Risks

As I kid the risks I took were stupid ones. You know exactly what I'm talking about, running into the street, sticking your hand into the toaster to get out your waffle, and trying to land a back flip off the monkey bars and ending up with a trip to the emergency room instead. Okay maybe I was just a really crazy kid but when I was younger I wasn't scared of anything and I wanted to do everything no matter the risks.

I'm now a "Nervous Nacy". I worry about all the risks, the risks are all I can think about. I got accpeted to my first choice school I should be over joyed right now but all I can think about are the risks, how will pay for it, what if I end up in debt for the rest of my life, what if I pick the wrong career and have to start again. I realize though that in order to get anything out of life you have to take some risks. Some people say they aren't "risky people" and never take any risks. I ask them if the drove to school today they say yes and reply "You take a risk everyday when you drive to school. You rely on a yellow line to keep another car from crashing into your lane, that is for sure a risk." I guess what I'm saying is that sometimes where taking risks without even knowing that we are.

My Humorous Clip

http://www.hulu.com/watch/299649/saturday-night-live-cold-opening-gop-debate-3

I'm not sure how to post a video but I do know how to copy and past an address to one

Christmas and Family

I love Christmas. It is my favorite holiday and not just because of the food, although that is a part of it, I love spending time with my family. Now let me just say that there are some members of my family who I'm less eager to spend time with such as my cousin Jimmy. Jimmy and I are less then a year apart in a age and we don't see eye to eye on anything. This Thanksgiving he asked me if I had started my wife training yet let's just say me response was not said with kindness. I do like hanging out with my cousin Kelly though. She is five and one of the cutest kids you've ever met. There is lovely picture of her to the left after she tricked her older brother into taking her to McDonald's after she'd already went once with her mom. I have special place in my heart for Kelly because she is my only girl cousin and for the last few years she always wants to sit by me at Christmas brunch and wants me to color with her. I love Christmas cause it's an excuse to spend time with my family and even though we don't always get along it's great to be with them. And below is a picture of all of us cousins from a few years ago so you can put some faces to names.
Back row: from left to right is Jimmy, David, Me, Dan
Middle: Tyler and Nick
Front: Kelly

Answers for Rhetorical Modes

1. Argument
2. Comparison/ Contrast
3. Description
4. Example
5. Narration
6. Classification

Rhetorical Modes

1. Fast food should be outlawed. It doesn't have nutritional value, causes weight gain and can contribute to many diseases. It's been proven that most fast food options aren't healthy not only that but the companies that aren't concerned about how healthy they are or what their food does to their customers as long as they are making money. Their food also cause people to gain weight which also can cause them to suffer from disease and health problems that obesity brings about such as diabetes.

2. My brother and I are related but we are completely different. My brother is the kind of person who never has to study for a test because he's just that smart. I'm the kind of girl who has to study for every test. Don't get me wrong I'm smart too but I don't understand things the first time, it takes me a little longer but I eventually get it. Although he and I have more in common than I'm willing to admit most the time. We both   have a similar sense of humor that involves a lot of sarcasm.

3. My friend could best be described as having a large personality. She's taller and has super long blonde hair. She's says what she means and means what she says. She's only a sophomore but she holds her own with us upperclassmen. She's out going and is willing to do anything to help her friends. But she can be unreasnably sutborn. She knows what she wants and what is right and is sometimes unwilling to compromise. Even with this she is one my closest friends and is always there for me when I need her.

4. Truth. What is it? Is anyone actually truthful? People are always saying that honesty is the best policy but when was the last time you told the truth to someone? You forgot to do your math homework so you "fudge the truth" and say you left your math book at your friends house while you were faithfully studying for an upcoming test and then ask for an extension. Or was it the time you told your friend that shirt looked great on her even though you thought the color was moldy pumpkin orange. Truth, its an interesting word. Everyone wants it but does anyone really give it willingly so they can receive it back?

5. Thanksgiving with my cousins can best be described as chaotic. My cousin Tyler is ten and loves to cause trouble. In the past years he has thrown food at people, cut someone's shirt and this year he gave his brother a black. My other cousin is  Nick and he is eight. He's louder than any other kid I have ever meet. Every year he demands that we listen to him sing. Now let me say that songs he chooses to sing are not award nominees. That leaves us with Jimmy. Jimmy and I are a year a part. This year he asked me if I had started my wife training yet. To say we don't see eye to eye may be understatement.

6. Joey is a senior at Harper Creek High School. His mom's a teacher and his dad owns his own company. His grandparents lived in the same town when the were raising his dad. His grandpa owned a hardware store and his grandma was a nurse. This makes him a typical small town boy. The biggest city he's been to is Detroit. He's never been out of the country and never plans to.

Forgetful

I am posting while at panera. I possibly forgot that I was suppose to post today. So I thought I could write about my forgetful nature. I'm that kid teachers hate. I always leave my homework at home, forget to print or even forgot to write it down. I've been this way since I was little. I guess it must be genetic because my dad is also very forgetful. In fact my dad has many a time forgotten to pick my brother or I up somewhere. Or maybe I just need to practice remembering things. I'm not really sure how to do that but if someone has an idea let me know.

What People's Actions Are Saying About Them

I am doing X2 on page 124. It asks you to go through different situations and talk about what their actions are saying. I picked situations that I found personally annoying or felt strongly about. The situations are in bold and my thoughts are not.

• a businessperson who leaves the restaurant table to answer a page?

This is just plain rude. The person is saying that their work is more important then the waiter's time not only that if they are eating with their family it makes them look like a jerk who cares way too much about his job. At the same time it show they are kind of polite because at least they didn't pick up the call and talk at the their table annoying everyone sitting around them.

• a doctor who leaves the table to answer a page?

That this person is a good doctor who cares about his patients enough to drop whatever he's doing to take care of them. Not only that but he's polite for not talking on his phone at the table.

• an answering machine that cuts of the incoming message after thirty seconds?

That they just want your name and number, nothing else. They don't want and sit and listen to you describe your problem on the machine then call you and listen to you describe the problem again and then get on with business. It show that they are about efficiency and that is their main goal.

• a phone answering device that begins, "If you have a rotary phone, stay on the line. If you have a touch tone phone . . .?"

I don't know what either of those things are, so I'm going to guess that they are old types of phones. This says to me that either the company has gone out of business and that's why they haven't change their message or their lazy or it's a line that elderly people call who actually still use things like that.

• a person who rambles on the phone?

That the person is disrespectful and doesn't believe your time is valuable. I find this to be so annoying. I hate when someone calls "just to talk" because this usually means they have some sort of hidden agenda so they talk about random stuff to make you "feel loved" then ask for whatever it its that really want.

My First Choice

For months now, possibly years, people have asked my where I want to go to college. I have finally made up mind. My first choice for college is Bethel University. I have sat and thought about for a long time and it offers everything I am looking for in a college.

That's where I'll be this weekend, at Bethel. I am doing a visit this weekend to make sure it's really where I want to go. It's a private school which means it cost quite a bit more than going to a public university so I want to make sure it's the right school. I guess I shouldn't sound so confident I haven't even gotten in yet but it's just always where I've wanted to go and it's hard to picture myself going anywhere else. It offers all the right programs, mainly nursing, and it offers the right atmosphere for me.

As senior, I think sometimes I get a little overwhelmed with all the changes coming up in my life and all the major decisions I'm going to have make. I just want to do well and go to a good school. I also think I sometimes forget to live in the moment. I get a little too focused on where I'll be in a year and which school I'll be at. I think every once in awhile I need to slow down and enjoy where I'm at in life currently.

Writing a Paper the Megan Way

I started my paper by actually reading the article. The first time I read it I read it straight through then the rest of the times I read through it I was looking for different devices. I started by rough draft over MEA while I was in Chicago so I wrote it in the car raped in my fuzzy blanket listening to my iPod. Now some people might find that listen to music while writing to be distracting but I like the noise. I have a really hard time writing if it's super quiet. I also may have eaten some Dunkin Donuts while writing my paper. I'm just saying it would be an improvement to Minnesota if they add some of those stores because they really do add to the writing process. I almost always right my paper all the way through the first time and then work on it from there. However, my intro is usually only a thesis statement until I'm completely finished with the paper because intros tend to be my weak spot so I leave until last to do. That's pretty much all I did. I also I had my parents read the article, much to their dismay, and then read my paper to see if it made sense.

What I Want to Be When I Grow Up

I want to be nurse. I have only told my mom that. I love helping people and being a nurse is a perfect way to help people. For a long time I pictured myself being a teacher but recently I noticed that I lack the patients that is needed to be a teacher. I love kids but I don't think I'd be very good at teaching them without yelling at them to be quit honest. So I have decide that my dream job would be working at childerens' hospital. I'd get to help kids and be with them and not be responsible for the education.

My only concern is maybe I'm not the right type of person to be a nurse. I mean I'm good at science so it's not really the educational aspects that are holding be back its more like the fear of picking the wrong career. What if I get to may last year of college and realize that nursing isn't for me? I know that's a problem far of in the future but I'm kind of worrier. I want to be smart about my education and pick what I want to do and stick with it. Luckily I have a year or two to look into it more before I may my final choices. I hope this wasn't a boring post but this has what's been running around in my head for the last few week and feels pretty good to type it and get out of my brain.

What I think about School

After watching the 2 million minutes video I was confused about what exactly they were trying to say. Up until the last 5 minutes when they discussed what happened to the students after high school I thought they were arguing about how students from other countries generally work harder at school which they proved. I also understand that they were creating the idea that since american students currently have a lazy work ethic it will effect future developments of the country. So I guess I did understand what they were arguing it was just the last five minutes that messed me up. I just typed and that and had an epiphany about what it was saying. They used the last five minutes to show that these super intelligent kids from other countries didn't make into their top school so what does that say about the kids who did make it in? It shows that they have even smarter and harder working kids then the one's in the video that america will be competing against in the future.

To go on to me general thoughts about the education system, I believe that everyone is to blame for the problems with the educational system. I think students are to blame in part for not work, for blaming the teacher for bad grades, for getting by with the minimal amount of work and for only caring about the grade they receive and not the actual learning taking place. I also think teachers are to blame because they often set their standards to low for students, don't take time to explain things all the way through in class, and some, not all, always blame the students. They don't ever think that maybe it's their teaching method that is flawed not the student. And of course parents are partly to blame. Since when is it a good idea to blindly believe what ever you child says? A growing number of parents are blaming teachers for their child's problems in school because their child said it was the teacher's fault. They don't then go to the teacher and ask what's going on in the class but immediately began to blame the teacher for their kid's bad grade. Overall I think that it will take effort from all three of these parties to fix the education system and until they can all admit that they are partly to blame it can't be fixed. 

Not an Adult

I turned 18 yesterday which mean affixing to the US I'm an adult. But I don't feel like one. I don't think I'm ready to make my own choices. I don't feel responsible enough to make the right choices either. I want to know why is it 18 years not 21 like drinking. Scientists say that your brain is not fully develop until age 21 then why at age 18 without a fully developed brain I'm suppose to be responsible for myself? I understand that when you turn 18 your starting make big choices like which college your going to but I don't fel ready to make those type of choices yet.I know I must sound crazy because most kids my age are excited to make their own decisions but quite honestly I'm scared to make the wrong choices.

I hope this post hasn't been to boring Mrs. Cardona and you aren't setting at your computer screaming I want that minute of my life back but this what I want to talk about for my post and I'm an adult now so I do make my own choices so I hope I picked correctly.

The President's Speech to Students

First of all I would just like to say I have never listened to Presdient Obama give a speech before. I know that sounds really bad but I have listened to bits or pieces but I've never listened to a whole one. So thank you Mrs. Cardona because I now feel like I'm a better citizen because I listened to this.

Now for the analysis part. I noticed that used short sentence to place emaphsis on the longer ones. An example is " And if that means college for you, just getting into college is not enough.  You also have to graduate.  One of the biggest challenges we have right now is that too many of our young people enroll in college but don’t actually end up getting their degree, and as a consequence -- our country used to have the world’s highest proportion of young people with a college degree; we now rank 16th." He use the first two shorter sentences to talk bring up a topic and then use a longer one to show what he's truely getting at.

I also noticed that he used language that could be understood by any high schooler. He does this on purpose to make sure that he gets his point across because if kids cound't unederstand what he was saying they would have tuned him out even though what he has to say is important.

Lastly I noticed that he hardly used any pathos. There wasn't any moment in his speech where I caught myself going "awww". He stuck mostly with logos. He uses facts like "60% of the US jobs will require more than a high school diploma"  this backs up his idea of how student need to continue with their education after high school. He also appeals to the students own chacter talking about how we have a responsiblity to ourselves, our familes, and our countries to get the best education possible and do the most we can with our lifes.

Jim Crow Laws

I strongly disagree with the Jim Crow laws, I know your all shocked. I just can't believe that people actually thought these laws were fair. Not only that but they thought that everything I was equal? It was not equal. The black and white schools were completely different. The supplies such as books for the black schools were falling apart where as the white schools were getting new books. Does that sound "separate but equal" to anyone? I could go through and list at least 15 more examples like this but I won't because honestly it's hard for me to think about. I don't want to think about how horribly these people were treated because it just makes me so angry and there is nothing I can do to go back and change it. All I can do is learn from our country's past mistakes and not inflict this kind of discrimination on any other group of people.

My Opinion on the Packet of Short Stories

I decided to write about my two favorite short stories from the pact. They just so happened to be the first two, I did read them all but these were the ones that happened to stick out to me.

William Kennedy-
I enjoyed this short story because it was relatable. I have wrote many "Eggs" and my parents have read them said its simply amazing then go on and correct my spelling errors. My brother is my "father" from this short story he reads my paper and just looks at me. He then goes on. " this really is the best you can do? You can't right anything better then this? And to think my and dad think your the good one at communications." So again I say liked this story because I have lived this story.

Pat Conroy-
This is pretty much the most brilliant short story I've ever read. She managed to make me feel more in a page and half than I have exprinced in some 200 page novels. The way she writes makes her story on serious subject in places light and almost comical. Such as the refrences to her family memebers names or her sister saying that the miscarriages, "Were the lucky ones." But for me the ending was the most powerful part of the story. How at ages 9 and 11 her and her sister began to write to prove that these things with their dad had actually happened.

Why I Write Revised

I accidentally wrote about the articles instead of why I write, so here is the real post.

Top 6 Reasons Why I Write

1. I write because I love being able to state my opinion about things without having to talk to people.

2. I like not always having to write about something logic and important. When I write, I like writing for myself and no one else.

3. I like writing about what happens during my day. I like to have a record of my life so I can look back and remember what I was like and how much I've grown since then.

4. I also like writing for other people. I like thinking that what I have to say could affect someone in a great way.

5. Honestly, I like making stuff up. When I younger I loved playing make believe and writing is a kind of grown up way to do that.

6. Oh and of course I write for school because I have too. But that's definitely my least favorite kind of writing unless I'm able to write about something I'm passionate about then its kind of fun cause I get enjoy myself and get a grade for it. 

Why I Write

I guess I'm just going to talk about what I found interesting for the two articles and why.

1. I completely agree with Orwell when he talks about the four motives of writing. I actually tried to think of a motive that he might have missed and couldn't. Anything I  thought of fell into when of the four motives that he wrote about.
2. I like that Orwell writes about issues he's passionate about. I also write about things I'm passionate about. I don't really see the point of writing about things your not passionate about, except maybe school and even then I at least try to write about something I'm passionate about.
3. Finally, I found it interesting that both writers talk about the way certain words sound when they're put together. I guess I'd never really thought about it before. I mean I have liked certain writers and the word that they've chosen to use I've just never thought about certain word going well together.

So there's my post about Why I Write!

First Post

I have never had a blog before and i'm looking forward to using this one even if it is for educational purposes. I'm hoping that I don't sound to weird because every time I start typing I double guess everything I'm saying. So here's to hoping that this year goes well and so does this blog.