Dear Readers,
This is my first English writing college level class I have ever taken before. It has been awhile since I have sat in a classroom with other students. The environment is a lot different from what I am use to these part couple of years. I graduated high school in 2012, since then I have been in the military around grunts. Smart and hard working people I have been surrounded by, but not college educated. As I first sat down in class I thought to myself I have not done any grammar or punctuation in years, how could I do good compared to these kids just coming out of high school a few months ago. I tried my best to intwine my very limited creative mind into my essays as I typed away. Taking this class has taught me to use my creative ideas in a organized pattern style as I type my final drafts. Before I was messy and would type away my thoughts as they came instead of sitting down relaxing, but this class has showed me the proper techniques to help my writing go to the next level.
My first essay, that I am presenting to you today is the ethnography essay. I was asked to view a subculture who have their own behaviors on how they act in their environment. Through some phone calls and discussions I was able to ask my lieutenant in the national guard because he was a state trooper to ride along side him. The struggle for me in this essay was to find the behaviors that he as a state trooper was different from local police officers. Asking loads of questions to the point he told me to just sit back and observe what he does nightly. I descriptively in my essay told my readers on how his vehicle looked, the highway and the events that took place during my ride along. I was no stranger to the events that took place because I have been deployed in a foreign country before. I was familiar with the techniques and procedures that he did frequently on his shift. By the end of the night I accumulate a total of 3 pages of field notes from observing what went on throughout his shift. At the end of the process I believed I used every resource and followed the purpose of this essay to put together my final product.
My first essay I wrote, but second piece of work I am presenting to you is my memoir. I was told to tell a experience to my readers that had a focus or a meaning to the story. I told of a experience that changed me changed my life around towards a whole new direction. I was brought up in a tough upbringing as a child and that influenced me to make some of the careless stupid decisions growing up. I told of a story of when I visited my long time friend growing up on New York City and how that evidently impacted me to change routes on how I wanted the outcome of my life to go about. I wanted my readers to vividly see the grimiest of the environment I was around that night and how that influenced my life decisions and how my life has been going to this day. I believe I gave my readers a firm grasp on what I wanted them to focus on in my story and an life lesson to learn from, from my own personal experience. This event connected to my personal life now by how I choose to do a complete turn around and gear towards joining the military to start fresh. I hope my readers enjoy my essay that I wrote, I focused really hard on typing this with details to the moment that everything happened and how it changed my life.
My third essay I typed but last one on this portfolio is the text wrestling essay. We were assigned to choose one of the two articles about the subject you were to write your essay topics on. I choose the article about child who committed a violent crime at the age of only 12 years old. This article stuck out to me because this child was easily influenced by the harsh environment he was raised in. This child grew into a grown man all behind concrete walls and iron bars. I put this essay in a headlock by asking questions to my readers, on how this is justice allowing this child to spend the majority of his life locked up? How did he not gain that second chance to rejoin society and try to make a difference from his wrong doings. I struggled with this essay because this topic made me furious, I feel as if my thoughts and ideas were scattered. I wanted to add a lot more to this essay, but I feel it would of been off the topic that the teacher wanted us to discuss. This was my toughest essay for me to type and discuss for others to read.
Throughout this course, I have learned to be more creative in my process of writing and also to organize my wild thoughts that jump into my mind as I type away. This class has helped me excel as a creative writer and grasp the attention more of my readers and wanting them to keep reading sentence by sentence. Lastly, I would greatly thank everyone who has taken their time to read my entire polio and essay’s and hope that it would keep you reading throughout all of them.