Writing with Sources

In high school, a major problem for me was putting evidence and meaning of the quotation before and after I introduced the quotation itself. In other words, I often had only one thought about the quotation and would therefore end up repeating myself in my thoughts. My second problem is voice – I write too much how I speak – slang and with many hyphens. My greatest struggle is finding the right word because I do not have a great vocabulary, so I end up saying the exact same words I often use when I talk too – “often”, “suggests”, “like”, “and stuff”. So I end up using my actual voice way too much when I should be using my professional voice. However, when it comes to writing to a specific audience, I can be very good at that because I have paid close attention in the past to how people address one another. When they talk to their friends, students tend to use a “top dog” technique trying to prove who is coolest. But when a student speaks to a teacher, his voice is much lighter and timid, and he tends to use much better vocabulary. Then, students addressing their families tend to be somewhere in between.

My Avatar in Second Life

I still think having an avatar is “weird” and “bizarre”, but I am beginning to get sucked into this world of Second Life. When I was younger, I was always interested in games such as The Sims and Sim City 3000, so Second Life is basically the program that I always wanted to try. I am excited to enter this new world, however the stories I have heard about people romancing and men creating attractive female avatars strikes me as “creepy”. I am putting quotes around these words because they are my generalizations about Second Life. I want my avatar to be as similar to my appearance as possible because I really don’t want to fool anyone. Also, I get judged in real life for my height and physical appearance (as all people do), so I guess I am not afraid to look the same in my Second Life. I want my avatar to dress in goofy pants and a Richmond shirt because in real life it shows that I am goofy and fun but at the same time appreciate an education too. Also, I don’t want to be one of those “creepy” males choosing a female avatar. I chose the name Ihavebad Frostbite because I think it says a little about myself – pointing out I have a sense of humor while at the same time being a good choice for a gender neutral name.

The Transition to College Writing

Keith Hjortshoj's Chapter "Footstools and Furniture" examined many of the issues that I struggled with in high school when writing papers. My teachers would often write "general/vague" and "sloppy/disorganized". I could introduce the subject I wanted to write about well, but when it came to organizing my points, I had two major problems. First, I could not state my points clearly enough to the point where it just sounded like a vague statement - I wanted to express my thoughts better and more thoroughly but my lack of a (good) vocabulary prohibited me from doing so. Once my vague and sloppy thoughts were on the paper, I found that they had no "flow" and were not transitioned well. This brings up my second major problem: I struggled with organizing my thoughts and developing body paragraphs with clean transitions. I usually had points that did not fit in with what my main thesis of the paper is, making many jumbled thoughts on a paper. 

The best thing I can do for myself is proofread, and start early. I need to organize my thoughts on printer paper to make my "road map" for my paper, then I need to think about each transition and develop it clearly from point to point. When I complete the work, I need to proofread it aloud.