Journal Entry for 9-16-2008

The assignment we had to do in our sketch book seemed like it would be very easy to do at first, because in class I seemed to have an easy time going through the pre writing, and coming up with tons of metaphors for cucumber seeds, but when it came to writing about a flashlight this past week, it seemed like my mind was drawing blanks. I think part of the problem is that once I left the classroom, that environment where I can think easily was gone, and all the other distractions that are present during the week and school year were back and so it wasn’t as simple as just coming up with the metaphors because I simply couldn’t focus well. The overall write up wasn’t as bad as the pre writing was, because by the time I wrote this I had already thought about it so much that a page came out without me hardly thinking about what I was writing. Eventually I needed to look down at my notes for help because I was getting stuck, but then I asked my roommate what did me and a flashlight have in common and he helped me out with some metaphors there. I was a little worried for the drawing part or the artistic part, I suppose it didn’t have to be drawing, but that was what I wanted to do. So I was worried about that because I’m not very confident in my drawing skills, and that took me a long time to get started because I kept wondering what it would look like when I finally sat down and worked on it. Eventually I decided what I wanted to draw and I got to work, and it turned out much better than I thought it would. All in all, it turned out to be harder than I thought it would be because it took me much longer than I imagined it would, however it wasn’t as bad or as much of a grueling process as I first envisioned it to be. I really did enjoy it, except when I was working on it at my girlfriend’s house and her dad was laughing about the flashlight, but then I reminded her that she hoped to be an education major and is applying for Berea for next fall, and she was like “yeah I know, it looks like I’ll enjoy that class cause that assignment looks fun.” I feel like when I grade myself that it’s not fair, because I like to give myself good grades. The reason though that I don’t feel guilty about my grades is because when I look at the rubric, I work towards the highest score, not the lowest ones, and where I’m giving myself the grade I usually work until I’ve either done my best, or I’ve done enough to deserve and get the grade that want to get on my projects. Instead of simply finishing it and calling it quits, I think grading myself causes me to want to do a better job, that way there is no question as to why I got a certain grade on a project, or why I graded myself a certain way. Is this maybe why you have us grading ourselves? It really makes me feel much more responsible for my work because of the self grading that we do. I think the journals might be getting easier now, because I’m doing a lot better job at just letting my thoughts flow out instead of thinking each word through. I think doing these journals helped a lot when it came to the assignment because I was used to writing for two pages, so when I looked down after I was finished I already had enough words so it wasn’t a problem at all to write over 750 words. In response some to my last journal entry, I do coach Bailey R, she’s one of our two girls on the team and she’s the faster of the pair. Again, I’m not entirely sure about the bullying act, but thank you that is what it’s called. I just don’t know how it works entirely, but all I keep hearing from my friends in high school, or the younger ones even is that you have to watch what you say or can’t play around and push one of your friends. I suppose it would be something good for me to do some research on since it is a new law that is involved in the field that I hope to go into, and now that I think about it it’s probably a great idea to do some research into that topic. One of the things that I put in my metaphors is that I hope I can be the kid of teacher that makes kids excited to come to class, and makes school fun, kind of like how moths are drawn to flames because of their light, I hope I can be that way as well since I’m a flashlight shining, and I think it’s pretty amazing that at this college so far I’ve come across many professors that make school fun and interesting enough to make me Want to come to class, not just have to.