Welcome to the blog for Prof. John Talbird's English 101 class. The purpose of this site is two-fold: 1) to continue the conversations we start in class (or to start those conversations BEFORE we get to class) and 2) to practice our writing/reading on a weekly basis in an informal forum.

Friday, February 27, 2015

Critiquing assistance?

I've been really sick the past few days, and I missed the group critiques for assignment two. I'm posting some of my draft here; would a few of you critique it for me?  I'd appreciate it. 

" Since I was about eight or nine years old, I knew that I wanted to be a forensic scientist. Although at the time I wasn’t too familiar with that title; so I called them the “Law and Order people”, but I knew what I meant. All throughout middle school my focus shifted to and from all kinds of different careers, for silly reasons. By the end of the movie Go Figure I was certain that I would become a figure skater, but after some serious child-pondering, I found myself wanting to be a forensic scientist again. For a while, in seventh grade, I told people I wanted to be an interior designer so nobody would make fun of me for being a dork. My best friend wanted to be an interior designer, which is where I got the idea, but in truth; I found it to be the most uninteresting job that I'd ever  of. Though  I did so in secret, I still planned to  be a foensic scientist.

When I was in eleventh grade my chemistry teacher, Mr. Nicotri, tout a forensic science class for credit recovery. The class was part of a program in our school, called City Kids, that I  wasn't in. I don't remember how I found out about the class but I  remember going immediately to the woman every student  called, "the City Kids lady". I asked, and she made it pretty clear she had no intentions of letting me in the class. Not only was I not wasn't I in the program, but I didn't have any missing credits to
recover, which was the point of the class. Even still, I  kept asking for the class. She always said no and I  always kept asking. She even tried to change my mind by telling me it was an after school and Saturday class, but still I asked for it. Eventuality she told me she would put me in the class simply because I was the only person that had ever begged her for a Saturday class.

For the next six weeks I was the happiest kid ever. Even while trudging from mid-yonkers to Wall Street every Saturday morning.  I knew for sure then that I'd love a career as a forensic scientist, but that didn't stop m my mind from wondering.

Toward the end of senior year in high school I fell in love with writing. I  thought of becoming a writer for all of a few hours before I  realized that it was not for me.  The emotional state I needed to be in to produce a praise worthy piece of writing , wasn't one I wanted to  be in all the time. Thus, I decided my writing would be only a hobby, and yet again my attention had returned to  forensic science. "

Thanks  for reafing guys :)

7 comments:

  1. its a good essay... but theres a few errors over all this is really good! this kind of helped me... i liked it

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  2. i feel that pretty strong, nice and organized. since you have to say why you came to QCC and what step brought you here so now you can say something about this and i think it will be great!

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  3. Dear Dhanyi:
    I'm sorry you've been under the weather. Hope you feel better soon.

    Like your classmates, I like this draft. It's strongest in the second paragraph where you show how badly you wanted to be in the program, so badly that you nagged a teacher--for extra work! That's a really good detail and I think everyone will get how extraordinary this is. It's so extraordinary that I wonder if you should spend a bit more time on the before-City Kids-era. You say that you've wanted to be a FS since the age of 8 or 9. That's incredibly young to already know what you want to be. Many of us will recognize the other dreams--writer, figure skater, etc. But to still be thinking about this career so many years later is very interesting. You watched Law and Order at this age? That's a pretty adult show. Who did you watch it w/? Why did that show make such an impact? I'm sure you watched lots of other shows that didn't inspire future careers. I'd flesh this part out a little bit before you continue on.
    Hope this helps.
    best,

    jt

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  4. Thanks for the input everyone. It all helped a lot.

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