For my Kennedy summary revision, I had a few things to change and add, but nothing major. I didn’t put a title on my first one, so I added that, and I had to fix my heading. A major thing I needed to change was using Ms. Kennedy instead of Caroline, and also I needed to make sure to include the title of the essay. Although I added some content to make the summary a little longer, I didn’t change the structure much at all. I felt like it was set up well, I just needed to add a little, and to spice it up. I used the “They Say I Say” book to try to change a couple of the words to make the writing more academic.

As for my “Just Be Nice” analysis, I had a bit more revising to do. I reorganize the structure a bit to go more with my thesis statement of my paper. I took the themes in my thesis statement and expanded on them more. I analyzed them deeper rather than just summarized them. I tried to at least. A couple of my paragraphs were pretty much just a summary, so I had to take a lot of that out. I was able to keep some of my original in there because it was analytical. I redid my conclusion completely. I wasn’t sure exactly what my thesis was in my first draft, so the conclusion didn’t go with what I made my final thesis. So I redid it and restated my thesis, and I tried to make the ending interesting.

I thought revising these would be worse than it ended up being. I’m still going to go through them again to make sure I have the MUGS part down, but finding the content and redoing it wasn’t as bad as I thought it would be. Hopefully I did a good job at revising these papers!

As we all know, last Wednesday the lives of the people in Haiti were dramatically changed within an instant as a 7.0 earthquake struck the city of Port-au-Prince. What is very interesting to me is that the reason it caused so much damage was not because of the strength of the earthquake, but because of how close the vibrations were to the surface. Haiti was a country of extreme poverty before, so this earthquake has left the country in pure chaos. Dead bodies cover the streets, and parentless children wander helplessly. There simply just isn’t enough heavy equipment to clean the aftermath, and enough people aren’t able to be organized to properly bury the dead bodies, which is creating a horrible stench. I was watching Oprah tonight, and this guy on there went there to help, and he had to wear a mask because the smell was that bad. He described it as the smell of a rotting animal only intensified by a thousand. It is so sad to me that so many people have nowhere to go or to turn. Also on Oprah, the guy said that we are dropping food out of airplanes to the people in Haiti like they are animals. He feels that is not the way we should be going about it. He thinks we need to take a more personal approach, and I can see where he is coming from. I’m not sure what specifically we could do instead, but it is extremely sad that they have to rely on food being dropped from airplanes. Yes of course, they will be thankful no matter what, but I feel we need to be personal about it to and really try to show the Haiti people we want to help them. I would really like to go over to Haiti on a missions trip someday to be able to help in anyway.

Saving Sammy

Saving Sammy Video

I just recently decided I wanted to start reading again, and my first book on my list to read was one called Saving Sammy: Curing the Boy Who Caught OCD. I was browsing the books in the psychology section at a book store one day, and I stumbled upon this book. “What would you do if your child suddenly refused to bathe, burst into fits of rage, slithered along walls, and wouldn’t walk out the front door,” is the first thing written on the back of the book, and it caught my attention. The book relives the lives of the Maloney’s during which Sammy Maloney became very sick. Beth Maloney, mother of then eleven year old Sammy and author of the book, wrote this book in hopes to get help other families who may be going through the same heart aching experience Sammy and her family went through.

She doesn’t know who her audience is in particular. Anybody can read the book, so she makes sure to inform the reader on vital parts of their lives, and she explains the medical terms so that most anyone can follow them. She brilliantly ties in the medical information with creative story telling. The book is a true story that is told from a narrative point of view. She takes a very passionate and objective stance when writing this book. Her objective for writing this story is to hopefully help others and to get the news out about her son’s rare disorder. She is very passionate about what she is writing about though. This story is communicated through a book, more so by typed words. Italicized and bolded words are commonly found throughout the text to help emphasize or point out important things.

This video clip explains more about Beth and Sammy, the book in general, and the motives for the book. I found this story extremely interesting and inspirational, and I would definitely suggest it to anyone who is looking for a good read.

First day blog

Hello everyone :) Hope this class turns out to be a fun one! Make sure to bundle up because this stupid cold weather is relentless :( I hate it and wish it would just be summer already! Only 5 more months… yay!