Model Senate
In this project, the senior class modeled the United States Senate. Each student was assigned to be a senator, committe chair, lobbyist, expert or party whip. I was given the position of Senator Bernie Sanders and represented a college debt lobbyist group. Our committees of college debt, climate change and immigration, each met in committee hearings to ammend and vote on their bills before moving to the full senate floor for final speeches and voting. This project greatly deepened our understanding of the US political system and gave us an opportunity to recreate the goings on in our country.
College Essay
Writing Goals
Goal 1- Developing theses and presenting them more clearly
Goal 2- Introducing and integrating more evidence with fluidity and seamlessness.
Goal 3- Increasing the variety of punctuation and sentence structure in my writing.
My first goal in writing this year is to work on developing clearer, better and more concise theses with which to build my papers. Although I have played around with creating good theses in the past, I feel that I do not fully understand how crucial they can be to creating a quality piece of writing. An example of where I could’ve used some work on my thesis is in my honors essay about cynical people. Although my essay made a fairly strong argument, I never came up with a specific thesis or thesis sentence. I feel that creating a strong thesis before I even started writing would’ve significantly strengthened my argument. In the future, I am going to strive to create a strong thesis based around the prompt in order to help structure the whole essay.
My second writing goal is to introduce and integrate my evidence with more fluidity. I feel that in the past, on numerous assignments, I have struggled to make my writing flow when I introduce quotes or give specific examples. In my honors essay on cynicism, I wrote
“After a 5 minute build up and presentation of his motion to create change, he concluded that it was overzealous and wouldn’t be watched. In the article “Cynicism, Irony and Politics,” it stated, “News media is a business driven by page views and advertising dollars, and often, the truth doesn’t sell very well.” If someone did take initiative to report news with the intention of helping our society, ceasing to skew the truth then this could have a positive effect on our society very positively.
The quote above includes the sentence leading up to the quote, the quote itself and the sentence following it. It can be noticed that the leading sentence has nothing to do with the quote. It is not to say that this quote was done incorrectly but simply that inserting a transitional phrase or sentence would increase the reader’s understanding and attention to the content of the quote.
My final goal is to vary the types of punctuation used in my writing. Since I feel very confident in my ability to structure sentences using periods and commas, I think it’s time to up my game. In my personal statement essay for the University of Washington, I managed to use just one semicolon and I’m not even sure if I used it correctly. The sentence in my essay said, “After three spins and one flip, I look to the finish area and land; making my last few turns of a first place run.” Because this semicolon does not join two complete sentences, I believe that it is incorrect. I tend to stick with the techniques that I know how to use well unless I think it’s necessary to figure out a different way to punctuate the sentence. It is my goal to become more fluent in the language of punctuation so as to vary my sentence structure to a greater degree. I also intend to research some strategies for fabricating sentences with complex punctuation. I hope that this will help with the fluidity of my writing as well as impress my teachers this year and throughout my college education.
College Essay Revision-
I grew as a writer in my college essay by recognizing my inability to clearly answer the prompt. Upon the conclusion of my first draft, I hadn’t even chosen a prompt and this was clearly a problem. Lori pointed this out to me and suggested that based on my content, I should choose to address the prompt about making a meaningful contribution to others. I added a sentence in the second paragraph that made a connection between my topic of skiing competitively and making a contribution to others. This sentence did help to address the prompt but besides that quick connection, I can see that as a whole, my essay lacks the direct objective of answering the question.
Goal 1- Developing theses and presenting them more clearly
Goal 2- Introducing and integrating more evidence with fluidity and seamlessness.
Goal 3- Increasing the variety of punctuation and sentence structure in my writing.
My first goal in writing this year is to work on developing clearer, better and more concise theses with which to build my papers. Although I have played around with creating good theses in the past, I feel that I do not fully understand how crucial they can be to creating a quality piece of writing. An example of where I could’ve used some work on my thesis is in my honors essay about cynical people. Although my essay made a fairly strong argument, I never came up with a specific thesis or thesis sentence. I feel that creating a strong thesis before I even started writing would’ve significantly strengthened my argument. In the future, I am going to strive to create a strong thesis based around the prompt in order to help structure the whole essay.
My second writing goal is to introduce and integrate my evidence with more fluidity. I feel that in the past, on numerous assignments, I have struggled to make my writing flow when I introduce quotes or give specific examples. In my honors essay on cynicism, I wrote
“After a 5 minute build up and presentation of his motion to create change, he concluded that it was overzealous and wouldn’t be watched. In the article “Cynicism, Irony and Politics,” it stated, “News media is a business driven by page views and advertising dollars, and often, the truth doesn’t sell very well.” If someone did take initiative to report news with the intention of helping our society, ceasing to skew the truth then this could have a positive effect on our society very positively.
The quote above includes the sentence leading up to the quote, the quote itself and the sentence following it. It can be noticed that the leading sentence has nothing to do with the quote. It is not to say that this quote was done incorrectly but simply that inserting a transitional phrase or sentence would increase the reader’s understanding and attention to the content of the quote.
My final goal is to vary the types of punctuation used in my writing. Since I feel very confident in my ability to structure sentences using periods and commas, I think it’s time to up my game. In my personal statement essay for the University of Washington, I managed to use just one semicolon and I’m not even sure if I used it correctly. The sentence in my essay said, “After three spins and one flip, I look to the finish area and land; making my last few turns of a first place run.” Because this semicolon does not join two complete sentences, I believe that it is incorrect. I tend to stick with the techniques that I know how to use well unless I think it’s necessary to figure out a different way to punctuate the sentence. It is my goal to become more fluent in the language of punctuation so as to vary my sentence structure to a greater degree. I also intend to research some strategies for fabricating sentences with complex punctuation. I hope that this will help with the fluidity of my writing as well as impress my teachers this year and throughout my college education.
College Essay Revision-
I grew as a writer in my college essay by recognizing my inability to clearly answer the prompt. Upon the conclusion of my first draft, I hadn’t even chosen a prompt and this was clearly a problem. Lori pointed this out to me and suggested that based on my content, I should choose to address the prompt about making a meaningful contribution to others. I added a sentence in the second paragraph that made a connection between my topic of skiing competitively and making a contribution to others. This sentence did help to address the prompt but besides that quick connection, I can see that as a whole, my essay lacks the direct objective of answering the question.