Week 6 Blog

When I was really young, I sucked at writing the letter J. You may think, "Oh, that's no big deal." Being that my name is Jordan, with a J, it was a giant problem. Looking back at some of my old pictures I drew for my mom, my J's looked more like S's, which may be giving myself some credit. But after having to give up recess for part of kindergarten, I finally learned how to write my J's correctly, along with the other letters in the alphabet. I feel that just being able to write letters on a page and being able to form words would be that pivotal first stage in my own writing career.

After that first stage in my own writing career, I think that the second stage would be the junior high days when you were assigned papers, but they were nothing like they were now. After years of just writing sentences and sometimes paragraphs leading up to jr. high, now I was getting assigned full page book reports, which really made me mad. I really never read, and BSing those book reports a page long was hard. Other than having to write maybe a couple 2 page reports, the extent of my writing at that stage was only about a page or so.

And after junior high brings me to my third stage in writing, which is where I feel I'm at right now. High school and college have made me open up in writing and have taught me how to fully develop a structured essay. Learning how to write all different types of essays with lengths have made me a better writer than I was when I was in my first stage. While I know I'm not in my final stage of writing, I do know that in every one of my stages I've learned something new and become a much better writer than before.

Week 5

While thinking about a topic for this blog, it just hit me. I think that the counselors at ICC are no help to students and are too demanding. In just my two semesters at ICC, my counselors have enrolled me in classes I did not need to take, have not responded to multiple email messages sent, and given me no information about scholarship money to help pay for tuition, even after asking for information. While I can understand that they may have busy schedules at times, I find no reason to refuse a student of help just because they did not schedule a meeting.
In my friend Nate's case, they have cost him almost a semester's worth of classes because they did not put him in the right classes for his major. You may ask, did he tell the counselor about what his major is before making his schedule? The answer is yes, and because of this, he is going to be stuck living at home another half-year, at least, because of his counselors wrongdoing. In my own experiences, I have also been placed in two classes last semester that had no completion towards my degree, also after they knew of my planned major. I've had many of my friends get no responses on calls and emails about important college questions, as well. In just the cases of myself and friends, we have had multiple problems with just trying to get in contact with our counselors about the many questions and issues we may have with college searching, completing our degree, etc. I think to make ICC a more comfortable and easy experience, the counselors need to actually be a counselor to the students at all times rather than just when you have an appointment.

Week 4 Blog

When I have to write, I'll usually be found in one of two quiet places, my room or the library. The first and most important thing I know about myself is that I need to distance myself from the distraction of television, friends, cellphone, internet, etc. I found out fairly quickly in my college career that with the amount of homework, papers, and tests, distractions of any kind need to be eliminated in order to finish all the work that coincides with being a full-time student.
Another necessity for myself when I write is having music. I mainly listen to Explosions in the Sky because it helps me zone into my work. Being able to drown out any noise distraction with music helps, and I always heard that listening to music can mentally stimulate you, so I figured it couldn't hurt.
In the starting process of writing, I have now in the past year started to write using just the computer. While I sometimes jot down a messy outline, I think I write better when I process the information and decide in the flow of writing whether a paragraph should be in a certain place or a quote be used as further explanation. I've also know that using this different process of writing has increasingly took me longer to write. While the extra time may cut into fun with my friends or my little brother, I have noticed that the quality of my work has gradually improved. So, I can accept the extra time if it pays off in better grades.
Overall, I know that being able to turn in my best work and always improve in writing will be essential for myself as I grow as a student and a teacher in the future. Having the ability to get across a point in a written manner as well as verbally can only be a plus and one I can hope to improve in the next coming years.

Myself as a Writer

After reading the prompts and processing each one, I found that I do write in many places just in one day. Obviously, I write notes, papers, homework, and even the daily crossword in my classes everyday. Other than just focusing on school, I write daily at many places. At my old job at a lumberyard, for example, I would have to constantly be writing down the customers orders and then going into the yard and loading up the wood and delivering the load to the customer. As meaningless as some feel writing may be, just looking back on that one example gives me some insight as to how important writing is.
Another example of a kind of writing I've done is some graffiti. In an underpass near my house about five years ago, my friends and me spray painted some "nice" words on the concrete walls, which are still there today and something I'm oddly proud of. Outside of school, I found that the most writing I do daily is on post-it notes. Everyday, I write many post-it notes for myself to remind me of homework, tests, appointments, sister's volleyball game times, etc. My favorite post-it notes to write are the one's that I use to surprise my brother in his lunchbox usually saying something about having a great day at school or telling him that we can watch his favorite TV show together after school.
I've found that writing, though trivial at times, actually has a great importance even daily in my life alone. Sending fun notes to my brother, to getting a load of wood correct, to writing down daily notes impacts not only my life but many others as well. Being able to become more complete as a writer through this class can have a much more lasting impact on my daily life now that I connect so many of my daily habits and writing together.