College Composition as a Class

     At first I really did not want to take college composition.  I dreaded going to the class.  I thought it was a waste of my time because I already learned everything in high school.  After the first couple of weeks I started to like the class and pay attention a lot more.  I realized that I have forgotten a lot of what I learned before.  I think the reasons why students are made to take college comp is because they forget a lot when they get out of high school.  We went over how to summarize, paraphrase, quoting, grammar, and how to write an essay.  Relearning those skills have helped me to remember the correct way how to do them again.  Having students go through the class and completing it will help students have a better understanding of how to write a better essay, with correct use of grammar, and how not to intentionally plagiarize.  College comp helps students with anything English related and it is a great class to take during freshman year of college.
     I want to carry many skills that I learned from this class into my next semester.  I will remember how to write an essay correctly if I have to write another essay in another class.  I will find mistakes in my grammar when I reread whatever I wrote and I will correct them.  I always have some type of grammar mistake in my writing.  I have a better understanding of how to summarize, paraphrase, and quote pieces of work that were not written by me and I will use them the right way for now on.  The next time I start to write an essay I will feel more comfortable with how to write my essay.  I hope all of these skills will help me next semester and future semesters. 

Top 5 Things That Presenters Should and Should Not Do

These are the top 5 things that I think a presenter should and should not do.


The top 5 things a presenter should do while giving a presentation

1.  Make eye contact with the audience.
The presenter should not be looking around the room while presenting.  They should be looking at the audience, but not to just one person.  They should be looking at everyone in the room.  This also allows the presenter so see the reaction to the audience to see if they are confused or have a question to ask. 
2.  Practice the presentation before presenting.
This allows the presenter to be comfortable with the presentation.  Rehearsing infront of people is a great way of practicing becuase they will tell the presenter what he or she should be doing different or doing a great job at. 
3.  Dress according to what the presentation is about.
For example, if the presentation is about something casual then dress casual, if it is formal then dress formal when presenting.  This shows the audience that the presenter is serious about the preasentation.
4.  Have everything that the presenter will need while giving the presentation.
This shows that the presenter is ready and all organized to give the presentation.  It also allows for no mistakes of forgetting anything. 
5.  Ask questions to the audience during the presentation if there is any questions and after the presentation.
This allows the audience to ask the questions that they are confused about and have a better understanding of the presentation.


The top 5 things a presenter should not do during a presentation

1.  Do not read off of what you are presenting the entire time presenting.
This show the audience that the presenter is nervous, may not have practiced, or has not idea what they are presenting. 
2.  Do not fidget with clothes, hair, hands, or feet.
This distracts the audience and all they are concentrating about is what the presenter is doing with their body.  It also shows that the presaenter is nervous.
3.  Do not rush through the presentation just to get it over with.
This then makes the audience feel overwhelmed and confused with what the presenter is presenting.  Take time while presenting and go slow.
4.  Do not talk soft to the audience.
The presenter should talk loud enough that everyone can hear them, even in the back of the room.  If the presenter is not talking loud then the people far way from them will not hear what the presenter has to say.
5.  Do not say unwanted words like "um" or "and" over and over again while presenting.
This shows the audience that the presenter may have no idea what they are talking about or are uncomfortable with presenting.

The Hardest Part About Writing my Research Paper...

     What is the hardest part about writing this particular research argumentation essay?  Well I would have to say finding the sources I needed for my paper and my essay structure.  I would look at articles and website pages and they seemed to be perfect for my paper, but they really had no significant relationship with my topic.  Once I realized that I picked the wrong article I would have to start looking for more, so that was kind of annoying.  I also had a hard time structuring my essay.  I didn't always know where I should have put some of the paragraphs, but I think I did a good job with that.  Also having an outline of how to write the argumentative essay made it a little easier for me.
     I am proud to say that I accomplished this essay without any really hard struggles.  I know I said finding the sources was hard, but to me that is always hard to find.  Once I read the articles and websites I knew exactly what I wanted to say in my paper to make the reader convinced of what I truly believe in.
     I procrastinate on every essay that I have to write for school.  I always find them boring and pointless when they are assigned to me.  For this essay, I actually got to pick my topic.  I was really excited to start researching and writing my essay.  The need for a better curriculum in schools for sex education programs is very important I feel.  I wanted to show the reader why I thought so.

My Research Paper

     In my English Composition class we have to write a research paper. We had to decide on a topic that was related to school in some way. I decided to write about sex education in high school. I know that the high school that I went to only focused on abstinence and not sex education. During high school I knew so many people who got pregnant and had a baby at a young age. I think it is important that teenagers in high school get the real lecture on sex education because I do believe that once teenagers have sex that they are not ready to deal with what comes after that.
     While researching and writing my paper I plan to find out many things. I want to know why most schools do not teach sex education to their students. The opinion of parents about the school teaching their child sex education if the school taught that program. And I would like to find out the pregnancy rate in teenagers and their contraceptive usage rates, because that could be correlated with the education that students get in school.
     I do not know much about the topic. What I do know is that a lot of schools in America don't teach about sex education to their students. More teenagers are having children at a very young age. Teenagers now are not open to discussion about sex to their parents or other people, and most do not use contraception. It seems like more and more people are getting STDs and getting pregnant and that all could be prevented.
     In my research paper I plan to argue that schools in America should teach sex education to their students. The current curriculum, in my opinion, is not working. There are increased rates of pregnancy and STDs. Most people I know or who are friends of mine either know someone who has a STD or a child. If the schools taught sex education in schools this could all be prevented and people would be better educated about the topic.

Summary of the blog "In the Words of Spongebob, I'm Ready" by Jennifer O'Connor

     In the blog, "In the Words of Spongebob, I'm Ready" written by Jennifer O'Connor she wrote about how she graduated from high school and is now ready to go to college. She was a writer for the Times Union High School Blog. Jennifer was also part of the BOCES New visions Journalism and Media Studies program. She is starting college soon and is very excited to see what life is like after high school. She is ready to start her new beginning and has been ready for graduation since the first day of 9th grade.
     Every Wednesday, the New Visions program would have to "produce, direct, shoot, and edit" (O'Connor 4) their own videos at the college. The program gave her class a preview of the college's campus. She liked the college and knew she would be going to school there.
     Jennifer started the program knowing exactly what she wanted to do in life. She wanted to be a journalist and a photo journalist. After the program started, she has changed what she wanted to do. After switching career paths a couple of times, she has settled on PR and advertising as her major. Jennifer also wants to minor in graphic design. She knows that she will change her mind on her major many more times, but what she does know is that she wants to work in communication.
     There is only a few weeks left of summer and she has a lot of growing up before college starts. She still needs to get a lot of things done. Jennifer still needs to get her driving license, find a job, and move all of her stuff into her apartment that she will be living with her sister in.

Here is the link to the actual blog entry.
http://blog.timesunion.com/college/page/4/

Works Cited

O'Connor, Jennifer. "In the Words of Spongebob, I'm Ready." Timesunion Blog. timesunion.com, 19

     July 2012. Web. 5 Nov. 2012

Summary of "Do Schools Kill Creativity" Presented by Ken Robinson

     In the video "Do Schools Kill Creativity" presented by Ken Robinson at a TED conference, he argues that schools are only teaching education and not creativity which the school system should be focusing on.  During school kids are taught to be educated in academics and not so much on the arts and music.  If a child likes those two subjects, then they are told at a young age that art and music will never get them a job in the future.  When a child is growing up they don't care that they are wrong.  Now, when a child is told that they are doing something wrong they don't ever want to make another mistake ever again.  That is when they lose their creativity.  If a child loses their creativity, then they may never find what they really like to do in life or even what they are good at.  The education system right now is made for academic integrity only, nothing else.  Academic inflation is happening in this country; this means in order to be the best that you can be a student goes to college and gets their AS.  If an AS is not good enough then they have to go get their BS.  Then if that is not good then they have to go on and get their MD, and then their PhD.  That is all because jobs want to see how much schooling a person has and to be highly educated.  In school kids should be taught about everything even creativity because the adults today do not know what the future holds.  Adults have to show the kids what the right thing to do and to do what they do best, not just math and science.
     I agree with the thought that Mr. Robinson proposes.  I think that schools do kill kids creativity.  In my own experience I feel like I have lost all creativity while I was in school.  During elementary school it was easier for me to sit down in art class and start drawing anything.  Then once school got a little harder and started to focus more on academics I felt like my creativity was fading away.  Middle school and high school projects and art classes were extremly hard for me because I felt like I did not have a good imagenation anymore.  Even now when I have to make up a creative writing peice for english I have a really hard time with that.  If school did not push math, english, science, and social studies so much in school then I think I would still have a creative mind and do thing things that I liked to do as a child.  When I was growing up I only had half a hour for art and music class the rest of the school day was focused on academics.  If schools start to focused on art and music a little bit more when kids are growing up and in the future, then I think that it would make a whole generation of people who will be very productive in the world and love what they do. 

Work Cited

Talks, TED. "Do Schools Kill Creativity." YouTube. YouTube, Feb. 2006. Web. 23 Oct. 2012

The Summary of "Plagiarism Lines Blur for Student in Digital Age"

     In the article "Plagiarism Lines Blur for Student in Digital Age" by Trip Gabriel, he states that students this day in age do not realize that using other peoples words that they did not write are wrong. Using the internet makes it easier to copy and paste a piece of writing into an essay. There is information on the internet that anyone could use these days.
     In many surveys between the years 2006 to 2010 by Donald L. McCabe; a co-founder of the Center for Academic Integrity and who also is a business professor at Rutgers University, he found that 40% of 14,000 students confessed to plagiarizing. Today only 29% of students think that plagiarizing is serious; earlier it was 34% of student who thought that.
     Gabriel included information from many people and their thoughts on plagiarizing.  Susan D. Blum; an anthropologist from University of Notre Dame. She said that students do not care about creating their own pieces of work. Students rather put down an idea of someone else’s work and hand it in to get it graded. Helene Hegemann a German teenager wrote a best-selling book. Ms. Hegemann said that originality doesn't exist anymore only authenticity. Sarah Wilensky, a student from Indiana University, said that plagiarism creates laziness. There is no creativity with forming your own thoughts. A person is just taking pieces here and there and making them make since. On the other hand, most students, artists, and authors do create their own original work. The real reason why students plagiarize is because high school does not prepare students for college. She says that if you can read and make since of a piece of writing them you will not plagiarize.
     Many students have plagiarized. Some did not know that they were doing so. Other students knew that they were plagiarizing. Those who knew that they were plagiarizing knew it was wrong and did not want to follow the writing process. In one case a student was called down to the disciplines office because of plagiarizing. The parents came to the meeting along with the students. The father said it was his fault that his daughter plagiarized.