Exerrcise 1:

For exercise number one we are to free write for ten minutes about anything that may come to mind. The first thing that came to my mind when I saw I could write about anything but would have to be for ten minutes was how I feel social media impacts us teenagers. In my opinion I feel that social media has both negative and positive effects to not only teens,  but to everyone who partakes in social media. A benefit that I feel personally impacted by is the simplicity of communication it provides, with social media, I am able to reach friends quickly and share what I am doing at any given time. I also think it is very cool to be able to stay in touch with people you used to be close with that have moved, or friends that are in college across the country. With social media I have been able to stay in touch with friends from across the country and my family. Another benefit is that it is an easy way to make friends before meeting them in person. For instance, I am from Arizona so coming to Ole Miss I did not know many people but with social media I was able to come in contact with people I did not know before the school year and make connections before even getting to the school . I now have some really good friends that I made on social media before even coming here. Now, Social media also has its negatives. Social media makes us believe in false realities, it shows us peoples lives and looks that are not necesarily accurate. Social media can bring down peoples body images and make them compare themselves to things that are not true. Lastly, a negative is that social media can be very unsafe and can lead to bad things unintentionally.

• Tell the reader what you intend for the research essay to do for its readers.  For this research essay, my intention is to provide a deeper explanation on exactly what the Humane Society is, and the importance of it. I want my readers to understand that doing little things, taking near to no work can cause a great impact on a specific community. 
• Describe its purpose(s) and the effect(s) you want it to have on the readers. Say who you think the readers are. I feel like my readers could vary from teens to college students and even to adults. My purpose is to make those people aware of how common it is that animals are in danger, and left with no home and food. The effect I want it to have on people is simply to be alert. I want these people to know there are indeed things they can do. 
• Describe your process of working on the essay. First, I had to come up with a community that was important to me so that I had prior information to use when writing this essay. After I chose my community, I had to gain knowledge on the more specific parts of this community and get a feel for actual statistics. Once I felt I had gained the proper amount of knowledge, I was then able to go ahead and write my paper. 
• What kind of planning did you do? I would say that the planning I really did was choosing a community I felt comfortable talking on. Once I had chosen my community, I then did my actual research. 
• What steps did you go through, what changes did you make along the way, what decisions did you face, and how did you make the decisions? The changes I made along the way were what community I decided I was going to research. I had looked for numerous communities to research, yet not alot stood out to me, and I felt that since I was not passionate about them, my essay would not be strong.
• How did comments from your peers, in peer workshop, help you? How did any class activities on style, editing, etc., help you? The comments from my peers were the most beneficial when it came to shaping my Final draft. I felt my rough draft was not my full potential, so seeing the helpful comments my peers gave to me pushed me to do better and fix things I hadn’t noticed needed work. 

1. How did you decide what information was most important for the draft? It was quite easy to pick out what was and wasn’t important when forming this draft. There is not alot of information to obtain, yet the only thing you could do is go deeper in the criteria. 
2. Why did you decide to “leave out” certain information? How did you make these rhetorical decisions? Like stated above, there was not THAT much information to it, so I tried to include everything I could do research on rather than leaving things out. 
3. What were the steps for your research in this draft? I had to come up with what I wanted to research, how I was going to get information on it, get credible sources, and then proceed to gather the information. 
4. What assumptions/biases did you bring to the research? How did you work to contextualize and check these assumptions/biases? The only assumptions that I made were that the Humane Society was able to provide the majority of their animals with homes, so in order to make sure this was a fact, I had to look on their website/ websites to make sure that what I was assuming was correct. 
5. How did you work with facts, observations, and so on, in order to form an argument? I had to find credible sources that provided my information, and then provide examples on why I thought this was an important topic.
6. What information are you still searching for to help your research? To help my research, I am still looking for more statistic information on the Humane Society. I want more information on not how many animals are rescued but how quickly and how well these animals are kept after being adopted, I would also like to know how well each Humane Society does compared to other locations. 

• Blog Post, Post a 200+-word summary/analysis of Johns & make a list of 5 -10 discourse communities in which you are a member.

I found Johns reading to be quite interesting, personally. Johns reading gave a broad aspect on exactly what discourse communities are. It had become evident after this reading exactly what a discourse community was and what it is like to be on the inside of one. Something I found very interesting from this reading, was how she stated that you do not have to physically be a member of one of these communities to be counted as a member. She states that we can all partake in our different ways. It was very interesting to see what each of these communities practiced, and opened my eyes to things I would not think of on my own before reading this. It was also interesting to see how each of these communities varied, but also how they are similar to each other. The last thing that really stood out to me was how she stated that we are  born in to these communities without choice. It was interesting to see how some people decide to follow the communities they are born in to grasp knowledge, and how some simply choose to do the opposite. The communities I would say I am a member in would be religious, economic, academics, athletics, and humanities.