Unit 8 Comments Or Lack There Of

 Oh man, finally getting to go on a 2 hour hike since being home made all the difference for me!  However drinking for my brothers 21st birthday did not help with trying not to procrastinate with my school work.  At least I am in better spirits!  Sitting in the half finished computer room at my half finished computer desk with my classical music has really helped to keep me focused and away from distracting people like my husband and mother!  So I guess my biggest issue throughout this writing class has been self discipline, distractions, and not having a set schedule for this whole term.  My sleep schedule has been extraordinarily messed up making it really difficult to get up for morning class, and hard to get up and get going for the day.  

When it comes to socializing I'm half and half.  Half of me is extremely shy and quiet and not many people see this side of me.  I'm mostly shy when it comes to meeting people for the first time, or being at a new job, place, environment.  The other half of me is loud, talkative, and rambunctious, the side most people see because I know them, they know me and I am comfortable enough in my settings to let loose.  When I chose online school it was because I wanted the detachment from people so that I could focus on school.  I have never wanted to go to an on campus college or university and be around tons of people.   I guess since I have been so focused with school that I haven't built any connections with other students.  For this class I tried to add all of the classmates for the blog assignment but I only had one person add my blog.  At times it can be frustrating to not have any comments but at the same time it is just a blog, not everyone is used to them and at least I get comments on the discussion board.  Besides it is only my 3rd term, as time goes by and the more there is to learn the more opportunities for educational and intellectual connections will be available. 

I definitely wouldn't want to get rid of my blog page because it is a part of my journey in my education and where I want to go with it.  Who knows maybe it will come in handy for the other classes I'll be taking and if not I can use it for a place for me to write since I don't use my other blog anymore.  My other blog is on Myspace and I haven't touched it in a year!  Before I used to blog all the time about anything that I found interesting, a big reason was because I was getting so tired of peoples' bulletins talking about how bored they were and the endless surveys of nonsense.  So I decided to start blogging about topics such as politics, oil companies, clean coal technology, even Captain Planet :).  I'm not sure yet what direction I'll be going with this blog but I am going to keep it. 

Unit 7 Peer Review

I think peer reviews are an essential part of the learning process because constructive criticism and feedback helps see things that may have been missed the first time around and also to see what areas are going well.  I know there are times in my writing where I am unsure of myself due to trying to be a perfectionist and when I receive reviews from my peers  they help to let me know that I am on track.  My experiences with peer review have been pretty good.  They seem to get better as the terms roll by and the classmates get to know one another better.  In the beginning it was a bit more difficult being new and not knowing anyone, I didn't receive a lot of feedback when school first started.  This could have been because I was usually later posting than everyone else, however this made me look for the people at the end of the week that didn't have any comments so that I could give them some positive feedback.  Sometimes I find it a bit more difficult to find people that don't have any comments already.  When someone has a ton of comments it makes it harder to write a review that isn't saying what everyone else has already said.

So far I don't think I have had any Ah Ha! moments during my 3 terms.  Mostly because these 3 terms have been extremely stressful with moving last term and then moving again this term.  I usually end up having to cram assignments and work and there are many days where my brain decides to just not function at all.  Good thing I am good at turning my stress into facilitating stress when I have to get things done last minute.  Somehow I always manage to get things done and do a decent job at it, every now and then I have to turn something in that I know I am going to lose a few points on but have ran down to the last minute.  Granted I wish that my life could go a bit more smoothly so I didn't have to stress and cram at the last minute.  I may be able to get the work done but while doing so I'm not the most pleasant to be around while trying to get it done.  I'm pretty lucky too when it comes to research and being able to find what I need to write my paper on.  Same with writing, I guess it's more of an all or nothing kind of thing.  I either have terrible writing block and can't get anything accomplished or I am down to little time and it all comes pouring out.  I wish my writing would come pouring out when I want it to not when I am freaking out because I have only a handful of hours to produce something.

I don't think there has been anything too shocking or intriguing during the writing process or during my research.  I've always known that artificial sweeteners are terrible and why, but it is nice to have a lot of data to back up why it is and to actually have a paper on it.  Makes me feel like people will be more willing to listen to what I have to say instead of just brushing me off like I'm some idiot or something.  It's also nice to be able to use what I learned from last writing class and apply it to this writing class and also learn more to perfect the skills of writing.  I'm still a bit nervous for future classes when they get harder and the grading gets harder too, but my husband has faith that I'll just get smarter as the classes get harder.

Unit 6 Topic, Ideas, & What's Been Going On.

6 weeks ago my husband & our roommate got home from their 3rd deployment.  For my birthday I got a computer desk and a nice computer chair, that I rarely got to use because everyone wanted to sit in my chair, use my lap top, and use my desk.  With the boys being back and so close to getting out of the Marine Corps their friends wanted to go out, come over, and run around everywhere.  This made it difficult for me to get my school work done, a lot of times I would cram school work so I could hang out because this is the first time in a long time that I have had weekends off.  Mainly the entire time we were in Twentynine Palms I cooked, cleaned, cooked, cleaned, and tried to find time and space to get my school work done.  I became pretty depressed being away from home, friends, and family, being in a crappy place to live where it's so hot you can't even leave the house.  Having people over all the time and doing so much cooking and cleaning and not being able to use my computer desk and chair when I needed or wanted to started to make me feel very unappreciated and not respected at all as the woman of the house.  Most times I would hide out in the bedroom to attempt to get school work done.  Last week we drove all the way home to Washington and I swear it was the worst road trip I have ever been on in my life.  We left in the middle of the day when it was well over 110 degrees instead of the night before or early that morning, California campgrounds are a total joke to me (what happened to tent camping?),  we got stuck for 4 hours in Northern California because the tow bar was literally tearing away from the frame of our 74 Dodge Ram Charger (that could have been really bad if we wouldn't have stopped), we finally camped at 5 am, had to stay extra days (cutting into my school work time), ran into traffic from Portland, all the way to our town in Northern Washington.  When I got home I had to cram so much school work in to one day that was all I did from dawn till dusk.  Now we have been attempting to unpack our stuff, while trying to do school work, and see friends and family.  I took 2 days off from school to find out that there is a lot of work to do this week...  But when I think about it, all of my terms thus far have had some pretty major obstacles and bumps in the road and I have still managed to get my work turned in on time, get good grades, and get the terms done.  If all of my terms were easy breezy I wouldn't be as apt to take obstacles and bumps in the road head on as well.  I have been trying to slowly change my school schedule so that I can still get school work done, take care of responsibilities, and have fun, without having to cram, stress (freak out!), fall behind, etc...  It's a work in progress...  

 On the topic of my topic of how dangerous fake sugars are my ideas about the subject are very passionate.  When I was a little kid I was a sugar-aholic, there was one incident where I was at a restaurant and grabbed a packet of sugar and poured it into my mouth... it was a packet of fake sugar!  Worst taste ever!  Another incident my mom had bought me one of those flavored sparkling waters, after a couple of sips I started to get an excruciating migraine, I looked at the ingredient list and saw Phenylalanine in bold so I decided to look it up online.  The first thing that popped up was "causes cancer, kills brain cells!"  No wonder my brain was hurting!  My husband thinks that I am a fanatic about sugars but what I try to get him to understand is that my body is super sensitive to what I put in my body and what I put on my body.  Most chemicals are a no go.  However even though I am a very passionate person does not mean that I am a 100% biased when it comes to any of my research.  I research both sides of a story, the pros, the cons, peoples opinions, and my opinions and I try to show people the information that they probably don't know, or if they do know it is an opportunity to have a intellectual conversation/debate (and I do love to talk).   Even though I love to talk about almost anything and everything and am open to ideas and opinions I know that not everyone else is and I respect other peoples opinions and feelings.  If I am talking to someone about a subject they had no idea about I tell them to not believe everything that I tell them, but to also look into it themselves because I'm not trying to make up their minds for them I'm just trying to inform them.  When it comes to future research I am going to look mainly for information that is going to back up my opinion and the point that I am trying to get across.  For research papers in the future, I more than likely will pick subjects that I feel are important, need to be talked about, and that I find interesting.  Granted I can research and write about whatever I am assigned because we are learning to be health care professionals so most of what we are going to research is going to be in that field and is going to pertain to what we are trying to learn.  

Unit 5 The Writing Process

My personal writing process is very informal and casual.  My favorite technique is the free writing or the brainstorming, where I write down everything that comes to my mind in no particular order.  When I do this it is easier for me to get all of my ideas down as fast as I can without blocking myself by the "Judge."  After reading that chapter on the artist and the judge it made a lot of sense to me about when I have writers block and why.  So if I try to write in a very structured style such as a formal outline in the early stages of writing I definitely self doubt myself and criticize myself to the point that nothing is good enough and my thoughts turn blank.  One of my academic challenges thus far has definitely been time management.  If I can procrastinate I normally will, it is not the easiest for me to set up strong schedules and stick to them, I have a terrible memory and tend to forget classes and assignments, and once a habit forms it's difficult for me to change it.  For example right now I take Wednesday and sometimes Thursday off from doing school work, Friday and Saturday I get the initial discussion post turned in and maybe some other assignments, if something is going on I'll take the weekend off from doing school work as well (It's been a long time since I've had weekends off), then Monday and Tuesday I'll get the last of the school work done and turned in.  This schedule however leads to a lot of time not spent on school work and a lot of time spent doing school work the day before and the day of that the school work is due, which most times leads to unnecessary stress.  So far school up to this point in time has been very rewarding.  I have always loved to read and learn and am very passionate about nutrition and health
so it is nice to finally been in college after 4/5 years of waiting for the opportunity.  So far I have earned great grades and am on the dean's honor roll list, and my goal is to make the honors list every term.  My friends and family are all very proud and extremely supportive because they know I can do it and I'm on the path for my goals in life.  Okay well I would write more but my husband and I are in the middle of the last day of living in the CA Desert and we still have much to do before we leave tomorrow morning for WA.   

Unit 4 Plagerism & Citations

Citing sources is important because the words are not ours they belong to the original author so it is not our credit to take.  Also when we are talking about a topic and use the work from another author we need to cite that source so people know where to look to find that authors work.  I know there are times when I have read a great study book and looked for their references so I can find the other authors to buy their books as well.  In high school in my World History class we had a huge project for the year where we had to write 5 essays per each letter of the alphabet.  Soon the work got so overwhelming and I was majorly lacking sleep that my paraphrasing was not up to par.  Needless to say the teacher and I had a conversation on plagiarism and on how I was struggling to keep up with all of the book work in all of my classes on top of that huge project.  In school though I don't remember them explaining why plagiarism is wrong, just that it is wrong and how much trouble you can get into.  After that I realized that it wasn't my work so I couldn't take credit for it.  If it would have been the professional world and not high school  I wouldn't have been given a second chance, I could be fired from a job, lose my credibility as a health care professional, or even sued.  I think more people need to know why it is so wrong to plagiarize someones work and be aware of the consequences.  The internet does blur the lines when it comes to sites such as You Tube and other sires.  It is a little harder to see that plagiarism is happening when it comes to movies, televisions shows, and music that is so easily accessible on the internet.  Some people think that it's a big movie company they made a ton of money on the movie why is it a big deal to download this movie for free.  But that's the same mind set as stealing products from a big store, just because they make a lot of money doesn't meant it is okay to take products for free.  It's the same thing, it's stealing no matter how you try to justify it.