Weather

 I absolutely love when it snows because it does not happen that frequently down here. Me and my friends would all try to get together and build a snow man or anything we possibly could think of to make. One time we made sponge bob and found some mud, from the melting snow, and made that his pants. We would also go up to the hunting land and have huge snowball fight or hook up random things to the back of the four wheeler and drag people across the snow, kinda like a sled. We always tried to make the best of it no matter how much it snowed or how long it was going to stay. None of us actually have clothes for the snow , so we would just bundle up and when we went in for a break or to warm up we would take off the clothes that had gotten wet and throw them in the dryer.  Know don't get me wrong I love the South but I guess I love the snow so much because it is something that I don't get to enjoy that often.

Other Classes.

I come to school Monday through Thursday. On Monday and Wednesday I have Rhodes Peele for finite math at 9:25-10:40 and Rodney Roosevelt for intro. to psychology. Prof. Peele is a lot  more of and old school teacher, he does not use blackboard and he uses those old projectors. I like the way he teachers though he goes really slow where everyone in the class can be sure to understand him, what I don't like is that he is very monotoned and writes down every single little word he says, making it take a lot longer to go over notes. Prof. Roosevelt is all the new school technology man, he does everything through blackboard including quizzes and some assignments. He has the things called iClicker and it is where you can take quizzes through a little remote thing and it automatically grades them. The things I don't like about his class is that he goes very quickly but we have only went over one chapter and it was pretty much the history of psych. so that maybe when it was harder. On the other days that I come to school I have this English class and an Art Appreciation class with Heidi Lingamfelter at 12:45-2:00. That class is a little harder on me because I am not really that interested in Art so I have to make myself pay attention so I can learn it. She also uses a lotof technology and is very into art so she gets super into it and excited, she is like an energizer bunny she always has so much energy. Needless to say I think this semester is going to go great and all my class will get better the more I get used to them.

Discourse Community

The older I get the more I notice that there are a lot of different discourse communities. A discourse community is a group of people who speak the same language or who are interested in the same things. Different people belong to different groups but primarily you belong to three. I belong to sorority, volleyball, and tennis.

My first discourse community deals with a sorority because unless you are in one you do not really understand a lot about them. The way I became apart of this discourse community is because I was about to start college and I became interested in getting involved and joining one. I wasn't really sure if this was for me because I didn't really understand what it was or how it worked, all I had seen was from television shows. So I began to talk to my cousin about joining and she started saying all this stuff I had no clue what she was talking about until she began explaining the words to me. She started using all these terms that I had no clue what she was talking about, such as: bid day, panhellnic , chapter, and big/little. Before I actually joined one I had an idea of what I thought it was going to be like which made me very spectacle about joining one. I thought it was like the ones you see on television, where it was a bunch of stuck up girls who just partied and were very girly. My idea of them was very off most people involved with sororities are sweet and willing to help other. All of them of a philanthropy which is a cause in which they raise money and give it to organizations that need it, Alpha Gamma Deltas' being juvenile diabetes.  I ended up joining one and my outlook of them has changed very much so and I try to explain to other people about how they really are not just what people think they are.

 My second discourse community I am apart of is volleyball. I had always been interested but just never gave it a chance and stuck to softball all of my younger years. So my friends and I decided to tryout our freshmen year of high school. The first practice we went to we were so lost because they used all this terminology that we had no idea what it meant. For example the coach said "Okay girls lets go practice spikes.", which we had no clue what that meant. A spike is when you go up to the net and they setter sets, gets the ball up, and you have to hit it as hard as you can down on the other teams side of the court. My first outlook on this sport was that you didn't have to be very athletic to do it because you only cover a small amount of the court but once I started playing that changed very quickly. You have to have arm strength to get it over the net no matter where you hit it from on your side of the court, and leg muscles to be able to jump to spike it over the net. Once I became apart of the team I slowly began to learn more and more about it. My teammates and I would easily confuse you if you overheard us talking because we used all this terminology and volleyball isn't a very known sport. I grew a passion for volleyball even though I no longer play I still love the sport and could talk about it for hours without any problem.
Another discourse community is tennis. Watching a tennis match, you immediately have a hard time understanding the scoring system. Love, 15, 30, 40 are the terms used to keep track of each set. Being an outsider, you would not know that "love" really meant zero. If you heard a score 15-30 called out, you might believe that a player is actually 15 points ahead. Other terms used in tennis such as volley, most people would relate that to volleyball. There is also shots called overhead, net shot, lob, cross, court, and line shot. None of this terminology could be easily understood by someone outside of this community. I started watching tennis my freshmen year because the guy I was dating was playing and at first I knew absolutely nothing and thought it was the most boring sport ever created once people started explaining it to me I began to enjoy watching it and even started becoming competitive while watching it.
I know many people that are involved in different discourse communities, and they try to teach me how to better understand their languages. I am interested in venturing out and trying to learn about new discourse communities.

How to Read Like a Writer

When I read "How to Read Like a Writer" it basically told you as you were reading any kind of story to ask questions to better understand. You could ask questions like ; What's the author purpose of this story?, Who was the story intended for?, What time period was it written in? and many other questions throughout the story.  It makes it easier to identify what you believe are the most important choices the author used throughout the text. Most of the time when you read it's for information, when you Read Like a Writer you are reading to see how the author put together this particular piece. It doesn't matter whether it is published or just student work you can ask these questions no matter what you are reading remember all writing can be improved no matter the writer. RLW seems to make it easier when you have to write things, so remember we aren't just reading for content anymore we are trying to see how it is put together.

Letter to a teacher.

Dear Mrs.Salter,
I was in your class when you taught History when I was in the seventh grade about five years ago. You always picked on me because I asked so many different questions to make sure i understood what we were discussing. I always resented you for that. I look back on it now and it made me where I never wanted to speak up in other classes because I didn't want to look dumb, when that's the point of school to ask questions and learn.  However, I think it affected my grades negatively rather then positively before I actually got over the fear of being embarrassed I began to see that asking questions benefited me and didn't make me look dumb just interested. I hope this information helps you with the way you approach things after hearing the way it affected me.
Thanks,
Emily Perkins

What do you want to be when you grow up.?

When I was younger I always said that I wanted to be a lawyer because I would always argue my point, even if I knew I was wrong. My parents would always tell me "I would argue with a brick wall no matter the circumstances", which always got me in a lot of trouble. Though as I have gotten older I have changed my interest and really  have no idea of what exactly I want to be when I grow up. I am trying to explore new things and look into majors so  I can figure out what I want to do. I am leaning more towards somewhere in business management because I am very organized and take control of things to make sure they get done in a timely manner. I love working with people and helping figure things out when there is a problem.

Previous English Classes

In my last English class my senior year of high school was more interesting than most. The teacher I had was getting ready to retire but she said that she loved our class so much that she wanted to stay. At the beginning of the year she was all about work and making us do papers and such, she never explained to us how to do it just figured we already knew and if we asked questions she just talked in circles and confused us more than before. She graded harder than some of the teachers at Faulkner, if one or two things were out of place be ready to make a 60 or lower, I know this because some of my friends were taking dual enrollment there. Needless to say we all had low grades in her honors class which is not normal. She then began to just make us take vocabulary test and turn in note cards, those ended up being about our only grades. We watched movies most of the time and did pretty much whatever we wanted, which I liked but then again didn't because I knew it wasn't getting me ready for what this class requires from me.