Reflection on Course

 Reflection

Yavapai College: Library

The skills I have learned in this class have been so many I am not sure where to even begin, I feel like my writing has improved over this semester in so many different ways. I was not sure in the beginning what was expected when we were being instructed to analyze the reading with little summary. I have always done summary so it was hard not to include summary. I am not sure how this will affect my future career, but it has helped with my other classes in the essays they have asked for, because I have given analysis instead of summary in my writing. The material we read, at first I thought “wow this is crazy stuff.” After research and digging deeper into the meaning of it I found the humor in it. I did enjoy “White Noise” best; it had drama, love and humor in it. I feel I have met the learning outcomes for the class by using organizational strategies; I would do an outline of what I wanted in my papers before I wrote them trying to get prepared for what I wanted to write in the paper. I feel that I did accomplish most of the learning outcomes in one way or another. Using the library to integrate information into the written papers, apply sentence structures, selecting and applying a voice. I think my writing process has changed because I read then re-read a few times. Then submit my paper to the online tutor, after that, I would do more revisions before submitting it. The challenges in this class have been writing a paper without using the World Wide Web. I thought on this last essay we were allowed to and I got marked down because apparently we were not. Overcoming this challenge was obviously difficult because I ended up using the internet to help me get through the final essay. I found this class to be a big challenge and had to seriously push myself to complete it. I thought many times about just dropping out of it, I am glad to be at the end. Learning how to do the blogger has been the most interesting part for me and I thought it was going to be the hardest.

 The link on the words under the picture Yavapai College: Library is to the library.

Something Useful

Something useful from Toni Shumway Paxton

Technology

Technology

I do online because it gives me the freedom to be with my family at night. I work a full time job during the day so it is hard to sit in classes. Although, it is coming down to where I will have to start taking a few of my classes in person and change my work schedule around. I am lucky that my work is willing to let me do this. Online learning takes discipline. Not that you don’t need discipline to go to class and stay on task, but doing online you are solely responsible for staying on track and looking at the assignment tab in blackboard. I feel there is a lot more personal responsibility involved. You need to have knowledge of technology in order to do the online programs as well. This English class has been more involved than any other classes I have taken online, but after I understood how to do the blog it wasn’t too bad. Some of my other classmates definitely made theirs look much nicer and better graphics were used, but I felt okay with how mine turned out.  The challenges to taking an English class online are probably not getting the input of your peers. Having peer review is helpful and in a classroom setting you would get more of that. I think the most beneficial technology was learning about how to link and add an image into my blog. I had never done this before and found it to be very interesting to learn. The technology I think I liked the most was probably adding a hyperlink to the assignments before submitting them, that is once I figured out what I was doing wrong, it didn’t take long but I thought that was great to be able to just click on the link to go right to the post. I will use this in the future as well. Learning the new tricks in technology is always fun to me.
The link I chose, attached to the title "Technology", is online vs campus. The difference between doing online and campus and the advantage and disadvantage. I thought it was kind of interesting.

By Everaldo Coelho and YellowIcon [LGPL (http://www.gnu.org/licenses/lgpl.html)], via Wikimedia Commons

Revisions

Revisions are Important

I find doing revisions is an important process. After my last post of my first sentence with thesis and people responded with what they thought about it and how things could improve I was very grateful and went back and think I made some improvements. I also submit my essays to the online tutor and make the corrections they suggest as well. I am not a very good writer and creativity does not come easy to me so my writings are usually quite boring. When I read some of my classmates writings I think how nice they sounds and wish I could be so creative with words. The benefits of revising is to improve, with the help of others. If you have someone look over what you have written they can tell you if it makes sense, or if you are using to much detail, even if you are using the correct words. Other peoples opinion is helpful in many ways.

The link I am attaching to my heading is interesting about why revisions are important, constructive criticism is an important element in offering the writer help.  

By Teetaweepo (My work based on: P_writing.svg) [<a href="http://www.gnu.org/copyleft/fdl.html">GFDL</a> or <a href="http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-sa/3.0/">CC-BY-SA-3.0</a>], <a href="http://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File%3AWriting.png">via Wikimedia Commons</a>

Tentative Thesis "White Noise"

All the Noise



By A.Savin (Own work)

Jack Gladney is the founder and chairman of Hitler studies at the College-on-the-Hill in a small town, Blacksmith. Jack married to Babette. He has four children from other marriages, and only two of Jack’s children live with him, Heinrich and Steffie. Babette has three children from previous marriages and only Denise and Wilder live with her. The family dynamic is different from what one would consider normal. Jack and Babette have an ongoing argument about who gets to die first because neither want to be left alone. Don DeLillo’s purpose for writing this story was met in many different ways. When DeLillo wrote about all the “noise” in the background: hidden in the announcements on tv, or in the cries of Wilder for several hours straight. The white noise was everywhere, including the supermarket. The noise is a significant theme throughout this tale.

 

The image reminds me of the supermarket that is referred to throughout the book. The link I have attached to my work cited below is "White Noise qoutes by Don DeLillo" I thought they were interesting.
DeLillo, Don. White Noise. New York: Penguin, 1998. Print.
 

Summary and Response to a Critical Article

Tom LeClair "Closing the Loop: White Noise"

Tom LeClair helps provide a better understanding of some meaning to “White Noise.” LeClair clarifies why he thinks Babette is so into watching and being near the children when he says “Babette thinks of the children… as protective charms” (396). Explaining the reason that she wants to keep them young, and the youngest child, Wilder, gives her the most pleasure.

During the evacuation process in part 2 Jack and Babette try to deny the threat, the “cloud” has. LeClair explains how Jack is exposed to the toxic cloud because he was trying to protect the children. LeClair fells that DeLillo increases his irony by “having Jack observe people who are not only prepared for disaster but seem to welcome it” (399).

In part 3, LeClair gives a better understanding of Murray Jay Siskind. LeClair speaks of Siskind character in another novel Amazon under the pseudonym Cleo Birdwell, but LeClair says that Siskind has a bigger role in “White Noise.” Murray is confident and influential over Jack; ultimately Siskind is the one who convinces Jack to kill “Mr. Gray.”

LeClair gives examples at the end of his writing of different types of white noise; he says it is a term for chaos. “What we hear as static may have meaning. DeLillo takes familiar sounds and turns them up, exaggerating them to give their ironic effect, and turns them down, finding in the lower frequencies a whisper of possibility” (411).

The feeling I got from reading Tom LeClair interpretation of “White Noise” was at first a sense of confusion. I felt as if there were too much information about other books that I had not read, nor was I going to read. Then finally he started analyzing what “White Noise” meant to him. Reading this gave me a slightly better understanding about some of the characters and what the story was about. LeClair gave a good summary about the book.

I am not sure how this will benefit me in writing my essay other than it gave me better insight into who the characters are and what they meant to the book.

DeLillo, Don. White Noise. New York: Penguin, 1998. Print.

LeClair, Tom. In the Loop: Don DeLillo and the Systems Novel. Urbana and Chicago: 

        University of Illinois Press, 1987.

RESPONSE TO WHITE NOISE

Murphy Karen, U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service

   

"Turmoil"

The blended family of six are living in a nice home near the College-on-the-Hill where Jack Gladney is the chairman of the department of Hitler studies. The family have a lot of thought about death and dieing and what will be the cause of their own demise.
Babette, Jack's wife, has a daughter named Denise and she likes to keep track of her mother and finds out that her mother is taking a medication that she is unable to figure out what it is named Dylar. Denise questioned Jack as to what Dylar was but he wasn't able to tell her either. Jack was not aware of Babette being on any medication by that name.
There was a train tanker that derailed and spilled a chemical called Nyodene D and Jack doesn't think that his family will be effected by the spill because they live in a nice neighborhood, but of course it does come their way and they have to evacuate. While they are evacuating Jack gets exposed to the Nyodene D for two and a half minutes while he is pumping gas and when they arrive at the safe location he has to talk with "SIMUVAC (Simulated evacuation)" (p 139) team and Jack learns that it can take 30 years before he could die from the exposure to the chemical. 
The link I added to the word turmoil above will take you to SparkNotes that gives an overview of the book and helped me understand better what this all was meaning. The picture made me think of the billowy cloud of chemical when the train derailed.

DeLillo, Don. White Noise. Penguin Books, 1985. Print.