Davey's English Blog

Class Journal Eng 112

[nickieng]

As a young lady, I really love shopping. The point here is so many people around me feel uncomfortable with my spending. I work and go to school at the same time, and earn money by myself. I enjoy my life by spending money on stuff that I love. Some people on the other perspective view said that I...

[daveycruz]

I think as long as you are spending money because you want to do it and not because other people tell you not to then you are fine. I used to spend a lot of money on Amazon and got boxes delivered to my house. After a while I realized that while I was enjoying what I bought, that some of the reason that I was spending money was because my roommates would get jealous that I bought things. As long as you are buying things for your reasons and not for others than I think you're fine.

[coolkhanh]

This is the most challenge essay assignment for me. I never had done a 10 pages essay before. I get frustrated, I hate English, especially when it comes to writing. I’m scared to write. I don’t know what to write. I’m so glad I finished a first draft and looking forward to edit it. The group...

[daveycruz]

I was terrified of speaking at work. I couldn't understand how people just stood up and spoke about whatever they needed to. I was always nervous. But I started doing it more and more. I think that even if you don't keep writing papers, you should keep writing something in English every day. The only way to get better at something is to do it, and be judged on it. It can feel harsh but you get better quickly.

[jcantwell01]

Journal Assignment 8 – Thoughts on Texts

            I believe anything could be a text.  I feel it is all part of a learning process.  If we could rewind our lives and have the teacher switch all of our texts or symbols around would we know the difference.  I do not think so. The new symbols would not be new to us just to the people who were taught using a different system.

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[daveycruz]

I feel like in this instance Mr. Webb is talking about a Text you can cite. I don't think you can cite "anything" I feel like there has to be truth, it can't be a fiction. You can't cite a story in an argumentative paper. But that's just my opinion.

[marylisa13]

Mary Landis

English 112

Professor Webb

Journal Assignment 7-Research Concerns

One of the assignments that helped me narrow down my topic for this research paper was the topic and thesis ideas. This allowed me to look at a broad variety of topics at one time and then I was able to narrow down...

[daveycruz]

I think it's great that you went so far outside of your normal wheelhouse for the paper. I often find myself gravitating back to history because it's so easy to find sources on it. I gave up on my challenging paper about modern science research because I felt that I would not be able to find enough sources. Awesome for you.

[riposite]

Okay so I am going to talk a bit about one of my favorite authors, William Gibson, and what i consider an amazing novel “Pattern Recognition”.

***okay now with the missing parts-I hate freaking hate Tumblr****

I chose to talk about William Gibson’s “Pattern Recognition” both because i believe...

[daveycruz]

I have only ever read Neuromancer my Gibson. It's not that I didn't like it, I did. but I got on a bit of a Neal Stephenson kick instead. Not that you can't read both of the giants in the speculative cyberpunk genre. I promise I'll pick up Pattern Recognition and give it a read.

[dainiusm]

I missed several journals, so now i am moving backwards. I am not trying to confuse anyone, just trying to get the assignments done, even though they are late.

A “text” to me primarily means a combination of symbols arranged in a pattern according to rules and regulations with the purpose to...

[daveycruz]

I like your point about cave paintings. Did those stories really happen or not? You can't call something a Text if it's actually a fiction. Good Point.

[daveycruz]

Open Swim

My favorite TV show right now is Community on NBC. I started watching it because as a man in his 30s who was going back to community college so that he could make more money, the characters really spoke to me. But as I continued to watch I found that I really cared about the people on the show. I don't know if it can be said to reflect society, but I'd like to share my favorite part of it. The development of the Character of Troy as portrayed by Donald Glover. Troy is a former football star who couldn't take the pressure of performing in college so he got himself injured at an end of year party. In the first season he is obsessed with being cool, making the right choices, not looking out of place and trying to get girls to like him. He also meets his new best friend Abed. Abed is a strange young man who may or may not be autistic. He has a hard time adjusting  to things around him. But he always seems to have a true spark of happiness. Troy begins to hang out with Abed and slowly drops his pretentious behavior. He accepts that he is kind of a geek. He likes geeky TV shows and cartoons. He makes mistakes and that's OK. He still likes girls, and still wants to get with them, but he no longer feels like he has to pretend to be someone he's not. And as soon as he realizes that, he gets one. He's happier than when he tried to be cool, and in many ways, is cooler than when he was trying to be cool as well.

[daveycruz]

"Texts"

I'm pretty old fashioned in my thinking and I don't think a lot of things can be considered "Texts". If someone posts a video to YouTube, that is not a text. This tumblr post is not a text.  I mean, the auto correct built in doesn't even recognize the word tumblr when I'm on a site called tumblr. That's not a text. Graffiti is not a text, and that's all this really is. I could be persuaded that this, and YouTube videos and reddit posts are diaries. So that would mean that they "could" be texts. But no one quotes a diary written this week. Or even this year. A diary doesn't really become important until after the person has died. So I suppose in my view, it can be counted as a text if they are dead. 

[daveycruz]

Research Concerns

I had to throw out the topic I thought I would be writing on because I couldn't find enough good resources. Science funding in the U.S. is a big topic right now, but all I could find was people's opinions and that is not what you want to base a paper on. When I switched to the Electoral College I was able to find lots of sources. Many of my sources I found online. I like online resources because I can search them faster and discard them if they aren’t of actual value. In a previous class we had to use at least two books we found in the library. I found that because I had to read so much of the book to see if I really wanted to use it that I didn’t want to discard it even if after reading I found it had little value to add to my paper. All of my resources for my paper are good resources with a lot of good reason to use them.

[daveycruz]

Journal Assignment 7 – The Writing Experience

The overall writing experience for this paper has been surprising at every step. I was surprised that after writing 300 word journals online we would jump to a 10 page paper. I was surprised after the paper was assigned to find that there was almost no direction to the paper, it could be argumentative, but didn't need to be. And it could be on any topic at all. My last English composition class focused almost entirely on reading essays and talking about them. Then I was surprised that the rough draft was due two full weeks ahead of the paper. I am TERRIBLE about doing all the work in the last minute, so planning so far ahead was a real challenge to me.

I really expected everyone to have the rough draft done, as I consider myself to be in the lowest percentile as far as time management, but I was surprised again to find that people didn't come to class and others had only written half of the required amount. When my grade came back I was surprised to have lost points. Very Surprised. 

The most surprising, and best part of the whole experience was how useful the peer review was. We had done small group assignments in my last class and in fact every class since I've come back to college has included an aspect of group work that always meant that people didn't show or that all we did was tell each other 'good job'. This was a real peer review. I really appreciate the people in my group that gave me criticism on where my paper needed work. This is the first time in the six semesters at NVCC where I feel like my classmates were there to make my experience better and I feel like my time spent reading and responding to their work was not in vain.

[dainiusm]

Journal 5

      I am amazed by the flexibility of American college education system. True, it takes some time to adapt, not very user friendly in the beginning, even challenging.  Someone who is not used to this system, like me, may find it difficult to comprehend those applied and not applied degrees, certificates, majors, minors, electives, prerequisites, course equivalents, hybrid courses, ELI courses, dynamic sessions, etc. It seems to take a college degree just to find your way through the system, but as you slowly move forward, analyzing different options, talking to advisors, trying to build your own schedule, countless possibilities emerge.

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[daveycruz]

The American system (which I think is based on the English system but I'd ha to check) has changed a lot just in the the last 15 years. And changed a lot more in a generation. I went to college here in Virginia in the late 90s. There were not as many options for electives. Students were pushed to pick a major and graduate in 4 years. You were supposed to find electives, but those electives were 'not important' and your grades in those classes didn't always factor into your GPA the same way. When my parents went to college in the late 60s and early 70s there were almost no electives. They both graduated in 4 years, with exactly the amount of credits they needed to graduate. They knew exactly what they were doing when they graduated and there were no questions as to if they would get a job. The new way is more comfortable, easier to fit into a schedule, and always for a little more fun, but the outside world after has changed so much I don't know if college has changed for the better or not.

[pharoahtames1]

I was reminiscing on the great times my friends and I had when we were younger. The spontaneity of taking off at will without any hesitations or rules to govern the road trips we took. The times we shared that will never return, nor never forgotten, but will be missed on quite terribly. My best...

[daveycruz]

Man, I have felt this so often. The vast majority of my friends are married, and many have kids. They always welcome me to events, but the events are now kid friendly and end at 9:30 instead of just getting started then. Part of adaption and change is being comfortable with who you are. The life of a nomad is a great one, unless you're just running from something. My best friend always said 'running is good, as long as you are running towards something, not away from it.' I still have to check myself sometimes and decide if I'm changing an moving on because I want to, or because I'm just uncomfortable and want to run away.

[daveycruz]

Journal... 5?

Last weekend I went to the Virgin Mobile FreeFest. A day long three stage music festival in Columbia Maryland. This year was my forth year attending and while it was not my favorite, I will say that there is no better way to be introduced to new musical acts and see some of your favorites than to go to a music festival.

I have been to festivals in Virginia, Maryland, DC, Pennsylvania and New Jersey and each one has been a great experience. My favorite big name performers have been Jay-Z, Tool, The Roots, and The Black Keys. I enjoyed learning about Grace Potter and the Nocturnals, Seasick Steve, My Chemical Romance, Breaking Benjamin, Fleet Foxes, Black Joe Lewis, and Gary Clark Jr. Some of these I experienced for free and others I paid over $200 but it was worth every penny. Discovering a band before they take off is a great pleasure in this world of constant over exposure.

I also enjoy the experience of being in a large crowd, meeting fans from all over the country who want to tell you about their experience. I heard The National perform because someone in line for food was in a hurry to get back and they sounded so excited that I decided to walk over to the second stage instead of back to the main stage. I have been offered a sandwich by a stranger in the pouring rain because we agreed that the listening to the last band onstage had been a transformative moment together.

Everyone should go to a music festival, and try to pick one with different genres of music. I listen to bluegrass now because of an opening act on a third stage, four years ago. You never know what you will open yourself up to, and it’s often as cheap to get open admission tickets to a festival as it is to get first 20 rows of a main event at Verizon Center. Leave stadium shows to fan-boys and girls who want to scream and barely hear the radio versions of songs pumped through the speakers. Check out who’s opening the second stage at a music festival and enjoy the best music you’ll ever hear.

[dainiusm]

Journal Assignment 4

My initial plan was to write about the negative side of genetic engineering, and the threat it arguably poses to the humankind. However a quick research on the topic revealed it to be too complicated and contradictory for this assignment. I felt that the amount of necessary research, complexity of evaluative criteria, and the lack of solid evidence were too challenging for a ten page paper, and would probably be a more realistic task for a doctoral dissertation.

That is why I picked another thesis from the selected five, and decided to make my point that hunting is beneficial to society, and its opponents simply refuse to view it from the positive angle. I am talking about the regulated sport and commercial hunting, of course, not about illegal hunting which is responsible for distinction of numerous species. Despite the abysmal difference between the two, hunting has a strong opposition in the world, and even faces more or less realistic threat to be banned. In my paper I will try prove the absurdity of such controversies, and build an argument in its defense.

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[daveycruz]

The only thing I can add to your topic idea is that you are currently living in an area that has some interesting tough choices about hunting surrounding it. The deer population alone, plus the foxes and skunks have become a huge problem in the suburbs. Deer cause car accidents and property damage and most would agree that the population needs to be kept under control. On the other hand there are so many people here, that work so many different shifts, that there is virtually no "safe" time to hunt. The homeless population is very large in this area as well, and many live in the same decreasing stands of woods as the deer. So safety is a big issue.

[runswithbacon]

Preservation of endangered mega fauna is crucial to the future of this planet. Their migration habits and consumption of various plants help shape and maintain the wild landscapes around us.

The points I would make would be about wildfires cause by lack of mega fauna, paths migration habits...

[daveycruz]

Don't deny the topic that interests you just because it could be a research paper. That will give you practice for the next paper. Don't forget to start with the basics. There are probably more than a dozen people in the class who won't know what Mega-fauna are. Maybe more. Just describing what they are and where they fit in the ecosystem right now is a whole page of your paper done.

You probably know this already, considering it's a topic you like, but biologists often look at the extinction of the mega fauna of Australia. The fact that the continent had it's own species and that they died out differently could also help lengthen your paper.

[jcantwell01]

Journal Assignment 4

James Cantwell

09/15/2013

I would like to apologize for my late posting. It’s not like me to turn in assignments late. The last three days have been challenging, to say the least. First, my back went out at the gym. It is starting to look like a serious injury, possible ruptured disk. Hence my wonderful limp. Suffering painfully while running the gauntlet the insurance company has set forth for me. Second, my mom was admitted to the hospital Friday afternoon via, ambulance and will be there until Monday. Third, my best friend of 30 years lost his older brother. I got that call Saturday morning. Needless to say I have been distracted by all these events layering one over the next in such fine fashion.

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[daveycruz]

It sounds like you've done a lot of thinking about this topic.  You've got a lot of great topics, and finding research to back it up will not be hard. Not that I disagree with you, but I think you should spend a few hours thinking about things from the other side of the equation.Think about things from the side of an open source advocate, or an Edward Snowden like individual. Try to frame arguments from the point of view that cyber security is infringing on our freedom. That should help you point those counter-arguments to rest in your paper.

[daveycruz]

Journal # 4 Laying out the arguments - Davey

Davey Cruz

FBI – Globalization

In the last two decades the Federal Bureau of Investigation has changed from a large, US based organization dedicated to capturing criminals who have perpetrated the worst crimes in the country into a huge worldwide establishment who attempt to catch terrorists and cyber criminals before they act.

Point one, the FBI used to be mostly based in this country. Point two the FBI used to focus on capturing criminals. Point three the FBI has grown from large to huge. Point four the FBI is now based all over the world. Point five, the focus of the FBI has changed to tracking suspected criminals before they act. Point six, all these changes occurred in the last 20 years.

Point one, the FBI has changed dramatically in 20 years. Point two the FBI used to be US based. Point three the FBI is now global. Point four The FBI used to focus on capturing criminals after they acted. Point five the FBI now captures before they can act against Americans. Point six, the FBI is larger than it used to be.

Point one The FBI is larger now than it used to be. Point two The FBI captures criminals before they act. Point three, the FBI used to catch criminals after they acted. Point four, the FBI is a world wide effort. Point five the FBI used to be a US based effort. Point six these changes all happened in the last 20 years.

I like the middle one best. When I got started I couldn’t even think of a way to organize them other than the first one. But I like the organization of the second grouping better. The third way just seems organized to be a letdown.  I think two paragraphs about all six points would be pretty easy. Definitely needs some research into how many worldwide stations there were 20 years ago. Those paragraphs could be a little small if there weren’t many. Two paragraphs about size increase could be pretty boring. I could easily spend more than two paragraphs on what the FBI used to do and what the FBI does now.

I don’t want to write this paper. It’s a lot of detailed research into a time in the FBI’s past. I got the idea from a Washington Post article that spelled out most of these changes already, and while it was interesting to read at a general level, I don’t really feel like a detailed explanation of the growth of the FBI from the early 90s to today would be very interesting for me to write. If I included a large section on the why, the terrorist attacks of 9/11, the growth of the intelligence community the infighting between the FBI and the CIA; that would be more interesting. But I also feel like that would increase the length of the paper into a much bigger and deeper thing. It would also steer very close to how I feel about the rise of government oversight in both the US and abroad. I feel personally close to the lack of privacy and the intelligence community’s role in that lack. I find that the closer I am to a subject, the less objective I write, and the less clear it is. I did learn that writing out my major points and putting them in order is a really great step. It gave me a different way of thinking about the topic. I’m really looking forward to writing up my actual paper in the same way and getting ideas about the structure of the paper. I tend to get really stuck in a one track way of thinking about a paper, and that one trick was a great P.O.V. changer.