Wednesday, April 25, 2012

Blog Post #14: Technology!


I have found that I prefer to take my classes online because they offer so much flexibility.  I am not just a student, I am also a wife, a business owner, and care taker for my elderly grandmother, so the ability to work on assignments when is convenient for me is really important.  I had never taken an English class online before and found that it was a big challenge for me.  I am not very fond of writing and the timing of this class was rough due to all that was going on in my life, but as the class is coming to a close, I am so proud that I pushed through.  My biggest challenge was making the time to produce quality work.  I would not have been able to take this class had it not been online, but I think I would have done much better if I had taken it in a classroom setting.  Most classes have been extremely easy for me online, but since I struggle with English, I was not disciplined enough to keep up with the work.
Learning how to create and maintain a blog was the most beneficial to me.  I am going to create one for our business where we can document all of our adventures and things going on at the store.  I am even considering creating one for me.  I am not much of a writer and never would have thought that I would ever have a blog, but now that I have moved away from Arizona, I think that a blog will be the perfect way to continue to share my life with my friends and family.  My husband is an actual writer, but lacks most technological skills, so he is also very excited to have a blog himself.  I am going to create and maintain it for him and he will have a place to share what he writes.




 

Blog Post # 13: Reflection on the course


Before this class I was only confident writing summaries or boring research type papers.  I had no idea what literary analysis was and had no real interest in learning more about it.  This class has changed my perspective.  While I don’t expect to ever have a writing career, I do love to read and am excited to have a new skill in interpreting text.  I had not spent much time actually thinking about where an author was coming from or what they might have meant.  I have always just rushed through the text and then moved on to the next.  Only to have an opinion of whether I liked or not, but never a real reason why.
I am finishing up my last semester at Yavapai this summer and will have finally finished my associate’s degree. I wish that I had taken this class earlier in my college career, as I think it would have been a big help with other writing assignments.  I hope to move on to working towards my bachelor’s degree in accounting very soon.  I am not sure how much writing will be involved, but if there is any, I know the skills that I have learned in this class have helped to prepare me for any future writing assignments.
          When I first saw the reading list for this class I was very disappointed.  I had seen the movie of both, Winter’s Bone and Up in the Air, and hated them!  I almost dropped the class!  I am so glad I didn’t.  While my opinions about, Up in the Air, have still not changed, I absolutely loved reading Winter’s Bone.  I went back and watched the movie again and loved it too.  If I could change one thing about this class it would be to get rid of, Up in the Air, all together.  I hated reading it, watching it, and most of all, writing about it.  Getting through it was the biggest challenge for me in this class.  I am still battling with writing my paper, but I do believe that it will make me a better writer in the end.  Reading and writing about something that I do not enjoy only makes me more appreciative of the things that I love.
I was also very nervous about the technological aspect of this class in the beginning.  Not anymore!!  I think this is what I benefited most from in this class.  I never intended to become any type of writer, but I do own my own business and needed the skills to be more technologically savvy.  I will be able to use the skills I learned in this class to better my store’s image and advertise in ways I never knew possible.