I chose these topics to speak about in my video because they were important to my development as not only a writer and a student but also a person. I talk about my writing assignments in fifth grade and how they taught me to show my work to an audience and how rewarding that can be instead of just keeping it selfishly to myself. I also talk about my playwriting once I got to college and how I enjoyed that, especially with the audience watching me. Both of these situations gave me confidence in the classroom as well as outside the classroom as a person.
The process of doing this assignment was really difficult and frustrating. Rick and I recorded our videos and that wasn't very difficult but getting them onto the computer didn't work very well. We spent two and a half hours waiting for it to upload on either the MAC or PC computers but they kept saying the files were too large. Finally, after emailing Dr. Kilborn I uploaded the video onto Youtube and that made it easier. Overall, though, it wasn't tough thinking of what to say in the video and it wasn't tough to make the video long enough. I was nervous talking in front of the camera but the fact that there were only two of us in the room made it easier.
Thursday, September 23, 2010
Sunday, September 5, 2010
Literacy Narrative Prewriting
I've had a few significant writing experiences in my lifetime and those experiences have led me to where I am in my schooling today. I remember as soon as we got a laptop computer at home and my mom let me use it, I would sit on there and type little stories. Most of the stories would revolve around myself as the main character, an attractive girl as my love interest, and me being the hero, usually with sports. I would score the game winning goal even after I got knocked unconscious five minutes before Mighty Ducks style by the big and ugly thug on the other team. I always wrote for myself. If I shared my stories with anyone else, they would have been bored and not as impressed as I was. I was impressed everytime I'd hit a page milestone. Ten pages! Horay! Twenty...thirty...fourty...fifty. Looking back, my longest one is almost 200. A bunch of poorly worded sentences with bad grammar and incomplete ideas that only I have seen. And that's how I like it. I wrote those stories for myself because they were fun and because it kept me entertained. It gave me a sense of accomplishment to see all of the pages piling up at the end.
Another exciting writing experience I had was in fifth grade with Mrs. Smith. She was going through a rough divorce outside of the classroom but that crept in to the classroom and really effected her teaching. She didn't do much and didn't teach us a lot, but the best thing she did was open us up to the writing process. She allowed us to create stories, starting from the brainstorming to the rough draft all the way to the Final Draft which we read in front of the class. I remember sitting in class, the blood rushing through my body as I waited for my turn to read my clever bit of prose in front of the class. Again, the stories centered around myself as the main character, but she gave us different situations to do so I couldn't always be the sports star I wanted. Since it was boring hearing everyone else's story, I brought my unique sense of humor into my stories and really entertained the class. I'm not sure if this is how it happened but in my mind, everyone was on the edge of their seats to hear my witty banter between dialogue and clever description of a bunny being blue instead of white.
My most significant milestone as a writer came about last semester when I took my second playwriting class here at St. Cloud State. I really took a liking to playwriting after the first semester and so I kept going with it and even wrote plays in my freetime. First of all, the first milestone I over came was my shyness as a writer. In fifth grade when the stories were all for fun, I wasn't afraid of sharing them with everyone. But as I became more of a serious writer in college, I was very scared to open up my work to others. It's a vulnerable thing and for a shy kid who doesn't take criticism too well, it could cause some problems. But in playwriting, we had to share our work with the class and I did it. But the biggest milestone I accomplished as a writer was after playwriting class, when my professor told me to enter some of my plays in a competition. This scared the heck out of me. THe thought of sharing my work with a panel of judges made me hyperventilate. But after a long time thinking about it and a lot of editing, I finally made the decision to submit the play. I'm sure the judges reading my play laughed their heads off at how awful it was but that doesn't matter. The point is that I sucked it up and submitted my play to the competition and I've been very proud of that milestone.
My life as a reader has always been effected by one outside element: My family. I often times feel out of place in my family because my dad got his doctorate in geography only to become bored and go to medical school and get his P.H.D. My mother also got a doctorate in geography and my brother skipped fourth grade and probably could have skipped all the way up to high school if the social skills had been anywhere near his IQ. And then there was me. Normal old Tim who was nice and liked sports but wasn't nearly as smart. But my parents loved to read and they loved to read in their free time! Same with my brother. He would stay up late and finish a book in one night! I always felt guilty when they would talk about books they read and I didn't have anything to add to the conversation. So, I started reading novels and mysteries just to be able to contribute something to the conversation. Once I started reading, however, I had to read more so that I could keep up with them and one up them. I started writing for myself but I started reading for my parents and my family so I could fit in better and appear as though I wasn't adopted!
Another exciting writing experience I had was in fifth grade with Mrs. Smith. She was going through a rough divorce outside of the classroom but that crept in to the classroom and really effected her teaching. She didn't do much and didn't teach us a lot, but the best thing she did was open us up to the writing process. She allowed us to create stories, starting from the brainstorming to the rough draft all the way to the Final Draft which we read in front of the class. I remember sitting in class, the blood rushing through my body as I waited for my turn to read my clever bit of prose in front of the class. Again, the stories centered around myself as the main character, but she gave us different situations to do so I couldn't always be the sports star I wanted. Since it was boring hearing everyone else's story, I brought my unique sense of humor into my stories and really entertained the class. I'm not sure if this is how it happened but in my mind, everyone was on the edge of their seats to hear my witty banter between dialogue and clever description of a bunny being blue instead of white.
My most significant milestone as a writer came about last semester when I took my second playwriting class here at St. Cloud State. I really took a liking to playwriting after the first semester and so I kept going with it and even wrote plays in my freetime. First of all, the first milestone I over came was my shyness as a writer. In fifth grade when the stories were all for fun, I wasn't afraid of sharing them with everyone. But as I became more of a serious writer in college, I was very scared to open up my work to others. It's a vulnerable thing and for a shy kid who doesn't take criticism too well, it could cause some problems. But in playwriting, we had to share our work with the class and I did it. But the biggest milestone I accomplished as a writer was after playwriting class, when my professor told me to enter some of my plays in a competition. This scared the heck out of me. THe thought of sharing my work with a panel of judges made me hyperventilate. But after a long time thinking about it and a lot of editing, I finally made the decision to submit the play. I'm sure the judges reading my play laughed their heads off at how awful it was but that doesn't matter. The point is that I sucked it up and submitted my play to the competition and I've been very proud of that milestone.
My life as a reader has always been effected by one outside element: My family. I often times feel out of place in my family because my dad got his doctorate in geography only to become bored and go to medical school and get his P.H.D. My mother also got a doctorate in geography and my brother skipped fourth grade and probably could have skipped all the way up to high school if the social skills had been anywhere near his IQ. And then there was me. Normal old Tim who was nice and liked sports but wasn't nearly as smart. But my parents loved to read and they loved to read in their free time! Same with my brother. He would stay up late and finish a book in one night! I always felt guilty when they would talk about books they read and I didn't have anything to add to the conversation. So, I started reading novels and mysteries just to be able to contribute something to the conversation. Once I started reading, however, I had to read more so that I could keep up with them and one up them. I started writing for myself but I started reading for my parents and my family so I could fit in better and appear as though I wasn't adopted!
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