Maria Elisa Vollmer Blog 2

Three years ago, I had an experience that forced my view of humanity to change.

I was involved with a student religious group at my former school called REMAR, in which we had been going to a Marist public school in a very poor neighborhood on Saturday mornings for 2 years. We used to bring games, activities, songs, crafts for the kids to do. We spent the whole morning with them. This experience in high school helped open my eyes to the current reality of Venezuela. I discovered the true need through which many are going through. We got a sneak peek from the current reality of our country; we got to meet some of the kids’ families and see where they live; little brick houses with a roof made out of zinc where a whole family lives, including grandparents, parents, a whole bunch of siblings and maybe even nephews and nieces. It was a harsh thing to watch, kids had to go to school in their bare feet because their families couldn’t afford shoes, so their feet got hurt. The thing that struck me the most was the fact that they had lost their innocence such a long time ago. This was because they live in an environment full of violence, hatred, disrespect, abuse, injustice, and many other negative values. But in the end that’s what kept us going there and giving our all to them.

Jiayu Chen Blog1

First of all, I’d like to say this is my first time to write a blog in English, and I appreciate it a lot.

  Messages are written usually in our daily life .We use text to communicate with friends, and writing blogs and dairies to record our feelings. I do write emails, blogs and text messages in my daily life. Of course these are totally different with the assignment’s writing. And the biggest difference is that we all like using simple words to symbolize complicated meanings compared with the school assignments. As a Chinese, I sometimes do assignment works such like essays, as a result, it is normal for me to use common words expressing my comments. But I cannot understand even a single words in those abbreviations. For instance, I do understand what “thank you” means, yet when I first time met ” ty” as a word, I missed. Besides, words like ”brb”, ”lol” also make me confused. So that is the most critical difference by comparing school assignments and daily writings. And it is my most important problem which I need to overcome in my daily writing and communication.

Kyle Reymann Blog 1

Communication is an important part of everyday life and it not only has personal benefits but also benefits others around you. To communicate with friends, family, myself, professors, etc. I use text messaging, email, Facebook, essays, and class notes.   It is very easy to meet up with someone on a short notice by just sending them a text message, but the downfall to text messaging is some people do it way too much and become attached to their phones.  If I want to meet up with friends ill just shot them a text and usually in minutes they will respond.  Email is also a swift and efficient way to communicate with others.  I usually talk with my parents on email daily and receive many updates about school related topics over email.  To catch up with friends back home, I send messages to them on Facebook where I can also see photos of experiences they are having at their schools.  Essays are usually formally written for professors so the language I use in emails and text messages has to be adjusted.  Class notes are great for communicating with yourself so that you can study topics gone over in class and in textbooks.

Madi McClure Blog one

In my daily life I use many formats of communication such as:

• Texting
• Emails
• Essays
• Notes

These formats of communication help me connect with various audiences throughout my busy schedule.  Essays and emails have a different, and  more formal audience, then that of texting and note taking. When writing essays you have an academic audience therefore the use of proper english is critical in obtaining a good grade. Emails, although it is a fast way of communicating like texting, the audience is more professional. Texting is a very fast way of communicating informal messages. The people you are typically communicating through text is peers. Texting uses a lot of short hand dialog and abbreviations. Note taking is also very informal, and uses a lot of short hand dialog. I am my own audience when I take lecture notes, so they do not have to be formal.

Throughout my rigorous schedule I need my communications programs to run smoothly in order to make it thorough my day successfully. These programs include: Google email, Microsoft Word, and my cell phone. I am confident I have successfully communicated when everything I am trying to convey is being addressed. 

My Daily writing style

Kyle Brown

My daily writings style consist mainly of texting people through my phone as it is the quickest way to contact people in everyday life. I also find it to be useful as I can receive the message I send and I can use informal writing depending on the person. My next most common form of writing consist of emails because most professors read them like clockwork and I can forward attachments in them. I also can send them over the Internet which depending on where I am is either a blessing or a curse. I seldom write items by hand due to how sloppy my handwriting is and how slow it is compare to typing. Also when writing by hand it is usually for a class assignment so I must be more careful of how I spell and write since there is not autocorrect. However when writing by hand I feel that it is much easier to convey emotion into my writing, much like the difference of a recording of music verses a live performance. This is what makes writing by hand a work of art is the conveyance of emotion that comes with it. It is also easier to form shapes and other ideas on the paper then it is on the computer. Such as poems that are in the shape of a bird or a writing style that is not on the computer (diagonal writing). This is one of the few reasons that I write by hand is that I have the ability to convey emotion, otherwise it would have died out with the invention of the typewritter.

Jake Apostoles Blog 1

Writing in everyday life for me comes through a variety of venues, either in digital or physical formats. The vast majority of my writing used to come through text messaging, as it is very fast and easy. I wasn't the kind of person who shortened words or anything like that, so I would still consider it writing. The other large source was email, which has grown to the primary source now that I am at college, as it seems I get at least 15 school related emails a day minimum, most of which I have to respond to. The fact that these are emails dramatically changes the way I talk in this form of writing, as it is now required by the Corps of Cadet that certain formalities are followed. Therefore, most of my emails have a very professional tone, which is in contrast to my unprofessional texts. The use of physical writing has declined in my usage over the last few years, as I had a pen-pal when I was younger, but those letters stopped a long while ago. Nowadays, formal letters only are used when that is the only option, so I rarely send them. Lastly, there is the writing used in school, whether it be for an assignment or for general notes taken during class time. Notes in class I use everyday, but are often abbreviated to save tie and space. I don't worry about formalities or really even spelling in this case as nobody will read them but me. On the other hand, with writing papers I am particularly careful to check my spelling as I know when I am typing very quickly I often can miss keys and make mistakes. Writing essays only happens when required for me, so it is not all too often that I write big essays.

Since writing doesn't always mean communication, I often don't judge how I feel I got my point across unless there is a reason to check. I really don't worry about it most of the time. I just guess that I got my point across and if i didn't, the recipient will ask me to go more into depth.

Caitlin Rudy Blog One

Even though we don’t often realize it, writing is a major part of our everyday lives. This baffles people because when you think of writing, what comes to mind is school. We think of essays and research papers for class, as well as note taking during lectures. While yes, as students, we do take part in all of these forms of writing, we also write in so many other ways without even thinking about it. Texting is the hot new form of communication and it requires us to write to our friends back and forth all day long. We don’t write many letters anymore, but we do sill write thank you notes. We also make many lists including grocery lists, chore lists, homework lists, etc. We also use email and Facebook to write to friends, as well as tweet on Twitter.

School writing compared to our everyday writing is like a chore. We tend to dislike writing formal essays whereas texting our friends is fun. We don’t have to necessarily be grammatically correct and also we can use shorthand. It’s much easier to abbreviate, and not have to worry about proper sentence structure when trying to get our thoughts into writing. Writing is a part of our lives that, no matter how technologically advanced the world gets, will always stick with us.