Class Blog Friday Nov. 16

According to the front dry erase board, our lesson plan included reviewing key concepts, an activity and of course a blog at the end.  We began class by talking through all of the things we had learned this semester about writing.  Ms. Lang wrote everything down on the board that we had talked about which included:

• Drafting
• Not Procrastinating
• Analysis- how to build an argument
• Full circle in drafts
• Writing is not linear
• How to blog
• How to analyze images and their relative texts
• Media influences
• Organization

After reviewing this semesters work, Ms. Lang introduced us to "Post Secret."  Post secret was initiated by a man named Frank Warren.  He put post cards around and told people to send him their biggest secret and he promised them anonymity.  Since then, it has become a popular blog and new secrets are posted every Sunday.  Ms. Lang brought a book called "The Secret Lives of Men and Women" which included many post secrets that have been collected over the years.  We then had story time with Ms. Lang as she read us some of these dark secrets

The activity was to create our own Post Secret to share with the class and Ms. Lang.  Luckily, most people actually brought enough supplies to make their own Post.  Ms. Lang supplied us with magazines to help and the class worked diligently on the project.  Anonymity was impossible for the project because the person sitting next to you had a clear view of all of your work.   Here is an example:

As usual, to finish off the class, we blogged about our class activity.  It was obvious how eager everyone was to leave because it's a Friday and everyone rushed through their blog.

Keep calm and have a nice day!

Gangnam style... what?

horses
girls
hot tub
shnazzy clothes country club.

My post secret was actually really fun to make and entertaining.  I just flipped through a magazine thinking about the pictures and thinking of things I would never tell people.   My audience is anyone who is annoyed by everyone that hates Taylor Swift for no apparent reason.  Tons of people can actually relate to her songs. I used colors in the background mostly to make it more artistic and added a picture of Taylor Swift to describe the writing.

This add is poking fun at Mcdonalds.  Usually Mcdonalds uses red as a bright color to make their food more appealing but this ad uses red as a a warning.  It makes it seem at though the fries and burger are part of a nuclear waste rather than a type of food.  Mcdonalds is often criticized for having unhealthy and somewhat fake food and the picture depicts this criticism perfectly.

When I just turned 4, my family took a month long road trip all over North America. We drove over 9000 miles with many stops along the way.  My sister hadn't been born yet so I got all the attention from my parents and the rest of my family.  We stopped in Canada to visit my grandparents and to see my cousins.  There were many landmarks along the way.  We saw Mount Rushmore and the Grand Canyon but as it turns out the thing I remember and appreciate the most, is the car ride.  I remember sitting in our red van where the ceiling was falling in and having no room to move because it was so full.  I remember when the air conditioning broke and when we got a flat tire.   I remember sleeping in the van because we couldn't find a place to stay.  It's not only the bad things I remember though.  I liked making the semi-trucks honk as they drove by and I liked to play with my etch a sketch.  I distinctly remember seeing a moose on the side of the road. Brittney Spears new album had just come out while we were on the trip so all we listened to was Hit Me Baby One More Time.  It's strange that we took this long trip to visit family and to view many of the wonders of the America's and I basically only remember being in the car.  Don't misunderstand, I have some of the greatest memories of my life from that time but they aren't from what would be expected.  Many people pay tons of money just to travel to see the Grand Canyon and family and such but I think it's important to realize that the trip there can be just as auxillerating.

At the age of four, my family took a month long road trip all over North America. We drove over 9000 miles with many stops along the way.  My sister hadn't been born yet so I got all the attention from my parents and the rest of my family.  Our main goal of the trip was to visit my relatives in Canada.  There were many landmarks along the way like Mount Rushmore and the Grand Canyon but as it turns out the thing I remember and appreciate the most, is the car ride.  I remember sitting in our red van where the ceiling was falling in.  I remember when the air conditioning broke and when we got a flat tire.  I even remember some of the various gas stations that we stopped at along the way.  It's not only the bad things I remember though.  I liked making the semi-trucks honk as they drove by.  I liked to play with my etch-a-sketch and my favorite song back then, Hit Me Baby One More Time, was on repeat in the van. It's strange that we took this long trip to visit family and to view many of the wonders of the America's and my favorite memories are from the car ride itself.  I'm sure my parents would be a little disheartened to know that I don't remember looking at Mount Rushmore or looking out across the Grand Canyon but I hope they realize that I loved that road trip.

I really liked my comments. Most of the essay was highlighted which is a little bit of a confidence boost.  The general comments were to make sure that there is a focus of the essay and to maybe put the focus towards the beginning of the essay and use the examples that I wrote about as evidence from the text.  I wrote the first three pages with so much ease and I expect that the rest of the essay will flow easily as well. I think that I am actually enjoying writing this essay because it is about something that I actually enjoy talking about and reading about.

The title

Once upon a time...

cinderello, the party animal, was a raging alcoholic   His father was run over by a lawn mower. It was brutal. Anyway, out tale begins with Cinderello meeting his horrible step mother, Andrew.  She was straight-edge and Cinderello was forced into sobriety.  He spent months and months dry and miserable.  One day, his fairy drunkmother, stumbled into his life. She provided him with a fake I.D. and some convincing facial hair. He sneaked out of his step mother Andrew's house and attended the rager at Colosseum completed plastered.  The slipper fit his foot and he married the love of his life, a Philipino transvestite that he met at the bar....still has no idea.

The end

My discovery draft was not very good but I now know what I am going to do my essay on now.  I will be analyzing a Rolling Stone magazine.  I can analyze how the pictures in the magazine relate to the text and what the magazine would be like if the photos were removed. It is a very liberal magazine that influences your train of thought subliminally.  The pictures have a STRONG influence on how the articles and advertisements are perceived.  I'm not sure how I will approach the essay yet but at least I have an Idea of what I would like to write about. I chose my topic because I really enjoy Rolling Stone magazine and would actually enjoy writing about it.  My peer asked what the images do to the way the text is read.  She also asked if I thought I could write 8 pages on the topic. 

A picture of Andrew.

I have always been awful at starting and concluding my essays.  Luckily, I had a few good ideas for the intro.  Now I need to create a successful conclusion.  My essay begins with a quote from a TV show that most of the essay's readers can relate to.  It is a good intro to the rest of the essay and introduces the main idea and the theme.  On the other hand, my conclusion is lacking.  It cuts off very suddenly and doesn't leave the reader very satisfied.  The conclusion is mostly analytically based and  what it really needs is the addition of another more personal paragraph to the end to really sum up how I feel about the media and how it has impacted my life rather than analyzing how the planet has changed over the past few decades.

I liked the peer review.  I learned a lot and now have an idea of what I want to do to finish up the essay.  I not only got ideas from what my partner told me but I also got some ideas from reading her paper.  It was beneficial in many ways.

My essay has many issues.  The biggest problem is that I compare too many tv shows and movies that cannot be compared.  I compare spongebob to movies like The Hangover and shows like The Office.  My initial point was to describe the change in media over the years and it's influence on my life but I actually just described my change in interests.  Just because my interests change does not mean that the media is influencing my life.  Although I believe that the media speeds up the process of my loss of innocence, I need to make it clear that the media influenced ME in this way rather than everyone else.

I should focus more on how Pokemon, Spongebob and The Office influence MY life rather than how the media is changing the world.  This essay is supposed to be about me, myself and I. Not the rest of the world.

My peers helped me focus my ideas and clear my mind of all useless details that I was worried about.  I was mostly worried about how to format the essay and where to talk about certain subjects.  My focus of the essay is to analyze the effects of media throughout my life.  Specifically, the loss of innocence that occurred over time.  Each form of media had a similar effect and they all coincided with each other to create a super-mass media that changed my life.  This peer editing helped me organize the theme of the essay and the actual focus of where I want the essay to go.

John Wayne seems to have had played a large role in Joan Dideon's views of how men and women should live.  John Wayne is in an "Alpha male" kind of role that Joan believes should be like every man.  In reality, most men are not as macho as she was probably hoping.  The movie has set unrealistic standards that skew normal perception of the perfect person.  Joan has also changed her ideals of the average woman.  Although she is aware that the movie is setting new standards, she does not realize that the movie is sending subliminal messages of fake personalities.

Failblog.org came around in Middle School along with many other website and related media that had a large impact in my life.  Failblog is a website where people can post videos of "Fails" that usually included severe physical injury.  I initially thought the videos were "Bad" and should not be funny but as I watched more and more I became more accostomed to it.  I laughed and enjoyed watching other people get hurt.  This is sort of when I started to lose some of my innocence and started to change my sense of humor.

Shitty first post.



The first part of the essay that had an effect on me was about how the first draft is like a "child's draft." I never really had thought of a first draft as something that is written in such a light-hearted manner.  Generally I focus on my first draft a lot more than I really should.  This article makes me wonder if a draft is ever actually completed and how an essay can always be revised.  "Final drafts" do not exist and writing is a process.

My writing process is very unrefined and unorganized. generally, I finish my first draft and just submit that draft rather than editing and revising.  I do this for a good reason.  Usually My first draft is more organized and accurate to the actual theme I am writing about. By the time my essay has undergone revision, the entire thing has gone off on a tangent and is not the original intention of the essay.  The first draft is often sloppy and poorly written but, the theme is on topic.

My writing is a hurricane that demolishes all organization and leaves the reader depressed and flooded with useless information.  Hurricanes come and tear everything down and leave traces of destruction and sadness.  Likewise, my writing is basic and not very in depth.