Peer Reviews

I have to admit I was a little nervous about posting my rough draft to be reviewed. But it was a good kind of nervous because I wanted to see if my hard work and thought process came together in the way  I had planned. So far I have had one review and this person pointed out some very important things I overlooked and I think after making these changes, my paper will be much improved. I am just thankful that I could keep her attention long enough to get through all the pages. My hopes were that my paper was not too boring and informational. I am looking forward to the next review.

The Writing Process

So this week I have been writing my research paper on the Lap-Band surgery v.Gastric Bypass. This is something that I am passionate about and already have a lot of information on so it made it easier to write. I found while I was writing that my paper was very informational and less of my opinion. I am not sure if that is a good thing or not since I need to persuade the reader to think like me. But nonetheless, I am enjoying the writing process. It feels good to put my thoughts together after these past five weeks of wondering how I was going to do this and what exactly I wanted to say. But I can say that the professor was correct when she said to pick a subject your are interested in or want to know more about. I definitely made this process flow a lot smoother than writing on a subject that I just picked from a list  or something.

I'm back....in more ways than one

So this week's blog I have decided to write about how school has influenced my life so far. For the last 13 years I have regretted dropping out of college. By coming back to a formal education at this point in my life, I feel like I have direction and purpose. I have been at a dead end job for the past 3 years and I didn't know when things would ever change. Then one day I said ...you know what Jessica, you can't sit around and wait for change, you have to make it happen. So I have taken control of my life and my future again and it feels great. By continuing my education, I feel empowered and to put it simply, I feel smart again. Not so long ago, I didn't feel this way. I was allowing other people and outside influences steer my life down a path that I was not proud of and that was not who I was. Now I have taken the wheel and it is an amazing feeling to be in control again.

Plagiarism

So this week we are leaning about plagiarism and citing our references. It is important to give the original author credit for their work and to also provide the reader with the information needed to research further. I know that I would be very upset if someone used my words without permission or giving me credit. I know how much work goes into writing something I am proud of. So if it was actually good enough to publish, I would definitely want my name mentioned. I can see already the paraphrasing is going to give me some trouble. I always feel like I either change the original sentence completely or end up using too may of the same phrases. I am going to have to seriously work on this part of creating my research paper. I am enjoying the process so far but I need to invest a little more time. My fear is that week nine is going to sneak up on me and I am going to be cramming. I need to utilize the scheduler on doc sharing as soon as possible.

Week 3 Post

So it's week 3 of this composition course. I am having a little trouble participating in the seminars because the screen moves so quickly and the conversation changes just about the time that I want to say something. I don't know how this will effect my seminar grade. Hopefully the professor understands, which i think she does cause she seems a little hurried because of so many people typing. Other than that, everything is going great. I have decided to write my paper bariatric surgery, specifically the Lap-band. I am actually having this surgery soon so I enjoy doing all this research. Most of the factual information i have already read before...a million times. But the opinions in the articles are very enlightening. People feel strongly, either for it or against it, so the reads have been interesting. I need to start keeping a log of all the sites I have visited so I can really get down to business soon. Hopefully next week I will have a little more information to share after I have done some more work on my paper. Until then....