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"If there's a book that you want to read , but it hasn't been written yet, then you must write it"
~Toni Morrison
~Toni Morrison
In this week's blog post I will be having my final reflection of my English Composition I class as I am now at the end of the semester.
I really learned a lot from taking this English Composition I course this semester. It was completely different than I had expected walking into this class on the first day. I thought it was going to be a typical reading and writing English class, but we ended up doing some amazing work. Never have I ever thought that I would be creating my own website where I would actively be positing my writing I have done throughout this semester. It is truly amazing to think that at this point, I have written over 10,000 words just from this semester. I was never really the writer type so I wasn't really fond of this class to begin with, but my professor had made the class way more entertaining and interesting. He really tried his best to help us all succeed and I really appreciate that as a student. This class has really helped me become more comfortable with writing in general and also it has helped me with being able to even start a paper. Before this class I had always had trouble just starting a specific paper, now I am able to start a paper with ease. I have also became more comfortable with writing about more personal topics as you can see in my Narrative Project. Also, I have become better with writing in different tenses and point of views as I had to change it up a little bit throughout the duration of this course. At the end of the day, looking back at this course I am very thankful for being able to learn so much and grow so much as a writer and also having such a great professor to teach me these skills as a writer and help me grow.
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In this blog post I will be posting my revision of my findings section of my research project. Please feel free to comment what you think about it.
Findings In this section I will prove the Three Good Things activity did improve my well-being by discussing these points. At first, the activity was a little weird and little hard to get used to because it’s not every day that I take my time to try and pinpoint three good things that happen to me for a particular day and write a brief summary about them. As a couple of days went by I was able to get the activity done with not as much of a hassle, mainly due to the fact that I did the activity on the week of Halloween which helped me a lot in the first couple days. This activity was easier to get used to because of the practice with the activity. What our practice is actually doing is helping the brain optimize for this set of coordinated activities, through a process called myelination (Why Practice Actually…). A lot of myelination happens naturally, much of it during childhood. Kids are like myelin generating machines, soaking up information about the world and themselves. As we get older, we can continue to generate more myelin onto our axons, but it happens at a slower rate and requires more effort (Why Practice Actually…). Myelination is a term in anatomy that is defined as the process of forming a myelin sheath around a nerve to allow nerve impulses to move more quickly. As the week went on, I started noticing good things that were happening throughout my days that I could easily right down and explain why they made me happy. For example, on the one day I played in a small tournament for my video game and ending up winning $10. This had made me happy simply because I was having fun playing a game and ended up making money from it. Getting paid for doing stuff you love to do is always a great feeling. On a few of the days I was able to write about spending time with family as well which also tends to make me happy just being around loved ones. By the end of the week I was comfortable with the activity itself and could easily see why it is able to help people with gaining happiness or gratitude. For this week's blog post, I decided to put my revision of my introduction up for criticism. I added a lot more to the introduction itself for the revision. Please feel free to comment any suggestions. Below is the revision of my introduction.
Introduction We spend tens of thousands of dollars on expensive electronics, homes, automobiles and vacations hoping for a 10% boost in our happiness (Three Good Things, A…). Now just sit back and think about that statement for a second. We buy new phones, T.Vs, cars, and houses trying to make ourselves happier, but how long does that happiness really last? Buying these nice expensive things does not mean it’ll make us happier as a whole. Sure we will be happy in the moment and maybe for a week or two after we buy whatever it is that we buy, but the happiness never lasts past that. In this paper, I will be discussing the Three Good Things activity and how it can help you with your own happiness and well-being just by spending 10 minutes of your time each day. The Three Good Things activity takes place at the end of each day and you sit down for about 10 minutes writing down three good things that happened to you that particular day and explaining why it made you happy. In a study of exercise’s effectiveness by Martin Seligman, participants were asked to follow those exact instructions for just one week. After one week they were 2% happier than before, but in follow-up tests, their happiness kept on increasing, from 5% at one month, to 9% at six months. All this, even though they were only instructed to journal for one week. Participants enjoyed the exercise so much, that they just kept on doing it on their own (Three Good Things, A…). It seems to be that the more people had practiced the activity, the more of long-term happiness they were achieving just by looking at the statistics. More practice of the activity is a major point because Generating gratitude is an undeveloped skill. Mastering it is much like loving-kindness meditation. At first you’re halfway decent, generating a slight bump of happiness. As you progress, that bump slowly transforms into a sustained rise (Three Good Things, A…). Gratitude is the quality or feeling of being grateful or thankful. Unfortunately, this study was cut short at only being six months long, but could you imagine the percentage of happiness that could be achieved by doing this even longer? I strongly believe that the Three Good Things activity will help in the long run because I believe that it’s the small things in life that make us happy, and when you think about it, that is exactly what this activity is about instead of focusing on the major events throughout that day that may have not been so good towards you. For this week's blog post my professor wanted us to talk about our research project we have been working on. Below this is my findings section of my paper where I use my personal data and talk about it. Please let me know what there is that I can add or fix. Thank you and have a great day.
I personally took the time to try the Three Good Things activity for myself. I did this activity just for one week to see what I could get from it. At first, the activity was a little weird and little hard to get used to because it’s not every day that I take my time to try and pinpoint three good things that happen to me for a particular day and write a brief summary about them. As a couple of days went by I was able to get the activity done with not as much of a hassle, mainly due to the fact that I did the activity on the week of Halloween which helped me a lot in the first couple days. As the week went on, I started noticing good things that were happening throughout my days that I could easily right down and explain why they made me happy. For example, on the one day I played in a small tournament for my video game and ending up winning $10. This had made me happy simply because I was having fun playing a game and ended up making money from it. Getting paid for doing stuff you love to do is always a great feeling. On a few of the days I was able to write about spending time with family as well which also tends to make me happy just being around loved ones. By the end of the week I was comfortable with the activity itself and could easily see why it is able to help people with gaining happiness or gratitude. For this week's blog post my professor wanted us to talk about our research project we have been working on. We started off by doing the Three Good Things activity, which is shown in my previous blog post, and took a deeper dive in researching it. Below this is my introduction for the paper, please feel free to leave any comments and let me know what there is that I could do better with it. Thank you and I hope you all enjoy.
We spend tens of thousands of dollars on expensive electronics, homes, automobiles and vacations hoping for a 10% boost in our happiness (Three Good Things, A…). Now just sit back and think about that statement for a second. We buy new phones, T.Vs, cars, and houses trying to make ourselves happier, but how long does that happiness really last? Buying these nice expensive things does not mean it’ll make us happier as a whole. Sure we will be happy in the moment and maybe for a week or two after we buy whatever it is that we buy, but the happiness never lasts past that. In this paper, I will be discussing the Three Good Things activity and how it can help you with your own happiness and well-being just by spending 10 minutes of your time each day. For this week's blog post I had to use these readings, What is Positive Pyschology & Why Is it Important? (Positive Psychology Program), Greater Good in Action: Science-Based Practices for a Meaningful Life (UC Berkeley's Project Home Page), and Three Good Things (Greater Good in Action) to help me complete a week of journal entries that are composed of three good things that happened for me each day. Below this introduction is my week of three good things.
October 30:
October 31:
November 1:
November 2:
November 3:
November 4:
For this week's blog post I will be showing you a vlog that I had made talking about the second draft of my Narrative Project. To help me with this week's blog post I used What is Fan Fiction -- and why is it making people nervous? (Stephen Downes), and Rewinding and Rewriting: The Alternate Universes in Our Head (Hidden Brain Podcast) to help me with my second draft of my Narrative Project. Below this introduction is my vlog I had made talking about my second draft. As always, I hope you enjoy and have a great day. For this week’s blog, my professor wanted us to read these following texts to write, or make a vlog, about us reflecting on our work we have done so far in the class. Following this introduction is my reflection on the class so far and how I think it is going for me.
Coming into this class I expected a typical, boring English class where we would read old novels, write about them, and do some vocabulary. I was completely wrong. I had no idea going into this class that I would be writing weekly blogs on my own website that I have created from scratch. When my class was first introduced to the idea I was pretty nervous because I felt like it would be really hard to create my own website and make weekly blogs. The website ended up not being that bad to create since my professor walked us through it all. Writing each weekly blog reminded me of the creative writing class I took when I was still in High School. I thoroughly enjoy the creative writing aspect of the class as it allows for more creative ideas to flow instead of just reading a novel and writing about what you have comprehended from the passage. I was nervous writing my first blog, which I do not think turned out very well. As I continued to write more blogs, I began to get better at my writing and thinking processes and create better writing from the practice. My favorite blog post by far has to be my Past Scene blog as it allowed for me to talk about something negative that had happened in my life that really changed me as a person. I only ever talked about the topic once before in depth with my girlfriend. Writing about negative past experiences really allows for me to grow as a person and also connect with all sorts of people that may have gone through something similar and do not have anyone to relate or talk to about the topic with. Just by going through the process of writing blogs every single week has really helped me with becoming a stronger writer. At the beginning of this class I struggled to get any type of writing started and now it comes to me more fluently. With the class being halfway over I still have three goals I want to reach for myself. First, I would like to continue with having all of my assignments completely done and on time. In the past I would struggle with doing any type of homework and I am really working hard to have everything completed on time. Secondly, I would like to reach my goal of becoming a stronger writer. As I said before, I feel like I have become stronger as a writer, but I would like to be a very fluent and strong writer by the end of this class. Lastly, I would like to reach my goal of achieving the highest grade I possibly can because it means a lot to me because I always struggled with school in the past and never really had the best of grades. Moving forward into the second half of this class, I would like to reach all of those goals and continue to have a great time in the class as well as a great time with my writing. For this week's blog I had to read What is a Found Poem?, Sample Found Poem, and Visual Examples of Found Poems to help me create my own found poem using my Narrative Project. I have entitled this free-form found poem "Behind Closed Doors" because the scene is about what my ex step dad would do when no one was watching. Below this introduction is the found poem itself.
Behind Closed Doors Rewind my life about 10 years from present day My mom had recently remarried My brothers, mom, new step dad and I had moved into a new house I was sitting in the kitchen trying to do my homework While everyone else was spread out around the house I always hated doing my homework I would always get frustrated and complain about it My step dad heard me complaining He walked down the hallway I was shaking in my shoes He started yelling right away He kept walking towards me No one was around I continued to complain and started sobbing I had no idea what he was about to do to me He stood behind me and grabbed my math book He smacked my head with it as hard as he could If I had told my mom She wouldn’t believe me After writing this found poem I came to the conclusion that my Narrative Project could use a lot more detail. It was a little challenging trying to come up with a decent found poem due to the lack of descriptive words used in my Narrative Project. More description would allow the reader to really feel like they are there in the scene themselves rather than just seeing my words talk about the scene. For this week’s blog post I had to revise and make some edits to my previous blog post from last week. I used My Mother Gives me a Writing Lesson (Martin Lee) to help me make some changes in my post. I added a small amount of dialogue, details and a little final piece that has to do with present day. Below this introduction is my revised blog. I hope you enjoy.
Rewind my life about 10 years from present day. I was roughly 12 years old at the time and my mom had recently remarried and my brothers, mom, new step dad and I had moved into a new house recently. It was a typical school night and I was sitting in the kitchen trying to do my homework while everyone else was spread out around the house. Like any other kid, I always hated doing my homework and I would always get frustrated and complain about it, usually just not finishing it. This time was different though. My step dad at the time had heard me complaining about the homework and I heard him as he walked down the hallway. I was already scared at this point because he would already grab us or mentally abuse us all in past scenarios. Once he entered the room he started yelling right away and kept walking towards me. “Why are you complaining about homework? You’re so stupid that you can’t even complete a little bit of homework without wanting to run off and do your own thing. You’ll never amount to anything you’re so dumb.” He said to me knowing he would break me down even more telling me that I’m nothing and won’t ever be anything in this world. No one was around. My brothers were in the basement and my mom was in the dining room I believe. I continued to complain and now started breaking down into tears because I had no idea what he was about to do to me. He was at least 250-300 lbs and I was only a 12 year old kid. Out of nowhere he stood behind me and grabbed my math book and smacked my head with it as hard as he could. He had the meanest mug look on his face and I swear at this point I started seeing stars and couldn’t think or even see straight. I made sure to keep quiet because if I had told my mom I knew she wouldn’t believe me over her husband as sad as it sounds. Also, if I told her, I knew I would have to deal with him again and I wanted to avoid that at all times. I prayed in my head that he would not do it again. Thankfully, he didn’t commit to a second hit with the hard covered math book. He then had left the room after he terrorized me, leaving me there shaking, paralyzed to my seat without saying a word. Stuff like this had happened in the past. Time for a little backstory to understand this past scene a little better. Before we moved with him he had put his hands on my oldest brother, who was roughly 16-17 years old at the time. He had grabbed my brother by the neck trying to choke him. My mom still decided to stay with him for reasons I’ll never understand since my brothers and I were in danger. Once we moved to our new house, my oldest brother eventually had a full time job and was barely ever home. This had left my middle brother and I at home with my mom and step dad most of the time. Our step dad would always emotionally abuse us with negative comments about us, he would always put us down making us feel like we were nothing and couldn’t make anyone happy. He would always come down the hallway and barge into our rooms without warning checking to see what we were doing, we never had any privacy. He would always pick on me since I was the youngest and weakest. He would always grab me from behind and put me in headlocks or chokeholds and tell me to try and get out of them and wouldn’t let me go and I would feel like I was going to pass out every time. He highly enjoyed being in control and picking on weaker people to make himself feel better and he also enjoyed putting fear into people. Fast forward to present day, my middle brother and I both have long term problems due to these multiple incidents from our past. The negative impact this had on me is depression for the past decade, and most recently, minor PTSD that gives me flashbacks of everything that had happened. Thankfully my mom had left him right before I started high school. We were stuck in the same house as him for 3 years where he gave us Hell. They were the longest 3 years of my life to this day. |
Matt GuglielmiThis is where I will be posting weekly blogs for my English Composition I class. Archives
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