Bridge Project “What does America mean to me?”
To me, America represents freedom. In America, we have so many freedoms that other countries don’t. In America, there is freedom of speech where in a lot of other countries there is not.
Earlier on the day I took pictures, there was a woman’s rights protest going on around the square (and all around the nation) in front of the courthouse. This is just an example of how many freedoms we have here in America. We have the opportunity to vote, to own businesses, to go to church, and to go to college where in some countries they have to hide who they really are or want to be for fear of the government or judgement.
Freedom of religion means the most to me because I can freely worship my God whenever and wherever I want to.
I have the opportunity to live wherever I want or go anywhere I please. The fact that I can live in Oxford Mississippi and be paid to go to college at my favorite university is amazing to me and almost overwhelming. Because of our freedom of speech, it makes America quite complex and confusing because there are so many different opinions. Everyone has different values and belief systems that they personally think are correct, so this creates controversy.
In America, you can go get a higher education, travel the world, or do literally whatever you want to do because it is your life and you have the freedom to live it. I feel like if the government would just leave everyone alone and let them legally do what they want to and what they are going to do anyway, then everyone would be much happier.
Yes, we have to have laws on some things, but when it comes to who you can marry, what you can do with your own body, or anything else like that it should be up to the citizen. Because we live in America, people are going to do what they want to do anyway so you might as well make it legal.
Final Daily Write 12/2/16
I feel so relieved that I am pretty much done and only have two or three finals left. I also feel pretty ready for them, but I have plenty of time to finish everything. I can not believe I have already made it through my first semester at Ole Miss. I have discovered so much about myself that I did not even know. I did not even know there was more to learn about myself, but I was wrong. I love this campus and my fellow students. I love how much I have grown academically and as a person in general. I am very pleased with my first semester as a freshman at the University of Mississippi and I actually can not wait to come back for my next.
Commonplace Book Final Reflection
It is very interesting to go back and look at my first impressions of college. I handled it a lot better than I had initially expected. I am very proud of myself for how well I have handled time management, school work, emotions, and stress.
I had a “reality check” during my very first week at Ole Miss. I said “ I have already done more in a week than I did in the first semester of high school.” I almost expected college to be harder than it is, but it is mainly just different. I enjoy the challenges that have been thrown at me. Of course, I did not like them at the time, but they made me much stronger in the long run.
When Mrs. Buckley assigned the first “long” paper, I nearly had an anxiety attack. I was so nervous because I had never written a paper that long before. I realized that I can not half-way do my work and expect a good grade out of it. In highschool, I do not think I wrote a single outline before a paper, but I also had never written a paper longer than a page and a half. I realized when I started to write my first synthesis paper that I would definitely need to plan my paper out in order to have enough to write about.
Anne Lamott’s “Shitty First Drafts” helped me a lot because it helped me, an extreme perfectionist, realize that writing is a process. Writing is not supposed to be perfect as soon as you begin. It takes a lot of time and patience to write a really good paper.
On one of our daily writes in September, the question was “How have you spent you week?” My answer was, “This week I have spent so much time doing school work and studying. This is how I wanted to spend my week because it makes me feel better in class when I have everything done and studied for.” A few days later I had a mental breakdown. I may have thought this was what I wanted at the time, but really I was overworking myself way too much and really stressing out. Don’t get me wrong, it is a great feeling to have everything done, but there is no need to put this much pressure on yourself. You are a human being. It is okay to take a break and do something for yourself. The human body can only handle so much. I think that self-care is one of the most important things to manage in college.
I have grown so much as a person throughout my first semester of college. I have learned that it is okay to not be perfect. If a C is the best you can do in a class, you can not let that define you.
College has definitely been a learning experience full of struggles, but I have learned so much along the way that will make me a better person in the future.
Unit 4 Reflection- Op-Ed blog post 11/16
This unit was a little bit complicated because I am still trying to get used to blog spaces even though it is November, but it was really neat being able to write like this. I really enjoyed this unit because it was so different. Although it was challenging at first, I got pretty good at formatting and other things on the blog space. Writing for a different audience was a lot more difficult than I thought it would be because I already had original ideas in my head from writing my argumentative paper. It was difficult not to repeat myself from my paper and to make it more opinionated. I am not used to writing opinionated articles, but I actually enjoyed it. I am also proud of myself because I got my formatting and pictures to look exactly like I wanted them to and it was a lot simpler than I had expected.
Daily Write- Op-Ed Gallery Walk 11/14/16
Today’s gallery walk was extremely helpful because my classmates gave me a lot of ideas to further edit my Op-Ed. Their encouragement helped me a lot because I did not feel like it was as good as it could be. It was helpful to walk around and look at how others formatted their opinionated articles and see others views.
Brainstorming Op-Ed Ideas
Unit 1:
Common read synthesis essay
-College identity and how it changes- out of state student example
-Racial identity- profiling/ black lives matter/ race in the election/ hopewell church burning
-Journey/quest
-Native americans- pipeline protests
Unit 2:
Rhet. Analysis Op-Ed
-Anne Frank Today is a Syrian Girl
-racial profiling
Unit 3:
Argumentative
Should the Drinking Age Be Lowered
-current things happening with alcohol or underage drinking?
-teenage rights
Unit 3 Reflection 11/4/16
Writing this paper has helped me realize that I honestly am a good writer and I have grown tremendously in my ability to research. The library website has also helped me so much with finding specific things. I have also gotten a lot better at citing sources and giving credibility and ethos to authors. Seeing my progress as a writer has helped me by encouraging me by seeing how far I have come already. My counterclaim argument have me a few challenges here and there, but I am happy with how it turned out and what I ended up writing about. I had challenges with finding a topic that I wanted to write about and that I could write a lot about. I ended up changing from my original topic because it was not specific enough, but I am happy with what I ended up writing about. Writing is definitely a process and I have learned that more and more as I struggle with patience and time management. I really liked when we did the memes about our papers also because it helped me realize that I was not the only person struggling.
Daily Write 11/2/16
The peer review assigned this week was actually not very effective because none of my group members were here on Monday. When my partner looked over my paper on Wednesday, it was very effective and helped me expand a lot on my research and gave me different ideas to write about.
Weekly write 10/28/16
It has helped me become a better writer and think about current events differently. It has helped me discover the different types of writing and their effects on the audience.
Rhetorical Analysis Essay Reflection 10/26/16
I am very pleased with my grade and I feel like it reflects my paper very well. I am a little confused about the feedback on my conclusion, but I just need to look over it some more and see what it is saying. Overall I am very pleased with my past two papers. They are both honestly better than I had expected. My writing has improved a tremendous amount over the past few months and I am very proud of that. My claims are getting stronger as I find out what kind of writer I am.