Dear prospective ENG105 student,

Congratulations on working to get your degree in whatever field of study you so have chosen.  In taking this College Writing course, the best advice I can give is prepare to work.  If you are an inexperienced writer this course is for you, but be preapred to work hard because in my experience this was a difficult class.  I was never a good writer nor do I think I ever will be, but this class has helped me become familiar with academic styles of writing that will help me in college courses later on down the very long, long road. 

If you have never blogged before, get ready to.  I never understanded the fascination with blogging and honestly it is something I told myself I would never due, but in order to pass this class I guess I had to.  At least we didn't have to twitter.

Become familiar with writing papers in MLA format.  Before I enrolled in this course, I had no idea what MLA even was, but now I find myself writing all of my papers for college in this format.  Also be prepared on doing a lot of research for several essays in which you will have to write because as I have learned, if you don't know what your talking about, you can't write a good paper. 

Another topic which will be discussed is literary analysis.  This is extremely tough and I have no business giving anyone advice being that I still have no confidence in myself in this subject.  The only advice I can give is work hard on understanding what the author of the material was really trying to say so you can succeed where I have not.

All in all, this is a difficult, yet satisfying course that will leave you with substantial knowledge to help you in your college career.  Good luck.

Sincerely,

Daniel Volpi

Creative Writing Prompts #49: What do you do on a rainy day.

Everybody hates when it is raining outside.  It just puts out this gloomy depressing feeling.  Usually what happens to is that all of the things that you put off doing before, you tell yourself you are going to do that day but it ends up raining.  At least that is what always happens to me.  I tell myself all of the time that I want to break out my golf clubs and go play a round of golf but I usually don't feel like going on the days when it is nice out.  I will go to sleep and say tomorrow i'm going and get all of my stuff ready, only to wake up to the sound of rain against my bedroom window.  But there are still lots of things one could do when you can't do anything outside.

The one thing I love to do when it is raining is sleep.  The fact that even though it is the middle of the afternoon and it is still dark always seems to make me tired.  Plus my hours in which I work are so crazy I don't get much sleep during the week anyhow.  So it is nice to catch up on it.  Another thing I like about the rain is that it gives me a chance to catch up on, or get a head start on homework assignments for school because my mind pretty much says "well you might as well get started, not much else you can do today."  The only downfall I had to that was that one day during a thunderstorm I was writing a paper for my one class.  It was not due for a while but I decided I just wanted to start it but ended up doing the whole thing.  Well as I was nearing the end of it, the power went out and my paper went along with it.  I ended up having to do the whole thing over again.  But as luck would have it, I usually don;t get to do these things on a rainy day because I always seem to end up working when it does.  I tell you , as a police officer, there is nothing like standing in the freezing thunderstorm trying to deal with accidents or other incidents.

Creative Writing Prompts #14

The most memorable house move that I had to go through was the only one in my lifetime.  At the time it was probably the most difficult thing I have ever had to do.  I lived in that house with my father, mother, and sister in the small town of Manville, New Jersey.  I lived there from the time I was born in the year 1986 until the year 2005 when we moved to Factoryville.  Both of my parents are originally from Archbald, Pennsylvania and when they both retired, they decided to move back here.  Unfortunately I was only 19 at the time, and was not financially set so I had to move along with them.

The hardest part of the move was the change.  For 19 years I lived in the same house, had the same neighbors, and hung out with the same friends that I grew up, and went to school with since kindergarten.  I kept telling myself that the move would not be too bad, because my entire family is from the Archbald area so it is not like I would not know anyone at all.  When we finally did complete the move to Pennsylvania, I found myself driving the two hour trip back to New Jersey almost every weekend to be with my friends who lived out there.  Eventually I started applying for jobs in the area and eventually gained employment at Wegman's in Dickson City.  While working there I became friends with a lot of my co-workers and began meeting more and more people.  I gained employment in other jobs, and made more and more friends.  Now I look back and remember telling myself that I was going to hate not knowing anyone, but I now have some of the greatest friends anyone could ask for.

In retrospect, moving away was hard at first, but it is not really that big of a deal.  Everyone is going to have to make a move at somepoint in their life.  Actually I am in the process of applying for jobs in the Florida area.  If, hopefully, I receive a job down there, I believe that move is going to be even more challenging.  But challenges are all a part of life.

This particular blog entry is more of a gripe session for me.  The topic that I have chosen is simply the question of why is college so expensive?  I mean, to go to a decent school for four years makes a regular person end up paying bills and student loans back over the course of several years even after they graduated.  And that is if they have chosen to get a degree in something that they do not change their minds about later on.

Take me for example.  I started out in the fall of 2011 at Lackawanna College because I wanted to pursue simply and associates degree in Criminal Justice because after graduating the police academy I was told that I would receive 21 credits towards it.  So I enrolled back into school and began taking the courses needed for the degree's completion.  Later on I decided that I wanted to do better than that and wanted to obtain a bachelor's degree in Criminal Justice because now a days you can't get any full time law enforcement job without one.  So after researching credits and classes that are transferable from Lackawanna College to Keystone College, I enrolled in several of those courses, spending a substantial amount of financial aid and student loans in the process.  Now during mid semester I decided that I wanted to switch my degree program from Criminal Justice to Forensic Science.  So I began researching that program at Keystone College and came to find out that only two of all the classes that I have taken actually transfer to that particular degree program.  After finding that out all I could picture is myself throwing money into a paper shredder and realizing that the past year of my life has been a complete waste of time and money.

But really it is a catch 22.  In order to get a good job that pays a lot of money you have to get a college education.  But first you must pay a lot of money to get a college education in order to hopefully get that good paying job.  I guess it comes down to the old business saying of you have to spend money to make money.

This article I actually saw this morning while watching Good Morning America.  I then went to http://gma.yahoo.com/blogs/abc-blogs/minnesota-teen-cant-bring-porn-star-prom-221942746--abc-news.html and located the article.  The story is about a teen from Minnesota who asked several girls at his school to the upcoming prom.  All the classmates that he had asked turned him down.  The teen then went onto Twitter and began asking celebrities, mostly adult film stars, if they would go to the prom with him.  It was stated that the teen asked over 600 adult film stars, and one of them actually responded and accepted his invitation.  The adult film star stated that she would love to go with him because she missed out on going to her own senior prom and she would love to make his prom dream and hers come true.  But school administrators banned the film star from attending the prom. In a statement given from the High School, they said that the adult film stars attendance would be prohibited under their prom procedures because it would be inconsistent with two school district policies. The 19 year old adult film star lives in Los Angeles.  The teen then said that he was going to hold his own prom at his house and that all the students are invited.

This is probably one of the most biased things I have ever read. You know for a fact that the school administrators simply do not want the publicity of having an adult film star at the school event.  Even the teen's mom told the news that she does not see what the girl's profession has to do with anything.  In my opinion, a job is a job. If the teen said that he was bringing a non-pornographic actress to the prom, I am willing to bet that the school would lay out the red carpet, but due to the fact that it is a profession most find to be distasteful, the actress is banned.

I chose to read this article because it couldn't fit the requirement's of the assignment any better.  In my opinion, why should someone be banned from doing something just because they don't agree with their line of work?

Between working two strenuous jobs for an average of 50-60 hours a week and going to school full-time, I do find it incredibly difficult to find time to actually step back from everything and to have time to myself.  My schedule is very hectic and nothing is set in stone, so I am forced to play each week by ear and find the exact times in which I will have nothing to do.  One of my favorite hobbies right now is sleeping.  I know this sounds wierd, but for the longest time it would be rare for me to actually get a full 8 hours of sleep, so I try to do it as much as I can because I do not know when I will be able to do it again.

Besides that, my all time favorite thing that I do to unwind is to ride my motorcycle.  This is one of the most relaxing things I do because nothing gives me more freedom.  When riding I feel like I leave everything behind and that is a great feeling.  Sometimes when I ride I find myself in a difficult position on whether to apply the brakes so I can turn around and head home, or to simply pull back on the throttle and just keep going.  I especially love going to Bike Night at the Quaker Steak and Lube in Dickson City on Wednesday nights during the summer.  Hanging out with a bunch of my friends and then going for a ride really does make me feel like I do not have a care in the world.

Another activity I do to unwind is that I love going to the gym.  Lifting weight is one of the greatest stress relievers, and sometimes if I had a very bad day I like to take it out on the punching bag.  Running is great to because it makes you not really think about anything else.  When I run I always just focus on where i'm running to.  Instead of saying I will run around the block, I say I am going to run to that stop sign, and from there I pick something else out.  It is just a really good way to focus your mind on something other than work or other problems and honestly puts me into a happy and relaxed frame of mind.

The peer review is a very helpful process when writing a paper, especially if you are not an experienced writer. A strength of the peer review process is that you have another set of eyes going over a paper or an essay you have written.  In the writer's eyes, everything could look and sound extremely well put together.  But in the eyes of another person, there could be several mistakes that the original writer did not see, and the paper may be viewed to not be as well put together. A major weakness with the process of peer review is the fact that the second pair of eyes going over the paper is not going to be the teacher, it is a fellow student.  I have openly admitted that I am a horrible writer.  Papers and essays never have and never will be my strong point.  So who's to say that my peer who is reviewing my work isn't as inexperienced in writing as I am.  They may say that my work is outstanding, and then I hand it in without making any changes and I get a poor grade on the assignment.  This is never an excuse though because one thing I have learned thus far is that each and every person is responsible for his or her own work.

One thing that I did find beneficial about the peer review process is that it is like having a second person writing the paper along with you.  The second person could read it over and say to add something that the original writer may have not thought of.  Or they could say to take an idea that was written and explain how to take another idea and branch it off of that one.  I am not sure however if there was anything specific I would change about the entire peer review process because honestly this is the first time since probably middle school I had to do it, and that was what seems like a lifetime ago.  If it was a process that I have done more often, then it would give me a better outlook on it and to see what if anything I would change.

I was nervous when I started the pere review, honestly because I had a fear of giving someone the wrong advice that would decrease the grade of their essay.