My Writing Process Now

My writing process now has greatly developed through this semester. I have found the importance of the thesis statement and have seen how it can carry you through your entire paper. It ties the entire paper together and makes it easier for you as the writer to remember the point you are trying to make. I have learned that this is also helpful for the reader as well. It helps to remind them what the paper is about and what they should be focusing on.

I feel more confident in my writing and understand how to efficiently and successfully write a paper. This process has eliminated a lot of stress and has made writing a lot more enjoyable. I have also found that writing is an amazing way of letting out your emotions and feelings. I really enjoyed this class and have found it very beneficial for the future.

-Maddie Rzeppa

The Live Review: Lady Gaga at Staples Center, was a wonderful article about the famous pop star Lady Gaga. When Lady Gaga was first becoming popular, I looked up to her greatly. She was the new David Bowie or Michael Jackson. Lady Gaga is different and thrilling leaving the audience always speechless with her unexpected choices. She made a name for herself and many people looked up to her.

Personally I thought she was cool, unique and daring. Always doing the unexpected and most importantly not caring what everyone else thought. Yes she stuff is crazy and weird but she stays true to herself and the image she has created. I think the most rewarding beautiful thing in the world is having the confidence to be yourself. Lady Gaga is the symbol of that and I think more people should have that mentality on life.

Like many great artists in the past not being afraid to be different she has made a mark on the music world and her name and music will never be forgotten.

-Maddie Rzeppa

Before College

My writing process before college is pretty hard to explain. Honestly I didn't really have one. I knew the basic principles of writing and the steps to do when writing a paper but never really developed a proper way of writing. I never understood how important a writing process was until I stepped into college. If you have specific way to write it makes the whole writing experience better and easier. I knew I needed a beginning middle and end. And the rest was just chance. Whatever happens happens and I did it to the best of my ability. I have learned quite a lot from this class and found the importance of a thesis and many other ways of writing.

-Maddie Rzeppa

Cupcakes

The passage So I Thought I Could Dance, immediately caught my eye because I used to be a very dedicated dancer. Know I just love dancing for fun and love watching different dance shows like the one mentioned in this passage, So you think you can Dance.

Being an intense dancer I am well aware of the pressure put on you to be the best. Reading this passage reminded me of the good times I had while dancing. I was mainly focused on ballet and was working towards become a ballerina. After a long day with a 5 hour ballet class, my fellow dancers and I where always exhausted, sweaty and irritated. The one thing that got us through the night was the delicious cupcakes we got after class. We would walk over to the local cupcake shop and devour a snickerdoodle cupcake. We danced down the streets with our tights rolled up and our hair tightly up in a perfect bun. We were all friends and it was great.

When class arrived the next day everyone was jealous of each other again and pointed out each others flaws. We fell back into the swing of things and forgot about the connection we had the day before. The good dancers got beat down with words that made us self conscious and you realized dancing didn't bring you joy any more. This passage brought many good dancing memories back, but also ones that I don't want to remember.

-Maddie Rzeppa

My Island in the Sun

The endless possibility of dreams and goals fill my thoughts each day. The excitement of reaching towards something then finally getting there with a huge smile on your face that you achieved the unachievable. My goals in life are very different from my peers, I am living my dream as we speak being a makeup artist learning from the best in the most beautiful small business. Learning the ropes of running your own small business and understanding the art of customer service is a dream of mine that has been achieved.

My goal is to finish school, whether I decided only to get an associates degree or moving on to a bachelors degree. I hope to stay with the business I am working for now for a few more years and when I am ready move on to bigger things. I would love to be a celebrity makeup artist and know that I can do so. Because of my unique style of makeup I have a better chance at getting up there in the makeup artist industry.

At some point I hope to travel around Europe. The lifestyle is very me and I would love to go all around to see if there is a spot I would end up. Once I picked a spot I want to open my small beauty apothecary. Filled with my own line of makeup and my most favorite products. I would want the shop super small and intimate. Simple and relaxing to enjoy what I love forever.

-Maddie Rzeppa

Sports

Growing up in a family where sports are very importance, but not the most important thing in the world really has allowed me too see both sides of the argument for changing the rules with sports.

In High School, being a so called "popular" kid was being athletic and a star in sports. Gender didn't matter. All the cool kids played sports and if you didn't basically your weren't as important. There were teachers that favored different students because of the sports they played. Not only is this totally wrong, but shows kids that academics aren't as important as sports.

Being at a school where the theater, art, and other programs where lacking in proper supplies the sports programs bought new gear each year, and had all of the top equipment. Instead of redoing a building or buying something truly needed for the school, they decided to spend a ton of money redoing the football field and putting turf in. Umm did I miss something? This was the biggest waste of money. Our football field was completely up to par and there was truly no need to replace it but hey football is really important.

You never hear about the artistic kids wining scholarships, or the super smart kids going off to amazing schools. All you see in the local paper is the students getting scholarships or wining awards for some type of sport. Favoring others has never worked out best for our society and the passage Time to Change the Rules discusses this as well.

-Maddie Rzeppa

Project 3 Experience

The experience I had with project 3 was very stressful. Honestly at first I had no clue what I was doing and I struggled with the direction for my paper. After the conference with my professor I had a greater vision of what I needed to achieve in this paper and finally found my path.

With that said, I still struggled for a while on writing my paper. I felt like I had so much I wanted to say but when I wrote it down nothing seemed to make sense. I decided to take breaks in between my writing so then I allowed myself to have a fresh view of the paper. It did take me a while to complete and  I was extremely nervous to turn it in, but in the end my hard work completely paid off and I am very happy with my final grade. If I had the option to never do this type of paper again I wouldn't hesitate to take it. But knowing that I could conquer it gives me the confidence to take on anything that comes why way throughout my writing career.

-Maddie Rzeppa

"Oh my gosh! Hold on lets take a selfie!" This is something I hear way too often in my day to day life. It doesn't matter where we are what we are doing or who we are doing it with the world needs to know how amazing we look. It is just expected that each day a flawlessly edited photo with a perfect filter is shared to the world. Basically instagram, twitter and facebook are tools to boost our self esteem and make our lives seem way more interesting than they really are. Over glorification on how amazing your life is and bragging to the world about how absolutely amazing you are.

Personally, I have never taken part in any of these social media sights myself. I like having my own privacy and don't feel the need to let everyone on the planet know what I ate for dinner. Does any one out there really even care? I feel like I have my own problems in my life so why would I ever want to share those to everyone hooked on these social sights.

The obsession people have with these sights worries me. How is anyone going to be happy with what they have anymore, and most importantly are people going to know how to communicate with each other in person anymore? These thoughts truly do worry me and in the passage, Here I am Taking my Own Picture, they clearly hit all of these sad but truthful points about the effect of these social sights.

-Maddie Rzeppa

Revise Revise Revise

The never ending tornado of revising has officially hit me. Proejct 3 is in the final stages of revising.  As painful as it is too get through every second is worth the ending result. The first thing I do is go through each paragraph, reading it aloud. This helps me find any mistakes or things I want to change. Once I am happy with that paragraph and I think it is perfect I move on to the next.

I think the most important thing about revising is having other people read your work and edit it. I always make sure both my mom and my dad are able to read through it and point out any mistakes. I also had my boss read through my paper because she has a masters in English. It is very beneficial having other people around you read your work. This helps you find any mistakes you may have missed.

When everyone has put there two cents in my paper I read through it again out loud to myself. Sometimes I may need to reword some sentences, or change some thoughts around, but when I am satisfied the feeling of completion hits. Know you just hope for the best and know you have done everything to make this paper the best.

-Maddie Rzeppa

What the F***?

Last weekend I was hanging out with my friend from Poland. He has been her a year now and his English has improved greatly. When we were out the other day I never realized how much he swore. It was almost every sentence he dropped an considerably inappropriate word.

Personally, I do think swearing  is a normal relaxed thing to do and is a way of expressing your feelings. But as society has gone on I think it has become more about showing your maturity and feeling grown up. We see constant swearing on TV, in books, and in songs so why shouldn't we do it? It is the cool thing to do.

I asked my friend if he swears just as much when he is speaking polish. He laughed at my curiosity and started to explain to me that teenagers in Poland swear in English because it is the cool thing to do. Parents and older people he said don't realize what the kids are saying because they don't speak English. He told me about how he has this one shirt that has the famous "F" word written across his chest. In Poland everyone had these shirts. When he came here and realized that this was not acceptable he was shocked.

Today it is becoming more and more acceptable for people to carelessly swear and there is a point where those words, won't have such an impact anymore. We all do it, and the power of a word is diminished each time it carelessly floats out of our mouths.

Tech-NO!

Like most people in the world, I am a victim of Google, Bing, Yahoo and all of those other brilliant search engines. If I find myself thinking too much about how much I truly depend on these sites I quickly change my thought because honestly it scares me. Titles always seem to jump out to me, and this was no exception. Is Google Making Us Stupid?, is the title of my chosen article for Chapter 70. I saw this title and said oh my gosh heck yes!

As the writer describes that we are completely dependent on the world wide web. All of our desired answers can be found with a few taps of your fingers and a click of a button. Too easy. What ever happened to working for what you want? Books are unnecessary for our everyday lives and the object that was cherish and used until it fell apart is know sitting on a self accumulating layers of dust each day.

You never are left to wonder about something with the internet getting in your way. Your thoughts can never just be yours. I would ask someone a question that I don't necessarily need an answer for, something that I just want my brain to imagine the answer. But immediately someone already has it pulled up on their phone. As much as the instant access of knowing what you need to know whenever you want it is extremely helpful and I rely on it day to day sometimes I wonder what would happen if suddenly this access was gone.

The difficulty my generation and generations younger is we don't know how to find information on our own in books. Its not fast enough for us and we have to work to our answer. You can type anything in the world in to a search engine and it will give you the answer. An example, if your stranded how to make a fire. I could look that up in a second, but if I was really stranded I wouldn't know that basic survival technique because I depend to much on technology. I see good and bad sides the increasing use of technology and how it is evolving more and more. It is helpful and amazing in one way, but scary and devastating in another. I hope enough people realize that we need to take a minute to pause the screen and live in the real world.

Maddie Rzeppa

Conference Time!

Being totally honest, I was extremely nervous for my conference on my project 3 research paper. I was unsure if I was achieving what was being expected from me and not quit sure the direction I was going in. I had many questions going into the meeting like, citing sources, what my intro should be, the title of my paper, the thesis etc. Basically, I had a lot of questions and was not completely confident in the way my paper was being written.

When I met with my professor, she covered everything. I was blown away by how helpful she was in giving me the guidance I needed for this paper. I had never had a teach work with me face to face about the problems that need fixing, or a way of saying something I didn't know how to say. I felt confident in myself and was completely ready to tackle this paper. Talking about what was needed to be done gave me more passion in writing this paper and helped me not procrastinate. When we were done with our meeting every single question had been answered and I felt really good about this paper.

If we weren't encouraged to schedule a conference, my paper would have not been nearly as good as t was. This helped me learn that even if it is not mandatory, or greatly suggested I should always try to get my papers looked over or ask questions to my future professors. There was a weight lifted off my shoulders after the conference and it helped me out greatly.

Maddie Rzeppa

Bella, Bella, Bella

The last passage I chose to write about, is called CinderBella: Twilight, Fairy Tales, and the Twenty-First-Century American Dream. I have never been the girl into romance books or movies. Chick flicks have never been my cup of tea and they never will. I am more of the action movie type of girl and enjoy rugged tough films. When the Twilight series of books came out I was the only girl in my middle school class who wasn't reading the series. My friends were obsessed with them, my mom was addicted, and the world was hooked. Trust me I love a good fairy tale and Disney movies are the one exception to my love for thrillers, but this just seemed too out there for me.

I was very curious to read this article and see what the opinion of the author is of this book and movie. I was entertained by the realism behind this article and it showed that this story is a over exaggerated fairy tale. Resembling Snow White and Cinderella, Bella is a sweet curious character trying to fit into the world and befriends the animals and creatures in the forest. Bella is desperate to find who she is and these stories bend and twist her path and changes from the person she once was into something she feels she was always born to be.

You caught me red handed, I have seen each of the movies. Each time I hoped something real would happen and after each scene I became more and more disappointed. Being the oldest in my family, and having a mom being a devoted fan, I was brought to the movie theater to watch one of the films. I couldn't understand how having an pasty unattractive man playing a sparkly vampire was entertaining, or seeing a very attractive man constantly change into a giant dog. The cheesy romance of this movie was kind of pathetic to me. After I read this passage I understand a little more about the books and the movies. I can see the inspiration behind it and appreciate it a little bit more.

Maddie Rzeppa

Peer Review Questions

When I got my peer review handed back to me everything looked well written and thought out. If I could ask a few questions to my editor I definitely would. I think having a peer edit my paper really helps me step up my game while writing my rough draft. I try to write better and edit my paper so my editor doesn't have as much work to do. And in a way I do want to empress them with my writing as well. I would have asked my editor what he thought I could have done better to extend the length of my paper. At first I had trouble shortening it and then I ran into the problem of it not being long enough. I would have liked to know if he had any ideas I could have benefited from. Another question I would have asked is if he thought I should start off my paper with a quote to lead into the opening of the story. It was important to me to have the intro and the conclusion to flow well together so I could tie off the thesis from beginning to end. I wonder if the editor liked how I did that or if he felt it was too redundant. Over all I felt my peer edit answered most of my questions and worries about my paper.

Maddie Rzeppa

The Real World

As I was flipping through the pages of chapter 72, I wondered what story would pop out at me this time. I turned the page and boom. There is was, Holden Raises Hell The Catcher in the Rye. I immediately new this would be the perfect story for me to read because of my personally connection to this book. When I first entered high school, the first thing my dad asked was when did I get to read The Catcher in the Rye. It was his favorite book and he new I would like it because we have similar interests in books. So finally when I entered sophomore year I was able to read this book. I was humored by the goofy personality and violence Holden has in the story. It was the first book that I could imagine myself there next to the character, and feeling like I new him. As I uncovered the dark secrets behind Holden I found him interesting, but most importantly sad. I saw a different view on the world and how cruel it can be. Reading this passage made me realize the importance and meaning behind this rebellious topic. This view opened up the eyes of the readers, showing them the shield of innocence we put around the world and the fear of the down and dirty truth. I enjoyed this passage and the message it brought.

Maddie Rzeppa

The Keys of Prewriting

Prewriting for my project 3 paper, analyzing womens studies for the Disney movie Frozen was challenging at first. I was unsure which scene I wanted to focus on, so I decided to grab a pencil and a piece of paper and start writing. I do this to get all of my ideas on paper so I can see if they make sense and are valid ideas that fit well for this paper. Once I found out the route I wanted to take with this paper, it was easy for me to sit at my computer and write everything I had to say. After I spit out everything, I go back and edit, add, and eliminate the entire prewrite. I think it is important for a writer to let everything out on paper without holding back and then cutting unnecessary information afterwards. Prewriting is an important step when writing any important paper. Sometimes it may seem like a waste of time but in the long run it is completely worth it and your paper will be successful.

Maddie Rzeppa