Just to tell you a little about myself, I am a wife, mother of 2 grown children, and a Grandmother of 5. I have lived in the Everett area for the last 40 plus years. I am looking at getting my bachelors in Business from Central Washington University. Before I am able to transfer, I have to take several classes at Everett Community College and one of these classes is this class English 101.
This class has been a real challenge for me; I thought I knew how to put an essay together. However, my first papers did not turn out well at all, even though I thought that I did really well on them. These two papers were on Identity and Community. My problem on these papers was that I did not think on the analysis of it, I wrote with my heart instead. You need to separate the two in order to think about how to write an essay on critical thinking; to analyze it, to synthesize it; to get it to show the reader what, why, how and then the conclusion is to reflect back to what it is about. The pieces that I chose to be in my eportfolio are: my essay on Tradition - Critical Thinking, my essay on Identity - Revision, my discussion board #1 post on tradition - Voice and Audience, and the last piece is my blog on Community - Writer's Choice.
In our first paper we learned about identity. Several of the essays described different identities and how they were all alike. Then I read the essay called “Mask” written by Lucy Grealy. She was ridiculed by her fellow students because she looked different due to a disease she had when she was young. It was not how she looked that changed her identity; it was how she was treated throughout her life. I did not do well on this paper because I forgot to show the analysis of it. There was no context to the paper.
The second paper was on community. This was really exciting to read about, because we found out that not only the location where you live is a community but people can be a community. People can find a community everywhere, such as a church, online, or even a family. Also a college can be a community, because this is where people can gather together as one. The paper I wrote was about the community of the college. In one of the essays we were assigned to read was by David Berreby “It Takes a Tribe.” He wrote “A college campus is full of people inventing a sense of “us” and “them.” (Berreby, 119) Another essay we were to read was by John A Hostetler, “The Amish Charter.” They were a community of people and they also had rules to follow, such as “Colors such as bright red, orange, yellow, and pink not allowed. Clothing in every way modest…” (Hostetle, 143.) Both of these essays described about how a community comes together.
The movie that I chose to watch was about Edward Scissorhand. This movie was a very exciting movie to watch, you were able to see how different he really was and how he wanted to be accepted as a person and not a machine. My time writing did not fair to well. However, I still really enjoyed this movie. this one I did not choose to be part of the other part of my eportfolio, I wanted to let you know what I thought about this movie.
The third paper was on tradition, this one was hard for me to decide what my thesis was going to be, but I had help from my classmate in choosing one. There are several different types of tradition. It was very interesting to do the research for this paper. In the essay that was written by Garrison Keillor, “A Wobegon Holiday Dinner.” This was about a family gathering for Thanksgiving and he did not really want to be there, he was tired of it being hot and crowded. When he got married and had a family of his own, he started his own tradition. “My aunts stood shoulder to shoulder and whacked at things and chopped and slapped dinner together.” “I have to get out of here right now,” my fiancée whispered.” (Keillor, 114) Another essay was written by Sarita James, “Let Me Find My Own Husband.” This essay was about her wanting to be her own person and not wanting to conform to her parents will and their custom of having a husband chosen for her. On this paper, the only thing that I had to remember was to keep my heart out of the paper. I am not sure how I did on it yet, but I think it went fairly well.
Now we are getting to the close to the end of the class and everything that the instructors taught us in this class is about to reveal itself in how well we gained the knowledge in critical thinking. This is where we as an individual are able to show everything how much we have expanded our thinking.
