Writing and Reading in a Digital Age: An Introduction to College Writing for the 21st Century

To be honest I thought that it would be like last year…media exagerrating about a storm that didn’t really do any damage. It turned out I was unfortunately very wrong. During the storm I was sitting in my apartment in Queens  with my husband and my 3 month old baby boy. I got really scared when they showed Atlantic City and Jersey Shore totally under water. I didn’t expect it would be such a disastrous storm. We live in the part of Queens far from water so we weren’t flooded but the wind was so strong that I thought our windows would break. Thankfully they didn’t but there were many fallen trees on the streets and sidewalks. We didn’t have power for one day and internet/cable was down for few days. All that matter is that me and my family are safe because I know it’s not the case for so many poor people that lost their relatives and homes. 

During the storm i was holed up in my house.The lights flickered,and nobody left the house for two days.I am mostly alright,though the lost time is going to be bad for my college work.

I hope everybody else made it through safe and sound.

Dear Students,

I have been so impressed with the personal essays that you have written that I would like to figure out a way to allow you to share these with one another.  Do you think Open Lab is the place to do this?  Perhaps Google Docs would be a better place since you could then distribute the essay as a PDF.  If any of you have any thoughts regarding this idea and/or ways to share these essays, please let me know.

All best,

Prof. Rodgers

During hurricane sandy I was at home with my sister,  not much really happened to make it a bad experience. I didn’t lose any power, but my cable went out. Because i didn’t have any t.v. I just listen to music and studied for my midterms, and got A LOT of studying done. The only thing that was kind of bad was that i recently moved into my house and it took hurricane sandy for me to realized that most of the windows wasn’t installed properly. There was freezing air coming through basically all the windows so I had to turn the heat up very high to stay warm.

During the storm i was stuck at home bored.  I went outside a little bit before the storm hit to walk my dog and i knew that it was going to be serious! i spent majority of my time watching Netflix up until my wifi started to act up and stopped working.  Thats when i just went to sleep and woke up to the craziness.  The fact that MTA was messed up drove me crazy, i hate being home because of no transportation and then the no Gas situation was bad! My dad didnt have gas so i couldnt drive to New Jersey to see my little brother.  My overall expierence was horrible.

When  Hurricane  Sandy  struck  I  was  safe  at  home.  It  was  a  great  experience.  But  only  because  I  was  safe.  Nothing  alarming  happened  to  me.  My  lights  flickered  once  in  awhile,  but  that  is  no  big  deal.  The  only  lasting  effect  was  that  I  felt  my  house  shaking.  I  am  glad  that’s  all  that  happened.  I’m  glad  that  I  still  have  a  roof,  running  water,  and  electricity.  I  could  have  lived  without  electricity.  It  is  a  shame  that  so  much  people  were  forced  to  abandon  their  homes  and  return  to  see  it  as  just  a  pile  of  debris.  People  have  said  this  was  the  worst  storm  in  quite  awhile.  That  was  alarming.  A  storm  of  Sandy’s  caliber  hitting  a  place  such  as  New  York?  That  I  felt  was  catastrophic.

when the storm was taking place on monday i was safely at home with my mom. i live in the bronx in a place where thankfully nothing really bad happened. i felt very scared and nervous about what would happen, i was thinking about if the huge tree that is on back of my building would fall with the big, fast wind that was going on. thankfully nothing happened to none of my family. i felt bad for the people that lost it all, my mom works in the lower east side in manhattan and she couldn’t go to work for 1 week because the power went off and the trains weren’t working. she lost a week of pay and now she has to work more to be able to get the money to pay all the bills for this month. i hope this horrible event never take place again, and for those people that lost their love ones i’m sorry for you lost and god bless them all.

I wont be writing too much because i touched on this topic while writing learning journal. During the hurricane i was safe at home. Thankfully, there were no personal casualties. The strong wind was a sight to see and feel . There’s something about natural disasters that catches my attention. So for a short time i went outside to feel the Strong winds (nothing too risky or daring). I enjoyed watching the cable wires swing back and forth by the force of the powerful breeze. I hope everyone remained safe as I was.

My condolences goes out to ALL the victims and  their loved ones.

Dear Students,

I’ve compiled some readings on the recent storm, as well as some really interesting NYC and NYState reports on Climate Change.  They are below.

NYC and Climate Change Readings
Prepared by Johannah Rodgers for NYCCT/CUNY
Updated November 4, 2012

Reports/White Papers

Union of Concerned Scientists:  Confronting Climate Change in the Northeast

MTA Report on Climate Change

Vision 2020: NYC Comprehensive Waterfront Plan
(Chapter 3 of report deals specifically with Climate Change)

Some Recent Articles on How to Rebuild
http://www.nytimes.com/2012/11/04/nyregion/after-getting-back-to-normal-the-big-job-is-to-face-a-new-reality.html?hp&_r=0

Some Recent Articles on the Storm

http://www.nybooks.com/blogs/nyrblog/2012/nov/01/hurricane-sandy-warning-science/

http://www.theatlantic.com/technology/archive/2012/10/the-article-that-predicted-the-new-york-subway-storm-surge-problem/264199/#
http://www.bloomberg.com/news/2012-11-02/listening-to-hurricane-sandy-climate-change-is-here.html?cmpid=otbrn.sustain.story

Some Recent Editorials

http://www.guardian.co.uk/commentisfree/2012/sep/17/climate-change-arctic-melts-editorial

http://www.usatoday.com/story/opinion/2012/10/30/sandy-climate-change-politics/1670073/

http://www.washingtonpost.com/opinions/eugene-robinson-will-hurricane-sandy-be-our-wake-up-call/2012/11/01/eb50acd6-2447-11e2-ac85-e669876c6a24_story.html

http://www.washingtonpost.com/opinions/what-comes-next-after-sandy/2012/10/31/e69d23ac-239f-11e2-ba29-238a6ac36a08_story.html

What You Can Do About Climate Change
http://www.greenpeace.org.uk/what-you-can-do

http://www.nature.org/ourinitiatives/urgentissues/global-warming-climate-change/help/tips-from-a-nature-conservancy-scientist.xml

my experince with sandy was annoying. i had to spend it with daddy and his new family. sure i had fun but i dont like to be bullied into eating. i just dont like it when pepole force ne to eat something., im an adult im perfectly capable of getting food. i dont mean ti sound selfish and a brat but thats just ibe of my pet peves. the internet sucked, it was sooooo slowww i gave up and just slept the whole day. when cuny sent me the email saying that classess will resume on friday, i was soooo happy. i told daddy about it and he took it upon himself to forbid me to go because the mayor said no school. ……..yea whatever dad. i would say more but this paragragh has to be short and trust me i can write an essay.