Self Evaluation for Essay #2

A. What invention strategy did you find worked best for you? Why do you think this strategy was the most helpful? What other prewriting did you do before writing your draft?

When writing this paper I thought of the different places or occasions where food had special meaning when it came to family and what types of food I wanted to include. I think that this strategy was helpful because I felt it necessary before even writing the introduction paragraph. I didn't really use any other strategies.


B. Which prompt did you end up selecting? Did you consider any other options or change your mind during the drafting process?

I selected the prompt of food and family. I considered food and memory as well.

C. What difficulties did you experience trying to discover a single focus or reason for writing?

I didn't choose a specific single reason to write about but choose including foods that my family eats at certain occasions and places.

D. What one or two (thesis) sentence(s) from your essay articulates your purpose for writing? (Write your thesis statement below.)

When I think of family, food is among the thoughts that first that spring up in my mind. This may seem weird until you think about everything families can do together and realize that most of them involve some sort of food.

E. What problems did you have trying to organize your essay? How did you overcome these difficulties?

When trying to organize my essay I had a hard time decidng what order to place my paragraphs in, until I decide to place them in order that where the most different from other people topic was at the end.

F. If you were starting the assignment over from scratch, what would you do differently? What changes would you make to your writing /thinking process?

If I was doing the assignmnt over again, I would probably choose the food and memory topic instead but do the same strategy process.

G. What do you like best about your essay?

I like that my essay has lots of different connections between family and food.

H. What do you like least about your essay?

The thing I like least about my essay is that I am not sure if the paragraphs flow well.

Exam #2 rough draft

When I think of family, food is among the thoughts that first that spring up in my mind. This may seem weird until you think about everything families can do together and realize that most of them involve some sort of food. Everyday family meals, baseball games, vacations, camping, desserts, and holidays are just among the few that mean something to my family and me.
In today’s world few families make the time to sit down together to enjoy an all important meal whether it is home-cooked, fast food, or store bought. Although my family didn’t have the time or the ability to sit down together for a meal every day, I remember making the effort several times a week. Enjoying a meal, no matter what type of food or even where the meal is being eaten, as a family provided my family time to talk about our day and what all we had to do during the week. Times shared between parents and children cannot be replaced. Meal times allow for bonding and memories that cannot be replaced.
For my family Cardinal baseball games include special memories when it comes to being a family with food. Every season my family tries to attend between two and four games a season because my younger sister and Dad really enjoy baseball. While at the games my mom, my younger sister, and myself always get the supreme nachos. These nachos are fully loaded with cheese, meat, sour cream, salsa, and jalapeño peppers. It’s something the girls in my family share and enjoy amongst each other. This tradition means a lot to me.
As a family that loves to travel to as many places as possible on vacation we take the opportunities to try new, different, or specialties of that area to try. When we were in New Orleans the food to try was the jambalaya and Creole food. Creole food that the girls in my family liked the most was the Cajun Creole shrimp. Another New Orleans’s dish that we were able to try was alligator. I enjoyed trying the alligator and thought it tasted like chicken in a way. While in New York as a family we were able to try New York style pizza as well as go to Cold Stone Creamery for the first time. The ice cream was a big hit for my family and we returned for a second time. Traveling to Mexico with my younger sister provided the opportunity to taste green salsa and other Mexican specialties. With school my mom and I got the chance to travel to Panama and Costa Rica where every meal was served with beans and rice.
Camping is the way my family vacations the most. My family enjoys grilling hot dogs, hamburgers, chicken, and brats while camping. Inside the camper foods my mom cooks include baked beans, hominy, and macaroni and cheese. Potato salad, salad, and chips are favorites and easy while camping. Lunch meat sandwiches and BLTs also satisfy our taste buds. Camping is something my whole family enjoys doing together and allows us to make lots of memories.
Desserts rank at the top of many people’s favorite food lists. Homemade pies made for Thanksgiving such as pecan, cherry, custard, and pumpkin allows there to be someone for everyone to enjoy. Homemade chocolate cake made by my grandma draws the whole family around the table to enjoy a piece sometimes with ice cream. Also among the favorite desserts in my family is the variety of candies my mom makes at Christmas time. She makes around five different kinds of fudge, puppy chow, caramel chow, caramels, nutty noodle, and toffee. Rolled up pie crust with cinnamon-sugar are the perfect bite size dessert made by my grandma’s loving hands, which we affectionately we call Circle Things. My favorite dessert is Sour Cream Pound Cake. This cake is delicious and makes me smile every time my grandma makes it for me especially on my birthday. Desserts are not the only special foods for the holidays.
When it comes to holiday meals my family can be quite unusual. For New Years our favorite meal to eat is side pork, fried potatoes, leaf lettuce, beans, and cornbread. This food is always good and said to bring luck. Easter varies from year to year. We could have ham one year and fried rice and spring rolls the next. Thanksgiving is pretty much the expected food of turkey, dressing, two types of homemade rolls, sweet potatoes, mashed potatoes, and gravy. My family however, also has three types of cranberry sauce, cole slaw, crock pot and regular corn, and green beans. Christmas and food at my house is a different story. On Christmas Eve we have barbeque or ham sandwiches, chips, pickles, and lots of different kinds of dips and crackers. Some of our favorite dips are hot chicken, cheese ball, and shrimp dip. The reason my family does snack type food is so we have time to open presents by a decent time. The past food choices on Christmas Day get even stranger for most people. We do not eat turkey or any other food that is normally ate. Some years my dad grills ribs outside, other times my grandma and Mom cook homemade fried chicken, and still others we eat spring rolls and fried rice. Holidays are a time for good food and family togetherness.
Food and family go together in everyone’s life. They get combined when people eat their evening meals, go to baseball games, go on vacation, take a camping trip, enjoy desserts at special occasions, and during holidays.

Research topics for the 2nd part of Chapter 2

1)if any studies done regarding what form of pester power is most used and most effected

2)the number of the different types of Teenie Beanie Babies that McDonald's sold in 1997

3)the advertisement of soda companies and fast food done in schools

Game Plan for Essay #2

For essay number two, I have choosen to write option number one. This selection is the best for me because my family often eats a varity of food. Our holiday food dishes are also different from many people. Modes I will most likely use will be narration, illustration, and description.

Paragraphs

Beep, beep, beep is heard at 5:30 in the morning during the school week as the alarm begins to go off. It is shut off and the getting ready to go has started. My roommate crawls out of bed and gets in the shower. Surprisingly enough she crawls back into bed once she is out of the shower for a little more sleep and so her hair can dry. At 6:45 the alarm begins again but this time it gets snoozed once before she climbs out of bed to straighten her hair, do her make-up, pick out clothes, and get dressed. Then she is off to class. My roommate has a very peculiar morning ritual.

Sentence- My roommate has a very peculiar morning ritual.
Mode-illustration

There are many ways that the university bookstore takes advantage of students. It starts off small when items like candy, pens, notebooks, and binders are considered. Then it escalates as t-shirts and bags are priced at higher prices than necessary. When looking at a hooded sweatshirt students better be prepared to fork out 40 to 50 dollars. The worst cases of students being taken advantage of is when they buy and sell back books. Students are lucky to get out of the store paying less than 500 dollars at the beginning and end of each semester for a full course load. But the real crime is evident when book buy back time rolls around, like only receiving eight dollars back on a 44 dollar book that was only used for eight weeks.

Sentence-There are many ways that the uniersity bookstore takes advantage of students.
Mode-illustration

The day started out good. I got to spend it with my parents, younger sister, and fiance. We went out to eat at O'Chalerys for Ashley's birthday and got delicous food like chicken and ribs. After lunch we went back to the house for Ashley to open her birthday presents and for her and I to open our Valentine's presents. Soon it was time for me to head back to school and the snowy, rainy weather began. Near the Indiana border my car hit black ice sliding as I lost control and hit a concrete wall. After turning my car around I slowly made it to the welcome center where I spent close to three hours waiting for my parents and another hour for the tow truck. I finally got back to the dorm room about 12:45 am and was able to sleep and put a heating pad on my sore shoulder from the seat belt. Luckly I wasn't seriously hurt and when it was all said and done, I was glad to call it a day.

Sentence- When it was all said and done, I was glad to call it a day.
Mode-narration

Feedback for Chapter 1 of Fast Food Nation

I would like to know more about...

1. General Motors secretly purhasing trolley systems in the US during the 1920s

2. The history of different fast food restaurants

3. Carl Karcher Enterprises Inc. buying Hardee's

what i should do to fix my essay

From my peer reviews I determined that I needed to fix my grammer errors, change my titel to make it more interesting, and that a stronger conclusion would make a better impression. I also needed to make sure that my essay was in the correct format and that it was long enough. Also to improve my essay I may add another example or rearrange some of the sentences.

self evaluation

1. Which prompt did you select? Why did this one appeal to you over the others? What other prompts did you consider?

I seleced the prompt of responding to the story "Generaton A+". I also thought about writing about a school-related memory.

2. Which mode(s) of writing were most helpful to you in terms of creating content? Did you primarily tell a story, compare and/or contrast or describe, for example? What other modes of writing/thinking did you utilize?

Primary mode(s): I mostly used narration.

Secondary mode(s): I also compared ad Contrasted.

3. What specific details will you include for your reader? Why are these details important? What do they accomplish?

I used statistics about the classes gpas and types of parents, teachers, and students. These details accomplish explaining my point.

4. What “place(s)” or “scene(s)” do you try to recreate for your reader? Why are they crucial? Paste the most important scene in your essay below:

My freshman year of high school I took a history class that was taught by the head football couch. On Mondays in class he would assign us the end of the section or the end of two sections’ questions to do while he sat at his desk and watched football film. Although he did require his students to keep a notebook with all the questions answered so he could call us up to look at our work. However, when I say look I really mean glance and if all the questions were answered he would give us the full amount of points. Sometimes certain students would write random sentences that weren’t about history and included the teacher’s name. He never noticed this. For his end of the year exam it was questions from our old test which he gave us to look at during class for a full week before exams. This younger teacher was forced to retire at the end of that year because of his teaching habits and other reasons.

5. Thinking in terms of your thesis, explain your main reason for writing…What are you hoping to accomplish in your essay? Why does it exist?

I am trying to express my point of view about the educational system today. This exists because of the essay "Generaton A+".

6. Thinking in terms of your audience, explain what choices you made with your reader in mind…What did you include, what did you take out?

My decision to include examples of a bad teacher was because most of my reader will be students that can relate. I didn't include college teachers in my paper because I am turning it in for a college class.

7. What problems or struggles did you experience writing this draft? What kind of feedback would you like from your peer reviewers?

My problems included deciding how may examples to use and which kinds. I would like positive feedback from peer reviewers.

Students, Parents, Teachers in School (Essay #1)

School and grades are a major part of life. Some students strive to make good grades, while others expect to be handed them, and still others just want to slide by with Ds to pass. With the students come their parents who have dreams for their children and want them to earn good grades, be handed good grades, and even those parents who don’t care one way or another. There are teachers today who give students the grades they earn, those who bump up grades some, and those who just hand them out freely for just doing the work.

In every school there are all different types of students. Most of my graduating class I would say just wanted to get by, graduate, go to the community college; that is like an extension of high school since 50 to 80% of every class goes there usually, or go into a trade-school. There are those students however that try their best to earn those A grades by studying, taking notes, paying attention in class, and doing homework. I was one of these students. Too prove my point about my class being in the just get by frame of mind, at the start of junior year only five students out of 100 students had a grade point average of three point five or higher. To me this was shocking especially considering the class of 2010 from the same high school who have had the same exact teachers had 17 students with a grade point average of three point five or higher going into their junior year. Of course almost all students wouldn’t mind being handed a grade occasionally for just having done the work but most students don’t expect this to happen often, especially students who worked super hard on something when someone who just scribbles stuff down gets the same grade.

When it comes to school and grades parents differ greatly. Some parents demand that their children earn straight As and take the upper level classes. These parents want their children to go to good universities in order to become doctors, lawyers, nurses, teachers, or other jobs that are looked at highly. Rarely a parent is found that expects teachers to give their child As just for attending class, handing in homework even if not necessarily right, and they may even expect that the teachers will curve all the tests or provide lots of assistance. More often than it should be parents are existing that do not care about their children’s education. They don’t offer to help them with homework or difficult school projects, ask how their day went at school, and usually don’t attend school functions. The children are the ones who suffer with parents like this.

Teachers either make students earn their grades, hand them out freely, or some do both. I have had teachers where if you do not study lots and lots, pay attention in class, take good notes, do every single assignment, and go to every class there is no way you could get an A in the class. While there aren’t many teachers to that extent teaching today, it does still happen. Usually you find more teachers that are willing to work with students to earn that desired A. They will occasionally take homework as completion if it was difficult, provide a curve on a test, let the class argue points back on a test, or will have extra credit opportunities available. This type of teachers is my favorite because if a student is putting forth the effort in class and on test but maybe had a little trouble with one chapter or isn’t a very good test taker they can still make an A or a B and have earned it. I have had one experience in my life that I had a teacher that handed out As to his class. My freshman year of high school I took a history class that was taught by the head football couch. On Mondays in class he would assign us the end of the section or the end of two sections’ questions to do while he sat at his desk and watched football film. Although he did require his students to keep a notebook with all the questions answered so he could call us up to look at our work. However, when I say look I really mean glance and if all the questions were answered he would give us the full amount of points. Sometimes certain students would write random sentences that weren’t about history and included the teacher’s name. He never noticed this. For his end of the year exam it was questions from our old test which he gave us to look at during class for a full week before exams. This younger teacher was forced to retire at the end of that year because of his teaching habits and other reasons. Teachers who want their students to earn their grades yet want them to still do well are the most popular and well liked teachers.

I agree with Suzzane Britt that not all students are earning the grades they are given but that’s not a reason to give up on the educational system and say that college is just like high school. I believe that super hard and super easy classes will always exist in every level of education, but by taking courses with a variety in difficultly the students are learning more and being less stressed.