College Composition Courses, Important or Not?

by: Lucas. F. College level composition writing courses are very important. every student needs one, it helps with every aspect of writing. I feel like these courses are very important. In these courses students will learn how to write papers, organize them, and how to make them all around better. I know from experience that these courses really help a lot. I have had a developmental english class and it really helped with my writing skills. Most students don't get the writing knowledge they need in high school. Most high school teachers don't teach students the proper way of writing. This is a great reason to have these courses, that way students can learn better writing skills for future college classes. I know that without these classes I would not be able to write papers as effectively as I can now. Most students don't even get a good understanding of how to write papers in previous classes. If these classes were not here students would have the worst time trying to write papers. During the courses that I have had this semester and last semester I have learned a lot of things that I didn't expect to learn. Before these classes I didn't know how to properly format my papers, I had no idea about all the different type of formatting that can be used. I also had no idea how to make a work cited page. Before I was just copying and pasting the URL's of websites and calling that my work cited page. Another thing I had no clue about was how to make in text citations, which I have found out is very important. With in text citations it makes it so you can't be blamed with plagiarism. Through all the years if my teachers were hard on me with this I would have been getting in all kinds of trouble for plagiarism because I have no clue that if you did not have an in text citation that you can be blamed for plagiarism.

Value of Research

by: Lucas. F. The value of research is vast. You use research in everyday life, weather it's trying to find prices on something, or just looking up general information you want to know. Being able to do research in your first year of college is very important. There will be times you have to write papers, or being able to research answers you'll have on worksheets and other various types of work. In doing research you have to try and get all of the information you can out of sources. When doing this you'll need to know at least the basics of research, being able to get the full information will help with anything you are trying to do in life. You must also be able to make sure the sources you are using are credible, and to find that out you must be able to research the authors of the sources and where they got their information from. If you cannot grasp how to research it's best to find out how. If you don't know how to make sure the sources are good, and the information is correct you will get all kinds of wrong answers and that will make it very difficult to get good grades on research papers. All in all we use research in everyday life, you need to know how it works and and how to get your information, it's a very important skill that I feel everyone should know how to use, not only can research help you in school but it can also help after school. When you go out you'll want to research the values of apartments and try to find the best deals, so if you learn how to do so in your first year of college it'll make things a lot easier in the long run.

Are college admission exams to hard?

by Lucas. F. I feel that the ACT test is very hard for high school students. I myself took the ACT so I do not know how tough the SAT is but I imagine it is about the same difficulty. During my high school career I learned very little of what is put on the ACT. The teachers in high school just don't cover subjects in as much detail as the ACT asks questions. I took my ACT my senior year in high school, and it was a very hard test, some of the questions I just didn't understand at all. I only took the ACT, being as the SAT was not offered many places near me and I didn't want to make a travel for a test. Being that I do not know what the SAT is like, but I do feel that it would be just as hard and maybe just as confusing as the ACT. The way they set the test up is just not a good way to measure the knowledge of high school students. Before the test I felt pretty good, I felt that I had the knowledge to take it on. Also before the test I did feel tired, I feel they make those tests way to early in the morning, at that time most peoples brains are not running at full capacity and therefor they might not be thinking at the level they should. After-wards I felt like I didn't do so well on the test, the questions were just way to complicated and very hard to understand. They also had a lot of information on them that was not explained well and that none of my high school teachers had thought me. I do not feel like the scores reflect how I would do in college at all. My scores were not the best, just about the lowest you could get to get into college with. I think that in college I preform better then my scores reflect. The subjects are explained more in college and I get a better feel for the information, unlike on the test. The questions on the test just do not make any sense, they try to make them way more complicated then they need to be. I understand it's a college admission test but I feel like this test would be more suited for students about to graduate college, instead of heading there.

Selfless Act

by: Lucas F. There is one altruistic act that I am very proud of doing. There is a lady back where I live that had an old gazebo she needed painted, naturally she asked around and my mom discovered that she needed help. Upon finding this my mom told me and my brother to give her a call and help her out. So we did so, thinking it wouldn't be too much trouble to paint a simple gazebo. Now when we got down to this gazebo it's paint was all chipped and the roof had moss all over it and it's table on the inside was just in awful shape. So me and my brother started on this as soon as we could. When starting on the gazebo we just started scraping the old paint off, this was a very long task that took us more time than expected. We then had to started cleaning the rest of it off so we could start painting. Now when starting on painting it was pretty easy at first but then when we got to the smaller parts it started taking us a lot longer. It took us about 2 weeks to get this thing done, it was a long tiring process. In the end we each only got 50$ and I feel that the job should have payed more, but at the end we felt good about helping her out. After doing this job I was kind of disappointed that we only got 50$ for it. But after thinking about what my brother and I did for that lady was a really good thing. Painting that gazebo was something her and her husband would not have been able to do at their old age. So after all that I think we felt pretty good about helping them out. If we wouldn't have done it someone else might have wanted to charge her more for it and she might not have found anyone to do it for her at all. Another altruistic act I have preformed would be helping out with Habitat for Humanity. There have been many days I have gone and helped this organization. The things I have done include like painting houses, going in and helping them with construction tasks, and just general stuff like that. Doing this kind of stuff really makes you feel good after a good days work. Knowing that you have helped someone in need is a really great feeling it's one like no other. These are just a few of my acts, I like to help people out whenever I can. The ones above are the major ones I have done. I help anyone out I can, if it's just as small as holding the door for someone with their hands full, or donating a few dollars to a homeless person. It's little things like that, that can make a real difference in someones day.

Presidential Candidate

by Lucas. F. There are many attributes that make up a good President. Some Presidents are born with these skills naturally and they just have that certain sense on what to do in certain situations. Others have to really work to get to the level of having those skills. When you look at a President you need to look at them and feel "I feel good about this guy, he really seems to know what he's doing." When it all comes down to it I feel the skills a president needs to have are, public speaking,cognitive style,organizational methods, emotional intelligence, political skill, leadership skills, responsibility, and courage, but the list goes on. In a Presidential candidate I feel that I want then to know how to speak to me, when they are up there speaking about all their plans I want to feel like they are talking directly at me, like they know what I want them to do. Most presidents are not the best public speakers, such as Obama, he seems to have stuttered a lot and had a hard time tying together his sentences, after the years went on I feel that he got better at it but in the beginning it was still something I noticed that was wrong. The other skill I would like to touch up on is the most important one. Leadership, a president needs to have exceptional leadership skills to make it in presidency. Most presidents that go out and try to run usually have a good amount of leadership skills, but then there are some not so much. They must be able to make decisions that effect the whole country, in my mind someone that can do that without hesitation and make the right choice is a very good presidential candidate.

Freedom

by: Lucas. F. Freedom to me is when you have the right to do things, things such as freedom of speech, and freedom of religion. When we have the freedom to speak our own mind the world is such a different place, I feel if we did not have this type of freedom we would not be where we are today. So I feel freedom is a very big part of who we are, and how we do things. I feel that Amanda Knox was free, but after doing something as terrible as murdering someone she had that right to be free taken away. I have no sympathy for her and I think taking away her freedom would be a good thing to do. I feel that Nelson Mandela and Rubin Carter where not free when they were imprisoned, when you imprison someone it takes away all their freedom, they may be able to move around inside the prison freely sometimes, but by any other means they are not free. Americans today enjoy a lot more freedom then our ancestors did. Our ancestors such as African Americans had no freedom at all, they were forced to be slaves, as opposed to now all people are equally free. The freedoms I cherish the most are the freedom of speech and the freedom of religion. Without these two things people would not be able to enjoy their own religion and they would all be forced to believe in one thing. The freedom of speech is also very important, so that people can speak their minds and tell other people how they feel and what they think.

Argument Story

by: Lucas. F. What argument means to me is something you think is wrong, and you want to fight for that point. Logic is what you know to be true, or you have a fact to back it up. I personally have not had very little experience with argumentative writing. To form my argument for mountaintop removal I will find all the facts I can about how it effects our environment and all of the cons of this process, then form a paper about it. The best claim I can make on this topic is that mountaintop removal is a very destructive process that harms the environment immensely and it needs to be stopped by all means. I will be supporting my claim by using facts on mountaintop removal and all of it's destructive properties. Also I will be stating the cost of the transportation that it takes to transport coal across the United States and many other problems with this topic.