THE BLOG

I had never done a blog before so i was kind of unsure when you first said we were going to do a blog but i thought if was fun when we started doing it. being able to type is way better than having to write it all out like if we were doing a journal. We always did journals in high school and no one really liked them so this was much better!

Workshop

I didn't like what we did in class on tuesday, it was the same as what we did before when we were just getting feedback on our papers. I thought that we were actually going to have time to work on our papers in class instead we were reading other peoples papers, yes the feedback is nice but also the feedback we get from other students isnt always that helpful and would be more beneficial if we just had time to work on the papers.

Thankgiving!

I cannot wait for thanksgiving break! Me and my family are very close, and on thanksgiving we dont meet with other relatives its just my mom dad brother and sister. Most of our relatives live far away and we only see them for christmas, but i like that its only my family on thanksgiving. I do most of the cooking on thankgiving, my mom help and still makes sure that i do everything right but she has taught my well and now that is my job, my little sister like to try and help too. Thanksgiving morning we always make cinnemon rolls and watch the maci day parade, my mom has always wanted to go to it, i hope someday she gets too. Then we start making the food and my dad and my brother put the christmas lights on the roof, we eat at about 2 every year then me and my brother always get to do the wish bone, and my sister gets upset every year because she doesnt get too and my mom feels bad for her but its just mine and my brothers thing. Then later that night we put up the christmas tree and watch movies.. i love thanksgiving!

Outline

The outline was a lot of help in writing the literary analysis. By having the outline we knew what we were supposed to have in our paper and get it organized so it was a good way to make sure we included everything and once we got the outline finised we pretty much had our whole paper written just needed to type it up and add words so i am very glad that you made the outline for us.

THESIS

Richard Connell's, The Most Dangerous Game suggests life as being a game and we can end up in someone elses game if we go on the wrong path.

critical reading

When I re-read the stories critically I got a lot more out of them. Yes it was more time consuming but thats the way we need to start reading, we need to set enough time aside so we can do it the right way the first time and not have to go back and re do it. I picked out a lot more symbols but some were still hard to interperet. I think that it is something you will get better at the more you do and like anything you need to practice/ take notes/ highlight to get better at it and be able to read between the lines.

Symbols

A White Heron:
Cow,
Gun, symbol of power
White , purity
Heron, symbol of being unique
Tree, symbol for the mans body
the toad, symbolizes a distraction. acting like she wasnt listening so she would have to speck about the heron

The Yellow Wallpaper:
Wallpaper
her writing- freedom
barred windows- trapped
Bed stuck on the floor- shes not moving
color yellow- bight look on life

Women in the early 1900s

Despite the activities of the Suffrage's and the support of the Labour Party and some members of the Liberal Party, women still had very few rights in 1900 and no political rights.(Turmen 2000) In fact, the activities of the Suffrage's lost women the support of many people, including women, who viewed what they did with alarm. (Turmen)

At the start of the Twentieth Century, women had a very stereotypical role in British society. If married, they  stayed at home to look after the children while their husband worked and brought in a weekly wage. (Turmen 2000)If single, they did work which usually involved some form of service such as working as a waitress, cooking etc.(Turmen 2000) Many young women were simply expected to get married and have children. (Turmen 2000)The term "spinster", though not a term of outright abuse, was still seen as having some form of stigma attached to it......that you were not good enough to get a husband etc.

Turmen, Chris. Women in 1900. 2000. 2010 http://www.historylearningsite.co.uk/women_in_1900.htm.

A White Heron

The condition of women in the early 1900s
Women were maides and did all of the house work. Sylvia was scared to talk to others she could barely talk to the man that came up to her on the road. She grew fond of him though and kept him company when he was hunting. Women were meant to please back then most of us now a days wouldnt let a stranger stay in our home. One line i found symbolic " he did not lead she only followed". thats what women did in the early 1900s it wasnt their place to lead. Women were still powerfull though and had will power for what they believed in, she would not tell where the bird was.
The wife doesnt make any of her own decisions her life is controled by her husband John. She has no say in her own condition everyone else is just telling her what is wrong with her. Being in that room for three months makes her more crazy i think.

Owl Creek Bridge, Dangerous Game

As soon as it started i knew it was going to be a sad story. Any story starting off with someone getting hung cant be good. I found it very weird that the man would rather be hung and drowned then be shot. I also found it weird that his brain and his body were almost to different things his hands were saving him yet he was telling them not it. It is amazing that he was able to get out of the situation too. But then when he got up out of the water he ended up getting shot at but they all missed him. he traveled all night to get back to his wife and children and right before he gets to his wife he dies! i couldnt believe it. it made me sad, that was not the ending i had hoped for i thought he was going to be free but at the last minute hes died.

I have read this story before in middle school. I dont remember the details but i remember what happens in general but reading it again i got the details and knew what was going to happen and it was disturbing listening to him talk about how he sticks the island and has the biggest game since i already knew it was humans.at first i thought they were going to go out hunting together but the general wanted to play the game with him it was a close call the first night i agree that the general knew he was there. He played the game very well and he won. this story was an ending that i hoped for. It was very intense at times, wondering if the general was going to catch him but he outsmarted him.

The Ones Who Wlk Away from Omelas

This is a very distrubing story. The first couple pages were hard to follow and somewhat boring, i would forget what i read and have to go back and read it a couple times to actually comperhend what they just said but then out of no where, theres a kid in a celler. its messed up it doesnt make sense that the city can only be so wonderful if theres a child that is miserable. It is unethical and mean and wrong.

Hurricane Katrina

Im glad i choose the topic that i did. It is something that really interets me so i like doing the research on it(besides that its taking up a lot of time) but i understand research papers are time consuming. I have found a tom of great facts on how the hurricane happened how it affected the people and how it affected the world and what we did to help fix it and clean up. I found a really good book. I like getting information from books more than from the internet i know the sources we use on the internet are scholarly but i like to actually have it in front of me in a book. This is my first time writing a research paper so we'll see how the first draft turns out.

Semester so far

English has always been one of my favorite classes. I feel like i am learning a lot of new techniques that are helping improve my writing. I like when we put our tables into a rectangle and have class that way, i also like powerpoint or writing things on the board i think visuals help a lot. The literacy tests sucked so i try to go to those extra credit speakers every wednesday to help make up for those. Tests have always been a weak spot for me. I like how we do three drafts of our papers so we get the option to inprove each time. I like the blog way better than a journal. All  in all i think it is going very well and i hope to keep it that way.

Research Paper topic

I had no idea what i wanted to write my research paper about. The things we do in class really help. You told me to just think about something that im interested in. I am interested in natural disasters and how they change the world. I didnt know how i was going to turn that into a usable topic but i just needed to pick a disaster and i could write about that. Sam suggested hurrican katrina in class and i really like that i idea and that is most likely what im going to write my paper about. I was really excited to have a topic picked out after class last thursday.

Topics For Research Paper

Today in class we wrote down three things that we thought were unfair. My top choice was cancer ( unless caused by your own actions. for example lung cancer caused by smoking. you did it to yourself so no sympathy there.) My second choice was racism and reverse racism because some african americans are just as racist towards whits as some whites are towards blacks. My thrid choice was toll roads just because of their inconvience. We also wrote down three thing we dislike about living in vermillion. My top thing is that there is no tacobell, taco johns just doesnt make the cut. Next i put living in the dorms. i like that i live on the first floor but people on my floor are SO loud! its really annoying and stacie and whitney both know what im talking about because were all on the same floor. For my last one i put that theres no good place to shop here. As of right now i have no idea what to do for a topic for my research paper.

Group Presentations

I liked how most all the group has hand outs that you could follow along with. The only groups that didn't have handouts were the ones that had powerpoints and that would have worked just as well if the power points worked today. I thought these presentations gave us some good advice on stratagies to take in revising our papers. It is always easier to give a presentation in a group. I thought my group did very well with the little time that we had together.

Class with a Sub

Class on Tuesday was a lot different without you. Ryan is a good teacher and i know everyone enjoyed having him as our sub but he is also a lot quieter than you. We got everything at that we needed to done and also had time to get with our group and set up a time to work on our projects. I was really hard to find a time that worked for all the people in just two days but we found and hour that everyone had free tonight and were all meeting at the library ready to work on the project. We are all reading our sections before we get to the library so we will know what to write and wont waste any time. It shouldn't be a hard assignment to complete.

Thesis Statement

I came to a topic today in class that I think will be easy to write about and persuade people. I want to write about how the USD campus should be a smoke free area. I think what we did in class today with the newspaper really helped a lot of us! Thats how I choose this topic, I got the idea from one of the articles in my newspaper. It was about how they just passed a smoke free workplace law. I would of never thought of this if I hadnt seen that article. Some thesis' I came up with were.. One one should have to deal with secondhand smoke in a public area. or.. A college campus should be a safe and clean area not poluted with secondhand smoke. Today in speech class we had to bring in five thesis' and I brought ones about my topic for english. We corrected them in class and my speech teacher said a good one would be "One one should deal with second hand smoke."  She said that is a good strong thesis statement. and then after that she said to have my topics like the first one would be secondhand smoke in public areas and so on. but i dont know if thats only how it should be for speech and eglish is different. I was thinking that english would be different and not like that. What is your feedback? or if this is what were going to talk about at the conference thats fine too!

100 people who are screwing up America

When i first printed this exerpt off i was discouraged by how long it was and i thought i wasnt going to want to read it all, but once i started reading it i actually got interested in it. I thought most of it was pretty funny. Im not really into politics or anything to do with the government, maybe because i just turned 18 or  maybe because thats just not really me, so reading this didnt affend me or turn me the wrong way at all. I was not really surprised to hear that the American bashers are in the mainstream and are our top schools college professers or our top journalists, but their opinions come from how it was when they were growing up. I personally think that AMerican is one of the better countries and i am happy and thankful to live here.

Peer Review

I thought this peer review we did in class last thursday went a lot better than any review I've done in high school. Not gonna lie, when we reviewd papers in class we didnt get enough time as needed and no one really cared about the other persons papers. We would get responses like, good conlculsion or well written. These responses weren't helpful at all, but when we did it in class I got feedback that actually is going to help me write a better paper. Im glad we did a peer review, I got reminded about my thesis statement (that I didnt have) also my topic sentences. It was helpful reading someone elses paper too.

If I were to die tomorrow..

If I were to die tomorrow, I believe that I would have made in impact in peoples lives but not in the whole world. Over the course of my life I may never do anything that makes an impact on the world. Im alright with that, I think the closer relationsships that we make are more meaningful. I have a more realistic take on the world. Only a few people compaired to everyone that has been on this earth is remembered today, and those are the people how have done extremely good or bad things or have invented something great that changes the world. That may never be me and thats just fine. Ill leave my name with the people it means most too.

Likes about English

English is probably one of my favorite classes, it always has been. I do not like my speech class because i dont like public speaking, math is alright but i find it hard, I love earth science lecture  its really interesting to me and the lab is okay lots of memorization. I love reading, so I like to read all the excerpts you have for us! Plus I like the way you teach, sometimes your intimidating but you got balls so props for that girl! ha.. I also like writing about myself so I think this literature narrative will go good and easy to think of ideas.

The Notebook

I have never read the book, but I have seen the movie many times. I recognized lines in this that are in the movie too. I think it this excerpt is a very good attention getter! It leaves you hanging, you dont exactly know what he is talking about. You can figure out where he is and what is going on but you don't know what is actually happening and what went on throughout his life. After reading the excerpt i find myself wanting to figure out what is going on. I could quote almost the entire movie. It is one of my favorites.

Learning to Read and Write.

"In moments of agony, I envied my fellow slaves for their stupidity". Frederick Douglass took every available chance he had to read, when he went on errends he always brought his book. Being a slave he wasn't allowed to read or write. He had to keep his reading a secret. I can't imagine a life where you aren't allowed to read or write. Now a days it is frowed upon if anyone doesn't know how to read or write. The more he read though the more he thought about freedom and his constant thinking about freedom caused him agony and that is why he envied his fellow slaves for their stupidity. I love reading about the past and seeing how different things used to be. It makes me appreciate my life more.

About Myself!

Hi everyone, my name is Alexandra Jacobs, everyone calls me Alex though. I am from Rochester Minnesota. I have lived there my entire life until now. I am 17 years old until September 10th. I plan to major in Elementary Education and minor in coaching. I love working with children, I student taught in a second grade class my senior year. I would love to be either a gymnastics coach or a track coach. I started gymnastics when i was three and did it all the way up through my senior year. I am doing track at USD since they don't have a gymnastics team. I run 100m and 400m hurdles. A random fun fact about myself is that i have broken 5 bones so far in my life and I am very excited about this year!