Jillian's Blog: Follow Along

It's Hard To Say Goodbye!!!

2009-11-30T16:51:00.006-05:00

This semester has been one wild ride expecially in my English 101 class. I have learned some very important things this semester that I know will stay with me throughout my years in college and beyond. The most important thing that I have learned is that when you are writing it is very important to write in your own voice. What that means is that you want to write the same way that you would if you would be saying or speaking about your topic a loud. I know that I have made some significant changes to the way that I write since I have started this class. I have changed how I write my papers because I want to get straight to the point of my paper but still give enought detail so that my reader will stay interested. I have also learned the importance of proofreading and also understanding grammatical usage and spelling. Writing is a first impression when it comes to someone else judging you without them knowing you. If they see that you have alot of grammatical and spelling errors then they are going to think that you don't know how to spell or write, and that is not a good thing when making a first impression. In your writing you want to come off as being strong and confident and that is what makes your writing stand out above the rest.

Thanksgiving Dinner

2009-11-23T16:26:00.002-05:00

Writing is something that I felt has always come easy for me. It was just about taking the ideas that I had in my head and transfering them on to paper. Well that process is easier said that done. For me, my writing experience has been like trying to cook Thanksgiving Dinner for a big family. There are so many steps and things that you have to follow in order to make sure the everything comes out right.

Step 1: Planning
Planning a Thanksgiving dinner is just about the same as planning what you are going to write about. You have to figure out what is going to be on the menu. It's the same thing as writing. You have to sit down and a better understaning of what you plan on writing about. You want to make sure that you write about something that is going to appeal to your audience when the sit down to read your paper. The same thing applies to Thanksgiving dinner. You can't have chili hotdogs for Thanksgiving. You have to plan and prepare your meal so that it will appel to the people you are serving too.

Step 2: Organization
The second part of preparing Thanksgiving dinner, is organizing the meals that will be served over the course of Thanksgiving. You have to get the ingredience for the food so you will be able to prepare the food and you have to also organize what dish will be served first and so on because you can serve dessert before you serve the main course. The same thing applies to the writing process. You have to make sure that you have all the right information and the right sources in order to write a very good paper. You can't have your last point come before your first point, and you can't write your paper without an introduction and jump right into what you are trying to talk about. Organinzation is very important because it will help get your paper to a point where it will be able flow smoothly for your reader.

Step 3: Drafting, revising, and editing
All three of these steps go together when planning Thanksgiving dinner. Once you are done organizing your meal you now have to cook it. Drafting in Thanksgiving is when you cook your meal and make sure that it turns out the way you want it to. Next is revising, if you taste the meal and it does not taste right you either have to add or subtract some ingredent that was added before or start over from the beginning ( usually it depends on how bad it taste). The last part is editing, well editing goes hand in had with revising. It's just making sure the meal is prepared to your liking and that it taste acceptable so that you will be able to serve it to your guest. The same goes for writing. Once you have all of your ideas and thoughts put together you have to get them out on paper. Once you have done that you revise and edit your paper to make sure it says exactly what you want it to say and that you don't have any kind of errors or issues. You want to make sure that your paper is persentable a possible for your reader because you don't want your paper to have alot of errors or taste bad for your reader or guest.

Step 4/Final Step: Publication
Now after all that planning, organization, and proofreading and editing it's time to serve dinner. You have put in all this time and effort into preparing Thanksgiving and its now time to present what you have worked on to you guest. You want them to appreciate the fact that you have prepared this dinner for them, and you want them to like and enjoy it. The same is for your paper. You have taken your time in writing your paper and you want your reader to appreciate it. You know that you are able to take your time and really do you best and show off what you have to offer.

I know personally that over the course of the semester I have really learned to take the writing process seriously because it is in place to make sure that we know what we are doing. It's not just there for show but it is there to help us get our thoughts and ideas from our head to paper. We want to be able to say that we are good writers and I personally know that I have had stuggles in writing because I did not take the writing process seriously. I now realize that English is not about telling you how bad of a writer you are but how you can improver your writing for the future. When it comes to writing there is always room for improvement. Like my English professor says "Drafts are not done....they are just due." and that is all writing is. It is a draft of what we are really wanting to say just on paper and we want to make the best impressions whether or not it's on paper or being spoken verbally.

Blog Prompt #8

2009-11-04T20:19:00.007-05:00

Here are three of the resourse that I will be using thoughout my research paper on what can the Univerity do in order to keep the retetion rates high on weekends?

1. Retention Update
http//www.usca.edu/esip/ept/pdf/retentionupdate(2006).pdf
I have decided to use Retention (2006), as one of my resourse in my research paper because it show the numerical charts, and information the University has taken over time to show what is being done to help the retention rates go up for the University. It shows that the University has taken notice in the fact that before not many students who start at USCA as freshman, usually don't stay on campus after their first year, or transfer. They either move off campus, therefore causing them to not become involoved in student activities, or they transfer to another school completely. In this document it show what the University had done in order for them to keep students here on campus. They built a new residence hall in 2004, and that caused the retention rates to rise tremendously as compared to the previous years. This is a very helpful resourse for my research.

2. USCA Marketing Plan 2007-2008
http//www.usca.edu/marketing/PDFs/USC%20AIKEN%20MARKETING%20PLAN%202007-2008.pdf
This is another resours that I have decided to use for my research. The USCA marketing plan basically talks about the University and its beginnings. It shows that they have used the information from the Retention (2006) documents to help develop this marketing plan. This is very useful information because it shows or discuss in detail what things are going well for the University, as well as the the thngs that can be improve. The marketing plan also discuss the importance of community involvement and also the importance of having the university and the community come together to make the students who are not from Aiken feel more like they are at home. That is the most important key to making sure that the students feel like this is their home away from home.

3.Best Friend Express and The Aiken Standard

Best Friend Express: http//www.bestfriendexpress.com/
The Aiken Standard: http//www.aikenstandard.com/

I have choosen to combine these two resourse together because they go hand in hand with the information that I plan on using in my paper.

I first decided to use the Best Friend Express because it is the local bus system that runs in Aiken. I feel that this information is useful because some of the students on campus do not have a means of transportation, and the Best Friend Express is a way for them to get to the places that they want to go. I know for a fact that I did not know about the Best Friend Express until I was talking to a fellow classmate who was from Aiken. I feel that this is valueable information for those who are from out of town and do not have a car or some other means of transportation. I feel that this will help the retention rate go up, because many students don't go home every weekend and they are looking for things to do on the weekend, and the Best Friend Expres will allow them to get off campus and into town.

I also decided to use the Aiken Standard as a resours because the Aiken Standard has all the information on what is going on, in and around the town of Aiken. I feel that the Aiken Standard is important to helping the retention rate go up, because many students do not know what is going on in Aiken so they call the town boring and say that there is nothing to do, when there is plent of things doing on in town. We have to make that information available for students. The information is not going to find them, but we have to bring it to them so that they are aware of what is going on and they will be less likely to want to go home and do something else.

Blog Prompt# 7

2009-10-21T20:09:00.002-04:00

"Research Questions"

How do we make USCA, a home away from home for incoming freshman students?
How do we get new students to say over the weekend to help them get acquainted better with the school and their new surrounds?
What kind of activities should the campus have on weekends so that students who don't live to far from the campus will not go home?
How much would it cost the school to develop some sort of transportation system to those students who do not have a means of transportation?

"Search Terms"

Housing, resident halls, dorm rooms
transportation/transportation cost, public safety, registered drivers
students life, weekend activities for young people, food services

Can You Answer This Question?

2009-10-14T19:57:00.003-04:00

Going from high school to college is a very exciting time in the life of new college freshman yet it is also a very scary time when they arrive as well. College is suppose to be the time in a young persons life where they can go out and feel like an adult. Although one thing still remains, students are still going home over the weekends. Now shouldn't students have alot of activites and things to do over the weekends to help them make the transition from high school to college much easier? Yes it should but one thing that I have noticed is that students are rarely here over the weekends? Why is that? What could be making them want to go home all the time? In fact what can the unviversity do to insure that students are making the transition to college much easier?

Blog Promp 5: I'm The Teacher Now!!

2009-09-23T21:33:00.003-04:00

I never realize what teachers have to go through in order for them to grade paper. I now have a new found respect for them when it comes to that. I read four different research papers and I gave each of them a respective grade.
The first essay that I graded was " Foreign Athletic Limits". I gave this essay a D. I gave it a D because thay had alot of grammatical errors, but most importantly they did not have a clear thesis about their paper and they kept rambling thoughtout, jumping from one idea to another without any clear format.
The second paper that I graded was "Online College vs. Online High School". I decided to also give this essay a D. This one also had many grammatical errors but the thing that was most troubling was the fact that they had some references but throught the paper they were quoting numbers and statistics without any clear references or resourses. If someone wanted to challenge this paper and wanted to make sure that the sourses they used were correct, they might not have been able to find them because some were not listed.
The third paper that I graded was intitled "Predisoped to Divorce". I decided to give this essay a B- or C+. I gave this essay that grade because again like the one's before they had some grammatical errors and the essay had a thesis but when it came time for them to explain there thesis, they did not do that. They spent most of the essay elaberating about the topic. They went on to give good details but they did not do a good job explaing their thesis.
The last essay that I graded was "NAACP Case Against Gun Manufactures". I decided to also give this essay a B- or C+. This was due to the fact that as all the other essays before, it had some grammatical errors. They did however have a thesis and did a very good job explaing their thesis however they did not provide all of the sources that they used thoughout their essay. They gave great examples and great information but they did not list all of the source of were they were getting this information.

Is That An Arguement?

2009-09-14T19:51:00.005-04:00

How are we able to analyze or say that someone has a good arguement or a bad arguement? The healthcare reform is a major debate on Capital Hill as well as around the world. We people who are not given the right amount of information on the situtation and because they are misinformed they are spreading the wrong kind of information. In a letter to the editor on the health care debate I found that people have a serious lack of information on what they want healthcare to be. They are so concered on how much money one insurance company makes on their clients and patients. In the letter the writer clearly uses words that have a negative meaning in the wrong way. They first use the word bureacrat, which comes from the word buracracy. The word buracracy is a negative word all together. They next decide to use the word Nazis which everyone know is related to anything negative when it is being used. This person has no idea of how to use these word in the right context.

http://www.thestate.com/letters/story/934100.html

Capital Hill Fallacy

2009-09-09T16:36:00.007-04:00

Who is to say whether or not someone is doing a good job or not. In a resent poll President Obama's approval ratings have gone down. According to the media, the people feel that the President is not taking fast enough action to get the economy back on track. What the people fail to realize is that there is only so much a president can do. All of the decisions and policies are left up to Congress. If the President wants to get a bill passed it will have to go through congress in order for it to be passed. The President has an administration to help him find ways to get the economy back on track but again as stated before, everything has to be passed through Congress. We say that we want changes and reform but we have to realize that we are the ones putting people in office that might be stopping change from happening.

What Kind of Writer Am I?

2009-08-28T14:29:00.004-04:00

Well, to describe what kind of writer I am I would have to say that I am a factual, detailed, and straight to the point writer. I really don't like creative or freewriting because I will start to babble or go on and on about one topic and all of a sudden I will start talking about something totally different. Yes, I am definally a factual, detailed and straight to the point writer. Why? Well it comes from having to do so many writing assignments while I was in high school and I came to this realization when I was assigned a writing assignment my junior year of high school. The assignment was to read a book by a British author then do research so get a better understanding of what went on or what happened to them in there life time to cause them to write their novel. My author was Johnathan Swift and he wrote the novel Gulliver's Travel. Now most people will catigorize this book as a children's novel, but because I had to do research on the book I was able to realize that the book was not intended on being a childrens novel. In my paper, I was able to give the details and the facts that was needed to be able to prove my thesis and give my teacher my report. I did it because it was an assignment, but until know I was never asked "what kind of writer I am".

Now that I have to sit down and really think about what kind of writer I am, it makes me realize that writing is more that just finding out information and putting it on a piece of paper. I used the word factual, detailed and straight to the point to describe what type of writer I am. These words really do describe what kind of writer I am. I am a factual writer because I want my audience to know that what they are ready in the correct information whether it be from a book in the library or a story that I am telling to get my point across. I am also detailed writer because I want them to know or feel what the message is saying. Lastly I am straigh to the point because if I go on and and on about I will start to lose my audience and I don't want them to lose the main reason why they are reading what I wrote.

Who Is Jillian?

2009-08-26T17:04:00.000-04:00

Well, Hello. My name is Jillian Gaymon and I am 19 years old. My birthday is May 2, so if you all want to send me a birthday blog then that is fine by me. I am from a little town just outside of Columbia, named Eastover. I went to Lower Richland High School home of the best girls basketball team in the state of South Carolina( I'm not just saying that...it's a fact!!!) Some of my hobbies include reading romance novels preferably historical fiction, I also enjoy going new places and seeing new things. I once took a trip to Europe and went to a number of different countries including Italy, France and Germany. One of my favorite passtimes is watching Disney animated movies. I love Disney movies from Peter Pan and Mary Poppins to Mulan and High School Musical. I enjoy watching them because they are so timeless and no matter how old you get, you will always be able to sit down and feel the magic of watching that movie the same way you did when you first watched it when you were younger. I know that the very first cartoon animated Disney movie was Snow White and the Seven Dwarf which came out in 1937. When I first saw that movie I was first introduced to the idea that sometime a bad situation when happen and when it does you just have to believe that everything will be alright no matter what the circumstances maybe. I feel that Walt Disney introduced us to a world of fantasy, make believe and imagination. He allowed us to have the mind set that it is ok to still use your imagination the same way we did when we were young and for no more than an hour or so take us to places that we can only imagine and not have to worry about the fate worrying that we are losing apart of our youth because society forces us to grow up.