In Freshman Composition Analysis

It is essential to understand that classes taken in grade school do not give students a full understanding of each subject. With the topic of writing, there will always be a new lesson to learn, an aspect to improve, or a differing way to explain. Author Craig Vetter states in Bonehead Writing, “This is your enemy: a perfectly empty sheet of paper. Nothing will ever happen here except what you make happen.” Each story, essay, or response comes from a writer’s experiences. With each attempt at a new piece comes an underlying story of emotions the writer is facing. Each person’s writing is unique and the ideas people have are related to their past experiences and what they believe to be familiar with when deciding which writing style to use. As a high school student, I have learned many things about writing that helped me become the improved writer I am today, but the most essential advice I have received is practice makes perfect. Although there is no actual perfect way of writing, I have discovered that each essay I write, my writing improves. It is easier to spot mistakes, find areas to improve, and ponder elevated word choice to use.

Football fans and even everyday people are the target audience for Buchman’s article. He points out his intended audience by saying, “[o]n Sundays, I’d feel either the joy of my team winning or the pain of their defeat.” Experiencing the triumphs and frustration of your team is a feeling any fan can relate to. Although everyday people are not as effected by the winning and losing they still care about people. No sane person wants to see other people get smacked around for sport. Buchman hopes his readers will stop denying the atrocities and shed light on the issues at hand by either protesting the NFL or holding them accountable for their actions. Buchman clearly illustrates these intentions with the quote, “[o]ver the past decade, though, football went from being a distraction from life’s harsh realities to a reminder of them.” With multiple cases of CTE occurring it suddenly becomes hard to deny the realness of the damage NFL players are experiencing. Knowing that your favorite

However, in 2013, the NFL and the NFLPA entered a dispute on how to allocate the $100 million. The NFLPA vetted several research proposals and invited the NFL to participate in the entire process, so they believed the NFL would comply with the research proposal they selected. The NFLPA decided to allocate the funds towards a 10 year Harvard initiative that would examine at least 1,000 retired players to use as long-term subjects on a wide range of health issues. The project aimed to discover approaches to diagnosing, treating and preventing injuries and in both active and retired players. However, the “joint contribution” would not pan out as the NFL refused to sign off on the grant. The two sides would eventually agree to allocate their $50 million funding towards separately selected medical research. The NFL has allocated most of its medical research funds to entities such as the National Institute of Health, the U.S. military and private companies. Examining the allocation of medical research funds from the NFL and examining how the NFL refused to allocate money towards the Harvard initiative, suggests the NFL is steering away from research specifically from the link between football and CTE. Although, the NFL is now addressing brain trauma as a health hazard for players and are trying to diagnose and mitigate the impact of brain injuries, the NFL is also not addressing the link between CTE and playing football, perhaps because the

This English Composition II class has educated me so much on how to write better, write in different formats, schedule my time better, and how to improve my writing. Learning more about all of these categories will help me in the future when I need to write other essays for future college classes that I will have. I am very happy that I took this class when I did, because of it I am more prepared for college this fall. I just hope my future professors are as funny and kind as Mr. Stout has been towards

Soon after Dr.Omalu’s paper was published another case of CTE gone wrong occurred, Terry Long. While the NFL denied any connect of the disease to the sport and the safety of their players, It was irrefutable that the fact that these athletes were dying and sustaining major injuries and the NFL was looking over it completely. In the end the NFL seemed to throw Dr.Omalus discovery to the wind, yet they have taken extra precautions since the discovery was made and gave a hefty settlement to Mike Webster’s

The blinds on the windows are shut, it feels like a prison cell as I sit under the spotlight. The darkness outside makes me feel somber and alone. I stare at the glowing screen and think to myself, “It’s just me and this paper.” In December of my junior year in high school, I was assigned a persuasive essay on Nathaniel Hawthorne’s novel, The Scarlet Letter; it was my first academic essay of the year. My previous experiences with academic writing were both stressful and unfulfilling; when the essay topic was announced, I felt only resentment and anger, I remembered my past tribulations. With my mother’s help, this essay was different; after I submitted it to the teacher, I possessed a new perspective on academic writing. From my experience, I learned that strong writing skills are vital to communication, critical thinking, and life outside of the classroom.

The NFL was recently caught hiding scientific information from not only the public, but its own players as well. This involved CTE scans done on former players. It is well known that football is a dangerous sport, but more current helmets protect against more types of head injuries. The problem is that players are able to get concussions even with them on. However players didn’t, until recently, know of the damage this could cause. Chronic traumatic encephalopathy, also known as CTE, is a disease that currently can not be diagnosed until after death, and it has shown up in many former NFL players’ brains. Yet, the information was not released for fear of how it would hurt the NFL. _______________________ There is no current way to treat CTE, but a company is working on a helmet to help prevent concussions. If concussions and head injuries can be prevented, then the number of people with CTE may decrease. But for many players, this help is too little too late, as they have already contracted this disease with no cure.

The fact that CTE was found in someone as young as Hernandez (27), is a commentary on the dangers high school and college athletes face. The degenerative disease did not have time to develop in Hernandez 3 years in the NFL. This disease began when he was playing football as a youth in school. This furthers the need for research and safety standards as many people who develop this disease will not be professional athletes. Their decision to play sports in school can have a profound impact on their entire life, and should not have their life goals limited because they chose to play sports as a child. The need for research and safety has roots in the life of all who play sports, not just professionals who may be most exposed to the risks.

Post-concussive syndrome can ultimately lead to diseases such as chronic traumatic encephalopathy (CTE). A CTE is a neurodegenerative disease associated with repetitive brain trauma and characterized pathologically by the accumulation of protein in specific areas of the brain (Abreu, Cromartie, & Spradley, 2016). In 2005, Bennet Omalu allowed Americans to become more aware of the term CTE after completing research on a professional national football league (NFL) player and releasing the study to the public. The issue of CTE in the NFL was not easy to uncover during this time due to the hiding and denying of test results ran on cadavers. This finding sparked a chain of events that ultimately forced the NFL to settle a class-action lawsuit from

On the evening of Thursday July 23, 2015 I conducted an interview of Alex Benavides- a senior mechanical engineering major at Oklahoma State University. Benavides describes his experiences in his english courses as enjoyable, and notes that it helped him become a better writer. Benavides also states, that from personal experience during summer internships, that there are ineffective writers in positions where clean, flowing, and proper writing is a necessity. Proper grammar is essential in professional writing situations, according to Benavides, and is also often the first area critiqued by professors and teaching assistants. “You only get out what you put in when you write”, says Benavides, “be serious and grind, it makes the difference”.

At 11:15 on Monday, August 17, 2015, my first official college class, English 1101, began. In general, I had no idea what college classes would be like let alone how college English would be. Even though this class taught me a great deal in one semester, it took a large amount of time and effort to make the adjustment from high school. The simplistic writing style of high school was put to rest the moment the first college English class began. As a result, I learned quickly that college writing is complex and less systematic than high school writing. Five paragraph essays with three strict body paragraphs were no longer the norm for writing. Even though my professor helped guide my writing, I was no longer coddled through the whole writing

Coming into the 3D program, I was none too excited about taking any general studies classes, including freshman composition. English class has always been the one class I have always had a disdain for. In high school, English was all about reading literature and being told to write several pages on a topic seemingly unrelated without any direction to guide us. Upon coming to Freshman Composition, I was pleasantly surprised to learn that the class was nothing like those classes. I feel as if I have learned many things and developed greatly as a writer throughout these last months shown in this portfolio. The main improvements of mine consist of my ability to manage time, my ability to structure paragraphs, and my ability to improve my papers through my own writing process.

Prior to entering class, I deemed myself a competent writer. However, I quickly discovered that my writing involved mediocre writing precepts. In contrast to the principles of scholarly discourse, my writing held the tenets of conversational writing and failed to meet academic standards. Furthermore, much of my poor writing was akin to a deep-rooted habit that I found humbling to admit and challenging to correct. Passive voice, unneeded words, long sentences, were a few of the obstacles that impeded my journey to effective writing. However, using peer reviews and an editing checklist I slowly began improving my skills as a competent writer. I also found that reading concerning writing provided supplementary methods to improve my skills as a scholarly writer. Implementing these innovative techniques, I slowly began to

For many high school students, the academic essay is an unforgiving monster that terrorizes their campus, a nightmarish beast that can rip the heart out of G.P.A.'s and dash all hopes for college admission. Yet, others tame this friend with ease, bending its cruel will to theirs as if it was nothing, as if they possessed a secret weapon. Well, guess what? They do! Successful essayists succeed because they are armed with the exact knowledge of what an essay is and how it is made; they know an essay is an organized group of paragraphs that strongly assert and vividly support a central idea. Further, they know the organization of an academic essay is as easy as one, two, three: the introduction, the body,

The expectations required from a college student in writing requires more critical thinking and more in depth compared to a junior high paper. Transitioning from a grade school to a college student in writing is very limited. Therefore, in order to understand the necessity of a true college essay, I would have to learn the importance of “providing specific methods and techniques to introducing, explaining, and integrating other voices with their own ideas” (Miles). In English 5A, professor Michael Maniquiz introduces the writer’s main purpose by utilizing class discussions to help identify the writer’s voice, thus that helps me as a student understand the writer’s purpose in order for myself to respond back to the text. In English 5A, the rational lists the order of expectations that will enable to offer many opportunities to gain valuable knowledge in academic writing. Entering the course I was prepared to use basic skills I have used in high school, but instead, I learned how powerful literature and language can be. Over the course the resource has helped embraced my academic writing.