Month: May 2019

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(Communist Manifesto Review)

I used the communist manifesto for nearly the entirety of its structure. I established a visual that compared the issue with what is causing it. Then continue on why and how the issue exists. The main reason being the separation of ‘classes’. If someone were to read the Communist Manifesto and then look at my peace, the similarities would be pretty blatant. My article, to me, feels a bit like a rewrite of the Manifesto on a much different topic. The language is similar, the structure is also similar. The humor might as well be the biggest difference, for one article was hired by communists to be used as a formal document, while the other speaks of the great injustice that video games can bring to gender, all be it in an extreme and unusual fashion. Another thing that I’ve realized the Manifesto influenced my writing in the fact I don’t plan on really using many drawn out and explained examples. I originally went into this project thinking “I’ll write how capitalist pigs are making money off of breasts and Male fantasy, yadda yadda yadda.” But now I feel that making the issue exaggerated and make a clear villain that has been abusing people for generations. Though I personally know the gaming industry has been getting better, and most women I speak with in the gaming community are ok with such fan service things, all be it because there are times where females get their own fan service from attractive guys in game as well. But who needs to hear that the situation is getting better when it’s easier to draw attention by exaggerating an issue by making a cause that inspires support. That’s the way Karl Marx wrote the Communist Manifesto and it’s how I plan to complete my project.

(Pixelated Thoughts)

Among the rubble of a destroyed city, a woman wearing a black military uniform, red armband, and black hair tied in a ponytail runs to take cover behind a pillar of high that has collapsed and now holds itself up from its own remains above her. Slinging her marksman rifle over her shoulder, she looks down the scope and watches a tall man made of metal, with a minigun fused onto its right arm, slowly march its way over to a man hiding behind another pillar 30 meters away with an assault rifle between him and the metallic man. Adjusting her view, the woman flicks off the safety and takes a deep breath as her finger lifts off of the trigger guard and onto the trigger right before…

Scenes like this are what filled my mind for several years of my life. The scene written above was taken from when I roleplayed online with people in a sandbox game called Garry’s Mod on a server themed around the Terminator universe. The event ended up with my character experiencing a near death experience after taking the attention of the terminator away from her teammate, where the terminator turned and fired its minigun in her direction with the bullets tearing through the concrete and through her ballistic plate vest. Even though there is such a story behind it with, what was to me, such vivid images, there was no animation from the models for all the things that happened. I along with two other people typed out sentence by sentence the actions that took place. Through watching how people structured their sentences, I slowly picked up the basics of grammar which are lessons that I take with me today because it just feels natural for me at this point. Garry’s Mod wasn’t the only game that I learned grammar through. I even started through a game called Warcraft III which came out in 2002, and then an expansion in 2004 called The Frozen Throne. After watching my brother do it a couple of times, I got an interest and tried it myself. Since I was only eight at the time, the things I learned showed in my ability to increase my ‘reading level’ throughout elementary school. I got to excel in writing assignments and my teachers always considered me a good reader, which I only have my experiences of roleplaying to thank.

It’s also amusing to me that during my years of roleplaying through video games online, the ones that often had mistakes in their grammar were the ones who tried to correct others. They often were disliked and given the term ‘Grammar Nazi’ to describe them. Most people never bothered with correcting someone, unless they were atrocious, so those who did it regularly were naturally disliked. The greatest fall of a grammar nazi was the moment they made a mistake and were called out for being full of shit. I naturally never paid attention to these things too much, but it was amusing to watch people argue out of character over the small things. These small things were exposed to me and I got to learn niches in grammar that I’m sure I would never use, however no such experience stands out to me after not interacting with roleplaying for years. With these years away from roleplaying though, I can proudly look back and see the other things I’ve learned from video games.

I’ve learned the composition of air by looking at filters on a space station, learned the geography of Europe slowly while establishing myself as a great power after starting as a lowly elector in the Holy Roman Empire in 1444, and so much more. Through a variety of games, I was able to be exposed to a variety of scenarios which taught me so many things. Video games can be a great way to learn things and it’s disappointing to me that so many people consider them a waste of time where nothing can be learned. Stating that video games bring out violent tendencies in people and are only harmful to children is a view that I can’t help but feel is ignorant. I can’t deny that video games often get people rowdy due to some people’s competitive nature, but to say that games only make people violent seems off when gamers are stereotypically shut ins, who are abnormally quiet when outside. I’ve seen people who could tell you facts about random parts of World War 2. If you wanted to know what tanks were reliable and which were a pile of junk, or the facts of battleships such as the Konigsburg or the St. Louis cruiser, there is a person who can tell you all about it depending on which gaming community that is explored. I personally view games as a great way to learn things, it just takes a little bit of searching past the most popular titles.

(P.S. Thanks for Everything Dr. Hall)

Haider Mahmood

English 1121

Dr. Carrie Hall

May 21, 2019

Improvement

How have I grown as a writer? The teachers always talking, you read long articles and have to write long essays! Who would love writing. At first I joined this English course because it was required. I was not even looking to improve I just wanted my college credit and wanted to get out. I’ve seen my professor Carrie Hall try so hard to get us to improve and I just couldn’t find the point. But because I see her dedication to get us to improve I started caring less about my grade and more on doing my part of the class which was trying.  I realized I wasn’t give this class my full attention and just kind of get out of a bad vibe. Knowing myself I knew I wasn’t going to enjoy this class because I just hate school in general. I hate the whole concept of school because it teaches you nothing about the real world. But this wasn’t any class, it was Carrie Halls.

The second we were both dedicated I wanted to figure out what was the point? I soon realized by writing , whether it was my journal , homework  or essays. My writing has changed because I’ve stopped looking at it as an assignment. When you are told to do something you just do it in school and never really ask yourself what’s the point of this. I feel like over this semester instead of writing this assignment for my professor I wrote it like I’ve been writing for my friends which made my essay more interesting to read and write.  I’ve changed my whole mentality of writing assignments from hating to write them to getting better to understand the concept of them, which was to entertain or show people a piece of how you think.

When writing and focusing on improving even with the help of you teacher you can’t really be good at everything. Although I started to love writing and getting to know how to write, I was good at things but I was also bad at things. The reason why I was so bad at essay is because I would go home and open my laptop and get stuck on the introduction. How do I even start an essay? I thought the point of the introduction is to tell people what you’re going to be talking about and so I would ask questions. Like if I was talking about hotdogs in my essay I would ask questions the reader would never know of the top of their head. For example do you know where hotdogs come from? I would think this is the type of things that would get the reader interested but honestly it just pissed them off. Until one day in class Dr.Carrie Hall makes us do an assignment where we think of a time in our life and write down our surroundings. With that information we create an intense scene which would get the reader hooked. One thing I’ve been really bad at is conclusion. I was told as a kid in conclusion just rewrite what you wrote about. I was so happy about that because when you get to the conclusion you just want to finish as fast as possible.

Now I no longer have a hatred for writing. In my free time I continue to write in my personal journal. No matter what it’s about, sometimes I write about my day. I write what I did in my day and what I wanted to do. I write about story’s that I make up from my head. For example I just created a story about a crazy race driver who does anything he can to win races. Writing has only made my life better because I can finally take my thoughts and write them on paper.  I used to write down my goals on how I can become a better person today and in years to come.  Most importantly writing has taught me to take risks. Writing in general was a risk for me because I was getting out of my comfort zone. I was writing my personal thoughts and didn’t know who would be reading it. Also I would ask questions that I wasn’t really confident in asking. Scared to be judged on the type of question I asked, whether someone would just say “ that’s a stupid question”. That one of my biggest fears when I comes to writing because it’s just a confident killer.

So this is me as a writer. I have improved myself in ways I couldn’t even imagine years ago. I’ve started to accept writing is a part of me just like brushing my teeth. Writing in my journal has helped me write my thought on paper easier because there a people who love to read your writings and support

Erik Yan

5-18-19

Eng 1121

Professor Hall

Over this semester I believe that I have improved on my writing. I think i’ve been able to write longer pieces than I ever could. In the past, writing more than 2 pages was considered a lot for me. I’ve noticed ever since like my first class of college, most of my written work was 2 pages or more. I kind of felt like it was kind of difficult to write a lot because I like to just say or present my point. My explanation for my point would be really brief with not much reasoning as to why I felt that way. I think throughout the semester I have noticed I sort of have been improving on explaining myself and my reasoning. I’ve been able to also explain my use of evidence a little better. I still need to work more on that but it is better than how I wrote in the beginning of the term. Having to explain more of why I agree to a certain thing helped to also extend my paper. I think my type of writing has remained more or less the same because the style of writing has been pretty similar throughout my pieces of work. The two pieces of work I have chosen both are written in a casual way. I find that it is more relatable when reading it which can help set up like a emotional connection. The two pieces I chose are the MTA Signal Memo and Gender Inequality in Video Games. I chose these two because I felt that my MTA Signal Memo was a “low stakes” homework assignment that made great use of a lot of evidence. I was able to gather evidence about MTA signal problems and I was able to explain why I picked the evidence I picked and what it all meant. This memo was basically kind of a mini essay in my opinion just without really an introduction and conclusion. I also chose my paper about women in video games because that was a subject of interest that coincided with the topic of my paper. I felt more invested in writing that paper because I was personally interested. This allowed me to write longer with more of an explanation of why I thought the way I did. I think something I can improve on is trying to explain what my evidence means in my own understanding of it. I basically mean explain why I picked it and how I have interpreted that evidence because no one else knows what I’m thinking but myself. I want to be able to properly write down my understanding of it so that someone else who picks up my paper and reads it, will understand what I am thinking about it.

My interest in writing has remained the same, which is only really writing when school requires it. I don’t find an interest in writing. I only do it because I need it for my classes. I find it much easier to just speak my ideas instead of writing it out. Plus since I would be having a discussion with someone on the topic, I can also get an immediate response or counter to my argument. Even though I do not write a lot outside of class, I still feel that I have had some type of improvement compared to previous written pieces. As I have said earlier about explaining my point more, In my “Gender inequality in Video Games” paper, I brought up evidence talking about the proportion of women compared to men working in a game related field. I explained how the evidence basically demonstrated that there was a disproportionate amount of males and females working in the video game field. I also recommend a solution to fix the issue of the disproportionate amount of women and and men working in the video game field. I recommended that companies should encourage more females so that more of them can join a video game related fields. Now looking back at it, I have noticed that I could have said “Video game companies can have free STEM programs which will help to encourage and maybe get more women interested in that subject”. If I said that I think it would be a little more convincing and help further support my claims. I did enjoy this semester’s writing assignments, I was basically allowed to write something that pertained to my interests.

Hend Elwahwah

Dr. Hall

Artist Statement

        Me as a writer… well, it did not start off so easy. Throughout high school, I most definitely did not know how to write. I never believed in myself to ever even try as much as I wanted to. Also, my High school teachers were doing a great job at belittling my writing. All I had ever learned from high school was, “Sound professional, use big words.” That is not ME writing, that is what my teachers wanted to hear. It didn’t make me comfortable in any way possible, at some point I just started putting big words together to try to make a sentence that would sound good. That was what lead me to grow a hatred for writing. I’ve always felt like it would be a drag every time a teacher assigned us an essay to get done. During the end of senior year in high school it was time to apply for college, all I could think about was mostly, English class. My teachers in high school had always belittled my writing abilities and skills, which left me at not believing in myself. I could remember how nerve wrecking it was just to think about college classes. All I was telling myself was, “what am I going to do in English class?” “I don’t know how to write” “My professor is probably going to think I am an idiot.”

        August 28th, 2018… college has started. First week of English class, we already got assigned an essay. At that moment, I lost it. I was afraid if I ended up with a terrible grade in the class because of my writing. I turned in the paper and got a C. That is terrible. Dr. Hall was my English professor and had told me to meet her in her office hours. I went to her office hour and she spoke to me and changed my thoughts about myself as a writer. She had told me, don’t use big words, stop trying to sound professional, sound like YOURSELF. . Speak like yourself, express your thoughts, ideas, and etc. I had started that class with a C, and ended up finishing the class with an A. At that moment I believed in myself. With the help of Dr. Hall I grew a love and passion for writing.

        Who am I as a writer? As a writer, I am myself. Not what others want me to be. What characterizes my writing would be the types of genres that I love to write in and that usually catch my eye. I love to write about my personal day to day life because you never know what the person reading my work is going through. It takes a lot to write about your personal life, but I feel like that is me as a writer. My writing has changed drastically over the years of schooling. As I mentioned high school did not help me a single bit. This is the end of my first year of college, and I genuinely feel like English 1101 and 1121 is what shaped me as a writer. Having a professor that always believed in you and always left positivity in the end of paper you submit, it makes you want to write more. It took me a while to find out who I am as a writer and what my strengths and weaknesses are. My strengths in writing would be placing the reader in my shoes, to look at the bigger picture of life, and to get deep. My goal is to always change the readers mindset to positivity and make them feel like they have a purpose. My weaknesses would be plenty. I still am growing  as a writer, and plan on working on my writing every time I have the chance too. One of my main weak points would be not knowing how to start an essay, analysis, a writing and not knowing how to end it. Also, grammar. I am in the process of learning on how to become a better writer, for myself.

       There are many examples of how I have overcome my weaknesses in my writing. I’ve learned in this class over the past semester on how to focus on my weakness. As I have mentioned my main weakness would be not knowing where to start and end an analysis, essay, etc. This semester I had wrote an essay that maybe isn’t the greatest to others but something I’m very proud of for believing in myself to overcome my weakness. Thanks to Dr. Halls technique of the classwork she made us do about what setting we were in, what are we thinking, what color is the room, what time is it that you’re writing this. It has helped me alot in learning how to start and end an essay. The essay was named, “Its Beauty In The Struggle.” The evidence of overcoming my weakness would be, “It was a winter morning in Brooklyn, New York around 6:30 A.M., sunrise hitting my window, I am all bundled up, drinking my hot chocolate, listening to music on shuffle, the song “Love Yourz” starts playing by J.Cole, aka the G.O.A.T, mind you this is my all time favorite song and I always listen to it. But for some reason that morning I stopped and thought to myself, “What is J.Cole’s message in this song? What is he trying to say?.” I started listening more towards the lyrics. I also watched the music video because it explains the song in a visual way. What J.Cole is trying to portray for the audience in this song is to always be thankful for what you have. Trying to achieve your dream gets many people caught up with trying to make your dream turn into reality.” (Beauty, 1) That right there proves to me I have overcome my weakness,  maybe not fully, but definitely better than I had ever expected. I seriously never knew how to start an essay or to even end one and for me to write all that and let me tell you I’m so proud of myself. 

     This is just the beginning of myself as a writer. To whoever reading this, you will get there and I promise you, you will make yourself proud. A major tip that I had learned in English 1121, focus on your weakness and try to get better for there. Always ask your professor for some feedback along the way. I mean hey, that’s what they’re there for! Always be kind to yourself as a writer, I’ve learned that the hard way that I wish I knew earlier. Everybody is different, and we all have our imperfections in things. Your writing may be terrible to you, but to others it may be amazing. A message from a person that was just in those shoes, BELIEVE IN YOURSELF!! You are you, and you are unique.