Zianni's English Blog

 Food helps individuals und who they are because of the comfort that comes with the said food. The feeling of everything being ok given this is the cultural food you’d been eating for years. When the speaker of the TED talk was expressing how embarrassed he feel to enjoy his cultural food at school because others would judge, he quickly realized his food is what makes him who he is. He realized that just because it may be different doesn't mean its bad and he began to embrace it. 

 When I was younger, I used to go visit my Panamanian grandparents in Virginia a lot. During these times, my grandmother would talk to me in Spanish as much as she can and introduced me to the recipes to some meals. This specific meal was a Spanish dish called Elotes. She taught me all the steps, tips, and tricks to fulfill the making of this dish. Today, I make this dish often and always look back on this memory. This experienced showed me how important it is to spend time with family, and spotlight your culture as much as possible for an understanding of who you are and what/where you come from. 

 Doing all the steps to write my essay was very beneficial for me. Having everything already planned out and evidence written down helped make the process of writing faster and easier. Not only was it faster, but continuously being able to type the essay without many pauses because of my previous planning, boosted my confidence in my abilities. I know see that in the future I should always make an evidence chart and plan out my thesis statement before actually writing. 

 Drafting is an essential step in writing an essay because it not only helps you stay organized, but allows you to analyze your writing and see what you need to fix. I had a field trip the day the class drafted their essay, but making a cluster truly did help me complete the essay faster and focus on making the essay good.  Though I think making a cluster is time consuming, I see it truly does help in the end. 

 When writing an essay, I struggle the most with commentary. After finding the evidence I can usually explain the evidence in one sentence. So to have to write three sentences of commentary was the most difficult. In an essay I feel most confident about the concluding sentences for each paragraph and the concluding paragraph. I feel I'm good a summing things up and finding lessons and meanings in things. I plan to expand my mind more when it comes to commentary. 

Im currently only interested in one college which is Georgia state but before then my top three colleges were Georgia State University, Clark Atlanta , and Kennesaw state. After further research, Clark and Kennesaw got dropped from this list. For Clark, I read they force you to stay on campus the first year and I had no plans of doing that. For Kennesaw, they are just too far away from the city for me and I like to be mobile. Georgia State does not require me to live on campus first year, they are not too pricey, its in downtown Atlanta , and everyone has a good time.

 I think my strongest idea was Cheryls drug use and how it was a form of self destruction and identity searching. Though Cheryls drug use was a main key in her adventure , I believe actually discussing that self destruction and how though we know drugs are bad , it made Cheryl who she is today. Everything happens for a reason and I just thought this would be a great yet personal topic to right about in my essay. 

 I learned that when planning a gap year its very easy to lose focus and to be 100% sure your going to be responsible and go to school. This is important because one it really tests your maturity and two this is crucial regarding time and what you could be doing. I personally wouldn't take a gap year because though I'm responsible life still happens, in a sense I'm having too much fun I may neglect /dread school.

 After reviewing my writing i did notice i could fix some things up. For starters, i failed to add the page number after my quotes so i fixed that. I also notice using transitions words like, “this shows” is a little boring. To fix this problem, i googled transition words and phrases and found a better phrase for each transition. 

 Its important to write an essay in your own words for one because its unlawful if not. As well as the fact of just not using your creativity. The more and more you exercise your brian the stronger it gets. If your so busy exercising someone else’s brain you may find yourself in a hole of defeat. There is also something about that feeling after finally completing an essay that came all from you. 

 The most challenging part of the paragraph for me was thinking of three reasons my quotes were valid. I think this was because sometimes i can be a procrastinator and the valid reasons i have i may overthink. I find it more difficult it create an arguable claim simply because your not going off of a set claim to back your going off of opinions and inner thoughts. 

 While writing an essay I think my most challenging part is finding sub categories that stick to the plot. My personal strengths is being sophisticated and writing good introductions and conclusions. I would like to be better at using graphic organizer to help organize my work. Most of the time i skip the graphic organizer but one specific time i skipped it and forgot the ideas i wanted to write. I had to find a completely new subject in which took longer than if i just stayed organized to begin with.