VCU

I like VCU a lot, it is a good school and I feel that I can get a great education. My classes are hard and allow me to learn a lot. I also enjoy the layout of the campus. I feel that I will do very well going to school here and I look forward to learning a lot more here.

Exam

Tomorrow I have an exam in crime and science. I think that I will get a good grade on it because I have studied a lot and plan to study more today. If i get an A on this exam then I will have an A in the course.

Games

Due to the large amount of rain recently many of our baseball games have been cancled. We have had two or three games rescheduled due to rain. Every year we get a lot of rain and are forced to push back baseball games. It is now part of the season having games rescheduled and played at the end of other games.

Baseball

Our baseball team played a very good game yesterday. We went up early 5 to 0, but in the second to last inning we were down 6 to 5. In the last inning my little brother had a hard shot in the gap and started a ralley where we scored 6 runs and ended up winning 11 to 5.

Class

This semester was very fast and hard. I took many hard and demanding classes and I feel that I will still do very well. My classes required me to work hard to try and remember a lot of information. I think that due to the difficulty of my classes I learned a lot about my courses.

Exam

I am getting ready to prepare for my finals. My finals are going to be hard, but I think that if I study a lot then I can get good grades. The hardest final is going to be international relations, because there is a lot of information.

Paper

The last essay I wrote was a very good essay. I had it reviewed by many peers and took alot of time to compose it. I feel that I presented my argument very well and that I can pursuade many readers.

Alarms

I was very mad that once a week someone would pull the fire alarm in the building and we would have to go outside and wait for it to be clear. Personally, I am not sure why someone wanted to pull the alarm so much, and I feel that it is childish. Having to wait outside so much made class difficult to complete like we needed.

Outside

The weather lately has been extremely weird. It normally goes from being very cold to very hot, in fact, last week I was wearing a heavy jacket at school, but now I am sweating in shorts and a short sleeve shirt. It is weird how the weather changes so much and so drastically.

Grades

I am doing well in all of my college classes. I am hopeing to get good grades this semester and I feel that I will. My hardest class is American Identity, because we have to do so much reading and it is very time consuming. I think I will be able to get a good grade in the class though.

Baseball

I coach my little brothers baseball team and I think that we are very good. We have a lot of depth in the pitching position and we really dont drop off much in the batting lineup, because most of our players can hit the ball. On defense we are very sound and dont make many mistakes. The team is very good.

Class

Focused inquiry was a weird class but it helped me to meet people at college and learn how to look at things from many perspectives. The class was very challenging and made me think a lot. In the long run I liked this class and I improved a lot.

Grade

I think that I should get an A in focused inquiry this semester. All of my papers were very well written and deserve and A. My participation also was very good in this class and I didnt miss much class at all.

Grade

When I got my grade on my presentation I was very mad. I got a C and I feel that I deserve way better than a C. My presentation was very clear and I think that I talked clear and got my point across very well.

Work

Doing the presentations on someone else annotated bibliography was very challenging. I had to take someone else work and present it to the class, so their work had to be very detailed. This also means that I had to write my paper very well so someone who didnt know much about the topic could present it to the class.

Expo

I think our poster for the expo will be very good and will allow others to see what we did in class. The poster shows how we did the theater of the oppressed and tries to show others what oppression is about and how we can fix it.

Dissicussion board

Getting to post my paper on the discussion board helped me to get feedback about what I need to do to improve my grade. After I put my paper on blackboard my classmates commented on it and told me what I needed to work on this allowed me to write the best paper possible.

Presentations

I really like hearing all the presentations, because it allowed me to see what topics others were writing about and see how they organized their paper. This helped me write my paper, because I was able to compare my writing to my classmates. Also none of my classmates picked the same topic so I got to see a good spread of arguments.

Presentation

My oral presentation went very well. I was very nervous however, when I had to stand in front of the class and talk about my topic. Normally when I have to stand in front of people in a class I get nervous, but this time I feel that I will still get a good grade because despite my nervousness still got my point across.

Paper

I feel that my argumentative paper is very well written and deserves an A. Personally, I spent alot of time on this paper and tried to do my best to convince my audience to participate in volunteer activites. My paper was very well organized and had many sound sources to back up my opinions. If people read my paper I think that they will want to volunteer more.

Expo

I plan to attend the Focused Inquiry expo tomorrow in order to reflect on my year in this class. The expo will be a great way to meed others that took focused inquiry and see how and what they learned this semester. It will also be a great way to end the year with my friends.

Thesis

My thesis for my argumentative paper is that if we as a society can increase volunteering then we can make the world a better place to live in. I have many sources supporting this claim and I plan to have a strong paper concerning this topic.

Annotated bibliography

When I was first assigned to write an annotated bibliography I was not sure what it actually was. I first thought that it was just a big works cited that showed all the sources that I planed on useing to write my argumentitiave paper. However, as I began to work on it I realized that it was a indepth analysis of each source I was going to use for my argumentitave paper. The annotated bibilography really helped me to write my paper.

Class

Looking back on my year in focused inquiry I really feel that it helped me be a better scholar.This class allowed my writing to grow and improve as the semesters went on. I was very glad I was able to take this class and improve my writing. If not for this class I might still be writeing on a high school level, but now I feel that I write on a high college level.

Play

I think that the play was very nice and I enjoyed watching it. I thought that telling the story as a memory was quite weird, but it still was a good play. I think we can relate the play to our personal essays, because in the play he tells about his life and give parts for everyone to relate to. I thought the reading was well written and a good thing to read for Focused Inquiry.

Exam

Today I took the essay exam on the Dew Breaker and I think I did very well. There were four questions I could pick from and write on two of them. I think I fully answered the prompt and gave very specific details from the book to better answer the question. I did not like being timed on my essays, because I feel that I had to rush through the exam. The exam went well and I think that my essays will meet the requirements.

Today

Today I went to the play and tried to remember facts from it in case we have a quiz on it. I think they play was good, the actors were good and the plot was easy to follow. I really liked how the actors were interactive with the audience. I think the play was very successful.

Exam

Today I had an exam in International Relations. I was late to class due to a fire on 95 and didn't get to class until it was over, so I had to take it in the class following mine. Due to this I had to miss Focused Inquiry and was not able to learn what they did in class. I think that I did well on the exam and I will study for the exam in Focused Inquiry so I can get an A on it as well.

Exam

Today I prepared for an exam I have on Thursday in Psychology. This exam covers everything I have learned so far in class, it is open book so I am very confident about it. I think that I will be able to use the book to find all the anwsers and thus get a good grade on the exam.

Exam

Today I prepared for an exam I have in International Relations on Wednesday. This exam will cover everything we have learned so far and is going to be very hard. I spent a lot of time studying and think that I will do well on the exam.

Girlfriend

This weekend I had a very nice dinner with my girlfriend for Valentines Day. The dinner was very romantic and I really loved it. Spending time with her makes me so happy, because she is a great person. I feel very blessed to have found her and look froward to many more great times.

No Exam

Today we were supposed to have our essay exam, but the professor postponed it to next Friday. I feel better now that he postponed the exam, because I was not fully prepared to take the exam. By next Friday I will have analysised the book more and then I will be able to write a better essay.

Exam

Today I had an exam in American Identity and I feel I did rather well. The exam was on the American Revolution and how the colonies reacted to British influence. This was mostly an essay exam and I had to remember all of the sources and readings I have read so far in order to fully answer the questions.

Essay

K's mother eventually marries the Dew Breaker despite all of the negative things he has done. One thing that leads to her marrying him is the fact that she feels sympathy for him. Even after learning that he was the one who killed her brother she still wants to marry him. A big reason for this is because she wants to try and change him. This has the story to come back to were it began to show the readers who the main character is and that he has changed and why. It make the reader realize the true effect of the main character one every narrator story.

Essay 3

In the book Danicat uses many different narrators to tell their stories, first to show who the main character was, and second to allow the reader a chance to have a personal connection to the book. Micheal, Dany and Eirc live under the Dew Breaker and come into connect with him every day thus affecting their lives. Nadine is Eircs girlfriend and at one point was pregnant with his baby, but she decided to have an abortion. Beatress is a seamstress who lives down the street from him and is always fearing him. Freda is a funeral singer who has learned of the type of man he is and therefore fears him. In putting these people in the book it shows that even everyday people that were not severely effected by the Dew Breaker were still scared of who he was. This showed that even though he did not harm them he still made them fearful because of just who he once was.

Essay 2

Danticat starts the story with Ka and her father sharing his dark secret to help aid the style of her book and to show the actually person her father is. This is first in order to show what type of person the Dew Breaker is now and to make the reader very alert and wonder what happened in the past to make him so ashamed. Following this she goes backwards to the climax in the book so she can build up the character and show how he changed and why he has changed so much in the beginning. In writing the book this way she allows the reader to be more personal with the book, because they have to consecrate on the book more.

Essay 1

Danicat is a very unique writer, she uses many unusual techniques to portray who her main character really is. In the Dew Breaker she separates her story into nine different antidotes each of which is narrated by a different individual who has a at one time or another came into contact with the main character. She uses these antidotes to build up the main character, the Dew Breaker, from many points of view to try and better show who he really is.
In writing the story this way she makes the reader constantly wonder what is really happening. By doing writing the book this way Danicat has to just touch on each of the narrators points of view and not tell their full experience. She also has to make sure to only state simple facts so she does not tell the reader anything until the end. In just, this style ties her hands and makes her use simple statements in each tale not allowing the point of the book to be revealed till the end.
By the book being written this way the reader has to spend the whole book wondering what is going on and why the story is being told like this. The reader is not able to just read the story and learn what the writer wants them to learn in this book, they have to consecrate on each narrators point of view and attempt to learn what importance they are to the book. In conclusion the reader has to really focus on the details of the novel.

Today

Today I am still sick, and I am just trying to get better. I tried to study a little for an exam I have this week but I really just tried to get better.

Class

Today I was not in class and did not get the handouts. I was extremely ill and was unable to attend any classes at all.

Test

This weekend I began to prepare for the essay test on the Dew Breaker I am going to have on Friday. I started to think about what questions might be on the test and tried to prepare my answers for them. In class we focused a lot of time on the characters and the authors style of writing. Therefore, I feel that I need to really focus on the specific aspects of each character and how the author used them to describe her theme. If I really focus on these events I feel that I will do good on the test.

Essays

Today I turned in my Unit One essay. After looking back on the process which I took to get to my final draft, I realized that this semester I am going to need to put a lot more time and effort into my essays, due to the fact that they require so much more thought and reflection. In this essay I had to write about a great experience in my life and try to relate a common theme to the reader without actually telling the audience what that theme was. In my opinion this was very hard, because I had to hope that through my writing the reader would be able to infer exactly what I wanted them to. In conclusion, I feel that I wrote a good essay and that I am going to do fine this semester.

Exam

Today, I had an exam in my American Identity class. This exam was very hard and had a lot of essays in it. As I tried to answer the essay questions I realized that I needed to know the information inside and out so I could correctly answer the whole question. I feel that I wrote good essays and that I will receive a good grade on the exam.

Article

After reading "We are Ugly, but we are here" I realized that Danticat writes the same in all of her writings. In this she had different events lead up to one common goal or theme very much like she did in The Dew Breaker. This shows that she likes to use indirect ways to achieve her common theme in writing.

Today

Today, I started to prepare for my exam on Thursday. The exam will cover many different topics and will be very hard. After this studying I feel that I am well prepared. Tomorrow in class I am prepared to participate in the class work. I will also need to find time to work on my essay. Overall, tomorrow will be a busy day.

Article

When trying to relate the article "Parallel Play" to the other articles in The New Yorker it is obvious that they all share many qualities. First, they are all very well written articles and require a sense of education to read showing the class of people who read The New Yorker. I think that this article was written to inform the readers of how different people have to overcome many different disabilities and to show the people with the same disease ways to overcome it.

Article

This weekend I read the assigned article for class on Monday. In the article I realized how hard it can be to live with a disease such as the one the author lived with. While reading the essay I was able to understand how someone with his condition can function in life and what he needed to do to really ensure his success. This essay can allow others who have the same disease to find different ways to conqure their condition, and I think that this is the main purpose of the article. Overall, the article was very emotional and I think helpful for many people with the diease.

Essay

When I looked on the discussion board and reviewed my peer reviews I really learned what I need to work on for my essay. Both of my peers said that I had a good story and that I just needed to work on grammar and find a better way to fix my conclusion. Hearing this allowed me to realize what I need to spend extra time on so I write a better essay. I know I can fix the grammatical errors, but the conclusion will be a struggle to me.

Character

In Dew Breaker there are many different characters and themes. This is mainly due to how the author separates the novel into different parts so the reader can see the main character, Dew Breaker, through many lenses. The Dew Breaker is looked at as first a father then as the story progresses a prison guard, then a horrible scary person and finally a guard who trys to change his ways. Themes in the novel also change from parenthood and life lessons, to a new journey and ending with finding the inner self.

Quiz

My quiz in International Relations is tomorrow, so today I spent most of my spare time trying to learn all the countries of the world. On the quiz I am going to be responsible for every country in the world, and will need to be well prepared. I feel that I will do well, because I know most of the countries. I will also need to get prepared for my Focused Inquiry class on Wednesday.

Response

In the essays, Tricked and Death of a Fish there is a clear audience and reason for the essays. I feel that the reason that the essays were written is to allow others the ability to know that bad or difficult things happen to everyone and there is a way to get past them. The essays are directed toward everyone, because everyone has bad things happen. Also these essays give the readers a chance to realize that bad ts happen and that there is many ways to get through them.

Paper

This weekend I read many readings related to the class and the novel, and tried to think of a source I could use in my paper. I have been thinking about my paper and trying to figure out a way that I can bring it together without directly telling my reader what I want them to get out of the paper. That was my biggest problem in my paper so if I can do that it would be easy for me to finish editing the essay. I think that I will find a good way to sum up what I am trying to say and be able to have a good paper.

Paper

Today's class assignment allowed me to realize what some of my peers wrote about and how they pulled it together. This helped me to realize how I need to edit my paper. I also learned some good points from the essays I read that I can use to make sure my essay is on task. Doing this assignment was a big help for me and I think the whole class was able to benefit from it, because it is helpful for others to read your paper. I think that this activity will help me to write a better paper.

Article

In the article, Vital Signs by Natalie Kusz there is a lot of descriptive language. This descriptive language enables the reader to be able to totally understand the situation the writer is attempting to describe allowing the reader to be more intune with what the writer is attempting to say. When I wrote my paper I tried to use tons of great adjectives so the reader could personally relate to my paper. In conclusion, details enable the reader to understand what is going on and allow them to place their self in the situation.

Writing

I think that this semester will help me become a better writer. Just by observing the first writing task, expressing a personal moment and giving the readers a common theme without actually telling the theme, I know that I am going to be challenged alot this semester. In this class I am going to have to actually realize what I am saying and try to convey certain point in my writing. I am also going to have to make sure I am not just writing about the assignment, but that I am writing for a reason. After this class I think that I will be able to express my feelings and use tools to help the readers know what I am saying.

Dew Breaker

I think that the author of the Dew Breaker is very intelligent, and after studying the articles I am even more convinced. She was able to write about a topic that she wanted to express and still allow the opportunity for the readers to find something that they could relate to. The articles show how she took her experience and broke it down into parts elaborating on each, so that she gave the reader a more personal experience with the book. In my opinion, she is very smart and the book was very good and I enjoyed it.

Essay

Today I began to gather my thoughts concerning my personal memory, Cody's birth, so I can start brainstorming. I used the technique that I was taught in class to try and place myself in the situation yet again, so I could re-experience the day. After I did this activity I felt more confident on my ability to complete this assingment, and I plan to begin writeing the essay soon.

Assingment

My personal experience that I am going to be writing about for my Unit One essay is going to be the day that my little brother, Cody, was born. This day was very special to me and I will never forget how excited I was. In my essay I am going to describe all of the vivid details and emotions that I experienced while awaiting my brothers birth, and the first time I was allowed to hold my brother. Even though this day was over five years ago, I am still able to remember most of my feelings because this day was so special to me. I feel that I will be able to write a good paper about this subject and enlighten my classmates and teacher of how this special day brightened my life.

Article

In Elements of Writing I was able to obtain some interesting and helpful tools for my writing. The article said that one can't truly understand a topic until they either write about it or talk about it in depth. The reason that writing helps one to understand something is because in order to write one must get all their thoughts together and then organize them so they can be presented in a mannerly fashioned. The article helped me to realize that it is important to gather all your thoughts before you begin to put them together. In conclusion, the article gave me some good writing tips.

Semester vs. Semester

In my opinion, the upcoming semester is going to be more demanding than my first semester. The first semester I was assigned a lot of notes to study, where in this semester I think that I will be doing a lot of reading and trying to obtain my own guide to prepare myself to succeed in my classes. However, this semester my classes seem to be more interesting, and since I already know how college life is I feel that I will also be able to better my grades. Closing, I feel that though my classes will be harder this semester I will be able to understand more information and get better grades.

Elements Of Fiction

I feel that the Elements of Fiction is a good article to read when looking at how the Dew Breaker is written, because it helps you realize that every author has a different point of view and writing style. In the article it shows how all authors organize their pieces according to their hopeful theme. Edwidge Danticat tries to direct the readers to her theme by useing many different point of views in this novel, because she wants the reader to really understand how things were in Hati and by useing different perspecives she is able to really show the reader the facts.