Research Paper Free Write

I am most passionate about animals.  I've been a vegetarian for five years and I work at Petland.  Ever since I was little i've always loved animals.  I only have one cat and one dog, but when I live on my own I will have more.  With that being said, I also have a lot of passion for other animal related issues such as; animal testing, slaughter houses, and overall animal cruelty.
    As far as movies and television go, I'm a big twilight fan. Which of course means that I've read all the books about five times each.  I don't really follow any shows on t.v but I love watching Jersey Shore. When it comes to the outside world, I try not to pay attention to it.  The news pisses me off and all of the drama gives me a headache. I live in the country and everythings fine, as of now thats the only news that matters to me.
    One thing that I'm really into is piercings.  At the moment, I have thirteen.  It's not as weird as it sounds because most of them are on my ears.  It's a big adrenaline rush to get them, and I think that they look pretty.  I like tattoos as well but I only have one.  My thoughts are, I can take my piercings out when I'm older but the tattoos will be there forever.  I love the tattoo that I have though.  It's a set of angel wings on my right hip.  It has a lot of significant meaning to me that doesn't really make a lot of sense to anyone else.  It means a lot about strenth and independence and things of that nature.  It's really pretty and I love it.

blog #3

I hated the informal summary.  I do not work well in groups, and I hate writing with other people.  When I have to work with other people I feel very pressured and regardless of my partners, I feel like my work is being judged.  I'm not very good at expressing my opinions, and when you have to collaborate with other people, that is incredibly important.  I get clammed up when I'm in a group, and then I feel like I'm not participating enough.  Once I get to that point it's all over.
    My group didn't actually do the writing process together.  We all wrote separately and then put everything together to make one whole paper.  That made the assignment a little better, but it was still uncomfortable.
    The informal summary was a lot better.  Since I was able to write the whole thing by myself and choose which article I liked the best, I was able to write it a lot easier.  The paper really didn't take that long to write out and I didn't mind it at all.  I also like the topic of obesity and fast food related health problems.  That fired me up and the whole thing was relatively painless.

blog #2

Writing the in-class diagnostic essay was pretty difficult for me.  There were a few reasons behind this, A. it was the first paper that I had written in four months. B. It's difficult for me to write on the spot. and C. I have a hard time writing papers on subjects that I have no passion for.
    If I could write this paper over again, I would probably try to brainstorm a little better.  Once I decided on what side of the argument that I was going to take I just jumped right in.  If I would have taken more time to think out the paper it would have taken me less time overall because I wouldn't have gotten stuck after two paragraphs.
    I enjoy writing as long as I like what i'm writing about.  I'm not the kind of person who can sit down and just write pages and pages on anything.  When I do write on a topic that I like, I'm usually a pretty good writer and get very involved in my writing.  The kind of writing that I like is usually free writes or topics that have very loose guidelines.  I'm not very good at structured writing and I usually get frustrated and lose my train of thought easily.  If I can't get emotionally attached to my writing, it isn't good.

blog #1

In the first section of readings, the biggest thing that was different from what I had learned in the past is identifying other people's arguments and proving why they are wrong.  In high school, the focus is more on building your points and not leaving room for others opinions.  I also liked the section on using informal vocabulary.  It has always been taught that writing needs to be extremely formal and cannot be relaxed or casual.  It helped how they showed formal next to informal and you could see that it was okay. I think my favorite section was the section on entering class discussions.  As it has probably already been observed, I don't talk very much in school.  Reading this section did help. It made the general idea of speaking up a little easier.  I can't promise that it will make me overly responsive, but it does help show how to jump in the conversations without feeling awkward or getting stumped.