this one was to me. I really can't say to much about the subject. However, I did realize when reading the article though how much a good writer will do this and not even realize it. I did it mostly through high school and our teacher never called it "taking an approach." We just did our work.

Revising Iliteracy

Either Hedge is really angry with the American people or he is right. I don’t know if enough people are paying attention to him but we should all read his article “America the Illiterate.” Let’s face it we as a population are just about retarded. There are people out there that can’t do simple math to balance their checkbook, with a calculator I might add. I’ve seen it! There are also people that at a grocery store try to use a coupon on the wrong bottle of detergent. They’re excuse is that it looks like the one in the picture. That may be true but there is always a size or special scent that people can’t see in the picture. I worked as a cashier for a small chain of grocery stores in my home area and I can’t tell you how dumb the average population is. This grocery store that I worked in wasn’t in the best neighborhood, but I’m not saying these people were the scum of the earth either. These people were average middle class Americans. They all probably had a TV in their family room and a car in their garage. As Hedge defined the illiterates, these people probably couldn’t understand a loan contract from their bank but surely enough voted for Obama because they fell for simple mind games in his campaign. These illiterates are the mindless zombies that do the same thing every day following the time constraints put on themselves because they want to watch CSI at 9:00. I’m not the best reader in the world and admit that some things in hedge’s article I didn’t understand. This includes many of the complex words. However, I do have the mental capacity to understand what he was saying by trying to understand the words using in text clues, and thus I was able to read the article and find his message in it. Unlike Carr who thinks we as a people are being made stupid by Google, Hedge turns and says that we are stupid because we are entertained at a middle school level and choose not to challenge our minds so that we think at a higher level. We prefer pictures because it’s easier to understand the picture than read the words under it. Next thing we know we’ll be ordering our food from pop-up menus, far out dude.

Now I know I'm not going and doing what the prompt had exactly asked me to do and revised this blog and reposted it but I think I rather post it again to let you read it and then talk about it. Know I have come to the conclusion that in this previous article I was a little harsh of my brothers and sisters of the stars and stripes. People are really smart and can do a lot of amazing things. I understand that after a long hard day at the factory and shop that not to many people want to go home and think to hard. People want to go home and relax and give their minds a break. I understand. I really do cause I try to do the exact same thing if I can. The brain is like a muscle though. You need to continuously work it and use it or you could eventually lose your mind. I have two great examples of that in my life. My father's mother and My mother's grandmother. They are roughly the same age, and were both house wives for most of their lives. The biggest difference between the two however is what they did with their spare times and what they continue to do in their lives and their mental status. My father's mother, Althea, is as sharp as a tack still. She spends most of her time now is spent doing crosswords, sudoku, and other mind challenging games and puzzles. My great grandmother doesn't know the time of year any more. She thought it was thanksgiving on her birthday which is July 12. She has spent most of her life watching her stories. Now I'm not saying this is indefinite proof because there may be a lot more to the differences between them. Maybe I was right that the people are illiterate. They have lost the ability to use their mind in order to complete certain tasks because they haven't used their mind to do so. It's always been mind over matter, but what if our minds don't work?