Choose Your Own Topic

So right now, I am in this tutoring thing that I have to do through my Math 223 class.  For it, I need 20 hours of some teaching stuff so we took a field trip to Chicago Public Schools and that was 8 hours and then tutoring is 12 hours.  I have had to go every Wednesday for basically the whole semester from 4 – 6.  It is really not that bad, just time consuming because I always procrastinate my homework so Wednesdays are typically the best days for me to do homework but tutoring sometimes puts a damper on it.  I always bring homework with me to do, like this blog assignment.  I go with a group from my class and there is also another group that tutored last semester but they are overachievers and continued tutoring this semester also.  The most annoying thing is that kids never come in.  I have been here for 30 minutes already and no one has come in yet.  There are 8 people here and no kids.  I think this whole semester I have helped 2 kids; one with English and one with telling time. When kids actually come in to get tutored, they typically go to the other group because the kids knew them better. So for the majority of the time, I attempt to do homework but I really only accomplish the blogs.  I normally forget my computer so I hand write it out and to waste time, I actually count out how many words I have to make sure I get the minimum of 300 words.  Then when I get back to my room, I type it all out and upload it.  Overall I like tutoring when I get to tutor children but otherwise, it is pretty boring.  On the plus side, since it is our last day of tutoring, we get ice cream. Day will equal made after that.

Word Count: 319

Cinematic Adventures

So it’s another choose you own topic again. I'm going to talk about randomness that has happened to me over the weekend.  Last Friday I went with my roommate and our 2 friends, Luke and Jeremy, to see “The Cabin in the Woods”.  I thought it was really good. I went in thinking that it was going to be this super scary movie and it was at first but then it took kind of a sci-fi twist, which was really cool. I don’t want to spoil too much of the movie but what was really interesting was that the twist was never fully explained.  It could be taken as good or bad. I personally liked it because it allowed me to come up with my own idea and explanation. After that we went to Steak and Shake.  It was very delicious. I got a peanut butter shake and split a turkey club with my roommate.  It was a fun little outing because we did perhaps the funnest game invented, people watching.  At the theater, these dumb giggling, high school girls sat right in front of us. They were so annoying because 2 of them got up literally 30 seconds after they sat down to get popcorn and then when they came back, they were giggling once again and they spilt some popcorn which apparently deserves more giggling. The most annoying girl sat directly in front of me and she thought she was the only one in the theater because she reclined her seat all the way back and was on her phone almost the whole movie. Halfway through, though, an employee came down and said that she needed to turn her phone off.  My friends and I started to applaud the theater man.  It was quite funny. Then at Steak and Shake, there were these 2 way old ladies with blinding white hair poofed out like a whole foot.  The really funny part was they saw us laughing at them and they walked past our table on the way to their table and did the condescending old person look at us.  Overall, that night was pretty entertaining and filled with delicious food.

Word Count: 362

Writing Style

Writing for each class is different for me.  For English papers, I typically just start writing, no planning.  It’s probably not the best idea but it gets the job done.  When writing for English, I always jump around or add new ideas so frequently so I have found that creating an outline is not really helpful.  As for research, I took the easy way out in high school and googled all my sources because the library was such a hassle to get to.  Now since it’s on campus, I've been trying to be more academic and use books.  For other subjects, like history, I typically write out little sections outlining everything I know and then I free write and reference the notes I wrote down earlier every so often.  I've noticed that if I try to write a legit outline, like capital letters and Roman numerals, I end up writing basically an essay because I don’t really know when to stop writing the basic information.  I've found that what works best for me is to write down general information about each part of the paper and sometimes order them into paragraphs with like the subject part name in my outline (like for history, Civil War in p1) and then free write the rest with the information I know.

I think overall each course needs to receive different forms of research.  English requires much more support because it’s such a broad subject so it requires more searching to find someone who has the same opinion as you.  Whereas subjects like history or science, the information is standard.  It’s always the same and the only challenge is finding enough detail on the subject matter.  Actually writing for each class is also different.  In high school, my AP Lit and AP Gov essays were written entirely different.  English requires explanation and analysis whereas history just needs the straight answer.

In regards to the article we read, I definitely used the pens, highlighters and post it notes.  While I used them to draw all over the pages, I also used them to annotate the passages like she did.  I really like her method of “brainstorming” in which she creates a web of post it notes.  It seems like it would be beneficial for me because I tend to switch my thoughts around a lot.

Word Count: 390

Close Readings

A lot of the stuff we have learned about close reading, I knew before.  I took AP Lit junior year in high school and literally every single class period we did close readings of like every type of genre.  It was awful after the first quarter of school.  But on the bright side, I did learn a lot about close reading passages and how the author puts in hidden connections throughout the text.  I always went into my English classes with the notion that the author does not plan out every single detail like whether to put a comma there or to use a certain adjective.  After spending so many hours analyzing literature, I have come to understand that authors do in fact tie everything together when they write.  They chose certain words to evict a specific emotion or response from the reader.  Phrases that seem odd or out of place are that way for a reason and it is up to the reader to interpret all the other clues the author has left to get the hidden message.  I have learned to not dismiss any random part of the story because it all makes sense and most of all I have learned that nothing I think could be considered wrong.  That is the thing I love and hate about English; there are no wrong answers. As for continuing close reading everything, I still do, even with like TV commercials. It’s bad.  I feel like I can't even read something without thinking about why the author chose to use this word instead of another word but I think it actually helps me to understand what the author is trying to tell the reader.  If I pick up on these small clues, I can have somewhat of a foreshadowing to what will happen later on in the story and then comprehend the story a little bit better.

Word Count: 316