Chapter 10: It May Not Be Perfect...But Nothing Is

This week we finished up the presentations for our Career Research Project. Although I was nervous when I did mine, I really enjoyed watching everyone's presentation. It was really cool to see what everyone is interested, and see what they're passionate about. I loved that I learned something new from each presentation, even if I had been exposed to the topic before. I will also enjoy reading everyone's paper, although I'm not a big fan of editing. But I know that I will be grateful to have so many edits, and so that means that I have to do that many edits. Even though I didn't have to post my draft until tomorrow I wanted to get it done before I go home tomorrow. Plus, it will give me more time to read my group mates papers because then I can start reading them tomorrow. I'm excited to learn even more about the topics of the people in my group. I know I will enjoy it because I wouldn't normally read or learn about a lot of my classmate's topics. I feel really good overall about my paper, I know it's not perfect, but nothing is and I know that through group workshops my paper will get a lot stronger. I am grateful that I will have so many edits because this is my first research paper in college, and I want to get it as close to perfect as I can, and that means I'm going to need some help. I also know that although I normally do really well on my papers, college is a whole new level and I want to be prepared that I may not do as fantastic as I want to, even though I know I'll do at least a good job because of the effort I've put into it. That's why I'm doing these extra credit blogs, I don't mind doing them, but I want to do them because every little bit helps when you're striving for As. Although it would be cool to read everyone papers just to learn more and see what they have to say, I'm glad we each only have to read four. This is better because it's going to be time consuming when each paper is supposed to be eight to ten pages and we have to do peer reviews on each, I feel for English teachers who have to grade hundreds of papers like these throughout a year. Which is part of the reason why I don't want to be one, although as I writer I will have to write and editor all of my hundreds of pages.

Chapter 9: You Learn Something New Every Day

Since changing the syllabus we have discussed presentations, conducted research, worked on our drafts and started presentations. Although I have talked some about discussing presentations and conducting research, I have to say that I'm glad we reevaluated the class so that we have more time to work on our papers and so that we have more time for our presentations. I have thoroughly enjoyed working on this paper, even though I don't necessarily like how long it takes but that's part of college so o well, I have enjoyed reading various articles about topic. I have learned a lot about Christian Fiction in the past few weeks and I am grateful. I might not have found out about the various genres of Christian Fiction more in depth but having to do it for class allowed me to learn even more which will help me in my future career. Although the articles I read for my Career Research Paper weren't about writing tips for Christian authors it did give me more hope for making it as one after I graduate. The fact that Christian Fiction is being more exposed to readers of all kinds shows that a lot of authors are getting their work out there, including new authors. There is also hope because I know from personal research and from these articles that there are numerous publishing companies in which Christian Fiction is doing well and there are even more ways to self-publish. This is part of the reason I choose this topic and I am glad I did. I also enjoyed starting to watch the presentations of my peers for their Career Research Projects. Although I already had my presentation done for Monday seeing some of my classmates helped me to better know if I was doing mine right. I now know that I really need to time myself before Monday and although it may not seem like I have a lot of information to say six minutes goes by fast, and I need to take that into account. I also wasn't sure how I wanted to do my handouts and what exactly I should put on them but I now have a better idea after seeing some examples. I liked the handouts that had pictures on them, and I will do that for mine as well. I also liked the presentations that had discussion slide with one question to start it off. I was already thinking about having a slide but now I'm going to add a question as well. I have learned a lot over the past few weeks which was possible due to all the things we did in class and due to the revisions we made to the syllabus.

Chapter 8: Working in the Classroom

This week we got to work on our Career Research papers in class which was really helpful. On Monday it was helpful because I got all of the sources I had organized so that on Wednesday I could write more of my paper during class. Although it felt like we didn't get as much time to work on it as I thought we would the time we spent in class really helped and I feel like it helped me be more productive on my paper by working on it during class. I thought it was also beneficial because I was able to ask some questions I had about my paper and have them answered directly while I was working on my paper. This week we were also given our presentation prompt, the example in class really clarified just what I need to do for. Although I realize that it does require work, I don't have to stress over it because I know that as long as I put in the effort and do the work I will do fine. I always get really anxious when I have to present in front of people, even though I know what I'm presenting about. It's comforting to know that we won't be graded harshly on our presentations as long as we try and say what we know so far about our topic and where our paper is going to go. Although I feel overwhelmed with having to have my first draft done for Monday, I know that it will help in the long run. I am glad that in the coming weeks we are going to be doing a lot of editing in various forms which will really strengthen our papers. Which is what I really need. Once I get my paper written even if it's not exactly what I want that's what the editing is for. It will also be good to get outside views on what I need to add, take out, or clarify. It will also be good that we're getting multiple people's opinions so that no matter who reads it they will be able to clearing see what I'm arguing and why it is sound, even if they don't agree that I'm right. I am also looking forward to peer review because I'm interested in seeing what everyone else is passionate about and why. I am also curious to see what people think of my paper, if they agree or if they have never really thought about my topic much before and I was able to teach them something new, not that I'll be mad if I don't I just always love learning new things from others and think it would be cool if they learned something from me.

Chapter 7: Changes in the Classroom

This past week we discussed how to change the syllabus of our class, which I thought was a good idea. I was glad that we all had a say in how the class would be changed. I thought it was good that everybody was able to say how they thought it should be changed and why. The Career Research Project requires a lot of work and is very time consuming so I for one was glad that now we have more time to work on it. Although I voted for keeping the Creative Non-fiction paper and getting rid of the Resume project I understand the benefits of the way that it is now. Because the Resume project is a shorter project it will give us more time to work on our other projects. I realize that although I just created a resume in my English class in high school the CV academic one is completely differently and good to know and have, and I may even need to update my resume for college. However, I am still interested in somehow doing the Creative Non-fiction paper because it is something that I am passionate about. Although I want to be a fiction writer, I was really looking forward to this project because it would be good writing practice. Not to mention that it sounded fun because it would be based on something that has happened to us but we could change minor details or add a few things to make it more fun and interesting. However, I understand that we aren't because majority of the class didn't want to, and I know that the resume project will be useful. Another benefit to the way that the syllabus has changed is the blogs. Now we only have to worry about doing blogs every other week and on other weeks we have the opportunity to do some extra credit blogs, like this one and who doesn't like getting extra credit? I also like the fact that now we have certain things that we need to blog about. Not that I was able to do the blogs before, but although we are doing different things in class each week there was a whole lot of difference in blogs from week to week. I feel that the changes that we've made in the syllabus will also help my work load for all my other classes. This being my first semester of college, I have had to make a lot of adjustments. Although homework hasn't been overwhelming because it's time for midterms it's starting to get stressful. This is another reason why the syllabus change was a great idea, I'm a lot less stressed over this project and this class in general.

Chapter 6: Prospectus and Annotated Bibliography

I think I will enjoy this project even though it's a lot of work because it's something I'm passionate about. Not only that but it will nice to know just how popular Christian fiction is because that's what I want to do and will help me feel like a have more of a shot at succeeding. I am also excited about this project because I want to be a Christian Romance fiction writing and I feel that when people hear that they presume that all it's about is two people falling in love. It's actually a lot more than that, it can have ties to history, it can be dramatic where someone gets kidnapped or shot, it's about how people grow spiritual through all the trials life throws at them. I want to be able to back what I know with facts and statistics not just for myself but for anyone who will read my paper. As we start to write our prospectus and annotated bibliographies for our Career Research Project I didn't really know what either of them were or what I needed to do. However between the readings and what we've talked about in class I have a clearer understanding of what I need to do. The readings talk about how when writing our annotated bibliographies we should summarize the articles and talking about how effective and why the sources we found are. In our paper it talked about how we need to use summarizing, paraphrasing and quoting to accurately getting out our point while giving credit to those we gain new insight from. Although I already know how it incorporate quotes in my paper it's comforting to know that if I'm not sure about something I have a place to double check. Something I learned from the readings this week was more details about things I already knew like signal phrases, what you need to cite and what you don't like you don't need to cite well known quotes. Although I don't think I'll use visuals, if I do it would only be a few, I was glad that the section in the textbook on using visuals and sounds had examples. I liked that they told you what kind of visuals you would likely use in what types of papers and whether it was online or not. Even if this doesn't help me in this paper I know that it will in future papers.