Travel Essay

When Stephanie assigned the travel essay and handed out the travel essay example packets, I thought to myself well damn, this doesn’t sound like much fun. First of all it took me about a week to decide what to even write about, and by that time I had hardly any time to actually go to my place and conduct my research. I put the assignment off as long as possible because I really didn’t want to do it. So as I actually wrote my paper, I did my best to make it interesting and effective but I just felt like it lacked in areas where my others works were fine. Finally I had a “rough” draft done and it was something to work with I guess.

However, as I look back on the assignment and reading over my paper, I’ve decided that the travel essay wasn’t that bad overall. I’m not entirely sure why I had such a negative connotation when it actually wasn’t half bad. I still wouldn’t go as far as to say it was my favorite assignment ever, but things still flowed relatively smooth. During my peer response as I was reading my paper out loud, I was surprised that it sounded as good as it did. Even though it still has its areas that need some major improvement, I don’t think I’m as far away as I originally planned. Granted there is still a chance that it sucks and my expectations were low, but I’m going to assume that’s not the case. I feel better this way.

Obama's Peace Prize

As you have probably already heard, last week President Obama was awarded the Nobel Peace Prize. While I don’t want to say that our president has done nothing to earn some regards for improving our country and our world, I am a bit skeptical about giving him such an honor when to be perfectly frank, he hasn’t done much to earn it. Sure, he has told us what he hopes to accomplish and how he wants to improve conditions, but he hasn’t done it yet. The nominations for the Nobel Peace Prize are due by February 1^st, which means he had been president for two weeks before the deadline. Two weeks! I don’t care how much you hope to get done in four years, but even still he didn’t accomplish anything world changing in two weeks. In two weeks, he told us that he wanted to accomplish a list of things. On that list were reducing nuclear weapons throughout the world, easing tension in the Middle East, and fighting climate changes by reducing the amount of fossil fuels used. Ok, so let’s see what he has done so far. I’ll even give him the benefit of being evaluated to today, October 12^th, instead of February 1^st. No countries are reducing their nuclear weapons build up, not even the U.S., we are still at war with Afghanistan and who knows what is going to happen with Iran, and I will give him credit for trying to be more energy efficient. So that is one out of three things accomplished that he won the award for. And I’m not being critical of Obama here, he never said he would get all this done in half a year. I commend him for the work he has been putting forth to try to improve the world, but why did he win the Nobel Peace Prize?! You can’t say it’s for good intentions, you just can’t. Even I have good intentions yet I’m not winning an award. If you ask me, they should have given the award to someone else and in a couple years if President Obama has accomplished a bit more, than we give him the award, but he hasn’t had enough time to actually deserve it.

Improvements in writing

Now that we have been writing for about six weeks, I have started to notice significant changes in the way that I write. One of the most drastic improvements in my writing habits would be the usage of “seeing” and not “telling.” When I would write a paper for high school, I focused mainly on getting all of my information or ideas out for the reader to read, but I never really worked at finding the best way to convey that information. If I were to go back and read some of my older pieces of work, I would probably get bored halfway through and quit. It’s pretty sad when even your own writing isn’t exciting enough for you. But now I’ve learned how to spice things up in my papers and make it much easier to read through.

Another major change I’ve seen in my writing habits is how I go back and make revisions. Before, I would simply go back and make the minimal amount of changes that the teacher brought up because I thought that was the only way to improve the writing. However, now once I make changes I go back and read through the paper to make sure it flows smoothly and isn’t all choppy. I’d always lose points because my paper didn’t flow well enough for the teacher’s liking and now I realize why. I think I always took for granted how effective transitions between paragraphs and even sentences were. I feel like I’ve already become a much better writer and it’s not even the midterm yet. Who knows what’s next.