2001: A Space Odyssey Rough Draft

The film “2001: A Space Odyssey” was directed by Stanley Kubrick and was released on April 6, 1968. The plot followed mankind on an adventure of finding a mysterious and artificial artifact that was buried on the moon. The adventure started off with primates in an open desert, finding themselves with tools for hunting. The movie then progresses to space where Frank and Dave are using HAL 9000, a computer, to see how helpful it is to mankind. Then ending is based off the expedition of the Jupiter mission. The part of the movie that I found criticism in the most was its content.

The primates in the beginning were awkward. I did not understand the meaning behind their involvement in the movie. At first I thought that maybe they were there to symbolize evolution, the theory of how man came to be. I also noticed the sun that was constantly shown and thought that it could mean with each gradual raise of the sun, perhaps it meant the apes were becoming smarter or more like “man”. The discovery of the bones gave a confusing meaning of their significance to me. The bones were used as a tool of crushing the other bones and for beating another ape. Were the bones just supposed to serve as a tool for future mankind, or were they symbolizing a man’s power in the future? The role of the primates were all together confusing to me, I could not comprehend the meaning of them.

The lack of dialogue was a downfall to this film, in my opinion. I realize that movies may exclude dialogue due to the attempt of emphasizing a point, but was that what this movie was trying to do? I could not find any explanation behind so little communication throughout this movie. I believed that was the reason why this movie was so confusing to me. I did not know what was going on when they only thing that was playing were pictures. The few times that communication did occur I got a sense of what was happening. All the different space crafts and people moving around simply perplexed me. I strongly believe that if there was more dialogue I would have enjoyed it more.

The characters were not very good. Of the few whose names were even mentioned, none of the others were even memorable. I would not be able to distinguish any of the characters from each other, all but the main characters. The way these people were portraying their role was unemotional. There were no points, in my opinion that I knew when something good or bad was happening. Facial expressions or body language would be a clear indicator of some sort of excitement or tragedy, but with blank, calm faces I felt like this movie was boring. Perhaps nothing extremely good or bad happened, but something else besides “blah” must have occurred. Also, it could be due to the writer that each character seemed flat. I never learned much about the characters, such as Frank and Dave, but I learned more about HAL 9000. I prefer movies with a little background on its characters. The one aspect of background that was shown during the film was families. In two cases, I saw families of the characters. One of which was the call from the little girl and the other with the family calling to wish Happy Birthday. I liked that part due to the fact of knowing a little more of the background.

In conclusion, this movie was very outdated for people of my age. I knew nothing about the basis of this movie, to my understanding the point of the film was to inform people of the sixties of what the future will hold. Although I am not a science fiction movie fan, I still believe that this movie was one of the worst I have seen. It was very hard to concentrate on it and extremely hard to understand. I wish I could have had some background on it before I watched, but I thought that watching the movie should enlighten me to some of the education from back then. I personally would not recommend this movie to other viewers simply because of my lack of emotion towards it.

I can do it, can you?

Have you ever had to make a portfolio? Maybe as a school project, or for a job? The portfolio itself is intended for a particular audience but could serve a number of different purposes.

A portfolio developed for a writing course typically contains examples of a students best work in that course, including notes, outlines, along with his or her own assesment of their performance in that course.

When it comes to organizing a portfolio, Norton's Field Guide to Writing states that one should label everything. Make sure your materials are arranged in chronological order, starting with your earliest material and ending with the final draft on top.

The most important part of your portfolio is your written statement reflecting on your work. It is your chance to think about and say what you have learned.

Its the best one out there!

641-661

According to Norton's Field Guide to Writing,

This section is focusing mainly on Evaluations. At the end of the short sample evaluations, the book provides a reader with the way an evaluation on the specific topic would look. For example, the one on a Flat bread Company ended up looking like a "list". The list was divided into different categories that the evaluation was based on. Some of the categories were food and service. I thought that this overall evaluation was the best put together one, and caught my eye first.

There was also a film evaluation in this section. The movie under review was Harry Potter. The book simply wanted you to look for the details that the writer thought the book was missing. I thought that the writer of this review was simply just trying to give suggestions on what the movie could have done better. He/She did not give much criticism.

Overall, in my opinion I think the composer of this section put very effective evaluations in this section. All of these were different, each was based on different aspects of life. Flat bread companies to movies is a great stretch. I felt this to be very beneficial as a student.

4 out of 5 approve

According to Norton's Field Guide to Writing,

Evaluate--to determine or set the value or amount of; to judge or determine the significance, worth, or quality of. Key Features of an Evaulation 1. A concise description of the subject- include just enough information to let readers who may not be familiar with your subject understand what it is. 2. Clearly defined criteria-determine clear criteria as as the basis for you judgement. 3. A knowledgeable discussion of the subject- show that you know what you are talking about and that what you researched is legitimate. 4. A balanced and fair assessment- an evaluation is centered on a judgement. 5. Well-supported reasons- giving reasons for your judgement.

Go Team!!

My group and I just had a group conference. Me, Angella, Amy, and Jenelle got very useful information regarding our website. We each got feedback from our instructor on how to make our section the best it can be. We are still getting along very well with each other, and I am positive it will stay that way. We are all very cooperative with each other, which makes everything so much easier with this project.
I am working on the section "facts and stats". I got all my information from one easy and convenient site. This site reallly helped me with stats about all the different aspects of self-defense. I even found information about college students and defense they can take while on campus. Which was really useful since our target audience for this project is young college women.
Other than that, everything is running smoothly and we are having a blast creating a website and learning all about self-defense!

There is no "I" in Team!

Angella, Amy, Janelle, and I are working as a group on creating a website. Our website is about Self-Defense. We each took different topics to talk about on the page. I am talking about facts and statistics. Amy is explaining the different techniques of defending your self. Jenelle is talking about the weapons of defense. Angella is explaining the tips and suggestions that she has found online about defending yourself. We are working really well together. I think our project is going to be really good.

According to Norton Field Guide to Writing, on page 454, introduces media and design. It explains the purpose of the specific advertisment, or such. I have never made any kind of website or anything for any purpose. I suppose if I was to read through this chapter then I would probably learn a few things about putting out an effective piece of media and the correct way to design it. This chapter is very effective in explaining every part required to create a meaningful presentation of some kind of media. The design is just one of the key factors that are further explained. The book also goes into detail about the spoken text behind the technological side of things.

In every story there is...

Most introductions offer a breif description of the texts content, often in the form of a thesis statement. Most essays are part of an ongoing conversation, so you might begin by outlining the positions to which your writing responds. Sometimes the best beginning is a clear thesis stating your postion. If your readers may not know as much as you do about your topic, giving them information to help them understand your positon can be important. You will always want to establish common ground with your readers. You may end by wrapping up loose ends, or you may wish to give readers something to think about. One way to to bring closure to a text is to bring up something discussed in the beginning; often the reference adds to or even changes the original meaning.
Considering a rhetorical situation you would want to make sure there is a clear purpose. Your purpose will affect the way you begin and end.
Who do you want to reach? That would apply to captivating the correct audience.
Does your genre require a certain type of beginning or ending?
What is your stance, and can your beginning and ending help you convey that stance?
Your medium may affect the way you begin and end.

A title serves various purposes naming a text and providing clues to the content. It also helps readers decide whether they want to read further so its worthe your while to come up with a title that attracts interest. A thesis statement identifies the topic of your text along with the claim you are making about it. A good thesis helps readers understand an essay. A really good thesis is specific.

How did this happen?

Have you ever heard of cause and effects? How about classifying and dividing? Maybe comparing and contrasting?.... Me neither. That is I have never about them until I got a very interesting assignment from my English class. I had to read about the difference between all these different questions.
Analyzing ihelps us think about why something happend.. the cause is the motive of the action and the effect is the consequence. You can always find a cause and an effect in a regular sentence structure.
Classification and division aer ways of organizing information. When you classify something, you group it with similar things.
Comparing things looks at their similarities; contrasting them focuses on their differences. This is one of the easiest things to remember. They are opposites.

Read it Right

We read all the time, such as magazines or newspapers we can not help reading everyday. But did you know that everytime we read something, we are learning something?? Shocking right! We read and we come across new words that we are not familiar with or new concepts that we have never really thought about previously. Strategically we should outline our reading, to ensure us that we can remember and yet understand what it is that we just read. Outlining is a great strategy to reading and a wonderful way to understand your reading. I personally think that if you just take a second look at your reading then I feel that you will honestly understand the material better. Strategy is everything when it comes to reading, or even just doing something of importance to your future.
and just so everyone knows i survived the fire drill!

Whats wrong with it?

Editing and Proofreading=stages in the writing process. Editing is simply the stage when you work on the details of your paragraphs, sentences, words, and puncuation to make your writing as clear as it can be. The best advice to go by while editing yours or another persons writing is, "your goal is not to acheive perfection, so much as to make your writing as effective as possible for a particular purpose, or audience". That advice really helps me out when I self-edit, or peer-edit. Also, editing can either be big or small. Editing can be something as simple as making sure the right words are used, for example there instead of their.
Proofreading is just looking over the paper again and again, making sure all the mistakes are correct and everything flows together.
Writing is a complex process but it does not have to be. If you put forth the right steps, your work will be amazing!

Look at what I can do

I love to write stories but I dislike writing papers for school. When I write my own stories I feel like I get my idea across so much easier. However, when I am in a class and I get a paper assigned to me, I get a total writers block. I lose all my ideas, I can not figure out how to word my thoughts properly, and I get frantic. I get throught all of that eventually, but then comes the self-editing. I can read over and over and over my paper and not find anything wrong with it but the second someone else reads it, errors come after errors. I always wonder why that happpens?
BUT I figured it out.. its because I dont kno what I am supposed to be looking for. I guess there are specific details I should have looked for throughout my writing that I completley just overlooked. I should have first looked at my papers length.. that is the first way that you can easily tell if the paper looks like enough detail. The other major part that I forget about it the focus of my writing.. it is so hard for me to maintain my audience.. I always feel like I bounce back and forth between how I explain some details. And then there is revising.. it takes forever but its the final step before your done with the writing. I like to have multiple people read my work to see if they can find something that doesnt sound just right.. so I can fix it before my professor takes points off for it.

Deadlines, Deadlines, Deadlines!

have you even been in the middle of a very important paper that your typing bout an hour before its due?... and then your computer crashes? and you lose all your work?
that is what i hate the most when i type papers, therefore i save all my work every 5 minutes.

however another thing that i def. do not like about typin up my paper is when i completley run out of ideas! it makes me so mad.. cause then i lose my concentration and starting wandering onto facebook and then im into a whole another problem!
i think when you write you should take breaks.. its easier to come up with your ideas and easier to get your ideas across when you have time to take your mind off the assigment then come back to it with a fresh start! try it :)

another thing is detail.. its the hardest part in my opinion. I dont kno how much detail to put into my paper. Im always worried about "is too much or too little" cause i never kno :) but the right amount of detail that i end up using is just the right amount that if someone who is reading your work, they will can understand and even get a clear picture of what that scence would look like if they were there.

so i kno i said there is one thing i hate the most bout typin up papers and you probably thought i was only going to talk about that one thing.. but.. i suprised you!

An informal language

I used to love to write when I was younger, as I grew up I didn't find it as enjoyable anymore. However, when I used to write I used a strategy called "free writing". Free writing is an informal method of exploring a subject by writing about it. In my opinion, free writing is the easiest form of writing to express your ideas. I love to just sit down and write freely about anything that comes to my mind, and express it in anyway I want too.
There are also mechanics in a free write. Perhaps you were a student and you were asked to writed a narrative about any topic of your choice, you can not just sit down and expect every idea to come straight to your head. You have to outline and list your ideas in some specific order so you can be sure to have an orgainzed paper. An organized paper is a great thing to have because it makes it easier for you to write and fit ideas and details into it, and makes it alot easier on your reader because they can understand your message.
I want to challenge you to something, go home and sit down and try this thing called "free writing" and maybe even you can enjoy writing.

The things I will learn!

When you sit down and start to write, do you ever think about what your purpose is?
Well i found out that all writing has its own purpose. When I begin to write, I think of the kind of emotion I want to portray throughout it or how I will express myself so my readers can understand my opinion on the topic. According to the my textbook for my English 103 class, "we write to explore our thoughts and emotions, to express ourselves, to entertain; we write to record words and events, to communicate with others, to try to persuade others to believe as we do." But that statement is so accurate though, I mean what else do people write about other than trying to explain a story or to persuade us on a issue or just to express themselves. Writing is a great way to express yourself.
The mechanics of writing involves many differnt factors to keep in mind. Just to name a few, being consicious of your audience is a big thing to watch when you begin writing. You want to make sure the people reading your piece can understand the meaning behind it. Genres are also important in writing. Genres are kinds of writings, such as letters or profiles. Genres have particular conventions for presenting information that help writers write and readers read. If that makes sense? :)
I also read something about writing literacy narratives. I dont know how many people have heard of a narrative, but a it is simply just a story. Key features in a narrative include: a well-told story, vivid detail, and some indication of the narratives significance. In my opinion, if you were to follow these key features one would write a very powerful narrative.
I read pages out of my English 103 text and found the information very useful and thought I would share it with anyone who was interested.

Greek Night...but not so "greek-ish"

so i went to A-dawg room to watch the tv show "greek" but we never ended up watchin it. Me, A-dawg, toree, and kourtni started talkin bout scaring random ppl on the street. So we attempted to watch the end of "greek" and left for my room. Toree and Kourtni took off on the other side of the street...scaring the random ppl. They creeped behind the bushes, as A-dawg and I acted like we didnt kno them. It was a very interesting way to end a very funny night!