Rules for Writers Chapter 3

Chapter 3 focuses on revising your paper. It says to start revising a paper you should do the big revisions before revising each individual sentence. Reread your paper to make sure that every paragraph makes sense and fits together. It can be hard to catch things that need to be fixed in the paper when you read it in your head, so chapter 3 suggests that you read it out loud to yourself. In making big revisions you want to make sure that everything flows smoothly and makes sense. You also want to make sure that your paper accomplishes its purpose and supports the thesis. After you have completed the global revisions, you can then turn your attention to editing the sentences. This is when you focus on the effectiveness of your sentences and check for grammatical errors. After all of the revisions are done you then must proofread your essay. Proofreading means that you are slowly and methodically reading through your entire paper checking for any mistakes that you had possibly missed during the revisions.

I have never been very good with revising, editing, and proofreading my essays. I have a tendency to just write my paper and turn it in. I do not usually check for errors. I really need to work on this. I am going to start doing the revision process on my papers. I am going to try my best to revise, edit, and proofread my papers. I think that I am also going to have a friend of mine that is an English major read my essays and give me feedback on them before I turn them in. Sometimes it is hard to find mistakes in your own work, so having some one else read it.

"Coming Home Again"

The importance of food in this essay is that it was a means to bring the family together. They would all come sit at the table together and eat. It was a way for them to spend time together. His mother would even come and sit at the table when her health was failing. Even though she didn't really eat the food, she still joined the family at the table. This was time for them to have family "bonding" time. As the narrator said, "The point was simply to sit together and array ourselves like a family again." (p.123) They hadn't been all living in the home for quite some time, but him and his sister had moved back into their parents' home after his mother got diagnosed with stomach cancer. They knew that they did not have much time left with their mother, so they wanted to take advantage of the last little bit of time they had to act like a family.

I wish that my family had sat at the dinner table all together when I was growing up. We did sometimes, but it was never consistent. Most of the time my mom and dad would eat their dinner in front of the television in the family room, and my sister and I would eat our dinner in front of the television in the living room. Now that I have children of my own, I want to break these habits. We try to sit at the kitchen table for dinner every night. We have the television on in the other room, but my children are positioned at the table so that they cannot see it. We mainly leave the television on for background noise. As my children get older, I want to use this time to talk to them and find out how their day has gone.

Rules for Writers Chapter 2

This chapter discusses some important suggestions for writing a rough draft. It tells you to have all of your prewriting materials that you had done earlier when you start to write your rough draft. They will help you figure out what you are going to write about, but can also serve as motivation to keep you writing when it  seems to be getting hard. This chapter talks about the different parts of an essay that needs to be drafted. One interesting thing it said is that you do not have to start writing your rough draft with the introduction. I always thought that you had to start with your introduction. I kind of like thinking that I can start with the body because the introduction and conclusion have always been parts of papers that I struggled with.

This chapter also gives some great tips for developing an effective thesis statement. I like that it says to ask if you are able to successfully develop and support the thesis with the sources that you have available. The chapter gives some great examples of thesis statements that are good and ones that are not so good. For drafting the body of your paper, the book states that each paragraph should be about each different supporting point for your thesis. This makes it easier for the readers to follow along with. With the conclusion, you are basically summing up the main points of your essay. The readers probably understand what you were writing about and what the main points were. The conclusion is meant to really bring home what you want them to know. If you are writing a persuasive paper, you could use the conclusion as one last attempt to get your readers to take your side.

I really like the idea of starting the draft with the body instead of the introduction. I have always had a hard time with introductions. I wonder if starting with the body would help me write stronger introductions. I think that I am going to use this strategy for my next essay.

The Way We Lie

"The roots of many mental disorders can be traced back to the dismissal of reality."

This didn't really shock me or confuse me, but it really stood out to me. This fact is so true. I remember as a kid trying to get my parents to get me tested for ADHD because I was always losing things, forgetting to do things, forgetting to bring things with me, and was having a very hard time concentrating in class. My parents never did. They just said that I was making excuses for slacking off. They took my troubles with remembering things as just being a slacker and not really caring about my school. Instead of getting me the help that I really could have used, I would just get in trouble and grounded for things like losing my homework or procrastinating on assignments.

A year ago I got myself tested for ADHD. It turns out that I did have it. I wish my parents would have gotten me tested when I had asked them to. Maybe things would be a lot easier for me. I have struggled with schooling for years. I have gone in and out of the junior college. I would not be able to stay focused and would end up forgetting to do homework. I would fall behind and then drop classes after the drop date. I have struggled with my ADHD quite a bit. I do not want to take the medication route. I am attempting to retrain my mind. I am working on Behavior Modification Therapy. It has been helping so far. I am not forgetting things as much. I have some bad days though, where I forget a lot of the things that I need or need to do.

My parents still to this day say that I do not have ADHD. They say that I just need to stop forgetting to do my homework and need to focus better. My 3 year old is starting to show signs of ADHD. When I talk to my mother about it, all she says is that she is just being a 3 year old. That could be, but she is also a lot more active than other children her age. She is constantly on the move. She is starting to have behavior issues. My parents still dismiss a lot of things. I hope some day they can move on from their dismissal and accept that their may be something  mentally that was causing me to act out so much as a teenager.

Essay 1 Rough Draft

 

The feeling of accomplishment I had for myself that day was indescribable. I never thought that I would be walking across the stage graduating high school. It was a huge accomplishment for me. It was a great feeling knowing that my parents and other family members were proud of me for being able to walk across that stage and accept that little rolled up piece of paper that says that I did it. Graduating high school was a very proud moment for me. It showed me that no matter what happens in your life, if your put your mind to something then you can accomplish whatever it is you want to.

One reason that this accomplishment was so huge for me was because of the rough road I took to accomplishing it. At a young age I got involved with the wrong crowd, as many teenagers do. I got into drinking and drugs early. Doing these drugs made me make some bad decisions, especially when it came to my education. I did very well my first year of high school. During that year, I really started to hang out with the wrong crowd of people. By the end of the year I was really starting to not care about school. I was more into hanging out with my friends and doing drugs. A month into my sophomore year I dropped out of high school. I had ran away from home and got involved with the juvenile justice system. For a couple months, I was in and out of juvenile hall every couple of weeks. I spent a couple holidays and a birthday in juvenile hall.

While in juvenile hall we had to attend school. Here I was introduced to a new way of school. The school worked in a different way than the traditional high school. For every hour of classwork done, the students would receive one credit towards that subject. Say I did an hour of science classwork. I would then get one credit towards the science requirement for graduating. I really seemed to do well with this form of achieving credits towards graduation. After leaving juvenile hall, I searched for another high school that had the same system for achieving high school credits.

I was able to find a school that was called a necessary small high school. It worked in the same way that the juvenile hall school did. I did very well at this school for the first couple of months, but unfortunately old habits got a hold of me again. There were other students in the school that used drugs, and eventually I started going out during our lunch time and breaks to use drugs with them. This really started to put a dent in my ability to focus on my schoolwork once again. Eventually I got so into the drugs and so lazy that I dropped out of the school.

At the very young age of 16 I found out that I was pregnant with my first daughter, who is now 6. Finding this out scared me a whole lot, but it also got me thinking. I needed to change my life. I could not bring a child into the world doing the things that I was doing. Three months after I found out that I was pregnant I was placed into a recovery group home that was specifically for pregnant teenagers. This program was able to get me to stop using drugs.

After arriving at the group home, I got enrolled into their charter school. I found out that they worked the same way that the juvenile hall school and necessary small high school worked, but with its own little twist to it. At this school, every chapter in the textbook that you completed counted as one credit towards graduation requirements. I really liked that idea. I had about 6 months before my daughter was due to be born. I decided that I wanted to graduate high school before she was born. I knew that it was going to be a lot of work because I knew that I had a lot of credits that needed to be completed in order to graduate that June, which was only three months away.

I buckled down and worked as hard as I could. There were nights that I stayed up until midnight or later getting as many chapters done in that time as I could. I managed to complete my whole junior year, senior year, and half of my sophomore year credits in a total of three months. Sometimes I wonder if I would have ever graduated from high school if I had stayed in a traditional high school. I liked being able to control when I could finish my high school credits.

I have found myself during my venture through the junior college looking back at that picture of me at my high school graduation. Playing my graduation in my head makes me focus on completing my college degree. Any time that I feel like I cannot complete my degree, I just look back at that picture. Sometimes I have to tell myself that if I can graduate high school after everything that happened during my teenage years and knowing that I was soon to become a single teenage parent, then I can complete my college degree. Even though I have more children now, I am no longer a single parent.

The main thing that I have learned through the experiences in my life is that you can accomplish anything that you want. The only thing that a person has to remember is that they need to stay positive and tell themselves that they can accomplish what they want. I have overcome many obstacles in my life and still have a few more to overcome to accomplish my goal of obtaining a college degree. I just need to remember that I can get my degree. Graduating high school despite what was going on in my life during that time has really motivated me to obtain my college degree.

Essay 1 Rough Draft

The feeling of accomplishment I had for myself that day was indescribable. I never thought that I would be walking across the stage graduating high school. It was a huge accomplishment for me. It was a great feeling knowing that my parents and other family members were proud of me for being able to walk across that stage and accept that little rolled up piece of paper that says that I did it. Graduating high school was a very proud moment for me. It showed me that no matter what happens in your life, if your put your mind to something then you can accomplish whatever it is you want to.

One reason that this accomplishment was so huge for me was because of the rough road I took to accomplishing it. At a young age I got involved with the wrong crowd, as many teenagers do. I got into drinking and drugs early. Doing these drugs made me make some bad decisions, especially when it came to my education. I did very well my first year of high school. During that year, I really started to hang out with the wrong crowd of people. By the end of the year I was really starting to not care about school. I was more into hanging out with my friends and doing drugs. A month into my sophomore year I dropped out of high school. I had ran away from home and got involved with the juvenile justice system. For a couple months, I was in and out of juvenile hall every couple of weeks. I spent a couple holidays and a birthday in juvenile hall.

While in juvenile hall we had to attend school. Here I was introduced to a new way of school. The school worked in a different way than the traditional high school. For every hour of classwork done, the students would receive one credit towards that subject. Say I did an hour of science classwork. I would then get one credit towards the science requirement for graduating. I really seemed to do well with this form of achieving credits towards graduation. After leaving juvenile hall, I searched for another high school that had the same system for achieving high school credits.

I was able to find a school that was called a necessary small high school. It worked in the same way that the juvenile hall school did. I did very well at this school for the first couple of months, but unfortunately old habits got a hold of me again. There were other students in the school that used drugs, and eventually I started going out during our lunch time and breaks to use drugs with them. This really started to put a dent in my ability to focus on my schoolwork once again. Eventually I got so into the drugs and so lazy that I dropped out of the school.

At the very young age of 16 I found out that I was pregnant with my first daughter, who is now 6. Finding this out scared me a whole lot, but it also got me thinking. I needed to change my life. I could not bring a child into the world doing the things that I was doing. Three months after I found out that I was pregnant I was placed into a recovery group home that was specifically for pregnant teenagers. This program was able to get me to stop using drugs.

After arriving at the group home, I got enrolled into their charter school. I found out that they worked the same way that the juvenile hall school and necessary small high school worked, but with its own little twist to it. At this school, every chapter in the textbook that you completed counted as one credit towards graduation requirements. I really liked that idea. I had about 6 months before my daughter was due to be born. I decided that I wanted to graduate high school before she was born. I knew that it was going to be a lot of work because I knew that I had a lot of credits that needed to be completed in order to graduate that June, which was only three months away.

I buckled down and worked as hard as I could. There were nights that I stayed up until midnight or later getting as many chapters done in that time as I could. I managed to complete my whole junior year, senior year, and half of my sophomore year credits in a total of three months. Sometimes I wonder if I would have ever graduated from high school if I had stayed in a traditional high school. I liked being able to control when I could finish my high school credits.

I have found myself during my venture through the junior college looking back at that picture of me at my high school graduation. Playing my graduation in my head makes me focus on completing my college degree. Any time that I feel like I cannot complete my degree, I just look back at that picture. Sometimes I have to tell myself that if I can graduate high school after everything that happened during my teenage years and knowing that I was soon to become a single teenage parent, then I can complete my college degree. Even though I have more children now, I am no longer a single parent.

The main thing that I have learned through the experiences in my life is that you can accomplish anything that you want. The only thing that a person has to remember is that they need to stay positive and tell themselves that they can accomplish what they want. I have overcome many obstacles in my life and still have a few more to overcome to accomplish my goal of obtaining a college degree. I just need to remember that I can get my degree. Graduating high school despite what was going on in my life during that time has really motivated me to obtain my college degree.

Rules for Writers Chapter 1 Summary

Chapter 1 discusses the writing process. It starts out by discussing ways to generate ideas for your writing assignment. For generating ideas, Diana Hacker says that you should start by assessing your writing situation. This means that you look at all of the aspects of your writing assignment. You need to locate the key elements of your writing assignment, which includes the subject of the assignment, sources of information that are available to you, the purpose of your assignment, the audience, and any constraints that the assignment has, such as length etc.

There are different ways to generate ideas. One way is to use a freewrite. You can also just talk to yourself or friends about the subject of your assignment. If your assignment is based on a reading, you can annotate the text and take notes. Write down questions that come into your head as you read. Then reread the text and try to answer the questions you had written. You can make a list of things that pertain to the subject of your assignment. You could use a technique called clustering. This means that you are showing relationships between the different ideas you have for your topic.

I plan to use the techniques in this chapter for my future writing assignments. I plan on doing a couple freewrites for each essay. I am also going to play with the technique of listing and clustering. I am also going to try to first write an informal outline after I generate some ideas.

The Joy of Reading and Writing: Superman and Me

Education is a means to save one's life because if you are educated you can do anything that you want. If you are uneducated, you are bound to struggle with life and just making ends meet. With an education you can have a career that means a lot to you and earns better money. Without an education you get stuck in minimum wage jobs and struggling your whole life just to put food on the table. I am obtaining my education so that I can get a better paying career.

Alexie is attempting to save the lives of the children that he helps by visiting the schools on reservations and educating the children. He remembers what it was like not being taught the things that he is teaching the children when he was in the reservation school system. He wants the children to learn everything that he had to teach himself. He feels that visiting their schools and teaching the children helps them become more educated, which will help them as adults, which in the end could save their lives.

Alexie saved his own life by not letting the stereotype that Indians are stupid get in the way of what he wanted to do. He educated himself so that he could achieve whatever he wanted to as an adult. Achieving his education made it so that he did not have to struggle as much as his parents had during his childhood.