The one thing I actually heeded to on my last journal was the fact that I needed to stay calm and I didn’t need to stay up all night.Good essays are not produced by stressed individuals either. I wrote my mid term at the cafe because I really do love food and I was playing  classical music through my headphones. Once I started the essay , everything in the cafe were blocked out of my mind except my cup of water and the WSPT. I quickly went through all of my errors in the last two essays before starting the test. I realized that i needed help on my sentence structures and the amount of commas I put in my sentence. I even have a few things planned ahead , One of them is to have a one to one conversation with miss Sarah on my mistakes. Ask her for some advice and try and improve on them. I will plan to do some free essays where I write and miss Sarah can point out the mistakes. I’m eagerly waiting for my WSPT results, I feel like I’ve done a lot better than in my old essays but that’s only my point of view. One thing I realized is that I felt really pressurized and paid attention to the timing more than my own essay. I really enjoy doing essays on my own time but I know that timed essays only help us build the ability to think under pressure and that is a really important ability everyone needs to work on.

Wow , I can’t actually believe that it’s already mid-term week. We were forced to miss a lot of classes due to snowfall and that costed us a lot but thanks to Miss Sarah , we had to only do our peer review and work online, so we don’t miss on class-time and fall back. The word mid-term is scary but after doing a few essays , I’m actually not that scared for the WSPT and I’m kind of prepared. First thing’s first , I’m going to be prepared a day back. I’m probably going to do those online exercises which Miss Sarah had posted. The night before the WSPT , i’ll quickly go through my errors so I don’t have to sit through the whole night and cram. All we really need to do is stay focused and calm. Good essays are not produced by stressed individuals, so that’s not something I’m looking for. A good night sleep is crucial for this one.

I’m really hoping for an interesting topic , so we’re all able to score well. As usual , I need to have a good breakfast , attend my 8 A.M. and have a freshly brewed coffee to write this essay. I’ll have to find a good place to sit and do my work without any distraction and the best place to do my work is in the study hall in my dorm. I have to make sure , nothing is bothering me and just write whatever I’ve learned so far. I’m trying to be positive and can’t wait to reflect on the essay results.

Cancelling class was actually a good idea. Odu should always give priority to the commuters as they have a lot of commuter students too. Feb 18^th was a day when the whole school was covered with snow ,  it would’ve been difficult to walk from the dorms to the classes too. Everybody loves a surprise holiday.

Everyone has their own learning style , whether it’s kinetic, auditory or even visual, they’re all different in their own way. I always thought I was a kinetic / auditory learner but after a few years, I realised that I am actually a bit of everything. My number one preference would be kinetic, I prefer hands-on experience than listening or reading. For example if I were given a board game to play, rather than reading the instructions or listening to someone, I would watch them play and then try it on my own. During lectures, I prefer to listen to the teacher speak, even though my attention span is low, the words she conveys will always stay in my head to an extent. Now suppose the lecture had powerpoints, that will only reinforce the teaching, so it really does depend on the situation at hand.

I always thought writing essays was hard but in reality if I just put in time , it becomes much easier. The first thing I always like to do before writing an essay is to get me some tea, a nice place to sit. Put in my earbuds while listening to classical music so I can get into the mood to write essays and get away from the distractions. Then I try to read the question at least twice before I ponder upon it. Then I think about how I would begin the essay and start writing it. I have a picture in my head so I know how to go forward with each sentence. There are a few difficulties I face , one of them being whether my grammar is correct or not. Sometimes , I  have a picture in my head but I cannot put it into words , my vocabulary is just amateur. The good thing about it is that , I’ve actually put in effort to try and improve my vocabulary.

Time flies by so quick,it’s already time for the second essay. It looks like I did well for the second essay, at least that’s what I thought. After submitting my essay online, I was eagerly waiting for comments by my group-mates. After a long time , I didn’t receive anything , I actually thought I wrote the essay so well that it doesn’t need editing, this was a huge ego boost but around an hour before the deadline, i got an email from Miss Sarah saying that no one could comment on my link, the site did now allow comments to be posted, she was quick enough to quickly fix it. Hardly, a few minutes passed and I was flooded with comments, in one way I was sad thinking that my essay was not the perfect essay but in the other way, it actually helps me excel in my work before submitting it to Miss Sarah.

In reality, I need to work on every aspect of my essay, I have a major problem with placing comma in their appropriate places as you can see in this journal. Another thing, I realized is I shift in person, that is from first person to second person very quickly. Instead of using a coordinating conjunction I use commas which is not a great idea This has to stop now or I won’t be able to get a good grade. I’m still working on these mistakes and will prove to be a better writer by the end of this class.

https://docs.google.com/a/odu.edu/document/d/1jZJWDDnSDilK5mlqPjphIczKh180F5LDmgNO2E2PUCQ/edit?usp=sharing

Oral presentations are pretty scary to me , it’s not like I don’t like to talk , it’s just that I have to do it formally in front of a class where there will be a teacher grading me. Luckily, we got an easy topic , the Webb center. Everybody knows where and what the webb center is , We usually enter the webb center atleast once everyday. The Webb center is a big place containing rooms , halls, catering services too. The only difficulty I face is how to express everything in a few sentences.

I have done a lot of oral presentations , I like them as they build my confidence in expressing my views in front of people. The issue I’m dealing with now is , will people be able to understand my accent ? I’ve never had this problem back home until I came here . After a few embarrassing instances with my accent , I feel that I’m more conscious now in what I say and how I say it too.  The only problem with oral presentations or any group work as a matter of fact is the responsibility of each member to complete the work. Usually, group work ends up with only one person doing everything and the rest of the group takes undeserved credit. Fortunately, this time I’m in a group with responsible individuals. I really like my group members , Nicole , Torrie and Antonio , we all are working hard to finish the work in time. We have a presentation which we plan to present. I feel like with my group I think I can talk more confidently and it won’t be as nerve-racking as before.

I felt the peer review was a success, not only did I get a lot of feedback from my peers, I feel that we even got closer than before. It’s not awkward anymore to ask help from the people in my group, they’re pretty understanding and helpful too. At first, I was very shy to even ask their names but I’ve gotten over it. To be honest, I was really nervous on what they’ll think of my essay. My essay wasn’t that great and plus I didn’t know it had to be five hundred words , I hardly wrote two paragraphs giving lots of detail on how I came to my dorm rather than the transition to college.
After reading the feedback , I understood my problems a lot easier and I feel like we all helped each other. I had a very low word count my grammar was all bad, I left space after punctuation marks too. Reading other people’s essays gave me an insight on how to write my essay effectively. I got my first person , second person all mixed up. I didn’t know we needed a thesis so I didn’t include it in my first essay. Luckily , I did have a conclusion to end my essay , I feel the peer review is very helpful along with the google docs , so everything is online , we don’t need to manually write it nor do we have to print it. Overall , I’m feeling positive and I feel like I will be a much better writer than I am now.

https://docs.google.com/a/odu.edu/document/d/1CPcpYan8qXOvA1HzNBu7_6C2OA6UeoX39f0e48gGDLM/edit?usp=sharing

To find my essays , just look to your left under the Pages tab 🙂