Wow, I didn't know I sounded so pessimistic in my journals! In almost every journal, I said something about not liking the prompt, or how mine wasn't good, or how I didn't know how to do the assignment. It seems though, from the beginning to the end, they do seem a little bit more positive because as time went on I had a better idea of what was taking place in class. I also realized from reading my journals that I talked a lot about my writing assignments from other classes like in biology and history. I stated that it was neat to see how my teachers told us to do the same things as my english teacher like taking into consideration the audience. I also talked about how I would much rather do an english paper than a biology or history paper. I also seem to become more positive about my writing throughout my journal.

My last blogger. How exciting!!! Well anyways, I just finished my introduction for my English portfolio and I am not sure if I did it exactly correct, but we get to go over them tomorrow in class so I will be able to change it if so. I feel that I was extremely redundant because for each piece I talked about how it showed my understanding of the same thing pretty much.

Well, English 11 has gone pretty well this semester. I have never had to write that much for one class so it took a little bit of getting used to, but it turned out to not be that bad. I am not too fond of writing because it is definitely not my best skill so I sure hope that it has improved a little from taking this class. I know my skill of recognizing my audience and targeting my paper towards that audience has improved because I never use to really think about it until we started focusing on it in class. The group evaluations have helped because it is always good to get a second opinion. Also, my teacher gives really good responses when he grades our papers so that will help out a lot when putting my portfolio together and just in general because now I know what I need to work on.

Writing is so much fun, epecially over Thanksgiving break! Not!!! Well, I did finish my paper last night, which was a big thing for me because I can usually never get work done when I am home, but I knew I had to because I have a final on Monday as well. For our Unit three project we were suppose to use two sources that argue or have opposing thoughts on a certain issue in our prospective major. My prospective major is psychology so I chose to tackle the topic of animals used in scientific research. I am not sure if I correctly evaluated my two sources in the way that we were suppose to, but I think it will do. Since my topic is kind of a sensitive topic it was interesting to read people's claims. It was hard though to find sources that weren't just stating their opinion, but who were actually in the field and could reliably write and comment on the subject. I know my paper still needs a lot of work so I am glad it is just our draft due on Monday. I also have some questions relating to the bibliography since my sources are articles within books, but I am sure I can get help with it in class.

Well, I just finished revising the worst paper I have ever written. I didn't really understand the prompt for feeder 3.2 so I seem to jump around in my paper without ever getting to the point. Before leaving class on Friday I thought I had a better idea of the topic, but today I realized I didn't. I think I might have done it completely wrong, but I don't know how to change it to make it right. It was hard trying to analyze a scholarly journal even though mine didn't contain a lot of jargon, it still was hard to analyze it and write about it. The article was so long if I would have done a complete analysis it would have taken forever and been about 100 pages long. Feeder 3.2 was only suppose to be around three pages so I barely touched on their argument and results, which is what the paper was suppose to mainly include. I really liked the last two units a lot better besides the speech part, but we only have one more paper to write so I am really excited about that!

Well, I just finished my intellectual autobiography and boy was it hard. I know it doesn't sound that hard, but writing about myself and my interests was difficult. Since I really don't have a specific love or interest in something it was hard for me to talk about what profession I may want to go in. In my paper I mainly focused on psychology since I do enjoy learning about it. The prompt said to talk about your intellectual interests and although I do alright in school I don't really have an intellectual interests. School is school to me. I feel like I might have strayed away from the prompt a little, but I think it will be okay. My paper doesn't really follow it because I didn't really have any intellectual interests to work with.

Well, this week I finished my last biology lab report. I am so happy I never have to do one of those again! After writing that eleven page report on Tuesday night made me never want to take a science again. It is just so much information you have to include and you have to make sure you get every step and procedure in there. Plus the fact that they grade them really hard. I hope I did okay on it because I need a good grade in there. Eventhough, I am not an English person, I would choose an English paper over a biology report any day!!!

This week I had to read a book and write an essay on it for history 27. The book was titled A Medieval Life and let me tell you it was as interesting as it sounds. Our teacher gave us some questions that we could try to incorporate into our essay, but she didn't give us an exact prompt or topic. This made it hard reading the book because I didn't know exactly what to look for because I didn't know what my paper was going to be about. We had to argue a certain argument. As I was nearing the end of the book I finally came up with a thesis.

I didn't like having to come up with my own prompt. I like when a teacher gives you an exact prompt because then you have a better feel for what you are suppose to write on. When I wrote my paper I didn't know if I was being too abstract or too specific.

Writing this speech kind of reminded me of writing my speech. I had to come up with an argument and find evidence to support it. For every claim we were supposed state evidence and then comment and elaborate on it. The history paper wasn't that tough, but I am not sure if my argument was a good one and if my evidence supported it thoroughly. When I first began writing it, I felt confident about it, but as I got further into it I began to get a little worried, but I wasn't changing it after all that I had done on it!

Well, my speech is over! It was hard making my paper into a speech. I had to cut and paste so much and end up cutting out a lot of good information due to the time issue. But I think it turned out okay.

I hate lab reports! Yesterday, I just had to work on the procedure outline and it took forever! I am dreading doing the entire lab report this next week. Lab reports are so not fun. It is not creative at all and all you do in it is describe what you did, what you used, and why. It is definitely not one of my favorite types of writing, but I have to do it.

Tonight when I get back to Chapel Hill I have to write a biology paper on a video, but we also have to include a lot of book stuff. I hate papers like this because you are using information right out of the book and it is so hard to paraphrase because it usually says exactly what you want to say so you end up citing everything! I also dislike biology papers because there is no opinion or room for one to include personal feelings. It is all based on boring facts, but I guess it doesn't matter because I am definitely not going into biology!