Fourth Blog Post

Everyone listens to music, some perhaps more than others.  I absolutely love music...most every genre.  My first love is classic R&B and Motown music...it is what my mom listened to when I was a kid and I still thoroughly enjoy listening, especially to Sam Cooke.  I am a huge AC/DC fan.  My kids bought me an AC/DC mug for mother's day a couple of years ago.  My head starts banging anytime I hear "Highway to Hell" or "Thunderstruck".  I think Angus Young is the best damn guitarist in heavy metal.  I love rap...especially the stuff from my generation (after all hip hop really took off in the 80s when I was a teenager --I remember Will Smith as part of  DJ Jazzy Jeff and the Fresh Prince way before he was a movie star and Queen Latifah as a rapper before she  was a talk show host).  I am a huge Public Enemy fan (I still have the first cassette I bought of their Yo!Bum Rush the Show album) and I love Run D.M.C.  I clearly prefer East Coast rap. I also enjoy jazz music (in fact, I am listening to my Diana Krall station on Pandora right now).  Music not only makes our lives enjoyable; it makes our lives meaningful. 
I want you to select the top ten songs that represent your life, so don't just focus on what you are currently listening to, but also what you loved in the past.  Along with listing your life playlist, you will need to explain why you choose each song on this playlist (a detailed explanation...not a "just because I like it" explanation).

Third Blog Prompt

I want you to go back to Chapter One in Hjortshoj's The Transition to College Writing and reflect on the differences between High School and College that he examines.  I would like you to elaborate on two of the five "basic, categorical differences" (on pp 10-12) that he highlights by summarizing his ideas as well as adding your own experiences  and then add two original differences that he didn't mention but you have experienced. Be sure to elaborate on these two original ideas also.  (So you should have a total of four points of difference that you share with your reader.) Your audience is a high school senior.  You should write in epistolary format (like a letter).  As always, enjoy blogging!

Second Blog Prompt

The expression, "Write what you know" has been attributed to a few different authors (Twain and Faulkner to name a couple) but essentially it means a good writer writes that with which they are familiar.  Now that you have completed some research on Poe's life and read three of his short stories, I want you to consider how Poe's life most likely influenced his creative work.  
In a well written paragraph, use at least four specific examples (not all from the same story), to demonstrate how events and/or characters in Poe's' stories directly relate to biographical information you uncovered about Poe in your research.

Blogging Requirments and First Blog Prompt

Welcome to the blogging (web log) experience! You will be keeping a blog as part of Composition this spring semester. Your blogging requirements involve two components:
1. You need to post to your blog at least one entry each week. This entry needs to be one complete paragraph following standards of good grammar and punctuation. Generally, your weekly entry will be based on a writing prompt that I will post for you on the class blog; however, sometimes your post will be based on a topic of your own choosing.
2. You will need to also read and comment on at least two of your classmates' blogs each week as well. These comments need to address writing and style not content. You will be able to find a list at the right hand side of this class blog page that will link you to everyone's blog.

For your first blog today, I would like you to respond to the following prompt:
You wake up in jail and have no memory of how you got there. As you pace around the cell, you find five items in your pocket from the night before. As you look at each piece, the night slowly comes back to you. Write about your night, why you have these five items (and give a detailed description of each of these five items), and how you ended up in jail.

Have fun blogging!!