8/25/11
Today class was mostly introductions. The professor spent the first half of class going over a
rather lengthy syllabus, followed by a short exercise used to help her students get to know one another
a group of 3 including myself volunteered to present The Revolt of the Cockroach People on September
13th and the 27th
8/31/11
Today in class we wrote an essay on the topic of dying languages. Although I took a rather
critical approach to the preservation of language involved in the writing I found myself enjoying the
writing. I finished earlier than most and wrote 3 &1/2 Pages. That was more than most discovered a
new benefit to being in college as well, Finish class early? Then go ahead and leave early no more sitting
and waiting for an annoying bell to ding in your ears.
9/1/11
Today was supposed to be some sort of writing workshop. I found it less exciting than the
previous class days, but I suppose that is to be expected. We scored some essays which brought me
back to high school heck we’ve been grading essays to “improve our writing” in class since middle
school. The one good thing about today’s class I suppose is the fact that we get to do some sort of
autobiography thing. I really enjoy the creative writing process involved with that type of thing.
9/8/11
Today in class we had our first presentation on Oscar Zeta Acosta’s The Revolt of the Cockroach
People. The presenters chose to use a jeopardy-like format. Our team out of the four quickly took the
lead and stayed there for the rest of the game. Once the game had ended and our discussion of the
book died down we took a quick break and then began to write a draft of our autobiographical essay
due on the 20th.
9/13/11
Today was my first GLD or Group led discussion on the book The Revolt of the Cockroach People.
We lasted well past the target time and I would say that we did very well Kevin is a strong asset to the
team and genuinely enjoys the writing class I believe. Overall today went very well though I’ve let
myself fall somewhat behind in the essay writing which I will start on now.
9/15/11
Today we gave our autobiographies out to our partners in class. We have been instructed to
write about which tips we will take and which ones we won’t. I plan on taking most of the tips given for
my essay. Most of the feedback I received was a result of poor punctuation on my part and wasn’t given
for the writing itself though I do plan to go back through and rewrite quite a bit of it.
9/20/11
Today we turned in our first essay. There was a minor hiccup for me as I forgot to print out my
letter of intent along with the essay I had already written I ended up having to turn it in to Anne’s office
hours after class and spent quite a fair bit of time searching for her office. It all worked out in the end
though.
9/22/11
We had a short write about a landscape today I felt I did well though I wish I had had more time
to really go back and describe every little detail. I don’t feel like I did justice to the landscape I chose to
describe which was the view from my house which is really very unique and beautiful I’m worried my
writing might have come out a little bit bland.
9/27/11
Today was our final group led discussion for the class we implemented my idea of having
students move from one side of the class to another depending on the question. I felt it worked over all
but could have and should have been implemented better. My fellow classmates seemed to have fun
with it though and that was good hopefully it was slightly less bland than our original power point
discussion.
9/29/11
I accidently fell asleep early last night so I didn’t end up having a full draft to edit during class it
worked out well though I spent the period making revisions to the draft that I had come up with so far. I
Plan to be more descriptive in my essay and try to remove my use of words such as stuff and things. I
also looked for alternative ways to write things so that my testimonial flowed slightly better.
10/04/11
Today we had our next essay draft introduced. We were told to have our next book the house
with the blue bed by the 6th. I spent that morning listening to the professor lecture us for the most part.
She talked about essays and how to work them etc.
10/06/11
Today our testimonial essay was due. I remembered everything this time around and turned it
all in completely on time. Overall I feel pretty good about this essay. I believe I did a good job. The first
group led discussion the book The House With The Blue Bed was done today it was a fairly simple
discussion. Although, our group did win lollipops for answering the questions correctly. It was also a
media Day.
10/11/11
Today was the second group led discussion the book. The group leaders tasked everyone with
putting together a skit based upon the chapters. Our chapter was about dead bodies and how the
narrator was afraid of them until a friend of his surprised him with one. Following that we worked on
our next essay which seems like it will be difficult.
10/13/11
Rather unfortunately at a later date I discovered that the journals from about 4 weeks from
now back to this date had been deleted somehow luckily I had a backup save saved back to this point I
will attempt to construct the missing Journals from memory at this point.
Today we had a workshop with Professor Devrick we worked on citing our papers and came up
to the final conclusion in class that the best use of citing knowledge should be your own and that you
should be able to discover mistakes when using websites such as easy bib and others.
10/18/11
We had another group led discussion today once again on The House With the Blue Bed. After
that Anne went into some detail about our upcoming essays which are due on the 1st. The group
discussion went well and I got an accurate feel for the book.
10/20/11
We had another group led discussion today. It involved The House with the blue bed yet again.
The discussions are going well and sometimes what the other students in my class infer from the book is
quite interesting. I don’t always agree with what others believe and oftentimes I find my interpretations
to be quite different from the majority of other students but it is nice to get a different view on data.
10/25/11
Today was a media day as opposed to regular Class I chose to write my media day on a movie
called the golden Child. It starred Eddie Murphy and was a slightly more serious role than his normal
genre. I would place it more under an Action comedy than an outright comedy movie. I enjoyed the
change in pace from regular Class.
10/27/11
Due to the birth of her daughter class was although not canceled was changed so that students
were not required to be in the classroom instead the class period was to be spent refining your essays
which is how I spent the majority of my time. Unfortunately It really seems like I picked a rather nasty
topic for my essay and it is being quite difficult to really refine into a workable essay.
11/1/11
Class was canceled.
11/3/11
We came back to class today and had another workshop on our essays I made some progress on
my essay although it still feels like I have quite a while to go. It definitely cleared up a few things about
how our writing should be done and I felt class time served me well.
11/8/11
Today in class we turned in our final drafts for our historical context essay I think mine was an ok
not my best work but ok. I picked an ugly topic and my essay might have been a little ugly. We also
worked on our cover letters and learned where to start we spent some time working on them and tried
to get a first draft done. Then we spent the end of the class watching a Youtube video on the Honey
Badger.
11/10/11
More work was done today on our cover letters she is really pushing us to get them fleshed out
and done right and correctly I have a rough outline of mine done but definitely need to put in some
more work to get mine to the point where I’m ready and willing to submit it.
11/15/11
Today in class we spent yet more time on our cover letters things are going well on my cover
letters I have the process down and just need to spend the time finalizing them. I’m sure that with all
the work that goes into my final portfolio I will receive the grade I feel I deserve in the class of a B+ or so.
I’ve never been a strong writer in the academic sense, but I feel I definitely put in the work required for
such a grade.
11/17/11
We spent some time today just to work on things that students in class felt they needed help
with. And so for the most part it was the cover letters and such that were worked. I need to finish up
my cover letters and get them uploaded to my portfolio so that is what I spent the majority of the class
doing that day.
11/22/11
Today our teacher classified as a media day I did mine on an episode of the cartoon Futurama.
It worked well especially since that particular episode was unusually deep for that particular cartoon. It
focused on the loss of an old friend and the possibility of bringing him back via cloning which is relatively
commonplace in the show itself.
11/24/11
Thanksgiving wooo;)
11/29/11
We got back to class today our essays are due this Thursday so for the most part that’s what we
worked on my essay is coming along very well I’ve decided to do mine in the testimonial format and
since I’ve picked a topic that is very dear to me the essay itself is not proving much of a challenge since I
feel so strongly about what I’m writing about.
12/1/11
Today in class our essays were due electronically. I had mine successfully submitted the night
before so I wasn’t worried about that. As opposed to actually coming into the classroom today instead
Anne chose to Skype us all. It was an interesting way to do class I suppose definitely different I spent
the class time catching up on small writing projects that I had let myself fall behind in such as cover
letters It is crazy to think that the next time we meet cover letters will be due so this quite possibly will
be my last classroom journal for the class of writing 5. Hope it wasn’t too much of a boring read. The
class was as good as a 7:30 a.m. class can be.