Today is Veteran's day, by many other students, it is a day the is marked by a lack of school and celebrated for that reason. We don't get the day off but it wasn't until this year that I really began to understand the significance of this holiday. It's weird because between now and next Veteran's day, life will be drastically different. Right now, if I know soldiers, they are friends of friends or friends of my parents but this time next year, it will be my best friend serving our country. Regardless of what people do in the military, the point is that they are ready and willing to serve our country with everything they have. I don't really know what else to say because these men and especially the woman are so incredibly awesome.
I feel like I have nothing else to say on that subject without rambling or getting too emotional so on to other current issues.
I had to register for my final semester of college classes. I have to petition for graduation (everyone has to, it is not because I am missing something, Mom) before March and before I know it, I will be on the field in a cap and gown with my friends. I would like to think that I am ready for all that.
Side note, I realized that I have given more tours in the last two weeks than I usually have in all of first semester. But they have been a lot more fun than usual which is great and totally worth it!
Okay, now I am really using this as an excuse not to be writing my GC reflection paper which is due tomorrow before I go into work. I am being responsible. I ate dinner before I started work and have Harry Potter on now.
Showing posts with label paper. Show all posts
Showing posts with label paper. Show all posts
Thursday, November 11, 2010
Thursday, March 19, 2009
I Need to Find a Place Where I Can Breathe...
I should probably take the time to mention that the titles of all of my blog posts are all song lyrics. Some relate to what I am thinking about and others are just parts of the songs stuck in my head.
So as usual, I am writing here to take a little time to myself while I push off other work that needs to get done. Today, I have to write a paper. I was thinking about where I would write this paper when I realized how much times change when you get older. I have a five to seven page paper due tomorrow. I am not worried and have no doubt in my mind that I will be able to finish it and have it not be the worst thing that I have ever written. One of my favorites? Probably not, but it won't be horrible.
When I was younger and things had to be typed, that was the hardest part for me. I could hand write a page but then the typing was like torture. This was back when rough drafts were written on paper and the final drafts were typed. That was also the formula, one rough draft, one final draft and that is it. You only edited the rough draft to make it the final draft. But back the typing. My mom used to type my papers, but not like other parents that typed the whole paper and would make corrections as they went, no, my mother typed in all of my grammatical and spelling errors so that I would have to learn to correct them.
In the years that followed as I learned to type my own papers, I discovered that each version was different from the others, not just in the grammar but in the way that I wanted to express myself. I realized that each time I sat down to write left me in a different mind frame than every other time. It still tends to be fairly obvious to see that I have stopped working on a paper for a while and then come back to it because the writing is more strained. I could start working on this paper and with the twenty minutes I have right now but the reality is that I will end up rewriting everything I had so it's not worth it. There are countless drafts that started out as one thing and became something different entirely as I gave myself time to think about exactly what I wanted to say and gave myself some idea of the contents of the paper.
I was also never one of this kids who could write off an outline. That was miserable. Making outlines for things that were already written, fine but trying to use them to guide what I wanted to say was impossible and any good essay I ever wrote was never off an outline. Writing is something that requires mechanics and creativity, but early on, we get the mechanics and it's time to just work the creativity, especially in thinking for yourself while analyzing.
The expectations of us changed all the time throughout our schooling. We went from being worried about our spelling and trying to just write a few sentences, to trying to write a whole page skipping lines in cursive to now, where we think about five-ish pages being no big deal. When did this happen?
My seventh grade English teacher may have been the only one to push us with us actually realizing that he was making our writing better. From my class of thirty, he gave about ten of us a separate project. This was a project more like the ones that I have now in college. It was a fairly open ended prompt about xenophobia. It was supposed to be ten pages long. Granted, at that time, we had a few weeks to do this rather then the days we have to do the same type of paper now, but I remember struggling to understand what he wanted from me since it wasn't spelled out exactly but with time, I realize that that forced me to be a better writer. It was a constant battle after that with every English teacher being different, some helped the creative part and wanted us to learn for ourselves. Others were very specific in what they wanted and grades reflected sticking to that.
So, I would love to keep talking about this but alas, I must go and take care of some things before I start my paper.
So as usual, I am writing here to take a little time to myself while I push off other work that needs to get done. Today, I have to write a paper. I was thinking about where I would write this paper when I realized how much times change when you get older. I have a five to seven page paper due tomorrow. I am not worried and have no doubt in my mind that I will be able to finish it and have it not be the worst thing that I have ever written. One of my favorites? Probably not, but it won't be horrible.
When I was younger and things had to be typed, that was the hardest part for me. I could hand write a page but then the typing was like torture. This was back when rough drafts were written on paper and the final drafts were typed. That was also the formula, one rough draft, one final draft and that is it. You only edited the rough draft to make it the final draft. But back the typing. My mom used to type my papers, but not like other parents that typed the whole paper and would make corrections as they went, no, my mother typed in all of my grammatical and spelling errors so that I would have to learn to correct them.
In the years that followed as I learned to type my own papers, I discovered that each version was different from the others, not just in the grammar but in the way that I wanted to express myself. I realized that each time I sat down to write left me in a different mind frame than every other time. It still tends to be fairly obvious to see that I have stopped working on a paper for a while and then come back to it because the writing is more strained. I could start working on this paper and with the twenty minutes I have right now but the reality is that I will end up rewriting everything I had so it's not worth it. There are countless drafts that started out as one thing and became something different entirely as I gave myself time to think about exactly what I wanted to say and gave myself some idea of the contents of the paper.
I was also never one of this kids who could write off an outline. That was miserable. Making outlines for things that were already written, fine but trying to use them to guide what I wanted to say was impossible and any good essay I ever wrote was never off an outline. Writing is something that requires mechanics and creativity, but early on, we get the mechanics and it's time to just work the creativity, especially in thinking for yourself while analyzing.
The expectations of us changed all the time throughout our schooling. We went from being worried about our spelling and trying to just write a few sentences, to trying to write a whole page skipping lines in cursive to now, where we think about five-ish pages being no big deal. When did this happen?
My seventh grade English teacher may have been the only one to push us with us actually realizing that he was making our writing better. From my class of thirty, he gave about ten of us a separate project. This was a project more like the ones that I have now in college. It was a fairly open ended prompt about xenophobia. It was supposed to be ten pages long. Granted, at that time, we had a few weeks to do this rather then the days we have to do the same type of paper now, but I remember struggling to understand what he wanted from me since it wasn't spelled out exactly but with time, I realize that that forced me to be a better writer. It was a constant battle after that with every English teacher being different, some helped the creative part and wanted us to learn for ourselves. Others were very specific in what they wanted and grades reflected sticking to that.
So, I would love to keep talking about this but alas, I must go and take care of some things before I start my paper.
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