FINAL BLOG!!!!!!

Since the beginning of the semester, my writing has improved so much. I have noticed that I can make a better argument, and that my ideas flow better together instead of just being random thoughts. My grammar has got better also. The strategies that have been the most helpful is making sure I do all the drafts well ahead of the due date, and writing down my random thoughts then making a thesis statement out of them. The one paper that was probably easiest for me to complete was the one over our short stories we read. I did the "Metamorphosis" and that was the easiest because I was real into what I was writing and it all made sense to me. Also, I think it was because I got to choose what story I wanted to write it over and not just have one. That was a big help, so if I did not understand one story, then I got to choose another one. Out of all the lesssons, the one that was probably most beneficial to me was all the lessons over writing our papers. I have became such a better writing by learning how to start a paper and how to make an awesome thesis statement. I do feel more prepared on writing college-level papers, but I still feel like I have a lot of room left for improvement. I believe that I will have writing papers down real well by the end of next year. Practice makes perfect!

3/30/2011

"The Flea"

This poem to me is about two people who feel that they are married because the share the flea. The flea has taken blood from both of them Towards the end the narrator talks about getting weaker. I believe its possible that they can be dogs, because when I think of fleas I picture dogs right away.

3/28/11

Poetry

My poetry exprience so far is fairly slim. We had poetry about every year in junior high through high school, but I do not remember much from it. We would always do old, boring poems that no one would care or pay attention to. I know we learned about some terms. I remember iamic petamater was went over, but I do not remember the definition. Personally, I do not enjoy poetry. Most of the time I do not know what they are talking about, or I do not get the symbolism that they are using. I have no perference on poets. I do like the idea of reading song lyrics though.

My personal definition of poetry is: something that is meaningful and powerful. They have a rythmn to them.

3/25/11

Scenes 11-end

One of the things that stands out to me is the scene with the horse-courser. I think its weird that Faustus is using his magic for pretty much nothing. If I had magic, I would be using it for something other than making a horse so when a mad takes it through water it dissolves.
In Scene 13, I find it strange with Faustus says " hell calls for right, and with a roaring voice says 'Faustus! come! thine hour is [almost] come!" To me this means that hell is calling for Faustus to come, and I don't know if he is listening or not.
In the last scene, Faustus is not wanting to give away his soul anymore, maybe he should have thought it through more before he signed the contract so he could have got out of it. I'm not exaclty for sure if at the end the devils take him, but I think they did.

My paper I am going to write about the contract, the same as my gist, and talk about how Faustus just jumps right into it and how he can not repent because of it. The only problem I have right now is that I am not for sure of where to get my scholarly sources.

3/22/11

Scene 6
Faustus meets the seven deadly sins, and after meeting them he that it feeds his soul. I do not get how he can say this since he sold his soul. So he does not have a soul to feed.
Scene 7
Faustus and Mephistophilis go to Rome and then in comes the Pope. I am a bit confused on if Faustus is invisible or if it is just dark enought that the Pope can not see them. Faustus ends up stealing meat and wine from the Pope. The Pope does a cross 3 times then Faustus hits him. The Friars sing "May the Lord curse him."
Scene 8
Comic Scene
Scene 9
Another Comic Scene
Scene 10
Faustus has a conversation with the Emperor. The Emperor commands Faustus to bring Alexander and his paramour before him. I feel as if there was more that went on in the scene but not for sure.

3/21/11

Scene V

All I got out of scene 5 was that Faustus signed a contract with his own blood. I'm not sure what it was for. Also towards the end I understood them talking about a wife for Faustus but Meph ends up bringing back a devil. That was all I picked up from the scene.

3/18/11

Dr. Faustus

I believe that the last part that we read in class is just Faustus, Valdes, and Cornelius talking about the black magic. They might be talking about taking over the world. In a way I can see them talking about that.

Overall, I really don't know what the last part is about. I do not like or know how to read these stories and always have problems understanding them.

2/28/11

Evalve

The course so far is going pretty good. I like the discussions we have after we read a story. That helps me understand them better because I have a hard time understanding stories when I read them. I wish that you would check grammar lessons more often so we know for sure if they are right or not. And maybe possible going over the vocab every day at the beginning of the class. The peer review last time was something that was not working for me. I believe that peer review works if people contribute to it. I think we should take a whole day for that. That way all of our paper would be extremely better.

2/25/11

"The Little Mermaid"

Setting
The setting starts out in the ocean, goes to land, and ends in the sky. Most of the story is very dark.

POV
I believe that the point of view is third-person limited omniscent narrator.

2/23/11

1) The characters in "The Birthmark" and the characters in "Bartleby, the Scrivener" are same in a way because each character has different parts and in each story there are static and dynamic characters. They are different because in "The Birthmark" they wer plausible, and in "Bartleby, the Scrivener" were not.

The plot of the two stories are similar because they both use in medias res, and they are different because "The Birthmark" was based more on being controlling, and "Bartleby, The Scrivener" was based on being useful.

2) The relationship between the two stories is that we learn it is not good to be controlling in your life and that being useful will end up helping you out in the long run.

2/18/11

I am going to write on the dicussion we had in class about racism.
In 11th grade I did a paper on the KKK and all the information I found out about it surprised me. I had no idea that there was still groups around that treat black people so bad. I grew up in a small town and either my freshman year or sophomore year my school receive a African American and a Mexican in the same year. My school accepted them but we were more exciting that we had someone that would be good at basketball (another big stereotype) and turns out he wasn't very good. I try not to be racist towards African Americans but I do know that sometimes I am.
South Dakota is really racist towards Native Americans. Most white people in South Dakota have a nickname for them that is not school appropriate. Growing up in a small town, for sports we played reservations and whenever we did we had to be escorted by the police in and out of the building. During sports our coaches would always say "we are playing Indians are next game so todays practice will be slack" I have grown up around racism towards Native Americans and that is all I know. But, my brother recently married a Native American and I can tell that the racism has gone down some but not much.
I do believe that in South Dakota the reason we dislike Native Americans so much is because our tax money goes towards them. That is one of the main reasons many white people do not like Indians. In South Dakota the racism towards Native Americans is related to the racism towards African Americans in the south.

Extra Credit 2/16/11

College

This article is true. I do feel that I have not learn much more than I did in high school so far. It seems like most students do not focus on these general classes because they just want to get to their degrees. I know I am one of those students. I am trying  to fly by these classes so I can get to my accounting classes and be in something that interest me. Overall this article is a good article and maybe this is something that we should be concered about. We should be achieving more in school and receiving more knowledge ever year instead of slaking off and just squeezing by the classes.

2/16/11

Fake Twitter Accounts
I do not think that fake twitter accounts are a good idea. What if people do not get that it is a fake person and not the real one? If I was a celebrity or a famour person there is no way I would appreciate this or allow this. From this article it seems like twitter know about these fake accounts and allow them as long as they are labeled. These could easily get people in trouble. They are a bad idea.

2/14/11

I feel that the first paper was hard to do. I am not good at literary analysis especially when I do not understand the story. I wish we could have had more of a revision process instead of only 10 minutes. Revisions help out a ton and I did not have much feedback so it was hard to revise for my second draft. I do think that the time alloted for the paper was perfect it was not to short and not to long. If it gets to long then students tend to forget about it. Overall I believe I did an ok job on my paper. I hope I end up with a good grade on it!

2/11/11

The Metamorphosis was an interesting story. I found it strange though that Gregor was worried the whole time about going to work and having to make money for his family. Did his parents not work? Once Gregor turned into a bug, his sister (Grete I believe was her name) took care of everything. His parents were lazy. Why did he turn into a bug? Was it because he was to stressed? Even though he turned into a bug, if Gregor was my son I would go talked to him about it and try to figure out a way to turned him back to normal. One of the first things I would do is call a doctor. I am not sure if this actually happened, but when Gregor died I took it as the "maid" just kind've through him out the window and his family did not care.
Overall I liked this short story a lot better the We. It was easier to read and was not has confusing.

Citations

Source A
Amey, Michael D. "Living under the Bell Jar: Surveillance and Resistance in Yevgeny Zamyatin's We."
             Critical Survey 17.1 (2005): 22-39 MLA International Bibliography. Web. 29 January 2011

Source B
Brenkert, George G. "Self-Ownership, Freedom, and Autonomy." The Journal of Ethics 2/1 (1998):
               22-55 JSTOR. Web. 29 January 2011

Source C
Randall, Natasha, tans. We. By Yevgeny Zamyatin. 2006. Print


I have no idea if the book is cited right.

Topic

I have thought the whole weekend about what topic I wanted. It has been hard for me to think of one. I have came to the decision of the topic of freedom. In our society today we are used to having freedom, but in We's society they have none. They are told by the Table of Hours what to do. I believe that this is a good topic and will be interesting.

1-26-10

I am going to write my thoughts on the book. I personally did not get the book. The first section we read I understood, but now I am so lost. I pretty much don't know what is happening.
D-503 talks a lot in the book and there are so many details to remember. I got confused. I hope that the rest of the books we read are not like this.

Extra Credit - State of Union

State of Union
In the State of Union President Obama started off talking about the shooting of Tuscan. The government is going to be one, not separate like we are known know as republicans and democratics. I feel like this is a great idea, that way the great decisions from both sides will come into effect not just one side. Obama's main points on his speech were the Democrats and Republicans converging, education, and jobs. His goal is to send more kids to college and receive an education, mostly because of all the baby boomers retiring. He wants to replace No Child Left Behind. I believe this is a good plan because many students and teachers did not like that during high school. More Americans need to be put to work. At one point Obama made a goal by 2035 to have all energy come from clean sources. He also talked about the war. In July his plan is to have all troops home and he believes the war is coming to the end. I hope this comes true, but sadly I do not believe it. He also mentions that gays can serve in the army now. That is a HUGE change.
My opinion on the State of the Union is that it was not as boring as I thought it would be. Obama repeated himself a lot, which made me mad. I also get annoyed by all the clapping and interrupting the President. I feel its rude!

Republican Response:
The rhetoric of both speeches are different. In this Republican Response, the representative is more calm and easy going. The president was more forceful and loud. I don't think they work together because once the response comes on, people are tired of listening so with a calm talker, it would be easier to not pay attention. All I got out of this speech is the heath care.

1/24/11 - One State

The one aspect of the One State that I would hate the most is having no family. Family means the world to me. They have helped me through so much. Without them I would not be where I am today. Family is the one thing I know that I can trust. Also, I know I will never be lonely I always have a mother, father, and brothers. I love them to death. I would be miserable without any of them.

1/21/11 - Strategies

I believe that WE follows the historical strategy that most. It talks about past events at times, and to understand the book better, knowing historical events helps out majorly. The author makes little references to past events that are not noticeable to people with no knowledge of history.

1/18/11 WE

1. Style - WE is more of a diary and length of the sentence is relatively short.
2. Tone - D-503 attitude is confusing. He is sometimes mad at himself, but towards others, he is happy.
3. Irony - I'm not sure about the irony in the story. There might be irony with how the robots have to follow a specific schedule and how D-503 goes away from that to see I-330.
4. Plot - The author tells the story day by day by record.
5. Characterization - D-503 does not actually live, but to readers it seems like in the future this might happen. I feel as if im in the story with him at times.
6. Setting - The setting takes place at the One State in the future from now.
7. Point of View - 1st person with D-503 as the narrator
8. Symbol - The Benefactor symbolizes God. That to me is the main symbol.
9. Theme - So far I think that the theme of the story is "Be your own person. Go beyond what you are told to do." But I am really bad at picking out themes, so I have no idea if that is right.

About Me

My name is Kayla Marie Foreman. I am from Miller, SD. I grew up on a farm. I was extremely active during High School. I was in volleyball, cheerleading, basketball, track, golf, and dance. I have two older brothers, a sister-in-law, one nephew, and two nieces. I am majoring in Accounting, and I plan on recieving my masters.