UNE, Marine Biology 2025
I picked the second prompt from page 102
Her words leave me speechless. I’ve always been told to keep my mouth shut if I don’t have anything nice to say.
Looking into his eyes is like gazing up at the night sky. His thoughts, like the stars, are few and far between.
I could read her look a book. Her book was written in German. I don’t speak German.
His voice floated through the air like a clarinet. Whoever was playing really needed some clarinet lessons.
I can feel the wind on my skin.
The way it whips my hair around to lash into my face.
The way it sends chills down my spine and it seems to swirl up and around me.
Oranges and reds paint the clouds below me.
They swirl and move like a great fluffy sea underneath me.
I can feel his lungs expand beneath me.
A yell leaves my throat and is taken by the wind before I can hear it.
The beat of his wings next to me though is something I’ll never forget.
For a moment it’s like they’re my own wings.
Like we’re one.
My chest swells with something I’ve never felt before.
This is where I was meant to be.
Where I was born to be.
The music crescendos around me.
It crackles through the speakers.
I open my eyes and I’m back in my living room.
My mother is typing away on her computer at our dining room table.
Her keyboard fades into the melody filling the room.
I’m sitting on my worn green couch with a blanket wrapped around my legs.
I’m leaning so far forward I’m almost falling off.
I want to close my eyes and go back in to the movie.
I want to feel that crescendo in my chest again.
That’s where I was meant to be.
This is the picture I picked! It’s kind of blurry so I’d definitely recommend the movie(How to Train Your Dragon). The soundtrack on it is also so good.
The rain is harsh.
It lashes against my skin like fire.
It turns my skin red enough to match my raincoat.
The raincoat isn’t doing much.
Dark shapes seem to swirl below me in the water.
Nothing ever seems to form.
Simply blurred shadows that bob in and out of view.
I’d join them if the rope in my hands wasn’t so steady.
If the wind pulling it to and from didn’t cut my hands the way it has.
I turn to look behind me.
Behind the unnatural red hull of our boat.
I see dark shapes swirling behind me.
The rain gives way long enough to see.
The mast of a ship.
The sails are drawn in tight.
The dark wood makes it appear and disappear in the gloom.
The mast looms infinite overhead.
Before disappearing again.
The past always follows.
I can’t catch my breath.
My knees are tucked into my chest.
A brown bear dressed as a hufflepuff is crushed between my chest and legs.
He’s overworked.
His head is wet.
My face is wet.
I sit in silence.
The silence being broken only sometimes by my sobs.
I don’t want anyone to hear.
I want everyone to hear.
I want to call my friends and scream their names.
I want to erase this moment from my life.
I want them to reach out their hands and help.
I want them to rush to my rescue.
I won’t give them the option.
The only one to see me will be my little hufflepuff.
I know they’d help if I asked.
I know they’d make me feel better,
If I asked.
So why won’t I ask?
The air is cold on my bare arms.
A jacket would have been a good call this morning.
When the wind dies down the night is nice.
My chest is warm from earlier.
The laughs of my friends still ring in my ears.
I just dropped one of them off at her dorm.
For a moment I am alone.
Exposed outside.
There are no walls to protect my loneliness.
I like it this way.
I turn my face up the the sky.
For a moment i start walking sideways.
I feel like I’m going to fall over.
How hard would the ground hurt?
But before I can find out I stop walking.
I look up to the stars.
I feel their light on my face.
Each breath feels electric.
Almost as if they’re too much for my lungs.
The stars seem to be multiplying.
And suddenly I’m no longer alone.
I tilt my head to gace forwards again.
The rest of the walk to my dorm is swift.
I’m content to do it all over tomorrow.
I’d say campus life has definitely changed for me over the course of this semester. I was a transfer in this semester so when I was first on this campus it was quite a lot for me to take in. However now campus seems like a second home. My friends and I have all gone exploring around campus and I’ve found the places I like to be. I’ve learned a lot about campus and campus life since being here and I feel I’ve found my place. It’s not too different from my home town considering I’m only about four hours away so it’s nice to see some familiar plants and animals around campus. I definitely think when I get to see campus more alive during the fall semester I’ll be paying attention to all the new life I can see.
(Sentence-Level Error) – Control sentence-level error (grammar, punctuation, spelling)
Framing Statement – Learning how to put my own voice into my writing has made my writing much better.
Before English 110 as I’ve mentioned before I was not at all the best at integrating quotes. I also think I had a passive voice and struggled putting my own voice into writing I was turning in for a grade. I think I was in a strong place when it came to sentence structure and using commas, semicolons and vocabulary but I always believe someone’s writing strengthens overtime. One can never be too good at anything writing wise. I also said at the beginning of the year that I wanted to improve with spelling.
After English 110 I think I’ve gotten much better at integrating quotes into my writing. I also think I’ve gotten much better at putting my voice into my writing. I’ll reiterate that I think writing will always improve with practice so I’m sure my writing has improved in vocabulary and punctuation even if I can’t consciously recognize it. I would also say my spelling has gotten the smallest bit better. Typing on a computer is seeming to help me recognize words that are misspelled even when I’m spelling them so typing out papers like this has definitely been helping teach me how to spell larger words I still struggle with.
This article is to showcase the good side of social media and the fact that for many it can be an escape or a place where they feel welcome. I liked the way this article shows social media in a better light. Social media shows a lot of people perspectives they may have never considered. It can also be a safe haven for a lot of people who don’t have that safe space in real life. Yet this can also be a double edged sword with people who share the values the Westboro Baptist Church have.
sentences from essay 1
I could’ve inserted my own opinion here much better. This was after I had written a summary about Chen’s piece so adding my own voice and more in depth take would’ve been a great way to strengthen my argument.
There’s no need for us to walk through life despising the “mundane” or “routine” things simply because they’re not exciting enough; we need to make them exciting.
sentence from essay 2
I think this is a great example of me using comma alternatives and also showing how you can show a certain tone in a written sentence.
Word count – 299
(Document Work MLA) – Document their work using appropriate conventions (MLA)
Framing Statement – MLA format is very important considering I’ll probably need to use it for the rest of my college career at least.
Before English 110 I think I had a pretty good idea of how MLA worked. Although I had always been told that I needed to place author and page number like this, “ending of quote (Gardner 7).” So it was a little bit of a shock to hear author and page number is supposed to be, “ending of quote” (Gardner 7). It honestly makes more sense to me the second way so I don’t know how I never caught on but I could’ve sworn I knew how to do MLA before I got here.
After English 110 I clearly learned how to properly quote but other than that not too much has changed. I know how to format a Works Cited page and that hasn’t changed. But I’d say the practice doing it was nice considering I hadn’t done one in MLA format since high school.
Here is an example of a work’s cited page that I did:
Works cited
Chen, Adrian, et al. “Conversion via Twitter.” The New Yorker, The New Yorker, 16 Nov. 2015, https://www.newyorker.com/magazine/2015/11/23/conversion-via-twitter-westboro-baptist-church-megan-phelps-roper.
Laméris, Danusha, and Naomi Shihab Nye. “Poem: Small Kindnesses.” The New York Times, The New York Times, 19 Sept. 2019, https://www.nytimes.com/2019/09/19/magazine/poem-small-kindnesses.html.
Paterniti, Michael. “Eating Jack Hooker’s Cow.” Esquire, 22 Aug. 2020, https://www.esquire.com/news-politics/a24131/jack-hookers-cow-1197/.
Wallace, David Foster. “This Is Water .” Kenyon College’s 2005 Graduation . Kenyon College’s 2005 Graduation , 2005, Gambier, OH.
Works cited page for essay 3
Here is an example of me introducing and citing a quote:
Her whole poem could be summed up as, “Mostly, we don’t want to harm each other” (Laméris).
laméris quote from essay 3
Here is another example of me using a quote:
Paterniti explains how both Jack and Bout open their doors to anyone during a thunderstorm, “When guests come through the front door of the Astro Motel, Jack Hooker will hand them the keys to one of his rooms and welcome them. Whoever they are, they’ll sleep under the same roof as Jack Hooker tonight” (17).
Paterniti quote from essay 3
For this quote, because I say “Paterniti explains” I don’t need to restate his name in the parenthesis all I need to add is the page number in which the quote can be found on.
MLA format, and proper citation format in general, is extremely important to know as it’s likely we may need to cite sources later in life and being able to properly do so stops plagiarism.
Word count – 282
(Peer Review) – Be able to critique their own and others’ work by emphasizing global revision early in the writing process and local revision later in the process.
Framing Statement – Having my peers actually comment on the way I’m writing and my ideas is much helpful tool I didn’t know I needed. Hearing how other people feel about my work was extremely helpful to know how other people interpret my writing.
Before English 110 I didn’t look too kindly on peer review. To me it was always a waste of class time that I could’ve been using to finish my essay. I never thought of it as a useful tool because all we focused on was local revision and we never gave any actual advice to each other the most we’d do would be to fix each others grammar.
After English 110 I realized just how helpful peer review could be. This class was the first class in which peer review was an actually helpful tool to me. Instead of focusing on simple grammar and sentence structure we were told to focus on the bigger picture and the ideas behind the paragraphs. This was much more helpful as I actually got feedback that would help me structure and change my essay. On top of this this was the first time I was really able to give good feedback to my peers as I was able to focus on, not sentence structure but, the ideas behind their essays. Being able to give actually useable feedback to my peers was wonderful and a good learning experience as I finally felt like I was being helpful for them.
In doing this it’s also important to be able to offer good peer review to someone else’s work. It was great to practice peer reviewing on someone else’s paper as it helped me to revise my own paper later. It was good practice as with my own paper I acted as though it was someone else’s I was peer reviewing. Here are a few examples of comments I made on a peer’s essay 3!
Being able to review someone else’s work is extremely important especially if I end up going into a field where I am around people’s research papers and need to help edit them. This practice was extremely helpful to me considering this is the first time I’ve gone through a good peer review practice.
Word Count – 403
(Active Reading) Employ techniques of active reading, critical reading, and informal reading response for inquiry, learning, and thinking.
Framing Statement – Using the annotation techniques, specifically challenging what the author is telling me, has helped me understand texts on a deeper level.
Before English 110 I didn’t think annotations were all that important. In fact I thought annotations were unneeded for me. I understood that they were important to others but I thought I understood the text well enough to not need annotations. If I’m being honest, I retain enough knowledge on each text to get by in a class discussion of it but when it came to finding quotes to use later it tended to be a struggle; especially with longer pieces. So for a while if I did make any annotations if was simply highlighting things I thought would make good quotes and that was the extent of it.
After English 110 I’ve realized the importance of annotations. I decided I was going to try to annotate the texts we were being given (on top of the fact I assumed how well we annotated texts may end up being graded but it worked out for the best). I found that annotating not only showed me good quotes but it also made me pay more attention. Questioning the text got me thinking more deeply about it; as did making text to text connections between the texts. I found that challenging the texts either lead me to have a deeper understanding of it or gave me something else to talk about in class or in my essay. I don’t use every annotation type, however, the ones I have been utilizing have greatly helped me understand texts in a deeper and more meaningful way.
These are the two pictures of annotated texts I think are my best. I have a tendency to highlight without adding accompany text to my highlights these were the pages I thought had an appropriate amount of both.
A lot of my annotations may not be the most scholarly but a lot of the time they’re what I’m thinking and feeling in the moment so it’s helpful to look back and see exactly how I was feeling. It helped me a lot when picking quotes to see exactly what I thought when picking quotes I needed for my essays. It was especially good for these two pieces as I got into them emotionally.
When it comes to reading responses I picked my Chen reading response as once again I got emotionally into that piece and I ending up using an idea from that response in my last essay.
This is a great story about how hate being met with love and understanding can change a person’s mind. However I think we have to be careful when considering stories like this. It would’ve been very easy for another person from Phelps-Roper’s church to just dismiss these people with more hurtful comments. And it could be extremely damaging to someone to be called multiple slurs while trying to explain to someone why homophobia and anti-semitism is wrong. Stories like this are very heart warming and I’m glad Phelps-Roper had a turn of heart but I don’t want individuals to make their own mental health suffer trying to make hateful individuals less hateful because of things like this. Some people take the burden of educating others too much to heart and if the person is more hateful than Phelps-Roper and more dangerous something much worse could be an outcome.
Part of my chen reading response
I ending up using this idea as my naysayer response in my essay 3. While I still wholehearted believe this my essay 3 was about educating people. I had to mention this belief in my essay as it’s one I hold however I think people who cannot educate should sit and let others do so. I like the dichotomy I created by starting this semester with this reading response and ending the semester by writing an essay about education. I think it goes to show not everything is so black and white.
Word count – 534
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