Biography

I come from a large family, I have four sisters and one brother and I'm the oldest.  I have five nephews and two nieces with hopefully another one on the way, we will find out next month!  I spent my school years here in St. Joseph, MO and spent my summer's in Aurora, CO!  Family came from both places so we got to enjoy both.  I love to read, there has never been a book I have yet to find that I just didn't like and could not finish.  Classmates will find that I will always volunteer to read and I pretty much write when I have to.  I found last semester that some things are easier to write about than others and hope to find my way through it this semester.  My strengths in reading are that I can usually read something once and be able to remember it, writing not so much.  I find that sometimes my words seem to run together so I have to keep reading my own papers over and over until even I understand what I wrote.

English 100 Review

I was really pleased with the class.  You as a teacher helped us learn more with your teaching style than a lot of teachers who just hand us paperwork and want us to learn from that.  I really enjoyed writing each one of my essays, I felt like each one was a remembrance of my past.  I enjoyed most of the stories that we read out of our textbook along with Kozal's book.  The class discussions helped with a lot of the papers and blogging's that we had to do.  I appreciated each time you helped outline a paper for me to make it more effective in what I was trying to say. 

Task four evalutation

• What is the thesis for your paper? How people forget about reading as a past time instead of watching tv or gaming.

• List the main points you make in your paper.    More times than most, people will trade in reading a good book for watching a television show or playing video games.  Reading not only stimulates your mind, but takes you places you may never have been or able to go to, and makes you feel a handful of emotions.  I explain how reading can make you feel love, loss, and friendship.

• What was the most helpful advice you received from your peer evaluation?   the only I was told was that my story was good.  Didn't ever give me advice on what needed changed,

 

• What was the most helpful information you received in class for your paper?

• How many drafts of this paper do you think you wrote and how/when did you write them? For example, did you compose at the keyboard, did you write lots of notes to yourself, did you pre-write or outline, did you write in small chunks of time or sit down and produce an entire draft at one sitting?

• What would you do differently with this paper to make it more effectively, or what did you try to do that you just don’t think you got a good handle on? I don't think I explained my personal experiences very well that I compared with the book I talked about.

What are most pleased with about this paper?  I really liked talking about all the books and authors that I love.

The Lonely, Good Comapany of Books

I absolutely love to read, I did not read as much when I was younger as I do now, but I did pick up a book every now and then.  I would say over the past five years is when I actually started reading books weekly.  I love all books, but most off all I love books that tell stories of life lessons, lost loves, heroic adventures, fictional books.   Sometimes I catch myself reading aloud and realize no one is listening.  I do read children’s books to my niece and nephews, that’s as far as that goes.  My first book I read five years ago was, “The Secret Life of Bees” by, Sue Monk Kidd.  While reading the book, I was brought to tears several times and upon completion of it, I wanted to know more.  That was when I started getting a new book every week.  I have fallen in love with several authors, Nicholas Sparks, Jodi Picoult, Carrie Adams, and Ceclia Ahern!  All of these books have taken me places that I’ve never been but felt like I had.  They all made me feel loss, love, and friendship without even talking directly to me.  I would have to say that my favorite book of all time is “Rosie Dunne” by, Cecelia Ahern.  It is a book that is like no other book I have ever read.  It is nothing but little notes, letters, phone calls, and instant messages between life long friends.   It is story that takes place in Ireland between two friends at the age of seven and takes you through their whole lives separate and apart.  I read four hundred some pages in five hours because I could not put it down.  I cried uncontrollably, I laughed hysterically, and was amazed at how their lives compared to my own.  So in answer to the question.  I feel that reading is a big part of my life.

Literacy Autobiography question

What about your present educational story? Is college what you expected? Have you learned or gained anything?  Have your perceptions of learning been changed or challenged?
College is more than I expected.  I knew it would be tough since I have been out of school for so long, I just didn't realize that I would need to adjust my life around it as much as I have.  I no longer have "down time", if I'm not doing something involving family, cleaning house, shopping, or reading my books that I have, I am doing homework or studying for classes.  Now all my work is basically done online and it is up to me to complete it.  When in high school it was done in the class.  I read more now than I did in high school also.  Reading I don't mind, because I have always liked to read, I just feel as though I read more school than I do for leisure.  I hope to catch up on some reading over Christmas break.

Experiences with reading and writing

Before this course I thought that it would be more reading than writing.  I'm glad that we got the chance to write, it prepares you for your future classes.

There was not anything I was unsure of prior to this class.

I read a lot, I have always been a reader.  I enjoy sitting for hours reading a book, most of the time I will stay up till two or three in the morning just because I can't put a book down.  My house is like a library.  I took a writing class in high school, but we never had to write anything on our own, it was always a group story we would write.  I took English 104 in high school also and the only essay I remember writing was a summary and analysis on "Othello" by William Shakespeare.  I'm sure we wrote on other stories also, but that particular one I remember, because I liked it so much.

Self Evaluation for Task Three

What is the thesis for your paper? I am still unsure what my thesis on this paper was...

List the main points you make in your paper.  I describe how I was flunked and compared it to how teachers need to follow through with that instead of passing the students.  Also I explained how it has affected my life today.

What was the most helpful advice you received from your peer evaluation? My grammar 

What was the most helpful information you received in class for your paper? The outline, how my paper should flow.

How many drafts of this paper do you think you wrote and how/when did you write them? I wrote three different drafts over a period of four days.  I kept remembering different things so I'd have to go back to add them.

What would you do differently with this paper to make it more effectively, or what did you try to do that you just don’t think you got a good handle on?  The hardest part was where I had to enter the quotes.  I don't think I had enough.  I didn't feel like the quotes I used went well with the story.

What are most pleased with about this paper?  Writing this paper made me remember to try hard everyday in all my classes so that I don't have a repeat of history.