Monday, April 27, 2015

Final Exam Essay - Christen Roper



Christen Roper

English 102

Tasha Thomas
 
22 April 2015

My Own Reflection
            This year has been one hectic and stressful year for my first year as a college freshman. I knew I was getting into a lot when I began my school year at USC: Upstate, but I didn’t know how stressful it would be. I do think, however, that it was a great year and that I was able to do the best that I could into my freshman year. I am now a rising sophomore, and I know more will be handed to me, but I think I can manage.

            English was a big step for me as well. I have always loved English growing up but this is the first time that I was able to voice my own opinion as a writer, and not have to deal with the requirement grade school had put on us. I think I have clearly evolved as a thinker, reader, and writer now. 

            In elementary school to high school, you are only told to follow the steps toward your college career, you are not able to think on your own, and you have to listen to what everyone else is saying. Coming from a family of free thinkers, that’s very hard, but I feel that college actually let me talk for once. They let me pull my own voice out of the cave it had called home and shine brighter every day. I was able to tell everyone my thoughts on certain articles in school, and even throw myself under the bus as well. I found that out from the “Extra Lives” article and how people thought that gaming so much was odd. I actually like to game. I think it is rather interesting and a place that is so different from the real world. So yeah, I threw myself down there, but I had fun doing it. I have fun and enjoy being able to tell people what I feel like saying, and how it affects me. I especially love writing argumentative essays as well, because they allow you to talk a lot. You can voice your own call to action in an argumentative essay. This semester I did gun control as my topic, since it sits so close to my family. Last semester I did birth control because it sits so close to me, just like gun control. Any proposal essay that I can make my own and talk about, even if I have to do extensive research and all of that, still feels like mine. I feel like being able to think out loud is what makes an essay sometimes better, and this definitely helped me evolve. 

            I have also learned to read better. I’m a leisure reader, I like to read books that I enjoy and that I want to read. I don’t feel like when I have to read something that I enjoy it too much, and I definitely don’t dig deeper than I am supposed to.  In this class, however, we were told to read and annotate our articles, to help us think better and to explore the different options that are given. This is one path that can help you be a better reader. Also doing an annotated bibliography for our literature review helped out as well. Doing the bibliography we actually have to read though the entire article, instead of just skimming through, and looking for details that we can use in our own paper. I have definitely turned into a deeper reader, and I don’t mind reading articles for school, as long as they’re short articles however.

            Writing was never a serious issue. I was good in spelling, good in grammar, and loved writing, but writing essays was not really the one thing I enjoyed. Essays are never really enjoyable, but they’re a part of school you just have to live with and enjoy somehow. All of these essays that I have written in this course have helped me. They have led me down a different path and taught me different steps to try and be a better writer. I was able to write a better essay that I was a few months ago. Kaizena and Google Docs also helped because an instructor is allowed to go in a give you advice to fix or change something so that you can edit and write a better paper than the one before. All of these essays we did were hard, but at the same time they gave a new prospect and wider view of aspects that we could use to make a better paper. All of my essay papers have definitely stepped up in details and better sentence structure. I actually enjoyed writing my essays this year unlike when I haven’t enjoyed them. I also try to pick a topic for essays that I enjoy, gun control was this years, and that makes the essays more entertaining to read and write as well.  The papers this year were definitely better.

            I think highly of myself as a reader, thinker, and writer. I really enjoyed this year, especially since I was able to enjoy myself and not have to worry. English has always been a better subject for me anyway. I love being able to read, write, and think, there is nothing wrong with that at all. Reflecting back on myself, I feel like I have done loads better than what I have done before, and am definitely proud of who I have become as a reader, thinker and writer. I can’t wait for next year since I had such a good year this year. I hope it will be as great as my first year in college, and the years to come will be just as easy and fun as this year.

Revised Essay- Christen Roper

Writing my Argument Analysis Essay wasn't really fun which is why I decided to revise it. I just made some small grammar changes and changed some sentences here and there to make it sound better than it had been. Just changing and adding sentences seemed enough to make the essay sound and work better than it had. I am glad that it worked the way I wanted it to.


Wednesday, April 22, 2015

Self Reflection: Essay Four- Christen Roper



   Writing a proposal essay has always been my more favorite of essays that I have written over the years. Especially when it is a topic that I have always felt needed to be addressed. There are so many different topics you can pick, and picking one that goes great with my own life and that has affected others was challenging, yet rewarding.

   The biggest challenge had to be finding articles from the library database that gave me both sides of the argument. I needed both sides and not just one side and I found more on the internet than I did in the database. But I somehow made it all work out.

   My best element would be the length and details. Normally I don’t get enough details in my essays because I’m trying to focus on the sides of the argument or even the thesis or conclusion, but this time I was able to bring in a good bit of details to help with both sides. Each side had at least a few good details that helped my proposal out in the long run.

   My weakest element would have to be my call to action. I pulled out my proposal really well, but I still feel that my call to action wasn’t very good. I got what needed to be done, but I still don’t think I did very well on that one part.

   I probably could have gotten a bit more research done for this essay to help with the sides and the call to action more. It would have been easier if I knew how much details were going into each side and not just favoring one side over the other. Being able to have more research for both the Literature Review and the Proposal would have been great.

   I really enjoyed this essay and I’m glad that I did better on this one than I would have done on either one. I have also really enjoyed my English 102 class this year. It was a very interesting and entertaining class and I really would do it over again if I could.

Thursday, April 9, 2015

Essay Four Thesis and Proposal - Christen Roper



Automatic guns, semi-automatic guns, military rifles, all of these are different variations of guns. Some people say that a gun is a weapon of mass destruction. Others say that it’s the way the gun is used, or what it was used for, that makes it this weapon everyone seems to think it is. We look through the newspapers and online articles about the violence that has happened and the main weapon that is always used, is a gun. 

            Guns have always been a serious epidemic in the United States today. Let’s take these stories for example. April 16th, 2007, Seung-Hui Cho kills 32 people in the Virginia Teach massacre. December 14th, 2012, Adam Lanza opens fire in Sandy Hook Elementary in Newton, Connecticut, killing 20 kids and six adults. July 20th, 2012 James E. Holmes opens fire in a midnight screening of Batman: The Dark Knight Rises, killing twelve and wounding even more.  These were only a few from CNN that have rocked the states and called for a ban on guns.

Yet, do we honestly think guns are such a big deal as people say they are? Do we think just because one person that can own a gun and wants to own a gun for his/her and their family’s protection, that it makes the gun a weapon of mass destruction and we should take that person and throw them into a prison cell? Some people might say yes, and the others might start up a riot that will confuse most everyone.  So what is the right choice? 

            Is there any ideas that could help with this controversy of gun control? Some say we should ban guns altogether, but of course you have people like the NRA that are against that ban completely. Then you have just banning certain guns or certain high capacity magazines. But someone will find a way to get them. Some want stricter background checks, and yet we already do those as well. So what is the best solution to our problem? 

            We think of so many different ideas to try and prove what is right and what is wrong. Do we honestly know what is right and what is wrong? Guns are a serious issue, but not as many say it is. Therefore I propose a solution. Banning automatic weapons and some semi-automatic weapons, plus high capacity magazines from getting into the wrong hands. Some weapons should be allowed for people to own, but certain ones shouldn’t. This way, the weapons that have caused the most destruction stay in the hands of the military, who are fighting for our lives, instead of people who just want to end them.