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Unit 1

Unit 1: Outline

1. Intro

a. Everyone needs help when they’re at their lowest in life, right?

b. talk about friends/family

c. I’m thankful for my support system who still supported me when I was down, put me back on the right track and helped me maintain my goals.

2. Body

a. At some point in your life, you might lose sight in your goals and ambitions , and that’s okay!

b. the importance of having friends/family to support you so you can find your footing again

c. without their guidance, I still may be lost, etc

3. Body

a. It’s important to find something that inspires you to keep going.

b. find something/someone that helps motivate you

c. use that as your inspiration to help mold yourself into a better person

4. Body

a. Once you find a goal that’s worthy of going for, the difficult part is staying on track.

b. friends can help push you to not lose sight of your goals

c. gain motivation by following/watching friends

5. Conclusion

a. Through my friends, I was able to get back on the right path when I was down, and they also helped me not lose sight of my goals once I got back on the right path.

b. Without my support system, I wouldn’t be where I am today and I am forever grateful for all my friends and family who helped push me to the person I’ve become today.

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Unit 1

Unit 1 Assignment

Through out my grade school years, I’ve never once really had to try very hard to do well in my classes. Whether it be english, math, or science, everything just made sense to me, and I never really had to try hard in any of these classes. If I had an exam, I’d just sit down, cruise through my notes for about 30 minutes the day prior, take my exam and get an guaranteed B+ at worst. I don’t want to make this seem like I’m bragging, but it lays down a background to where I’m coming from.

This changed when I took my AP Bio class. All the AP sciences were notorious for being very difficult. However, me being me, and having passed my general bio class with flying colors, didn’t expect the class to be very difficult at all. Boy, was I wrong. On the day before my first exam in that class, I did my usual routine of briefly skimming through my notes for a few minutes and got ready to sleep. On the day of the exam, I remember feeling good, and when I got the exam, my mind went blank. None of the materials I had studied for stuck in my head and all the questions were so much more detailed than I had expected. I’ve never finished an exam feeling this terribly before. When I got my results back, I was taken aback by the low exam score, even though I knew I had done very poorly on the exam.

I felt terrible but I thought maybe this exam was an exception, and I repeated the same thing for my next exam. As expected, I did poorly on this exam as well. I kept up the same thing up until the after the midterm. My overall average in the class was probably around the 60s, and it was then I finally realized that if I kept this up, I might fail the class and not receive credit. Starting then, my attitude in the class changed completely and I began to act like a proper student, studying nightly and slowly but steadily building up my knowledge in that class. I remember the night before my next exam, I actually felt prepared and didn’t have a feeling of impending doom from failure.

I took my exam the next day, and actually felt good after finishing the exam. When I received my grade and saw that I had passed with flying colors, I was so relieved. I remember feeling very proud of myself actually. This was the turning point of changing my studying habits. I kept up my efforts in the class and ended up doing well on my subsequent exams as well as passing the AP exam with a 4!

Categories
Process

Genre/Rhetorical Analysis/Mother Tongue

A “genre” majority of the students my age are very familiar are social media posts. I’m not sure if that would fall under the category of a genre, but it’s a pretty broad section of media that a large percentage of the population have been exposed to. The social media platform that I use the most is probably twitter. The one thing about twitter is its word limit. All the texts have to be under 250 letters, which leaves very few room for creativity. Because of this, the posts tend to be sweet and concise, and usually contain images and such as well. This generally is a good thing for the users, because people don’t scroll through social media to read massive walls of texts. People usually just scroll through the page mindlessly to gain quick bits of information. This also probably ties in with the medium that it’s used on. People use social media everywhere. no matter where they are. Whether it be on the go, or in public places, it’s a more fast paced form of medium compared to a newspaper, or a magazine or such where it’s more of a relaxed enjoyment type of activity. The target audience of social media is generally younger audiences. This is also reflected on the language and content of the posts. The content is usually based on problems and issues that individuals our generation goes through, such as school, relationships, family issues, and whatnot. All these elements combined help make twitter a successful form of medium that allow its users to effectively communicate ideas with one another.

The genre in “Mother Tongue” seems to be some kind of persuasive text. It seems like it could be something found in a book to help guide new college students about the choices they’ll be making for college. The personal anecdotes and all the explanations of the choices the author makes it seem much more personal and relatable for the readers to agree and go along with the message that the author wishes to convey.