Ok now all of a sudden it won't let me put up more pictures!! I'm so confused...I HATE COMPUTERS! Ugh...but yet I know I probably couldn't even live without them. Sometimes I wish I lived during the 1920's. The latest technology was the automobile and hardly anyone even had one! Think of how much less we'd have to worry about without technology? I suppose they still had things to worry about that I can't even think of. But the movies make the 1920's look like so much fun! I mean, it was even "cool" to be a criminal...not that I'd want to be a criminal...but it just seems like it was a totally different culture. So I wanted to put up pictures of my snowboarding trip really bad...maybe if I log out and try again it'll work...(?)

For my last few entries I'm going to just tell a little more about myself...I'm also going to try to put some pictures on here (?)

Yay I got it! Well this first pic is my daughter Rheagen. One of our favorite things to do when the weather is nice is go to the park and take walks.

This is a photograph that I really like...well actually it's two photographs that I turned into one photograph. At the time, I was really impressed that I did this because I was just trying to teach myself PhotoShop and this was the first thing I did that I actually liked.

This is Rheagen again...you can't see very well but she's throwing a little fit. This is a pretty mild fit for her. Her last fit got her a bloody nose because she fell out of her bed! But even though she throws her fits, I still love her and think she's the cutest thing ever!

Ok. So I think I'm now finished with this class! I don't have my syllabus right next to me at the moment, but if I'm not mistaken...I'M DONE!! I have to say that this has been a really hard semester for me and I'm SO relieved that it's almost over. This summer I'm taking full-time classes but I still don't think it'll be as hard as the 18 I took this semester.

Review of this Class

I didn't mind this class actually. It's strange that I've been so nervous to take a speech class in college because I did speech team for 3 years in high school and I was actually really good at it. But all of a sudden I stutter and freeze up when I have to talk. I couldn't tell you why that is. But this class was ok. I think not having to talk in front of a whole bunch of strange people really helped. I enjoyed the persuasive speeches the most because I got to explore some topics that I hadn't really given a lot of thought to before. I like doing papers about my own believes and convictions because it forces me to research it more thoroughly and then I get to know even more about it. I'm really glad I did the paper on same-sex marriage. Pretty much everyone I know is against it but after doing the research, I was able to get through to them at least on some level although I know I didn't change their minds completely. What I enjoyed least about this class was just doing it long distance. For the most part, I like to be in an actual classroom and get to know my professor and classmates. But I guess my shyness is the reason why I wanted to take it long distance in the first place, so it works out. Overall I enjoyed the challenges presented by this class and I feel that I learned a lot on an academic as well as on a personal level.

Presenting the persuasive speech # 2 was about the same as #1. The slide show was a struggle and I'm frustrated that I couldn't figure out how to make my pictures look nice. I feel like I just just "know" these things considering my major. But computer programs are never a natural learning process.

I think I did about 3 takes of this presentation that were about a minute under time before I realized that I didn't have ALL of my cards in my stack. After I had all my notes I did fine. Again, making reference to the slides was also hard because on the cards there would just be a "3" somewhere in a corner and I kept forgetting to mention all of the slides. I guess this speech took a little longer to do than the first one. I got really frustrated once because I gave the speech really well finally but when I went to watch it I realized the camera must have froze up or something and it only taped the first 3 minutes! I don't think I like my digital video camera. I got it for Christmas last year from my mom and I sorta wish she would have just bought me some movies or something! But overall, I think this speech went well also.

For speech # 2 I also had to think pretty hard about what subject I wanted to use. You really can't write a persuasive for something that you don't actually care about. So I had to find a subject I cared about but at the same time wouldn't stress me out too much. I choose same-sex marriage rights for this assignment. Since this isn't something that affects me, I knew it wouldn't get to me too much. I think people don't understand that you don't have to be homosexual to argue that homosexuals should have all the rights heterosexuals do. To me, it's just obvious. I used to be one of the Christian-types that I talked about a little in my paper who are just out-right against gay marriage. I don't know when I started thinking that it really wasn't right to deny them rights. I guess the last few years I have been doing some soul-searching, trying to find out what I actually believe and not just what I was taught to believe. To me, being Christian is about kindness. We are supposed to be like Jesus and Jesus was constantly befriending "sinners"...not to change them, but to help them. I don't know if homosexuals choose to be that way or if it's inborn...to me it doesn't matter. They are people, they are Americans...they should have the same rights as the rest of us. And since we don't have an official religion, we can't start now making laws based on a specific religious belief.

Persuasive Speech #1

Preparing for this speech was a little harder than the informative speeches...just because I had to do the PowerPoint and I really don't know how to use that program very well. The pictures I wanted to put on it were really tiny and it seemed silly to have little icon-sized pictures on my slides that you couldn't really see. So I just took them off and so my slides mostly illustrate the main points of my speech.

Presenting the speech was only hard because I kept forgetting to make reference to my slides. I would get over half way through and then realize that I skipped slide # 4 so I had to start over. But it was ok b/c not having my daughter screaming in the background or having to worry about when she's going to wake up from her nap makes it a lot easier to do several takes. I felt like this speech went fairly well.

First I'd like to talk about my persuasive subjects just a bit. It was hard for me to choose a persuasive topic for this class. Not because I don't have strong beliefs about anything...but I'm starting to feel burnt out trying to express some of them. I am always wanting to make arguements against abortion and laws pertaining to family issues. But I have used those topics SO many times that I've become drained of them. Thinking about some of these issues actually gets me very stressed out because they are near and dear to me.

For my first speech I ended up going with genetic engineering. It's not such an immediate issue that it makes my head spin but it is something I'm concerned about. At this point, no one can say that it's definately good or definately bad...we don't know much of ANYTHING about it really...but yet we're experimenting with it and applying it to everyday life. I don't think that's right. My speech is to get the point across that we're not ready for genetic engineering. We don't know the consequences of it, so we need to wait until we do before we decide how to use it or IF we even should use it.

This last part of the semester has been the craziest ever! Spring break was great and everything, but I really think it did me in! I didn't really rest at all...I went snowboarding...which is great fun but not the most relaxing activity! So I came back to school even more tired than I had left. All of my classes became a struggle. Last weekend I didn't have my daughter so I played catch-up the whole time. And what do you know, I got caught up! Thank god I was starting to get worried! Well I guess I do need to get caught up with my blogs...

Well! It looks like I am a LITTLE behind on my posts!! I have no excuse other than I honestly haven't thought of it. I'll just write an entry for each step I took through the third unit of this course I guess, we'll see where that gets me!

Ok I have to post another blog so that I have all ten for this unit! Unit 2 of Speech was much harder than the first. I don't think it has everything to do with the class itself but moreso with what's going on in my life right now. I definately took too many credits this semester (18!!) and I am finding it hard to keep up with any of my classes! And to make matters worse...I took a second job. But I didn't take the job for the money (although it does pay better than my regular job) I took it because it is a temporary position for another professor of mine to do work that is actually related to my major. How could I pass up the opportunity? I am now starting to feel a little relief with having the first two units of this class done and I am looking forward to the summer. Haha...actually I am probably going to school full time this summer, but I am still looking forward to it! It's summer for crying out loud! From here on out I don't think I will ever take more than 15 hours a semester and I'm going to try to stick with just 12 because I need to concentrate on the quality of my classes (especially for my major) rather than just getting them over with. That is my goal for the rest of my college career. Wow I'm really thirsty from that speech!!! Well thanks for listening/reading!

I just finished my second informative speech. I don't know why but I kept getting nervous when the camera was actually recording me! When I practiced I got through it just fine but when I knew the camera was on me, I felt like a baffling idiot! My first take only lasted about 4 minutes when I decided it wasn't worth finishing so I just stopped it, took a lunch break and then started over. I reviewed the recordings from the 3 speeches that I have on my camera and the sound quality seemed much better. I wonder if that's because I recorded these in a house rather than a downstairs basement...? It sounds a little far fetched, but something must account for the improvement! Well I look forward to handing this in and finally getting a start on unit 3!

I just got back from snowboarding in Colorado over spring-break! It's been so long since I've done it last that I forgot how great it was! I mean, I'm not "good" at it by many people's terms but I CAN get down the mountain...one way or another, I always get down! My confidence has improved a lot...I can say that. I usually stick mostly to greens and maybe a blue here and there but this time I mostly did blues and even a blue-black...and I did those without even falling! (I was too scared to fall!) The worst part was that I fell off the lift EVERY SINGLE TIME...and a few of those times I took my friends crashing down with me! I'm sad that it's over and I won't get to go again until next year (hopefully). I guess now it's back to the grind with homework and work :(

Well I haven't "officially" had any small group assignments so far this semester but I often find myself turning assignments into just that. My sister and my best friend are sort of my "creative team"...well they aren't MY creative team...we are a creative team because I try to help them too. The best example of this is from the beginning of this semester. I had an assignment to create a chair out of one single sheet of paper. It had to be at least 3 inches tall, have at least one leg, a back support and it had to support a raw egg...and of course it had to have aesthetic quality. Well 3-D design isn't exactly my forte so I took it to the Team. We all sat down for about 4 hours creating individual solutions. We were all creating effective prototypes but still not any to the level they needed to be. After hours and hours we stopped, picked out the 3 strongest chairs. We narrowed down the qualities of each chair that were strong and what exactly was holding back the quality. We were then able to combine the best features of these three chairs into one Super Chair. I could probably not have accomplished this alone because my solutions were all different...but yet very much the same and some of the solutions the Team came up with...I never would have. If I can I will post a picture of our "super chair" later...it's pretty neat!

Last night (Wednesday March 07) I went to a church group for college-age people as my small group speaking event. I felt a little out of place since most of the people there are regular attendants and I am not. But everyone greeted me when I came in with my sister and quite a few people introduced themselves. The first 15 minutes seemed to be reserved for social interaction and during that amount of time I didn't even know who the leader of this group was because everyone seemed to be about the same age and the group was not very diverse.
When the meeting got started everyone (there was about 12-15 of us) sat at a very large table where we would be able to interact with one another. There had been an assigned passage reading from the Bible, which of course I had not read. It was Exodus 15:2; "The LORD is my strength and my song; he has become my salvation. He is my God, and I will praise him, my father's God, and I will exalt him." We discussed different interpretations of the verse and focused on the concept of what salvation really means. It seemed to me that the young pastor leading this group was not so much a "speaker" as I had seen in past speaking events but a prompting participant. When the group became silent where we seemed to be "stuck" he would clarify in order to get the discussion started again. This small group gets together to solve problems that come along with living a Christian lifestyle, specifically for the college-age person. I would suspect that many small groups are formed to problem-solve but the church group takes it a step further than say a corperation's small group and forms a support system for each individual. I did not know anyone in the group besides my sister but I felt very comfortable sharing some of my own basic beliefs with these people.

Celebration!! I FINALLY did my first informative speech! I've really been at a standstill lately so this is a pretty big accomplishment. I had to do a lot more takes for this one than I did on my first speech of self introduction because it just wasn't quite long enough and I was too reliant on my notecards. But I think it actually turned out pretty well in the end and I am satisfied with it.

Well I've got all the research I need for my first informative speech. Now just to write it and present it...hmmm. I am planning to get this one completed this week and then I will feel like I am getting back on track. I still can't find my textbooks for this class and one for another class which has me pretty worried because I've unpacked everything that I know of. Hopefully I just left a box with my dad or something. Well that's about all I have for now so I'm going to go start organizing my information now!

I feel like I'm so behind now. Not just because I moved but because my daughter's babysitter has called in sick the last 3 days and my computer and internet at home doesn't work...so basically I have been stuck at home with my daughter with no access to this class and my other classes. I'm really nervous because mid-term is next week and I still have to redo a lot of things just from the first credit. My mom has been sick so she hasn't given me her video camera but somehow I need to figure out a way to get some work done for this class!