October 2020

During this hard time of corona, most students have found it easier to stay connected  with their families, but for me I have found it hard. I have found myself to be very busy throughout the semester. I rarely have time to contact my family. When I am not at a six hour practice, I am either studying, in class, eating, or busy with other things. I have family that lives in Oxford and I barely even get to see or talk to them either. I visit them sometimes, but can also go days or even weeks without stopping by.  I need to find more ways to be able to see and talk to my family more. I should start planning out when I am available and sacrifice some social time for family time.

In this article, Jones discuses trying to lead people away from viewing arguments  as verbal “wars”. Instead she wants us to see our opponents perspective in arguments and “find common ground”.  Jones states that a good argument “see all angles of the argument”, this way the solution is better found and easier to find.

In The Makers Eye, Murray discusses how difficult  writing and self-reviewing can be. He states that self reviwing can be very hard, because people can be too hard on themselves and change thins that don’t nee to be changed. He also says that students will write one draft and submit it stating that it is already perfect, which in fact is never true. AS students we can never write a perfect or even good paper on the first try, it will take trial and error to make a paper actually good. When reading over your first draft you need to check for the subject, audience, form, structure, development, dimension, and tone. Then only is it ready to be finalized.

In Literacy and Cultural Context : A Lesson From the Amish, Fishman discusses the literacy in an Amish families household. The family has centered their learning of literacy around their Amish beliefs. To them their cultural ties to literacy is more important than the educational value. Eli and Anna believe that their learning and teachings of Amish literacy should help their society thrive and continue, and help students understand their role in their society. All of the books in their household are made by Amish authors, and promote Amish learning.

The thing I found most useful was the “not all teachers hate me”. Growing up it was imprinted on my brain that college professors were top of the line, hard-ass, drill sergeant , meanies. Throughout my whole pre-college academic career, teachers have always told me that college professors do not take ANY crap, and are not afraid to fail you, even if you turn in something a minute late. This terrified me for a very long time. Now that I am here I am not certain if it is because of the Corona circumstances , but teachers so far have been very lenient towards late work. I am mostly  looking forward to football, and least looking forward to school-work and exam weeks. Advice I would give another student is you NEED to be organized. Make sure you have a weekly planner so you can lay out all of your homework assignment for the week so you do not miss anything. If you can try to get your homework done the day it was assigned so it doesn’t pile up.

In Brandt’s writing she discusses  Literary Sponsors. A literary sponsor as any agent (person or thing), that enable, promote, support, or teach literacy  in some type of way. They also can help gain an advantage on someone’s literary  abilities.  She goes into depth about the negative challenges people face that can hender them from gaining an advantage in literacy. Race, gender, and  socio-economic status all have affects on a child’s ability to get  a head start on literacy. What time period you were born in can also determine your writing ability. Someone in 1920’s would write totally different from someone in the 1990’s.