In Class: Freewrite

Alright, well my computer just took like 30 min to boot up and stuff but here I am. I had to run the mile this morning at the track at 6:30. I have been out from soccer for a year now with a broken leg but I am slowly working my way back into things. The team goal is for everyone to run a mile in 7:00 minutes or less. I thought this was going to be impossible for me since I am so out of shape. I actually surprised myself and ran it in 6:48 so I made the team goal and also had a personal accomplishment and proved to myself that I can keep up with the rest of the team.
I am soooooo sick of school right now and I am counting down the days of class. I cant wait to have a long break and not do jack taco for a few months. I had the mistake of taking summer school last summer- I wont be doing that again! I plan on only being home for like a month and then coming back here and doing summer workouts so that I can get back in shape and be ready for the fall season.

Unit 3 Proposal

My group had decided to take on the task of  arguing the legalization of marijuana.  We have decided that hits many audiences and in order to hit everyone we will be using a piece of argument that reaches out to our own age group, our parent's age group, and elderly.  I really feel like our group is on its way to a great project!  We are all very motivated to get the project rolling and not procrastinate!  I hope we end up with an excellent project, which I'm sure we will. 

In Class: Chapter 12 Reading

Last night's reading was on chapter 12 about style in arguments. It talked about style and word choice and how the vocabulary of the argument helps to create its style and tone. It also talked about sentence structure and argument and how that plays an important part in establishing style. It talks about punctuation and how where we place a comma or period can make an argument more effective or less effective. It talks about Special effects such as figurative language and analogy or using a word that doesnt mean its traditional meaning. We can use things like metaphors and similes and analogies to draw comparisons between things. And we can also use schemes to add "zing" to our arguments.
If we apply these things our unit 3 assignment I think it will make our paper more sharp and appealing to the readers. The manipulation of words and sentences creates many unique styles that can make papers much more interesting or it could have the opposite effect and make them dry, boring, and a chore to read. I think our group will be able to bring our different writing styles together to make a whole new unique style.

Job Title and Description

I have been chosen to be the Editor. My job responsibilities will be to look over all of the writing we come up with as a group and have the last say on what goes into our writing and what comes out. I will look for grammar and punctuation as well as content, flow, and organization. I will also help in the writing aspect of this project which is the Memo that must accompany what ever we chose as our major project. My job will help our group to ensure that all of our ideas collaborate as one cohesive piece and that we make sense. Sometimes it is difficult to have the ideas of four different people coordinate and sound good so hopefully I can help our group organize our thoughts. 

My group members are Brenan G, Jeff G, and Ashley T. 

In Class: Free Write

I hate group projects. No one can meet when you can meet and there is always a scheduling conflict. Or 3 out of the 4 people can meet at one time and the other person cant so the group just gets together without that one person and they dont do any of the work but still get the grade even though they did absolutely nothing. It seems to work out that I often get stuck doing a lot of the work because I actually care about my grades unlike many people in these TCU Core classes. Also, once the project is actually complete and it comes time to present the project, we havent discussed who is going to present what part and then when we get up there we sound like idiots who have no idea what we are talking about. Then there are some people who have horrible anxiety about talking in front of the class so then we sound even more silly. My biggest complaint is that I often get stuck doing the majority of the work which makes me mad because other people still get the credit for the work that I did.

An ideal group work situation would be to assign everyone a different and equal part of the assignment and hold them accountable for it. I think that peer evaluations are good because then you can get credit for the work you actually did. I am hoping that we can all work out our schedules so that we are able to meet outside of class if necessary. As long as we are on task and get a majority of our work done in class and turn things in on time it should go smoothly.

In group work ther is usually a leader who coordinates and colaborates all of the parts together. They usually ultimately decide what goes into the final piece and what does not based on the material the other group members have given them. Under the leader there could be a researcher, a creative person who has the vision and sets our project apart from the others. Someone to layout how the presentation will go and what we are going to say. I do think that each group member should play a part in the actual text of the project and add their own thoughts about it all.

In Class: Reflection

It is kind of funny to look back on my older posts at how grumpy I was about writing and the general topic of arguments. My views about what an argument is, the state of arguments in the United States and how I go about arguing has changed a lot. I think I have a pretty good grip on the idea taht everything is or can be an argument. The way we dress and talk and act are all arguments in some way. I learned a lot about how people can take factual information and twist it however they want to make it lean toward their values or opinion. The emotion and character we put behind our arguments is what really makes them successful and believable. I actually ended up really enjoying this class when at the beginning I thought I was going to hate every minute of it. I liked that you made sure not tell us any right or wrong way to do our assignments and writing because taht is what stresses me out the most in English courses. I think I have grown as a writer and like my work more now than I did at the beginning of the semester. The assignments have been very interesting and challenging but the amount of freedom we had to write about whatever interested us is what made them fun.