My Research Question

1. The topic of my discussion is rape on college campus.
2. I want to discuss how rape on college campus can affect things later in life. Discussing how the victim may feel, how often people get away with it, so does this encourage them to continue doing it? Because they didnt get caught? Like does that have any effect on rape in society outside of schooling. Also, i want to answer the question, why does it go so unnoticed? So un talked about?
3. These are things i feel really passionate about and want to understand.
4. I need to learn statistics about how often this doesn't happen, how many unreported cases, what the rapists and victims are like later in their lives.
5. Im thinking ill get most of my info from like journalists because i need updated info which i cannot get from a database. Then ill use the facts i get from modern sources to research databases, and encyclopedias.

Why i love fruit snacks

I love fruit snacks because it reminds me of my childhood. It is such a nice snack and so tasty. I was not allowed to have them a lot as a kid because they're bad for your teeth. But now i have access to them all the time, so i eat all the time. I eat pretty healthy and sometimes i just get really excited to eat fruit snacks. Honestly, no matter how healthy you try to be, you gotta keep that one thing that you love, that you crave. You eat healthy and its okay to splurge on that one thing you love every once in a while. Honestly, its just something that i feel is really prominent in my life right now and i feel like its good to share those things. Its better for me to talk about my love of fruit snacks to my blog where noone needs to actually read them, then for me to talk about them to my mom for four hours. I know what your thinking, "This is ridiculous" and yes it is. But like i said, you need to share what you love. This is a stepping stone to sharing your passions with he world and in turn, sharing yourselves.

Family

Being away from home makes you think a lot about family. You never realize how important they are in your everyday life until they are not in your everyday life anymore. I feel it is very important to never take someone for granted- because you never know what is going to happen. So i always spend as much time as i can with my mom, dad, or brothers. Being away from them has only strengthened those feelings for me. Every time i go home, all i want to do is be around them. I don't want to work on any assignments, i just want to be around them. I want to spend every second i can with my family. I just have this deep fear that one day i skip out on spending time with them and then the next i don't have the opportunity to spend that time with them. I know that is a little morbid, but i would rather think this way because i cherish my family way more than i ever did in the past.
I'm not sure what exactly brought these feelings on for me, i had a lot of death around me growing up. Not necessarily in my family, but in the setting i was often involved in, i saw it in the people around me.
My biggest fear is losing those closest to me. But i don't think of that on a daily basis, i just think of how much i love them and how much i want to be around them. My family is the most positive set of people in my life, more than any friend, colleague, etc. I just really love my family and it breaks my heart when i see other people disregard theirs. Because you really never know what is going to happen.

Rape Culture- Research Topic

Rape on college campus. Often unnoticed and unreported. Actually, way more often than not. Why? That is what i intend to answer in my research paper. I plan to focus on what rape in college can lead to in real life. Whether that is the rapist- who has raped in college and gotten away with it and now believes he can continue to get away with it. Or focus on the victim and long term effects, why they didn't say anything? How do they feel now? Skimming through my research, i've seen that rape is a large felony, it is taken very seriously. So why is it so often unnoticed? Why are victims afraid? Why are prosecutions not as harsh as the crime seems? Why do people get off easy? I feel strongly about this, especially in relation too college campuses. I saw a documentary once that focused on rape culture on college campuses and this is one of the biggest motivators behind this topic.

What's important to you?

It's difficult to set priorities. Especially in the workplace, or during school. At the time, the most important thing may seem to be your assignments or the work that needs to be done. But in the long run- what are you doing this for? What are you working for? What are you going to school for? Most people would respond with their family, or themselves. It is very easy to get caught up in your everyday tasks and ignore the things most important to you. I make it a priority to always remember the reasons why im doing what im doing. I push myself and strive to be the best i can be but i never let any assigned task overshadow my family. No reading assignment is more important than visiting my family members. Obviously getting all of my work done is extremely important to me but the point is, my family is more important. You never know what is going to happen and you never know when. I will never miss an important moment with my family because i have homework. I will always find another way to get that homework done, but family comes first.It's easy to forget, but i force myself to remember. I live by the idea that forgetting what is important to me is a life long mistake. My education and my opportunities means the world to me. I do everything i can to make the most of them. But my family means everything to me.

Balancing assignments towards the end of the semester

College is very stressful. It's full of things you've never heard of or understood before. You're pushed to your limits of procrastination and cramming. At some point, you realize procrastinating and cramming no longer cut it. But when the assignments pile up at the end of the semester, it becomes hard not to revert back to your old ways. So when you feel the anxiety building up over the end of the semester, take a deep breath and go one at a time. Take each day to do something small, stay caught up on little homework assignments. The bigger assignments, take each day, or every other day to add to it. Think about paper topics way ahead of time and have them ready and organized when your finding your sources. For that class that's your most difficult (we all have that one) study and read ahead. Probably easier said than done, but when you're relaxing on the weekend, take a few minutes to look over notes. Look over notes right after class. Turn to your textbook to read for parts you do not fully understand. Just keep looking over your information, tell your friends about it so the bulk of the info is already circulating in your mind when you go to study for quizzes and tests. 

In the end, don't turn in something you are not proud of. Work hard to put every bit of spare time you have to good use. 

Reflection on how far my writing has come since high school

All before high school i was told how good of a writer i was. I won awards at a young age, but in high school, something changed. I got C's on my papers and i never knew why. I tried to fix it, and i listened to all of the comments from my teachers but my grades never improved. Nothing about it was challenging, there was no encouragement in the writing department, it was all just flat. No one told me how to improve. I genuinely believe high school held me back. It was nowhere that my writing could grow. As soon as i got to college, my writing grades shot up again. My first college paper i got an 88%. The ones after i got 98% on each of them. I learned so much in the process. I felt that writing was important and not some random academic assignment i had to complete just like math homework. I was being challenging in the best way and learning so much along the road. My teacher taught me beneficial things that i applied to my writing and used to improve. It was amazing. I could feel how much I was learning. I loved writing my papers and seeing how far they went. I loved writing again. Now im in my second college writing class and i love it just as much. Im not doing as well but i know im learning. Each paper is a large challenge. And im still learning how to get my feet on the ground with these papers but i still feel how much im learning & i can feel that what im learning is not for nothing. I believe i did so bad in high school because writing was just for a letter grade. College has shown me (again) how to improve and gotten me excited about the works i produce. Its still a struggle, but i know i can get my writing skills where i want them to be.

Beginning and End of My Explanatory Synthesis Paper

In the beginning of the writing process, i had really no idea where i was going to go with this paper. I really liked my topic but i had trouble getting a cohesive theme i could carry throughout. I had ideas in the beginning that i could not find evidence to back up, so i cut out that part of my paper entirely. I had to reorganize my paper many times before i could figure out how i wanted it laid out. I couldn't break up my topic into subtopics that together served one purpose. I went to the writing center twice for help with this and it definitely aided positively in the final outcome of m paper. From my original design plan, my second two paragraphs are about the same overall concept. My first paragraph completely changed. I luckily found a visual aid that helped me rethink one of my whole paragraphs. The information it gave me gave me ideas on what direction to take my paper. Im happy with the way it's organized now but im still not super happy with the way my overall paper turned out. I know that i could have made it sound better throughout if i had more time and was not interrupted by other projects. Hopefully, at the end of the semester ill be able to re edit this paper and make it exactly what i want. But my overall paper definitely improved immensely from where it started. I am still not super happy about how my paper sounds, or how cohesive it is. I also fixed some of my passive voice, i know i probably missed some. But i'm glad i learned about that and was able to apply it into my writing. Changing to active voice definitely made my paper sound more academic and professional. I learned a lot in writing this paper because the first ideas i had changed so much by the time i finished the paper. I was literally constantly altering how my paper was organized, or the overall theme so that i could end with exactly what i wanted. If i could redo this paper, i would try to find more time to do everything i wanted to to this paper, but unfortunately so many tests and projects, and i was not able to dedicate 100% of my time to this paper. I know if i had lots of extra time, this paper would've been amazing, which i guess goes without saying. But i certainly am proud of how well it came out while i balanced all my other class. Overall, im very proud of the final project and the message i educated upon. I taught myself a lot in writing this through the editing process and im very happy with my end product, despite its flaws.

Explanatory Synthesis Writing Process

Writing this paper has been extremely difficult for me. From coming up with a topic, to switching that topic, to trying to figure out how to organize that topic, to reworking it again. It took me up until the night before the first draft was due to figure out how exactly i wanted to organize my paper. I'm still not super happy with it either. Most of the time, after i find my sources and stuff, my paper just falls together but that's not happening here. For some reason I've had a lot of trouble with this papers coherence. But i love my topic and my sources, writing this paper has taught me so much and i just want my paper to do the same for others. I'm hoping at some point i can sit down and really think it through but i do not have the time during the week. I'm really exited about what we learned about passive voice because i never understood it before. But now that i understand the difference between active and passive voice i'm very excited to comb through this paper and fix it all. I think that will help with the coherence a little bit. I also know i'm going to apply the active voice in all my future papers because it sounds so much better and i can't wait to improve all of my papers. I just really like writing and i think this going to help me so much.