7/2/2012 Final Day of Class!

Today was the final day of class. It ended short and sweet with a pot luck party, presentations, and peer review of the final paper. Personally, the end was bittersweet because on one hand I’ve completed all my English course requirements but on the other I will miss how this class sparked my interest to develop my English skills more. There isn’t that many classes that I can say that I’ve did all the homework and felt intrigued and interested. This class taught me a lot without me even realizing it like how to improve on my own writing process, differences between personal and business writing, targeting your audience, and much more. 

                I hope everybody in class became better writers and good luck with what they are pursuing in life.

                I’m at a lost of what else I can write for this blog and I’m only at a hundred and forty eight words. I guess I can talk about the final paper. I don’t think the final paper will be too difficult to write but hard to fill five to seven pages I’m thinking, then again, maybe not because if you break it down piece by piece then you’ll probably have a lot to write about.  Really go into depth on what makes that author’s style his very own unique style.

                I did come away with becoming a better writer after everything from this class. A few articles I liked that we read that were assigned to us include Stephen King – what writing is, Klosterman’s  Mcdonald and Areanas, and a few other readings that Paul passed out in class. I thought they were all interesting or fun to read. However , I did not and still don’t like the Sondra Perl--"The Composing Process of Unskilled Writers"  article. May I suggest you give your future classes a hint about the difficulty of the article before assigning it Paul? (lol)

 Thanks for everything Paul and classmates!

6/27/12

I missed class today due to a really bad fever I’ve had for the pas two days. I hope I didn’t miss a lot in class because that would really impact my grade negatively.

This class is coming to an end. It was a fun class to say the least. I never dreaded coming to class like I would my other English classes at SF State. Most class meetings were interesting and intuitive. For a four hour long night class it seemed more like a two hour long night class which is a plus. I have had other night classes at SF State from previous semesters that were two and half hours to three hours long and two a week which I really hated but had to take it because it was the only available class that had slots still open.

I actually learned a lot in this class in such a short time. I learned how to become a better writing by analyzing my own writing process which seemed weird and awkward thing to do at first, learned the difference between business and personal writing and when to use which, learned about what Discourses are, interesting film called exit through the gift shop which showed me the origin of street art and how street art become popularized, and as well as many other things.  

A rough draft of the last paper is due on Monday about “How to write like…” and I still haven’t selected which author I am going to write it on. I’m leaning towards Klosterman because I understand his writings more. Also I like his writings more for example his very first article Debriefing Agent Zero which talks about Gilbert Arenas the professional NBA basketball player and his other article talking about eating mc Donald’s for seven days straight and surviving to live another day.  

6/25/12

Today in class we turned in our three letter assignment. It was actually really fun doing it which is unusual for me because I usually find English homework and paper assignments a pain to do. The easiest one was probably the yelp review letter because there weren’t really any rules when it came to writing it. The hardest one would probably be the one addressing my friend about that problem because I wanted to get my point across but in a friendly way which was weird. What I learned from this assignment is that you write based on who your audience is. You write for your audience to please them not yourself.

 Now when it comes to the presentations I am lost. My presentation is this Wednesday and I still haven’t started yet which isn’t a good thing at all. I still have no idea on which author to pick for my presentation. Hopefully, ill get things moving by tonight or tomorrow morning!

I thought everyone who presented today did very well. I like the last one which was about how the story moves and starts in different parts. Somewhat like a puzzle in a sense.

There are only two more classes left together. Time has passed by so fast it seemed like we just started this class yesterday but in actually it’s been almost a month.  

I think the final paper will be a pretty interesting paper to do to say the least. I would like to learn what makes theses writers so professional and unique.  Maybe that will help me become a better writer myself when I do.  If you know the recipe then you’re not that far from the dish. I have trouble with some of the writers readings though because of the jargon and diction. I guess I’ll just have to reread it  more thoroughly and use a dictionary.

6/20/12

            Our first paper was due today. I feel good about it. It gave me a lot of insight on my writing process and what I could improve on. I don’t really edit my paper while I’m in the process of writing it. I just continue writing until I’ve reach the desired amount of pages for the assignment which isn’t a good thing.

            In the beginning of class we had to give a synopsis of the article that the Paul handed out. I agreed with the article that literacy and writing are changing because of the audience and technology. I never really knew which side she was on though whether she was for the change or against it. She made a lot of valid points though about how technology allowed literacy to change through mediums such as facebok status, texting, and yelp.

            Later we watched a movie called Exit through the Gift Shop. I thought the movie was really good yet boring at times. I almost fell asleep several times while watching it. One neat thing I learned from the movie was the origin and creator of the clothing brand Obey and how they got they’re logo which was the face of Andre the giant from wrestling.

            The three letter assignment is due on Monday and I’m looking forward to doing it because it seems interesting and something I would have to do in the future. The presentation is also due next week. I chose to do on Wednesday because I want to put more time into the writing for the three letter assignment. I still haven’t chosen my writer. First writer that comes to mind is Amy Tan but that’s way too obvious and predictable. I’ll probably pick a popular writer, one of which I’m familiar with.

            On another side note….Miami Heat won the NBA playoffs today!

6/18/2012

            I found the Tony Mirabelli – Learning to Serve article really interesting because I was one of those who had the misconception that it doesn’t take a lot of skills to be a waiter or waitress but after reading the article I think it does take skill. While it may not be obvious it does take some skill level to interpret and communicate with customers and other restaurant workers. If it were so easy then why not just let little kids do the job, right? Literacy skills come in play in all levels of communication.

            This auto ethnography is somewhat stressing me out because my transcript didn’t turn out like I thought it would have. My recording only lasted thirty five minutes and there was a lot of silence and mumbling. I guess my writing process is very quiet… I still haven’t finished my auto ethnography either yet. Hopefully, I’ll have it done by Tuesday night and just spend time editing and reviewing it on Wednesday morning.  

            In class today we discussed about the differences of personal and business writing and when to use which. The cover letter was very funny with the halokilla email, hella, and gaming all night. I thought it was a pretty good cover letter minus the errors. I also thought it’s a coin flip on whether or not he should of added how his GPA went from 1.6 to 2.6. Some people won’t take you seriously with an average GPA like that. I would know because my current GPA is 2.75….horrible. Accounting is one hard major.

            I thought the yelp reviews were hilarious and easy to understand. Yelp is a good website in my opinion. I visit it a lot when I can’t think of a place to eat.

 The three letter assignment does seem to be something that’s going to be fun to write. I look forward to writing them.