Month: February 2020

While reading the comments from my last essay, I can see a few ideas where I can show improvement on my next essay. One thing that I can focus on is the intro paragraph. In my last essay, I sped up the intro and did not do a full introduction to the authors and text’s that I was discussing in the essay. I am going to make sure I lengthen the first paragraph by adding in each author and a short section about what they wrote about in their text’s.

Another aspect I am going to approach differently in this essay is making sure I work with the authors more deeply. I know, especially in my last paragraph, I talked most able me, and did not relate many ideas to other authors. I want to make sure in this essay, every time I hear an idea that reminds me of one of the readings, I will mention it and make sure I talk about it in detail.

The last thing I want to do different in this is to express my idea more fully. In my last essay, I would mention happiness, but would not mention the different types of happiness. In this essay, where I am taking about empathy, I will make sure to go into detail about what empathy is and how people do not show it.

When it comes to me, I use technology when it comes to the majority of my classes. Every class, except for one, requires me to use my computer either to write essays, keep data, or do online homework. My psych class is the one time of the day where I do not use any form of technology because my professor prefers us writing our notes in class because that way, we can processes the information more. When it comes to having to be on my computer, I rarely to never try to go outside of my school work unless I have to look something up. I feel like my computer is more of my educational network, whereas, my phone is where I get most of my entertainment from. For the classes that require the computer, I am mostly on it the bulk of the period. My classes range from 50 minutes to 2 hours and 50 minutes, and for having multiple classes a day and having to be on my computer during that time, it supports the fact that I use technology a lot during the day. Even outside of class, all my homework assignments are on blackboard, which means I have to spend even more time on a screen. This sometimes leads to me having headaches at the end of the day.

For my personal preference, I wish that this was limited. I understand that for classes, teachers want us to be on technology, but I wish that the homework we were given was more on paper. I know in high school, I barely had any online assignments, which I wish was the same for college. There are even sometimes where a teacher gives us the option to print or read online, and a mostly choose to print because it gives me time away from technology for a little while. With the world being so devoted to this technology era, I feel that the amount of screen time is only going to surge, but I hope that the more articles that are put online and the more news about phone and computers taking us over will show some of the educator that this is a serious issue and they will start to respond by having less online work.

From this all, there are sometimes that I do feel like computers are beneficial during classes. They keep us organized, it keeps our information save, and it allows us to look up information we do not know. I do think that we should keep using them, but I think the amount of time to use them is the factor that should be revised.

As we move on to writing more essays, the one aspect that I want to work on when it comes to peer review is how to give people examples of how to improve. From the workshops we did, I thought that I was better when working on the the local review rather than the global review. On the local review, I was able to point out sentences and talk about specific sentences that can be re-written. However, when it came to global review, when I had to talk about specific sections that could be moved around and what could be added, I had trouble coming up with ways that each essay could do my suggestions. I would always write what they did that seemed off or too long or short, but I would never say that because it needed revision, how they could do it. If I can start doing this, I feel that it will be more beneficial to my peers and their writing will be enhanced. One way I can do this is to think more critically about their writing and make sure I understand what I am suggesting. This way I will know how to come up with the examples. Plus, I can pull information from my own writing and incorporate it into my classmates pieces.

Throughout my essay, I would use Barclays formula to integrate each of my quotes. I found it useful to do so because it would help me organize my ideas within my paragraphs. The formula also had little explanations as to how each of the sections will help my writing, which made it easier to use. First, I would start with my claim, to state my topic of the paragraph. Then I would go to my introduction, and made sure I introduced my quotes and what I want people to know about it. Next I would state the quote and cite the author. After, I would explain the quote and how it relates to my overall idea. Last I would transition into the next idea. One section of my writing that I used Barclays formula in was when I talked about Cathrine Sanderson. In Sanderson’s video, I demonstrated that she was on the same side of Gilbert in saying that children do bring you pleasure but not overall happiness. I introduced what she was was going to talk about, I integrated a quote, I explained it and then transitioned into what she wrote and connected it to what Gilbert wrote. An example of how I did so is shown below.