Another blog of my choice..

Ok so I am sitting in the library doing anther blog of my choice because I am have an hour to occupate my time here in the library before class starts. I am really excited to start our research paper! I found a topic I am highly interested in and that would be child obesity. Should we have a better plan to prevent child obesity? I am excited cause I actually found a topic I am interested in. I am slo excited to find and see other peoples point of view. I think it is rather interesting and exciting. I am not too sure on what else to write about because from my knowledge, we have to blog about something that pertains to the class. So all I can think about is our research paper. Anywho, I really appreciated having a guy come and present to us on how to loook for different research items through the online UVU library system. Because we know how to access all this and where to look, it makes it that much easier. I also like having books available at our own library about almost any research question or topic you may have. I am excited to do my research paper because I am interested in Health and childhood development and I feel that child obesity ties into both catergories of where I am interested. So hopefully I don;t procrastinate this paper and do a wonderful job on it. Well I guess that is all for now. I need to go study for a math test that I have to take tomorrow and I am totally not ready for it. See ya.

My Writing Habits

One of my habits while writing, is to save the correctness for last. When I write I tend to type really fast. I don’t really care if words are spelled correctly, if my sentences are complete or not, and whether other grammatical rules are followed. I start my papers this way so that I can get my ideas out before I totally forget them all. I also do this because if I don’t, it takes me a lot longer to write my paper, and I end up wasting a lot of time. In addition, if I first focus on making my paper error free, I typically forget what I want say and my paper ends up not as well written as I would have liked it to be. Having this habit helps me to write better papers and to effectively get my ideas and points across.

One habit that I need to work on more is to know when to stop. I tend to be a perfectionist and I want my paper to be perfect. I proof read and edit my papers many times and never know when my paper is good enough and when to stop working on it. I rewrite, erase, and add ideas that may or may not be needed. If I work on this habit more, I think it will take away the stresses that I have about having a good paper and it will make my satisfaction of the papers I write to be “good enough.”

Developing habits

One of the habits that I’ve been trying to develop is to discover what method of drafting works best for me and for the assignment at hand also. I tried outlining on our last paper, which helped me to organize the paper on a more closed-form way. It also helped me be focused on one idea at a time instead of feeling overwhelmed by all the info. I tend to spend a long time on one setting trying to get things done, but it has been more harmful than helpful; I realized that taking brakes from the assignment refreshes my mind and helps me get new ideas. Another habit that I’m trying to create is to talk to others about my ideas and learn from their own ideas also; it is weird, but talking to others brings out thoughts that you didn’t even knew you had.
A habit that I really need to develop is to reduce my expectations on the early drafts. When I try to do the paper perfect from the beginning I get writer’s block every time. I’ve lost important ideas because I didn’t put them down on paper fast enough or because I felt they wouldn’t “fit in” at first. I think that free writing would help me with that also.

My topic for this last paper is about the effect that video games has on teenagers. I haven't done a lot of research on it yet, but I kinda want to put my opinion on it so far. Honestly I don't play a lot of video games and never really have been too sucked into that world. My little brother on the other hand for real has an addiction to video games. Not necessarily the violent or games with high sexual content or anything, but just games like Star Craft and the beloved World of WarCraft. My father hates, hates, hates it, and its actually caused some contention in our home believe it or not. If my little brother was to be punished he would be grounded form nintendo games and he hated it. His day honestly revolved around his games. It controlled his life for a long time, and he wasted a lot of time. He had a lot of potential to do a lot of really cool things, but we couldn't ever get him to leave the house. My point being is that games can be super addicting. He snapped out of it thank goodness, but hours and hours were lost because of it. The violent games like Grant Theft Auto increase violent behavior. People start to mix their games with reality and people get hurt. I know of one story when a teenager killed a bum with his paint ball gun and a base ball bat because he wanted to play grant theft auto in real life. He was so sucked in, that he took it to real life. Anyway, I'm going to research it out and see what I can find. Facts, questions, behaviors, ect... Wish me luck!

10 Habbits

One of the Habits that I feel I do well on is the third one, Schedule Your Time. I like to pick out a topic and then talk to my peers about it and see what they think about it. Often times people will know things, or have strong opinions about your topic already. Most of the time they will have an opinion that forces me to look at things in a different way. Its a lot easier to be open minded when you actually talk to people about your topic. Once I've heard others opinions then I'm loaded with new information, looking at problems and solutions in a new way, and a lot more prepared to write my paper. One I would like to work on more is exchanging my paper with more people. Again, when others see your work they are able to analyze it and give you suggestions. Also it helps with all the little things like grammar.

My feelings on the opinion peice.

I am just blogging away because we do have to have five extra blogs of our own to come up with before the semester is over so I decided I was going to blog about our last assignment and that was our opinion peice and response to it. I enjoyed this assignment because I actually love having other peoples opinions on everything in my life. So when I heard we had to write and response to someone's opinion on a certain subject, I was enlightened and excited! Although i didn't agree with everything the author of the article had to say, he made some really good points and opened my eyes up to quite a few things on child sexual abuse. It was actually a pretty emotional article for me cause he used some facts very blunty and even used a picture which was sad to see. I am sickened by child sexual abusers here int his world. They are sick and need help. I don't understand how anyone could ever do that to an innocent human being. Seriously it makes me so upset, I have never had so many knots in my stomach at once. Anywho, I would just like to say I had a great time writing this paper and I hope I get a good grade on this paper. It has actually been the first one I really enjoyed writing on. Well i guess that is all for now. See ya.

My Habit

One of the habits I noticed I used was what method I use when I am drafting my work. The one method that works best for me is by beginning to start my rough draft directly through typing. I don't like to do rough drafts with paper, although I feel it gives you more room to put more ideas into your paper as you are writing it, because I feel by typing a paper, you can keep your rough draft more clean and simpler for others to read. I also noticed that by me typing my rough drafts, it makes it easier for me to be more responsibe of where it is because it is saved in my laptop or computer rather than being put in my notebook putting it at risk to slip out, which it has before many of times in high school. That is the great thing about college though. They don't care how you start your rough draft off, just as long as you have one! One habit I feel i can work on is managing and scheduling my time into my paper. Because I like to write, I often find myself putting english last because it is my easiest class. I feel if I had a different outlook, my papers could be much mroe detailed rather than just done the night before. By going to the writing center and having peer reviews this semester however, has helped me to not procrastinate my time in writing my english papers and making me get them done at an appropriate time. So that is one habit I would like to try to improve on and do more.