Before I begin, lets have a round
of applause for Ms. Tanya Sasser! For this being my first English class at JSU
that I thought I would completely dread, I actually ended up LOVING it. I was expecting this hybrid class to be
completely ridiculous, but Ms. Sasser definitely made it meaningful and worthwhile.
She incorporated different methods of teaching that, overall, made learning
much more effective. She also didn’t do the typical “outline,” “rough draft,”
“essay” type of English class. She used blogging as an alternative which, might
I say, was very effective for me personally. Because of her, my writing skills
have made a drastic improvement. Let’s take a look at my progress over the past
couple of months:
In my third post, COLLEGE: The Good Of It In a Nutshell, you can see where I expressed my opinion more and began to
lengthen my work compared to my two previous blog posts. I went from about 260
words to nearly 700. I also began
incorporating quotes, links, and graphics from a variety of sources. And let’s
not forget photo pin! I can honestly state that I was one of those people who
copied and pasted images from Google onto my own work, thinking it was legal.
Boy was I wrong! I learned so much about how to do things the right way instead
of the “doing it just to get it done” way.
In the article, The Case Against
College Education, the dominating opinion is that college is
not always enough to guarantee success now or in the future, nor does it always
do the job in preparing an individual for their chosen career field.
“It is absurd
that people have to get college degrees to be considered for good jobs in hotel
management or accounting — or journalism. It is inefficient, both because it
wastes a lot of money and because it locks people who would have done good work
out of some jobs. The tight connection between college degrees and economic
success may be a nearly unquestioned part of our social order. Future
generations may look back and shudder at the cruelty of it.”
Throughout my fifth post, I took a
more personal approach by focusing on intergeneration collaboration. I
seemingly managed to connect with the audience, especially my own generation. I
included vivid language and posed questions to keep the reader’s attention.
While reading an
excerpt from the book “Share or Die: Voices of the Get Lost Generation in the
Age of Crisis,” I came across one particular passage that stuck out so vividly
to me. It told the story of a girl who was living in the BIG, BOLD state of New
York on a $25 per week stipend from volunteering with $60,000 in debt from
student loans. (Now you and I both know that this is a rare occurrence. C’mon, whom
do you know that would volunteer for ONLY $25 per week? Especially in New
York!) She spoke about how “society has already forcibly stamped “Generation Y”
on [her] forehead, at the sight of which older generations stop and scour the
floor in search of [her] pacifier.” (Is this not true? Do older generations not
think of us as “innovative, but impatient,” and “smart, but selfish?” And is it
also not true that we “youngsters” think of adults as incapable of even coming
close to knowing how the technological world operates? Think about that for a
moment………)
…OK, moment over.
I think that my approach on making the audience feel as if
they had read the book for themselves was a success.Overall, I
believe that I have radically improved as a writer. My posts show for
themselves that at the beginning, my writing style was more timid and
non-exuberant. Now however, I have found and accepted my writing style and
continue to thrive to get better throughout my English career at JSU!
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