football sunday anybody?

Sundays. Sitting in my bed, under my favorite teal blanket, all snuggled and warm. This is my kind of Sunday. Family weekend just ended, and it reminded me how much I appreciate them.  Even though their gone, today will be fun filled with bucket loads of homework and Sunday football! Football makes all things better. So does food. Food, football, and my brand new 49er hoodie all add up to the perfect Sunday.

Back to the homework part…So on the 27^th, my class was given a piece of writing called “Writing a Life” by Katherine Bomer. It talked about how revision is healthy when it comes to writing. In my WID, I talked about how stubborn when dealing with revisions. I hate changing my original ideas. I feel like I came up with the stuff I did for a reason, and why should I get rid of my originality. See, I told you I’m stubborn.

Now that I read the piece by Bomer again it makes me wonder a little more about revision. Yea, I like to keep my original ideas but my original ideas can sometimes be bland. Revision doesn’t necessarily mean I have to change my idea entirely but I can continue on with it – run with it. I can create new things from my original idea, go in detail, or just get more creative. Rereading this piece my Bomer has kind of allowed me to be more open with revision…Now I don’t mean that it’ll be easy, but I definitely want to try it more often. I want to start getting feedback from other people with my writings. I think advice and revision can only make my writing better. Couldn’t hurt.

 

 

49ers!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!

$12.95 Wi-Fi

I am sitting in a Westin hotel room in downtown Charlotte, trying to relax, when I get the urge to do my homework. Why not? It’s 10 pm and I want to sleep in tomorrow so I’m just going to do it now. I’m here alone while my mom and aunt are at a Bachelorette party and I’m stuck here with the flu. Figures.  The irritating thing is Wi-Fi is $12.95 to use…Seriously? People charge to use Wi-Fi?? So instead of writing this directly on my blog, I’m writing this on a Word Doc and then tomorrow I will copy & paste this on my blog. I kind of like writing it on a Word Doc first, it’s easier. Moving on…

This WID is one of my favorite ones for sure. I chose one from class, this past Thursday I believe. It is from this story called Girl by Jamaica Kincaid. This author writes her stories in a very different way. I’m not sure how she came up with the idea to write this way but it gets points across in a differently. I really liked how she wrote her story. It’s hard to explain through a blog, you just have to read it for yourself. https://docs.google.com/file/d/0BwM_mqgmQbT3S2YzUTlfYkluOXM/edit

For the WID, we had to pick an idea that dealt with our literacy narrative, and write it kind of like Jamaica Kincaid did in her story. Now at first I thought it would be kind of difficult just because I’ve never written anything the way she did. All of the essays I have done have been like… point-blank I guess. I’ve never really tried anything different. To me, the way I write essays is the way I’m most comfortable with. I can easily get a point across and explain it in terms that I feel are understandable. But this made me think. All my essays have been about something else, and never narratives. In elementary school I wrote narratives but never in high school. You aren’t really given opportunities to speak from your mind, or tell a story. Usually we are given a couple topics to choose from. Rarely are we able to tell our own story about our own idea. So the way Kincaid wrote her story gave me a new idea. I like how she wrote her story, and I want to try it myself one day.

In class, we were able to write our own story like Kincaid as I said earlier. Here’s mine!

 

 

I’m proud of mine because Lacy said it was really good and she liked it. (:

 

Because I Can

I’ve started this blog reflection with three different sentences and erased them, and I’m not sure why. I am so distracted right now. Someone really important to me was here for the weekend and I just had to say goodbye to him. It was extremely difficult and I just want him to come back. I should probably stay on task now that I’m starting my Sunday homework fest. I am also feeling a little sick to my stomach which is definitely not helping me what to do homework. But here goes…

I am going to reflect on the WID from last Thursday. Lacy showed us this website called www.wdydwyd.com .WDYDWYD stands for “Why Do You Do What You Do?” It’s this site where I think people can post different things on that answer the question. People post pictures, videos, stories, and just a ton of other things that could help answer the question in a way that other people can observe and understand.

While Lacy was scrolling through the website, I decided that it might be easier to just go to the website myself, so I did. I found a few that I thought were particularly interesting. There was a post that was a picture of woman holding a sign that said “because I can,” and to me, I really love that. It reminds me of the freedoms we have as Americans. We have the freedom to express our feelings, just like we do in these blog reflections. Freedom of speech allows us to say whatever we want and feel which I appreciate the most out of all our freedoms. This sign makes me think of personalities, and how personalities are a way we express ourselves. Who would we be without our personalities?

Time After Time

Another day, another reflection.

 

It is that time again. To choose another Writing Into the Day thing. This time was much more difficult to decide which writing than the first time. Today is Friday and the first day of my weekend so I'm trying to focus since it's 2 in the afternoon and I'm still in my pajamas in bed. I’m a tad distracted so hopefully my blog will make some sense.

 
Today I chose the Writing Timelines we had to create for homework the other night. When I was doing it, I didn’t really think about how it was meant to help us. Maybe it isn’t supposed to help us – I don’t know. The Writing Timeline did a little extra for me though. It helped me understand a little bit more about why I am the writer that I am today.

 
Before I go in depth on what it did for me, I’ll explain what the Writing Timeline was. The task was to choose at least five memories (or more) that we believed shaped us as writers. Before creating the Timeline, Lacy, my teacher, gave us a list of questions to answer  what we remember about our early writing. I unfortunately do not remember the questions specifically, but they were pretty simple so it’s no big deal.

           
So for me, the Writing Timeline made me remember back to elementary school when we first had the super easy prompts. I remember using stupid transition words like “first, second, last.” It is kind of funny how many other words there are to use other than “first, second, last.” My next event on my Timeline was when I was in 8^th grade and I joined my school yearbook for the first time. It was a super easy class but it was the first step in my yearbook career. I had to take pictures of kids I’d never met, write stories about sports I knew nothing about, and overall it just allowed me to open up and become less awkward…which I’m thankful for. I loved yearbook. I skipped a couple years until my next event which was my giant research paper for my junior year. I wrote it on the correlation between aggression and violent video games. The paper gave me the ability to write an extremely personal opinion on something very modern. I got a really good grade on that paper and it assured me of my writing abilities. I shouldn’t second guess myself. My fourth event on my Timeline was when I became Editor-In-Chief of my high school yearbook in 12^th grade. Best moment of my life. It was an amazing experience. I learned so much about journalism from the five years I was in yearbook. Being Editor-In-Chief is the most gratifying event on that Timeline. My final event on my Timeline is my first college paper. I turned it in last week, and I don’t know my grade yet but it’s making so nervous. Turning that paper in made me question all of the skills and everything I’ve ever learned about writing.

 Have I really been a good writer all this time? Who am I trying to kid?

 Overall, the Writing Timeline helped me comprehend why I write the way do.

Oh My Mali

So basically “Writing Into the Day” is something my English teacher wants us to do. We are shown some kind of multimedia something, a poem, or something like that. Then we write what comes to mind afterwards. It can be completely random or actually related. I don’t think it matters but I think she wants us to just practice expressing our thoughts? And put them into writing, which then helps us become better writers? I am not exactly sure but I hope to understand it better by the end of the semester. I think it is really cool creative way of starting a class. It’s not boring, and we get to say what we want. Kind of like what this blog is for.

More specifically, this blog is meant for me to explain more in depth about a particular WID (Writing Into the Day). The one I end up choosing felt like I could easily express my opinion, and the other ones really did not interest me at all, honestly.

Personally, I decided to choose a "Writing Into the Day" thing that is fresh from my mind. One that I knew I could really elaborate on because I know that I just watched it and wrote a response to it in this class period. We watched a video from Taylor Mali that (at least I think) was supposed to show how people in America are losing their declarative voice. When it comes to speaking about something we have a strong opinion about, we tend to use words that really have no meaning (like the word 'really' for example). Words like 'just, like, really, ya, kind of" used in a sentence where we are trying to state an opinion can kind of dumb down what we are really trying to say. These words make it more difficult to describe our feelings.

In my writing, I talked about how I agree with what Mali is saying in his poem. As a young adult, I know exactly what he means because I use words like those in almost every sentence.  It is kind of sad actually. So many scholars took their time writing dictionaries, and perfecting the English language. And we use slang and other imperfections that take away from the language. It’s embarrassing.

I tried to find the link to the video, but i couldn't. So here is a picture of his face just for fun.