just ADverb: ONLY, SIMPLY + katie (kAY-tee) meaning: "pure"
Just a little about me... Hi everyone! My name is Katie. Just Katie. I am 30 years old, a mother to two wonderful boys Allen Jr. (11) and Uriah (2), and a bonus son Cameron (22). I have been with my partner JR for almost four years, creating a beautiful blended family. I love to be outside in nature, I collect fossils with my sons, and we enjoy fishing, canoeing, camping, and exploring. I also love to cook! I like to make southern comfort food and Jamaican-inspired dishes but with a twist. I am a high school dropout, and after 15 years of being out of school, I decided to go on this journey to create a better life for myself and my family. I hope to set an example for my boys that it is never too late to achieve your goals, that the possibilities are endless, and that dreams have no expiration date.
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Just a little about what you'll find here...
I honestly do not enjoy academic writing; however, I realize the importance of acquiring these skills. I have a pretty severe case of anxiety, which intensifies my fear of failure. That combination leads to an insane amount of overthinking. I literally overthink every aspect of every assignment, even now writing this. So academic writing + anxiety = nervous breakdown. However, I was able to complete my tasks.
I am sharing a few essays I wrote in English 1201; each serves a purpose in helping improve writing technique and the processes you use to get your claim across. One of the works I shared is a research essay, one of the biggest challenges I have faced in this class. I changed my topic a few times after each minor assignment used to help prepare us for the final research essay. I found that my topic was too broad, so I narrowed it down. Again, it was too general, so I narrowed it even further, finally coming up with: How Do Mental Health Social Workers Make an Impact? While writing this essay, I found processes I need to improve, like forming a detailed outline. I failed to do this correctly, making writing it more complicated. I did well in the more personalized areas of the essay; I mean, writing about your own experience is easier than the technical stuff.
Overall, I am okay with how it turned out, though I'm more proud that I actually completed it rather than its content. If I could do it differently, I would have changed my topic to something more researchable. I chose the topic of social work because I have been impacted by social workers throughout my life. A fun fact is it's my major as well. But I really wanted to get to the bottom of how social workers change lives, and then the research essay was born.
I also included a Literature Review whose purpose is to summarize a few credible sources that you would use in the research essay. It helps to give you an idea of how to format the paper and the direction you will take in writing it. Remember I mentioned going a few rounds with the topic? Well, my literature review was one of those rounds. I kept the original review to serve as an example of how your paper can transform through revisions, exercises on writing, and research findings. You'll see that only two sources from the review were used in the final essay, as well as a topic change and the way I used the information.
Next, I shared a Rhetorical Analysis of a Visual Text or an in-depth breakdown of the visual aspects of two music videos of the same song and how those visuals make a claim and use appeals. Sounds simple, right, well not really, at least for me. I struggled with conveying my message and the details in smaller, more concise sentences and paragraphs. I can ramble in my writings; I worry about not having enough detail or excluding something important. So my approach in this was to read the lyrics with the music, without the music, then watch the video, then watch it again, and again take notes, reread the verses and take notes. You get the point, and I will never listen to those songs ever again. With using that information, I was able to form a pretty decent essay. I would probably choose a different song if I could do it again. I was satisfied with some of the detailed descriptions I was able to explain and unsatisfied with my ability to detail the videos' claims.
JUST SOME REFLECTION...
Looking back through all the writings I have done in this class, I feel like now I have a better understanding of writing various types of essays. I have also learned how to target different audiences, discern what audiences are targeted in someone else's writing, and how to use rhetorical appeals to draw in readers and get their attention. The most helpful learning tool in this class was the discussion boards. Not only did it give you an audience and purpose in writing your paper, but also feedback from peers was really helpful in revising your work. And because I'm a cornball, the thing that impacted me the most was the times I commented on other students' work; being able to encourage them or hopefully help was really rewarding. I cannot honestly say whether I have improved in my writing over the course, but I know I have gained skills that will help me.
I am most proud of my work in the Critical Reading Discussion Forum. I say this because it involved writing a discussion post based on an article we read, then completing learning activities, and finally rereading the same article and posting again about it to see how you read and understood it differently. I liked how I could see the vast difference in comprehending the article's message; I was able to dive deep into the text and actually understand it. Overall I am just grateful to have gained some skills, learned more about what I like to write (and don't like), and finished in a better place than where I started.
Through this course, I was slowly becoming more motivated to write a poem which I used to love doing. I finally wrote my first poem in years. It was about my Mom, who passed away 3 years ago. When deciding whether to share it or not, I decided it was something I wasn't ready for the world to see. So I was writing a letter to my younger self, and it just turned into a poem. The great thing about writing is the release it brings to your heart, so I am putting myself out there and sharing my letter poem here. The theme to JUST KATIE is learning from your mistakes and expanding your skills, with the goal of improving your future.
I am sharing a few essays I wrote in English 1201; each serves a purpose in helping improve writing technique and the processes you use to get your claim across. One of the works I shared is a research essay, one of the biggest challenges I have faced in this class. I changed my topic a few times after each minor assignment used to help prepare us for the final research essay. I found that my topic was too broad, so I narrowed it down. Again, it was too general, so I narrowed it even further, finally coming up with: How Do Mental Health Social Workers Make an Impact? While writing this essay, I found processes I need to improve, like forming a detailed outline. I failed to do this correctly, making writing it more complicated. I did well in the more personalized areas of the essay; I mean, writing about your own experience is easier than the technical stuff.
Overall, I am okay with how it turned out, though I'm more proud that I actually completed it rather than its content. If I could do it differently, I would have changed my topic to something more researchable. I chose the topic of social work because I have been impacted by social workers throughout my life. A fun fact is it's my major as well. But I really wanted to get to the bottom of how social workers change lives, and then the research essay was born.
I also included a Literature Review whose purpose is to summarize a few credible sources that you would use in the research essay. It helps to give you an idea of how to format the paper and the direction you will take in writing it. Remember I mentioned going a few rounds with the topic? Well, my literature review was one of those rounds. I kept the original review to serve as an example of how your paper can transform through revisions, exercises on writing, and research findings. You'll see that only two sources from the review were used in the final essay, as well as a topic change and the way I used the information.
Next, I shared a Rhetorical Analysis of a Visual Text or an in-depth breakdown of the visual aspects of two music videos of the same song and how those visuals make a claim and use appeals. Sounds simple, right, well not really, at least for me. I struggled with conveying my message and the details in smaller, more concise sentences and paragraphs. I can ramble in my writings; I worry about not having enough detail or excluding something important. So my approach in this was to read the lyrics with the music, without the music, then watch the video, then watch it again, and again take notes, reread the verses and take notes. You get the point, and I will never listen to those songs ever again. With using that information, I was able to form a pretty decent essay. I would probably choose a different song if I could do it again. I was satisfied with some of the detailed descriptions I was able to explain and unsatisfied with my ability to detail the videos' claims.
JUST SOME REFLECTION...
Looking back through all the writings I have done in this class, I feel like now I have a better understanding of writing various types of essays. I have also learned how to target different audiences, discern what audiences are targeted in someone else's writing, and how to use rhetorical appeals to draw in readers and get their attention. The most helpful learning tool in this class was the discussion boards. Not only did it give you an audience and purpose in writing your paper, but also feedback from peers was really helpful in revising your work. And because I'm a cornball, the thing that impacted me the most was the times I commented on other students' work; being able to encourage them or hopefully help was really rewarding. I cannot honestly say whether I have improved in my writing over the course, but I know I have gained skills that will help me.
I am most proud of my work in the Critical Reading Discussion Forum. I say this because it involved writing a discussion post based on an article we read, then completing learning activities, and finally rereading the same article and posting again about it to see how you read and understood it differently. I liked how I could see the vast difference in comprehending the article's message; I was able to dive deep into the text and actually understand it. Overall I am just grateful to have gained some skills, learned more about what I like to write (and don't like), and finished in a better place than where I started.
Through this course, I was slowly becoming more motivated to write a poem which I used to love doing. I finally wrote my first poem in years. It was about my Mom, who passed away 3 years ago. When deciding whether to share it or not, I decided it was something I wasn't ready for the world to see. So I was writing a letter to my younger self, and it just turned into a poem. The great thing about writing is the release it brings to your heart, so I am putting myself out there and sharing my letter poem here. The theme to JUST KATIE is learning from your mistakes and expanding your skills, with the goal of improving your future.