Well, what a first few weeks of college these have been! In these abnormal times we all are living in, really, we all are just trying to get through the ocean of life as smoothly as possible in these rocky waters. But I think we are finally starting to see some calmer waters ahead.
In what is becoming a healthy tradition, Mr. Blom asked us, on both Tuesday and Thursday, a simple question. How are you? Surprisingly, most of the answers were positive! The consensus is we are doing better than the previous for many reasons. Some of these include: people are starting to settle in after moving back home, some were getting their workspace organized which made them feel better, and one lucky student is even getting a puppy soon! However, even with everybody trying to get their life together, there still are some downfalls. One to be in particular is that many students are having trouble with motivation (myself included sadly). Even through these tough times, we all manage to get our work done and keep progressing!
Afterward on Tuesday, we had the opportunity to peer review and workshop each other’s Feeder 1.2. This is the second worksheet that we all needed to complete in order to work towards a larger goal, the Unit 1 Assignment. In fact, the project’s rough draft is due this Wednesday, so I would say that all the students need to get working as soon as possible! Anyways, during the class we all workshopped other student’s rough drafts of Feeder 1.2. Personally, I received very helpful criticisms that aided me to edit and almost perfect my feeder. This feature of the class is my favorite because all the students give honest and very helpful critiques! I love the fact that we all are working together to further our writing abilities, gain a better grade, and become experienced article editors all in one class.
On Thursday, after our daily check-up, we all were asked what kinds of information we would include in a public health article that we would write. All the students joined forces and compiled a list of information, statistics, and other aspects of the article that we would want to include. With this list, we created a template of what a professional article should contain. Afterward, we were sent off into our groups of four or five to review an article that each group read together. I will my group as an example, we read and reviewed “Using Machine Learning to Improve Breast Cancer Detection” by Eric Zheng. Through this activity, we had to create a formal analysis of what the article was about, what information it contained, and what stands out to us about the article. This activity gave us all a good insight into what a formal article truly looks like and what to/not to include within our own.
To reference my analogy earlier, the ocean of life has created some extremely rocky waters, and everybody is trying to stay afloat. However, our English 105 class has created a boat that will not sink! No matter what waves of confusion and chaos life flings at us, we keep driving along as if nothing happened. Now that most people have found a steady living space, we all can see clearer waters ahead. For now, we all are striving to achieve great things and become the best writers even during a pandemic!
“Landscape/Rough Sea || Crete, Greece” by Patsnik is licensed with CC BY-NC 2.0. To view a copy of this license, visit https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc/2.0/
