Writing Process Paper

I feel that knowing your writing process is essential for you to be a well rounded writer. You have to know how you are most successful to enable you to create the best paper possible. If you do not know your personal writing process your writing will suffer. I learned a lot about my writing process and about the writing process of the students in my class. I took these ideas and tried them in my process and some of them worked which made my writing improve.
Over the course of this semester my writing improved immensely, I saw this not only in this writing class but also in other classes where I had to write papers. In my Government class I had to do a research paper and I would have been lost if it was not for this English class. The Government paper was in MLA format and I earned a 4.0 on the paper because of the improvements in my writing and because I was introduced to MLA format. Knowing my personal writing process helped me to achieve the grade I wanted on my Government paper as well as papers in this class.
Overall I write the best at home, while I am writing the problems that I experience include many grammar issues like word choices and errors with overall grammar such as commas. My worst habit is I like to wait until the last minute to write my papers. However I have been trying to get away from that. In my research paper for this class I found that if I start working on the assignment the night I get the assignment then I will get it done early, if I do not then I will rush at the last minute. All of my papers that I have done since the “This I Believe” paper have been started the night I received the assignment.
I really need to work on my grammar issues and word choice issues the most. I think that these are the things that will hurt me in the long run the most. If I do not work on these then I will never get into the physical therapy program at Central Michigan University. Thinking about my future is what helps me counter the flaws in my writing. If I think about the grade I need to earn then I will take more time and do better editing for my paper.
My writing process is really four main stages. It helps me to think of my stages as an outline so I can be more organized through out my writing process. If I have a plan then I am more likely to complete the task at hand. If I do not go through the steps then I always get a grade below a 3.0. I tend to use the five “W’s and H” as I start brainstorming for my paper.
Brainstorming is the first step in my writing process and from the beginning of this course I have felt that I can’t start a paper without this step. I start out working with a scrap piece of paper and I put all of my thoughts down about what I’m going to write about. I do something identical to the brain dump that we did at the beginning of this course. I start off with this step because I feel it is probably, besides editing, the most important step in my writing process.
Before I started this class I could never start a paper but the brain dump enables me to start on a topic and use all different types of ideas for a paper. In this step I use bubbles to connect things that are alike for my paper. If nothing is in common then I wait a while and start another brain dump. I am more of a creative person no this method works for me well. It reminds me of, connect the dots where you make a picture after all the pieces are together. The final picture, after all the dots are connected, being the start of my second step.
My second step is the outline and I do this like you would if you were to prepare a speech. I start by taking the things that connected the best during the brain dump and putting them in to a category. I start be determining what type of paper this is by using the terms in the book, it helps to show me what kind of paper I am really writing. The outline is made by had to save time and I put what type of paper I am writing at the top of the outline so I can stay on track. I make this outline because I am a disorganized person and the outline helps me to be organized while I am writing. This works for me mainly because it keeps me on a steady path to my main goal which is a 4.0.
The third step in my writing process is to actually write my paper. This has to be done at my desk in my room which is the only place I can write. This is because there are no distractions around me and if I get distracted then I will not write the paper well. With the outline at hand this is really a fast and effective step. Normally I write this portion of my paper within an hour on a three page paper, because everything is mapped out for me. Essentially what I do is take my outline and write it out on the computer.
This is also the step where I add all of the description to my paper. When I use description in this step I like to use the thinks we learned during this class like dominant impression and exploding the moment. These make my paper less boring for the reader to read and more fun for me to write. I think these are what really made my papers good in this class.
My final and most important step is my editing and revising step. Most of the time I have someone educated such as my mom, who is in the Nursing program at JCC through Eastern Michigan University, peer edit my paper. When I edit my papers I probably repeat this step four or five times on a really important paper, such as the research paper and two times for a paper that would be a low percent of my grade. There are no words I can use to express the importance of this step in my writing process. With out my editing step I will fail every paper.
Overall I am glad that I had the opportunity to discover my personal writing process because with out this process I think I would be lost in college. I have changed a lot of things in my writing process as I have sat through this class. I went from just typing the paper to having an actual process to follow every time I write. The writing process has taught me how I write best and has made writing more enjoyable for me.

Gypsy Story

As the lonely nerd sits in his car bed working with his ten year old brother, he teaches him the ways of the gypsy. This nerd whose name is, John Smith, loves what he does and he is a professional. In his mind his car bed is the fastest one on the road, wheels screaming and motor rumbling John and his brother are cool. When you look into the room you see a scene unlike any scene before. As the two brothers sit in the bright red car bed they talk about selling treasures and what mom is going to make for dinner. The smell in the room is that of pizza rolls which mom just made. Above the car bed are only the best collectibles, Star Wars action figures, all of the characters are there including Darth Vader. On the floor you see wrappers of candies of all kinds and shapes. The one that sticks out the most is the SpongeBob, which has colors on it such as blue and yellow. The lamp shade sitting next to the bed is that of shades of dark and light purples mixed all together weaved in and out. Getting sick from all the candy and pizza rolls john and his brother quickly jump up from the car bed and go downstairs. Walking down the stairs banana nut bread filled the air. Mom was baking them their favorite bread, they got excited. Mom told them that the bread would be done in about 10 minutes and told them to get dresses. The boys in matching race car pj’s ran upstairs to get dressed. When they go to their room they noticed that they forgot to take the dishes from earlier down to be washed. John quickly hid the plates in the trunk of his car bed. “Mom won’t find them in there,” john told his little brother Ricky. About 15 minutes later they go back downstairs for bread. Mom starts asking when john has to work and how is he going to get there. John says that his nerdy friend Jason is going to pick him up and take him to work. John also tells his mom that he and Jason are going out tonight so don’t wait up for him to get home. John has a rough day at work and can’t wait for the day to end. He is excited about going out with Jason. They are planning on going to a club and trying to pick up a couple girls. He has not had a date in a couple years. He is just about to end the day and leave when his boss Charles comes in and informs him that there is some extra work that needs done. He gives John the choice of staying and getting some overtime or not. What a delima!! He really needs the money, he is saving up to buy a very nice convertible Corvette this year. He is tired of having everyone take him places. He also wants to go to the club with Jason. He decided that he wanted the club. And so he goes. Eventually he finds out that his boss is at the exact same club and is fire for it. What no one knows about him is super human. When he finds out he is fired he snaps his boss in half and decides to run from the cops. Eventually he is arrested and sentenced to death. Since that day he has been electrocuted three times and shot twice and he still lives on. This is the legend of John the nerdy gypsy man who can never die.

My Papers

I believe that most of the strength in my writing has to do a lot with my creativity and and my ability to describe things. I think the dominant impression really helped me with this. All of my papers flow I think is the main thing and in all but the research paper I described things in great detail. Grammar is the number one thing that I need to improve in my papers specifically in my word choices and commas. It really helps me to print off a copy of my paper and try and grade it like I think a teacher would.
I use the method that Dave said most teachers do in the begining of the semester. Start at a 4.0 and work up and down based on errors that are made in the paper. In my research paper before I handed it in I changed the word suck to such something that a spell check will not fix. Most of it is grammar errors that can be cought by carefully reading through the paper. In terms of the writing process there would be a lot of things that I would do differently when it comes to the writing process. Including what was already mentioned like printing a copy off to revise. I also like to have someone else look through my paper before I do my corrections so I have extra knowledge.
I know now that I have to write in a dead silent environment otherwise my writing suffers. I make more errors and forget good points that I want to mention when I have a lot of noise around me. For the reflection and the this I believe paper I feel that this was a big factor for me. Overall I fell like I am much better at writing than when I started at the begining of the semester, I used the tips and writing tricks that were given to us and countered on them.

Simpsons

As the clouds part from the blue sky and the the title of the show appears you start to see actions by charactors that are familiar to almost all of the United States. Bart, Homer, Marge, Maggie and Lisa, these are the charactors of possibly the funniest show to ever air on television. The Simpson can be describes in one word, great. These charactors thoughts and actions add to the comedy of this show. A family of a husband, wife and three children is something that everyone can relate to. The episode where Marge becomes a reble shows the comedic preformance, the relation of family, and how these charactors interact unlike any charactors in other shows on television.
I loved the part in the show where Marge was talking about the ballet and Homer got excited because he thought he was going to the circus. I thought it was funny how an image of a bear in a car poped into his head. Homer is sadly mistaken, when Marge and Lisa tell Homer about the ballet he becomes dissapointed. Later in that episond Homer tells his friends he has to go to the ballet and they also think that he is going to see the bear in the car.
While Homer is walking with his frieds something else happens that is funny. Homer sees a couple of vending machines and wants a pop but he has no money. Homer then decides to stick his hand up in the vending machine, not realizing that all he had to do was let go of the can,he calls for help and the emergency crew are ready to take Homers arm off, just then someone in the background says,"Homer are you still holding on to the can. Homer lets go of the can and as he walks away all you can hear is the laughter of the EMS crew.
Another thing I liked about this episode is that they turn a sweet housewife into a rebel. Marge and her new found friend go on a high speed police chase and end up almost going over a cliff. It is funny how her charactor changes so much just because she normally has no friends.

The Finished Product (Obesity Paper)

Josh Murphy
Professor DeBaker
English 131
28 Oct. 2007
As a larger than normal child sits on his couch and eats a bag of potato chips, while watching television, his parents start to wonder, is my child obese? This is a question that many American parents have today especially in cities like Detroit and Philadelphia. Childhood obesity is a large issue in the 21st Century and leads to adult obesity. In medicine things that cause obesity along with the health effects of obesity are important to know. “In the years 2003-2004, 17.1% of children and teens, aged 2-19 years (over 12 and a half million young people) were overweight, and 32.2% of adults (over 66 million) were obese. Almost 5% of adults were extremely obese” (Boyse, par. 2). Prevention of obesity is a must if we want our children to lead healthy and prosperous lives. Exercise alone will not prevent obesity though some other factors need to be considered such as diet and behavioral approaches. Things like eating right and watching less television will improve overall health.
Obesity will follow you from the time you are a child to when you become an adult and this is especially true in the female population. Being obese can lead to some major health effects down the line including heart disease, gout and diabetes (Maffeis Tatò, par. 1). These conditions can be prevented if children stop doing things that lead to obesity like snacking and living off of fast food. Children need to also exercise more in order to prevent or correct obesity and its effects one of which is diabetes (Collins, par. 1).
Although obesity causes many diseases diabetes and specifically type two diabetes is one of the biggest problems facing obese people. Type two diabetes has to do with a person’s blood sugar. Obesity relates to diabetes due to one major factor and that is a lack of insulin. Insulin is a hormone that the body makes by it self and when this is not made by the body people have to take shots of insulin. When someone is obese there is less insulin made, the person then has to take shots to control their blood sugar and thus type two diabetes is born (Health Effects of Obesity, par. 3). Although diabetes is controllable by insulin there is no real cure so once you have this disease you can not get rid of it. Diabetes is not the only major disease that is found in people who are obese, obesity also causes heart disease.
Heart disease revolves around many different things that go wrong with the heart including blood clots, atherosclerosis, and Coronary artery disease. Blood clots are found in many obese people. Atherosclerosis is where your arteries harden and this is found ten times more in the people who are obese versus those who are not obese according to the Stanford University Medical Center. Coronary artery disease is caused by the thing that obesity is all about, fat. Deposits of fat get stuck in the arteries and they clog the arteries. This causes the heart to get an insufficient amount of blood (Health Effects of Obesity, par. 4). Obesity can affect the heart and circulatory system by raising the blood pressure.
Your blood pressure in a basic definition is the pressure that the blood puts on the walls of your blood vessels as it flows and this is affected greatly by obesity. Obese people have lots of excess fat in their bodies and fat needs the nutrients and the oxygen that your blood carries to survive. Because of excess fat, in obese people, the heart has to pump a lot harder to circulate all the blood around the body and this will increase the blood pressure. More blood is going through the body and creating pressure on the arterial walls and then the blood pressure goes up. This increased blood pressure has an adverse effect on the heart, meaning it can actually harm it in the long run this is because the heart is being over worked (Health Effects of Obesity, par. 2). The effects on the body from obesity do not just have to do with the circulatory system but the respiratory system as well. Obesity can cause things like sleep apnea which is directly related to high blood pressure (Health Effects of Obesity, par. 6).
When you are asleep you normally breathe throughout the whole night. When people get sleep apnea they stop breathing for periods of time while sleeping. This will cause two main things one is snoring and sleep apnea will also make you tired during the day. You will become tired because when you stop breathing your sleep is interrupted, therefore you do not get enough sleep. For the people who are obese respiratory problems are caused by all the extra weight (Health Effects of Obesity, par. 6). “The extra weight will squeeze the lungs and cause restricted breathing,” (Health Effects of Obesity, par. 6).
Although there are many health effects from obesity, that are sometimes fatal, these can be prevented by stopping the problem at its source. The causes of obesity include a wide variety of things, including but not limited to, lack of exercise, excessive snacking, and genetics. Genetics is not something that you can control but the rest of the causes are preventable. Even if it is a genetic problem diet and exercise will increase an individuals overall heath and help correct or prevent the effects of obesity.
Children who come from a family with a background in obesity will tend to be obese too. There is an 80% chance that a teen with an obese parent will have weight problems also. This could be caused by both their genes and how their family eats on a regular basis. According to Kyla Boyse a Registered Nurse in The University of Michigan Health System children whose mother is diabetic also tend to be overweight (Boyse, par. 10). Even when children are adopted they tend to have the same patterns as their parents when it comes to obesity. There are many things genetically that can lead to obesity also. Things such as your metabolism and the fat-storage in your body can lead to a person becoming obese (Collins, par. 7). There are ways to account for a low metabolism and a high fat storage in your body though a big thing being exercise.
A lack of exercise is a big reason why people all over America are obese today. If you take in a lot of calories and then do not use them, your calories will turn to fat. A large build up of fat is what obesity is so naturally over time the normal person will become fat and then obese with this build up of calories. Things like television, video games and the computer all contribute to the lack of exercise. Children that watch television have a much higher rate of obesity than those who do not. Only one out of every five children participates in after school activities like basketball and football (Collins, par. 2). Only 30% of the children in the United States have to go to a gym class every day, this makes it very hard for some children to get in shape (Boyse, par. 9). There are other things that make you out of shape though, one of which is snacking.
Lots of snacking is very bad when it comes to obesity, there are so many different snacks to choose from as you walk through a grocery store that it is hard to forget about the snacks and focus on the nutritional foods. “Americans spend one billon dollars a day on snacks” (Collins, par. 3). Snacking is a bad for an obese person and it is often one of the main things an obese person will tend to do. Watching television ads persuades children to want a certain kind of snack and then the child’s parents go to the store and buy these snacks. Vending machines in schools make the problem only worse with the high calorie and high fat snacks and drinks (Collins, par. 3). Everywhere you look there is a different kind of snack this is also true for fast food chains, whether it be McDonalds or Taco Bell. Fast food is another major contributor to obesity.
Children are a major contributor to the money that fast food chains make. Their ads and meals are focused on children for this reason because children can be persuaded to go to a particular restaurant. Eating too much fast food is a major cause of childhood obesity (Collins, par. 4). According to Anne Collins and Nutritionist and weight loss consultant, “In 1992, children aged 6-14 years ate in quick-serve restaurants on average 157 million times a month” (Collins, par. 4). This has a dramatic effect on the weight of Americans, especially children. Children who eat more fast food will have a higher BMI (Drewnowski). BMI is your body mass index which is your weight divided by your height squared (Body Mass Index, par. 2). This can tell your doctor if you are anything from to skinny to obese. Fast food and snacking are not the only causes to blame though, an unfavorable socioeconomic status can also be blamed.
Socioeconomic status can be a large factor when it comes to obese people. People who are poor and less educated are more likely to be obese at the same time people who are educated and are well off tend to be the opposite. This is not always true though, the rich and the educated can be obese as well. Minorities also have a higher rate of obesity than that of whites. Areas of the country that have a high poverty level are also more likely to be obese (Drewnowski).
Because some people are poorer than others there is a difference in the quality of the food that the lower income people buy than the higher income people. The people with higher incomes buy the higher quality foods which are healthier than the low quality foods. Older people with a good education are more likely to buy fruits and vegetables so naturally they are healthier, as opposed to those who do not (Drewnowski).
There are many things that cause obesity and most can be prevented with a good diet and with the right amount of exercise, America’s youth can reach new heights in physical fitness and prevent the spread of obesity. A good diet and exercise will in turn fight heart disease, diabetes and other medical conditions that obese people are prone to. The negative health effects of obesity start at an early age and continue throughout the lifespan, making the key to a healthier America prevention of obesity.


Works Cited

“Body Mass Index.” Wikipedia. 23 Oct. 2007. 23 Oct. 2007 .

Boyse, Kyla. “What Research Tells Us About How Parents Can Fight the Obesity Epidemic.” Obesity and Overweight. Feb. 2007. 20 Oct. 2007 .

Collins, Anne. “Causes of Childhood Obesity.” Childhood Obesity Causes. 2007. 20 Oct, 2007 .

Drewnowski, Adam. “The Real Contribution of Added Sugars and Fats to Obesity.” Journal of Epidemiology 29 160-71 2007 supp. FirstSearch. WilsonSelectPlus. Jackson Community College Lib. 25 Oct. 2007 .

“Health Effects of Obesity.” Stanford Hospitals and Clinics. 2007. 19 Oct. 2007 .

Maffeis, Claudio, and Luciano Tatò. “Long-Term Effects of Childhood Obesity on Morbidity and Mortality.” Hormone Research. 2007. 20 Oct. 2007 .

Miller, Beth. “Obese Children Show Early Signs of Heart Disease.” Washington University in St. Louis. 16 Oct. 2007. 19 Oct. 2007 .

Analyzing My MySpace

At first glance I might look like a charactor b/c of my MySpace page. The older generation would call me a "card," which I am. My red and yellow Superman symbol on the top of a jet black background makes it seem as though I am a fan but there is a meaning behind the background and the overall Superman theme of my MySpace. Superman is my nickname for many reasons. All of my friends that are girls call me that, I wonder why? lol j/k It really originated with one of my friends Shelly, my number 4 on MySpace. She was thinking of a nickname and it came to her Superman, this is perfect she told me. This name has stuck for over a year and it has followed me from just her through the football team and all my friends. My music section is pretty short b/c I like almost everything, my favorite being rock. Only the best bands though, you know, The White Stripes, AC/DC and The Stones. My #1 friend the best ever I talked a lot about him in a previous blog. My best friend for 9yrs, an enemy turned friend, the best kind. My blogs on MySpace are that of comedy and truth to me. From Borat to a rant on why you should vote independent. Check em out there great! Blog comments are greatly appreciated and the favor will be returned. Everything from how I am Irish to the fact that I'm single is on my MySpace. I must add that I take great pride in being Irish as well. If you would like to learn more just check out my page.

Final Research Blog

Finally the paper is finished! Although nothing is perfect I fell like this one is pretty close. I would say that I earned over a 3.7 but we'll see. I really learned a lot during this assignment not only about obesity but about my writing process as well. Like going through a print copy vs. a paper on the computer is a lot better. I also found a way to concentrate under stressful situations. My father passing away led to me looking for ways to get things done in a stressful situation. Especially for this paper because I basically baried my dad and came back that night so I could make it to class the next day. I do believe that those days were as if not more important than Dave said. find listining to music sooths the soul and helps relax me while writing or doing anything else for that matter. I think this class and this and the next couple of assignment will be the backbone for my whole college carrer. Applying what you've learned and writing research papers are really what college is all about and without and education you have NOTHING.