When You Can See Your Final Grades

I will have final grade information posted to the Splatter “Check My Grade” area by 6pm Friday, May 18. This is a few hours later that I originally said, but patience is a virtue, eh? The portfolios themselves will be available before then by noon–in D108–if you’d like to pick them up, but the grade info won’t be available until the early evening. Thanks again for a great semester.

Swanson, Troy. “Mash It Up…Gracefully Using Sources”, (Why White Rice?) Thinking through writing,Dubuque, IA, Kendall Hunt, pages 163-173, Print

DeVillez, Eric R. “Write That Down!” Why White Rice?: Thinking through Writing. Dubuque, IA: Kendall Hunt Pub., 2010. 98. Print.

I thought back on my previous experience in service learning because many were social issues. I have volunteered to walk in the Breast Cancer walk in down town Chicago when I was a freshman in high school at the Chicago High School for Agriculture Sciences. This was a great event to attend because I felt I was showing all the people with Cancer in the world that I care and I believe I donated my legs for an eight hour walk to show how much I care. I went with a small group from our school and some of the students that attended were handicap and I assisted them greatly. I would push their wheelchairs around and help with any other assistance they needed. I really enjoyed helping in this event and wish to do it again soon. I have also volunteered at the Oak Lawn Community High School my junior year in a Baseball clinic for young baseball players. I helped show them how to hit a baseball the correct way and really enjoyed teaching them. Whenever I have a chance to show a young person how to place baseball I makes feel I am doing a good deed and it reminds me of my myself because I have been playing since I was four years old. Before we could even start there were many technical difficulties. Each and every one of our group members tried to contact the Animal Welfare League but never received a call back. This was a major downfall as a group because it delayed more of our time to being able to type this paper from an experience in the project view. The final portfolio was a great chance for me to show my overall experience in life on service learning. I felt great going about completing the Live, kill, die project, service/activists guide to an issue, Letter to the Editor, A Critical Reflection of Service, A Story of service, and Beginning and end we all were required to complete. I have read feedback on my writing from multiple people and asked the professor questions whenever I have some. I understand all the readings of the course and maintain the schedule well. I also connect the drafts to the major readings. If I don’t understand something I ask multiple people. I believe we will all learn well from these experiences and have enjoyed giving a helping hand to others through the peer reviews. When we all first met in class and got to know a little bit about each other through playing the yarn game, many of us said we love to help others. The story of service project has given me the opportunity to do so in such a way that we can be graded for it. This has been the most convenient way for everyone to be able to pass and I believe it will boost my grade drastically. Life has many challenges and we just have to make the best of it. I greatly enjoyed this experience and I will be more than happy to come back and help again. Everyone at the facility greeted me with a warm welcoming and they were very kind. The Critical Reflection of Service showed me the best way to show my experience at the Share Your Soles event I attended. This event was fun-filled and I really enjoyed writing about it. I was able to express all my thoughts and feelings about the social issue. This experience of performing a service for a greater good compliments with what we are learning in class because that is one of the main points of the class to be able to help others in need such as peer reviews and making notes on print outs of others peers assignments. Learning through experience has taught me more in the class because it helps understand how to deal with adversity when it arrives. The Letter to the Editor assignment made it possible for me to send a letter to an editor and be taken serious. I was not very sharp at writing letters to editors but after doing so for an assignment I have mastered it. When our loved ones are away at war we hope for their safe return and when we receive a call that they didn’t return we become very devastated. Having to live with the fact of loosing a loved one is very complicated because it is so hard to get off our minds. Those families should be honored to the up-most and have special privileges in the government such as being able to live comfortably for the rest of their generations on top of generations. Allowing them to live comfortably means allowing them to be government-expense free and not having to worry about any type of government finances. The Service Activist guide to an issue piece of work allowed me to express my thoughts on equal rights. I really appreciated having the chance to be open about my personal take on the equal rights issue. When I did this assignment I was able to collaborate with another classmate and really found it interesting because we didn’t have all the same takes on some of the equal rights issues. Life has its ups and its downs so we as humans have to make the right decisions so gay rights should be accepted everywhere because we shouldn’t be judged on our personal preferences, we can’t control who we like and it can produce self-hatred. When an individual realizes they are gay at a very young age they feel like they are trapped and can’t handle the pressure that society puts on them. They feel like they are abnormal and often an outcast. Society’s negative impact on them can cause them to want to give up on their own life and possibly consider suicide. No one should judge a book by its cover because it is so hard to determine the many downfalls in the book and the many ups that can shape, an individual, American’s decisions in considering the book to be a great, fair, or bad book. Everyone should accept and love the way they are no matter what the circumstances are and they need to know that they can’t help it. Gay rights should be accepted everywhere because we shouldn’t be judged on our personal preferences, we can’t control who we like and it can produce self-hatred. The Live, Kill, Die project gave me the opportunity to explain in detail what exactly I care about so much that I would lay my life on the line for. Laying my life on the line is not easy but having the chance to tell what reasons I would was a great experience. If a person thinks they have all the experience they need then they are truly mistaken. Many people will think they have reached that adulthood in life but really haven’t. Reaching that adult will be very difficult because as life goes on there is always opportunity to learn. The beginning and end paper has allowed me to reflect on the course as a whole and specifically the final portfolio. This assignment is great for the teacher to see how their students feel about the course. I try to ask questions that I believe the whole class would want to know. I always include a reading journal of at least two-hundred fifty words each week. Each written contribution to the side is of great quality and sufficient. The contributions are substantial and I try to reply on some Open conversations area. I have assisted others in numerous tasks. I have demonstrated great leadership while taking on this project. It is also good for us students to show how much we care and the Communications 102 course and its entirety. If I continue to do well on these assignments I will be able to achieve success in communications 102 and have the opportunity to take communication 103. Having to do all the assignments McGuire presented to us in a timely fashion was very difficult. I believe he is trying to help us be better students and not only that but better people to the world around us. When I took this class I did not plan on just trying to pass it, my goal was to learn something from completing the course by conducting in such community services. As of week 14 I believe I have learned many new ideas and became a more open and willing individual. The course has been tough but I believe since I keep trying my best and meeting the grading contract I will be able to learn the most out of the course. My loved ones are also very helpful with things in my life so they too care for me just as much as I do for them. Success will come through care and pride in whatever I endeavor because if I have enough care and pride in what I plan to do, the sky is the limit. Being able to expand my horizons and reach new heights is a great ability that should be prized by who ever may possess that trait. I am very grateful to have had a chance to be taught by Mr. McGuire and do believe he will continue to do well as a teacher and community outreach. I feel that I really brought out my inner activism because I have been learning about many different services since high school. Three things I have learned so far in the course are what is expected from the professor, the necessity to read every time assigned to read, and necessity to stay on top of all my work.