today in class.

Liz was right, a lot of baggage is brought to this class. ......Harvey's "guinea-pig" revision experience was awesome~~!!!!!
I noticed that we all got more descriptive and constructive responses when we talked together.
HArvey said that my comment really helped him. But I think i needed other people to talk so that they could spark my thoughts. In our text, Writing @ RRCC, I learned that writing usually begins with a reaction to something. Reguardless of that something being an experience, a piece of writing, etc., it begins with a reaction and not just a mere thought. I think I read somewhere that it is also a philosophy that everything is a reaction to something....but without diving into that, I just want to say that it is much easier to write when you are thinking about something that happened/ reacting to somethign that happened, whether you read about or experiencced it. Today, hearing other people helped me to pinpoint exactly what I wanted to say by opposing or supporting others.
When I read out loud, I actually started crying. I was afraid that I would start crying because listening to others read made me feel sad because it related to what I wrote in a big way. So, since I was the last one to read, I started crying. It was very emotional for me. Reading it out loud was much more than writing it, reading it, or summarizing it to anyone else. And it felt so blank when i read it aloud. I felt like I longed to be alone when I wrote it and reading it aloud made me very vulnerable. It wasn't as heart-felt as I thought it was when I wrote it. And like Liz said, it makes much more sense to me than it does to my audience. I think the hardest part of this piece is that it is so personal and explaining it breaks it down more for me when I put EVERYTHING into simplifying the concepts therein. However, someone once told me that you don't really know anything until you can teach it to someone else. Emotionally, this is hard for me because I don't want to look back on the decisions I made, I don't want to do that at all because that was part of the paper, was not looking back. Part of the paper was also my fear of ending up somewhere I don't want to be. So, maybe this is a blessing is disguise then...hahaha! I can re-evaluate the decision I have so intricately documented, and now, for all to read..and examine. I also think I am showing "inertia," which, by the way, means the ability to resist gravity, to revise this because it is my own thoughts. Thus it is hard to tell myself I need to change, because this paper was the biggest decision that I've ever made. However, this class and doing what I am doing in this class is my dream and my experiences in my paper are all things that I did for this class, this semester.
I am having some trouble being able to revise for people right when I hear their writing. And reading it aloud makes all the difference in the world. I think, in fact, it's better than reading it in the silence of your brain. So, I want to read it aloud a few times, or have someone else do it for me, while I write my notes, and I want to compile stages of notes to later synthesize. I feel like I have to do sooooooooo much stuff to get this stuff out on the table, let alone do it.
I am confident that I will have a lot of writing to use on portfolio 1. I can't wait to discuss what the standards will be. And I cannot wait to hand it to Liz. I think that we need a lot of work done before then and now and we need to utilize our connections through the internet to help eachother.

....So, for class, my first suggestion as to what I want the teacher to grade us on is this: That, as students we let others examine our work and incorporated their suggestions in ways that made our writing retain our identity, but we expanded our horizons and at least LISTENED to what others had to say. I am not saying that we need to do what others suggest to get a good grade, but rather we listened and revised our papers in one way or another to make it understandable to others by gaining feedback from our audience. We utilized the feedback from who we are writing for. WE do not write in this class for ourselves; we write so we can present a piece to others. Look at it this way, musicians that think it is just a matter of time before they are famous and that their audience is graced with their presence only play music for the money, for the girls, and for the fame. And I don't go to concerts to give anyone money, I go to concerts for humanity, to feel love graciously given to me by an artist and I give back. I write so that others can feel it too, and so that they can realize that they're not alone in feeling hopeless. I love humanity and I want to help everyone and I think love is the best way to get that across. I believe that if you try and try and try and try and try, eventually some light will come out of your darkness. I think one of the standards for our class is that we change our writing for the purpose of clarity to our audience and that we revise after hearing sugestions, but not emulating someone else's style and we acticely read our writing and help others.