Journal #20: Final Journal

Hello everybody!

Still I can't believe that we finished this class because this semester went very fast! I remember the day that we met with each other in the beginning of this semester when Sean gave us syllabus and plan for this class and that day was like yesterday. In this class we spent a good time to learn important skill and even learning writing sort of difficult this class wasn't boring because the teacher and classmates have been nice and go really along with each other.

During this semester I have learned a lot of things and composition class was the most important class that changed my writing skills mostly. Now I know how the paragraph must be written. Topic sentence, supporting sentences, and concluding sentence were the main parts of the paragraph. A group of paragraph represents an essay and that essay has different styles descriptive, compare/contrast, cause/effect...etc. Each style has its own method of writing.

I really valued the effort that has been done by our teacher Prof. Sean because he helped us to do well. However, there is a small problem that I face it usually in toefl writing section which is time. When I write an essay, I need a lot of time to brainstorm ideas and arrange them into a good essay. If I'm limited with a certain amount of time, my ideas become really bad. Currently, I'm working on this problem by using time writing to overcome timing problem.

Yejin and Jamie

Journal #19 : Reaction - Baraka

A lot of people have seen many movies from many kinds like action, drama, comedy...etc. There are other kinds of movies which describe nature and human. Baraka is one of those movies that give you an overview of how people and nature live on this planet. It has a lot of sadness scenes that make you think about other people. This movie starts with giving an image of how people and nature lived together in the past in a balanced way and how people life have changed to the negative side. Pollution, wars, and poverty were the most effective scenes on me.

Very thin people wearing dirty cloths and poverty was pictured on their faces were looking in trash for anything valuable that could help them to live. I couldn't imagine how this happened and I couldn't believe my eyes! What a hell! Think about it if you don't have money and anything useful to make you alive would like go to trash place and searching for valuable stuff? It is poverty that make the Indian people in the scene go around the trash with their cows to find something to eat or to sell.

You may ask why they didn't eat their cows? Some Indian people have religious reasons that forbid them to eat these animals even they are in desolate state. While other people in the world find what they need to live easily not only this some of them use golden spoons, plates and other luxury stuffs to use them to eat, other people were searching in the trash to find a piece of bread!

We don't care about poverty because we have enough sources for us and for our children. Yes this is the answer that most people think about it when someone ask them to find or suggest a solution for poverty. We lost the sense and the feeling. We lost the human being concepts. We just think about ourselves and this concludes that we live like animals or worse than them.

In that scene sadness was my company and the image of a group people children, youth, and elders looking for their food in the trash give you the definition of the word "Poverty". Poverty has roots in all regions and countries and my grand father told me stories about their hard life before oil age. They lived simple life and they couldn't eat meat daily or weekly and I was thinking if time goes back can I live like them?

Ceyda and Sun

Journal #18: Reaction - Writing

The writer of this poem wrote an amazing imaginary conversation between a visitor to his house and him. While he was sitting in his room, he heard knocking sound. He went to the door and opened it, but there was nothing just darkness and sound of wind. After he closed the door, the sound came again but this time much louder. He looked around his room then he walked to the window. The visitor, a raven, was outside and it went inside his room without asking him! He thought that the visitor was the angels of Lenore. He talked with the bird and asked him some questions but the raven didn't say anything. After while he realized that it is difficult to talk with that bird and he asked it to leave and make him alone because he was afraid from it and he thought it would hurt him.

This poe is really far away from realistic. I have read a lot of poems but I haven't read like this before. It pictures the fear side of that man and also his sadness. How it come people can talk with animals! This make those words really awesome and unique.

Sun and Ceyda

Journal #17 Move to America

Hello Dad and Mom...

Education is the most imporant step in the life. With eduaction you can increase your knowledge and background. Furthermore, good education leads to finding a good job. As you know I got my engineering degree from King Saud University with a high GPA. I want move to the U.S. to do my masters. I understand the distance issue between the two countries and I will be far away from you. However, technology makes communication with you much easier. You may think America is a dangerous country, but this absolutely isn't right! Everywhere in the world, there are safe places and dangerous places and I'll live far away from dangerous places. Another point is the statistics show that the average number of crimes in California State is low. You also talked about the schools in my country. Actually, schools in my country are good for undergraduate studies, but they aren't good for graduate studies.
I'm looking for doing my masters in a good school in the U.S. becuase this will help me to increase my knowledge and find a good jop.

Best Regards,
Saud

Laura and Priss

Journal #16: Confucius Quote

"Find a job that you love doing and you will never have to work a day in your life."

The meaning of this quotation is whenever you work in a job you like it, you will be happy and interested in it and that leads to enjoy your work. I agree with the man who said it becuase that's the right way to produce and do a lot of tasks without any negative feeling. In addition, you make a clear different between people who like or dislike their jobs by monitoring thier activity and productivity in thier work environment. To be honoset with you, I like to be a pilote since this job required traveling to many places and dicovering a lot of cities. However, like other jobs this job has disadantages and one of them is being away from your family for many times.


Laura & Sun

Journal #15

Verlyn Klinkenborg, (October 15, 2008). Watching the Numbers and Charting the Losses — of Species. New York Times, p. A37.


In this article, Verlyn discussed the decreasing in the number of species on our planet and what are the causes for this problem. It's obvious that the writer used claim of cause and policy in his article because he used researches and numbers as an example of how this problem is very important to support his ideas about this claim. (par. 2,4 & 5) According to him, human behavior and modern life styles are in charged of this distinct. Also he used an appeal to emotion and and reason in his article to argue the readers. (par 3,6 & 7).


Yejin & Ceyda

Journal #14: Your First Source

I searched in the library database and I found an article that is full with useful information. I sent the link of this article to my email then few days later I tried to find it but I couldn't I found this message " The article you requested is not being returned from the publisher's system." 

I searched again using Google Scholar and I found a useful book which will be my first source because it gives a definition of what economic globalization? and what its limits?

David Held (2000). A globalization world? Culture, Economics, Politics. Open University: Routledge.

Link: 

http://books.google.com/books?id=v5Zj325gmzgC&printsec=frontcover&source=gbs_summary_r&cad=0#PPP1,M1

Sehyun & Abdullah