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Brief but Spectacular take

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=tRAcXki4aKM

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Reflection

Reflection

English 101

Brandon Bohl

Position Paper

 1.     What did you learn by completing that assignment?

a.     I learned that when you are writing a position paper, you need to make sure that you clearly identify which side you are on and support it enough so that the audience knows which side you are taking. Along with supporting your side of the position, you have to mention the opposite side of the argument and acknowledge it to a certain extent.

2.     Are you a more confident writer?

a.     After the first couple writing assignments I still didn’t think I was becoming that good of a writer, but after we started doing our longer papers like the position paper I could feel myself making it easier to do the assignments, It was a lot easier to keep going on the draft without stopping and having constant ideas when I was writing.

3.     Can you identify the rhetorical purpose of the assignment and the audience it is meant for?

a.     The purpose of the paper was to take a side on something and then back it up with research, your own experiences, or other knowledge you have. The audience isn’t one specific group of people, if could be for anyone to read in most cases. My position paper was whether to participate in sports in high school so for my paper, the audience in most cases would be high school students and the parents of those students.

4.     What genre is the assignment? What are the constraints? What is the formula for the genre? Structure?

a.     The genre of the position paper was argumentative and persuasive paper because in my case, I was trying to get more high schoolers to participate in sports.

b.     The formula is to have a side to something and try to persuade or argue against the opposite of your position. The structure is pretty basic, nothing special about it usually around 5 paragraphs.

5.     Can you work/collaborate with other people? Did you discuss and share your work in class? Did you read your work in class? Did you participate on the discussion board?

a.     When we did this assignment we worked with others when it came to reviewing our writing and looking to make it better after the first draft. We shared our first draft on the discussion board and the people in our group looking through it and made suggestions on how we could possibly make it better.

6.     How will these skills transfer to your future writing?

a.     At some point in your career you are going to have opinions on stuff in your job. If you for some reason wanted something changed, you could write a position paper to your superiors talking about why something should be changed and what would benefit from it being changed.

7.     When you get writing assignments in the future, what are the first things you will do?

a.     Think about it and sketch out ideas and then once you have an idea, write bullet points and start organizing it and then just write. Review it and improve it once or twice and then have a final copy.

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Minimum Wage Debate

He takes a stand on both sides of the issue. He doesn’t pick one side or the other to fight for completely. He thinks that both sides could be a good idea if you back it up and do more than just raise the minimum wage.

It gives a little doubt because it shows that he didn’t really know what he was talking about at first. But on the flip side not everyone can know everything about an issue. Sometimes you do some research to help make your decision on what side of the argument you’re on.

He is on the side of raising the minimum wage. He said that he thinks the minimum wage is unreasonably low and if the wage got raised he would be happy for the working people.

He addresses both sides of the argument equally. He doesn’t take a strong side either way. To some people, it may be difficult to determine which side he is on. Because of that, it weakens his argument because he isn’t strong on one side and could change his mind and flip sides at any time.

The article about the Nike commercial showed how anyone can cross the barriers and boundaries playing sports so why can’t you break boundaries with social issues like racism, sexism, and other issues. I agree with Nike’s thinking on this issue. We as a country cross boundaries all the time in more than just sports, even the littlest things. For example, if you are going faster than the speed limit, you are crossing the boundary. People do that all the time and think nothing of it, so why can’t everyone treat everyone equal and break that stigma of races being different? Why can’t everyone be treated fairly no matter what gender, race, religion, ethnicity the people are?

https://www.tumblr.com/blog/the-english-guru

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Brief but Spectacular Take First Draft

My name is Brandon Bohl and this is my brief but spectacular take on how much people you look up to impact you.

 Intro not finished yet.  

 Clap

 Ever since I was little my family was a baseball family. I was born to play baseball and more specifically to be a pitcher. My uncle was a good pitcher who had a few tryouts with professional baseball teams and my dad pitched at the collegiate level. My grandpa, who was a teacher and a farmer, coached high school varsity baseball for 30 years. I don’t even remember the first time I played catch because I was so young. I’ve even seen pictures of me from when I was really little holding a bat. Once I got to a certain age in my baseball experiences when baseball become competitive and you kept score, I was always the one that always knew the score. I was always the more competitive guy on the field. As I continued to grow up and play, my grandpa became one of my biggest supporter and told me that he would come to my games until the day he passed away. He came to every single one of my games and bringing me to most of them. He told me many many things to help me along the way, whether it be words of wisdom or help related to baseball. One thing that he told me when I was 10 has stuck with all throughout my playing years and still sticks with me today. His famous words were “Never Give Up.” He used to tell me this all the time before high school in little league because my team wasn’t the best. I’d be out there pitching and my fielders would make errors behind me and I would get mad. Once I realized what he meant, it helped me as a player because I wouldn’t let one error in the field mess up my concentration on the mound. He told me that all my life, whether it was in baseball, any other sports, or just life in general.

 During the summer before my junior year, the phrase “Never give up” had a whole new meaning. While we were at a family reunion, my grandpa suffered a severe stroke. We were in Western Minnesota at the time so they brought him to a hospital in Fargo, North Dakota. Now, I was the one telling my grandpa to never give up. He never did give up he fought hard and ended up recovering rather well for how bad the stroke was. Over the course of the next two years, he had two more strokes, brain surgery to get rid of bleeding in his skull, and several broken ribs from falling. He never gave up even though all that. Up until the morning of Christmas in 2016 when he passed away from yet another stroke. He never gave up. He fought through all the rehab all the medication all the doctor’s appointments. He fought through all of that for the people he loved. He practiced what he preached and never gave up. His statement will forever live with me.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Zj91x5H5ohY

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=x3fVvZgr3KQ

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Tell me something about my country

1.     Another purpose I think she was trying to address in her narrative was her views against the war. Throughout the paper, she talks about why she doesn’t like the war. Before her brother died, she wasn’t protesting the war like she did after he died, but she still seemed to not be in favor of the war. She really showed it after he brother died, when she talked about how her and her friend when to protest the war in Iraq that her friends brother ended up dying in.

2.     I think that the connection between home and this story is relative because she is making the connection of her brother is like being home. Her brother was such an important person in her life and without him she feels lost.

3.     At times I think she could’ve reworded things to make it sound more important and special but on the other hand, there were times when the tone was perfect and it fit the part of the story perfectly. When she said, “When you’re killed at 18, you don’t leave much behind,” I thought that was a very good line in the story that set the tone for the rest of the story.

4.     I think the scene at the funeral with the flag on the casket and everything. The specifics of that specific scene weren’t that emotional for me but the military funeral was because my grandpa passed away in the last year and he was in the Korean war. I was a pawl bearer for his casket and carrying the casket with the American flag on it was emotional. Then during the burial, you see military personnel give a member of the family a flag, you hear the 21-gun salute, and then the taps at the end.

5.     Our family reunion a couple years ago was the saddest family reunion we have ever had. Every year on my moms side we get together at my cousin’s cabin on the lake. We hang out all weekend and just relax and go boating and have fun. On Saturday, we were tubing and my cousin, Rob, flew off the tube and ended up hitting his head on the water pretty hard and ended up with a concussion.

From there on out nothing went right. The weather was bad the rest of the weekend, and on the day we were leaving to go back home we were eating breakfast before we left. My grandpa had a stroke in front of everyone at the table. He got rushed to the hospital in Fargo, North Dakota and the next week was spent sitting in hospital lobbies and waiting rooms sleeping on the floor and in the chairs. Our lives would never be the same from that Monday morning on.

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Narrative

Brandon Bohl

Narrative

English 101

4/5/17

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=NFJPUqvcaaI

 My First Wisconsin Badgers Football Night Game

             My family has season football ticket for the Wisconsin Badgers. My Mom went to Madison for her Vet school and while she was there, she bought tickets as a student because they were cheap. Once she graduated, her and my dad decided they were going to keep getting them because they loved the Badgers. They have had them ever since then and every year we go to 3 or 4 of the home games. I’ve been going to Badgers games since I was 10.

           When we got all our tickets in the summer, my parents let me go through them and pick which ones I wanted to go to. I was going through them and saw right away a night game. I’ve always wanted to go to a night game but it just never worked out each year. The night game was against the Ohio State Buckeyes. The Buckeyes have always been a really good football team and this particular year they were a preseason favorite to win it all. The game was at 7:30 pm on October 16, 2010 at Camp Randall in Madison, Wisconsin.

           My Dad and I left our house around 1 in the afternoon to head for Madison. We stopped in Tomah around 3 for a late lunch before we got down to Madison to tailgate before the game. Once we got down to Madison around 4:30, we found our parking spot and walked down State street to meet up with our friends to tailgate before the game. While we at the tailgate party, we played catch with a football, talked with other Badger fans that were stopping by, and of course grilling hamburgers and hot dogs. After we got done eating, we were off to our seats.

           As we walk out of the tunnel to get to our seats you come out to the beautiful view of the sun setting sky and Camp Randall. Once we got to our seats, we had 15 minutes to wait before the game started so we went and got our drinks quick. Right before the game before the Badger players come out onto the field for the game, they play this video on the big screen that goes through the history of Wisconsin Badgers football and all the exciting plays over the years. I have seen that video multiple times because they do it for every game but that night it was amazing. Seeing that video under the lights in a beautiful stadium that doesn’t have a single seat open playing at the time the #1 in the country was truly amazing. At the end of the video the smoke and fire crackers go off and the team runs onto the field and the game gets ready to go.

           The Badgers got the opening kickoff of the game. David Gilreath was the kick returner for the Badgers and we caught the opening kickoff and took it all the way back for a touchdown. The whole stadium was shaking and it was very loud after the touchdown. After that, I had a sense that we would pull off this upset and win the game.  As the game went on, we kept the lead and extended it throughout the game. We ended up intercepting the ball late in the game and kneeled the ball and ran the clock out and we won 31-18.

           After the final kneel down, all of the student section jumped the railings and charged onto the field to celebrate the biggest upset of the season. We let the craziness die down a little bit before we headed down to the field because that was the only way out. On our way to the exit my dad, who is 6’ 1” bumped into the back of one of the offensive lineman for the Badgers and the lineman happened to be 6’ 11” 360 pounds and made my dad look like a little kid. A couple hours later, we finally got out of the city with all the traffic and headed home.

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Library Citation

Nike. "Equality." 12 Febuary 2017. Youtube Video.

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Flashmob

How to make a flash mob dance

Get your group of friends together and decide what you want to do.

Recruit more people to your group to make your flash mob bigger.

For our theme, we picked it happening during the halftime of a football game.

In our group pick an appropriate song or songs that would go good with the dance.

If we couldn’t plan the choreography of the dance on our own then we would hire and find someone that could help us with that.

Once we have everyone we want and we have the choreography planned, we break up into our groups that we are going to be in for the dance and we practice our parts for a while until we have them perfected and ingrained in your brain.

While practicing, find out who the best dancers are and find out are what point in the dance do certain people do the best and look the best

Once we have everything set in stone, we put the plan into action.

During the halftime when everyone is just sitting around talking waiting for halftime to be done, the first group of people in the stands starts doing their dance in the stands and slowly working their way down to the field. On their way down, they pull, what’s thought to be regular bystanders, in the dance and then they join in and by the time they get down to the field, everyone is in the dance.

When the dance is over, all the dancers just walk back up to their seats and pretend nothing happened.

Final Draft of the Flash Mob:

1.     Gather a group of friends and decide what you want your theme to be.

2.     Our theme we picked was the Harlem shake during the halftime of a football game

3.     Get permission from the athletic director and talk to the sound person at the stadium

4.     Decide who the leader or starter is in the group and what they do or say to start the flash mob

5.     Pick out a color scheme and/or costumes for each section of the group that comes in together

6.     After you get all the details down, find a place to practice, like the theatre, and start practicing and finding what things work and what things don’t work

7.     For our theme would don’t have to have everything perfected because the dancing of the Harlem shake is random moves/dances

8.     Have 5-7 practices making sure everyone knows when they are supposed to join in

9.     Find a videographer for the performance

10.    The day before get together for one last practice to make sure everything is done and ready

11.     When it is time during halftime, have the first person start the dance and then everyone else joins in on their cue and then when the whole harlem shake is over, everyone just goes back to where they were before the dance started.

Review

We started by picking out our theme of what we wanted our flash mob to be. Once we had our theme we starting thinking about how we wanted it to go and then started to plan it out. Since we were just writing it and not actually performing it, we didn’t have to worry about the practicing aspect of it. We put in the plan about practice but once we planned out how we wanted our flashmob to go we were done.

 When it came time to revise our plan, we looked it over again and we reconsidered some things if we thought we could change it and make it better than it was before. We added a few more things in, in the second draft. For example, we added the part of the song and how to people came on to the field

 We could maybe change the location if it didn’t turn out the way we thought it would. Another idea would be to pick a different song that would go better with the dancing or changing the dancing to go along with the song we had.

 The experience working together was decent. We communicated through email because I live off campus so it was hard for us to get together in person to work on it. When we got together in class that one day and worked on it together it went a lot smoother than through email.

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Marriage Proposal

For my research, I just went on Google and typed in wedding proposals and found some and either watch a video on them or read about them. Most of them were really extravagant proposals. I interviewed a few couples that I know included my parents, and what I found out is that their proposals around 30 or so years ago, weren’t as extravagant as they are these days. They are basic proposals, but they were still special moments and the place they proposed at meant a lot to the both. I researched the cost of engagement rings, and in 2016 the average guy spent almost $6,000 on an engagement ring. Just 5 years before that they were spending on average $5,000. If the price rose $1,000 in just 5 years imagine how little they were paying for engagement rings back 20-30 years ago when most of our parents were getting married.

           I asked my mom about how my dad proposed to her. What I learned is that they went on a week long vacation to Door County in Wisconsin. The first trip they ever took together was to the same place years before. They did a bunch of fun things throughout the week. Every night they were there around sunset they would take a walk on the beach and through the woods and trails and stuff. The last night they were there, they were walking on the beach like they did all week and then my mom was walking in front of my dad and then he stopped and got down and she turned around and he asked her and she immediately said yes!

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Application and Resume

RESUME

Brandon Bohl

E9132 639th Ave

Elk Mound, WI 54739

715-225-9824

brandonbohl11@gmail.com

 Objective

To qualify and get the custodial job at Polymer Technology Company, LLC.

 Education

Graduate in the Class of 2016 from Elk Mound High School

Freshman at University of Wisconsin-Stout, Menomonie, WI

·      Majoring in Criminal Justice.

·      Expected to Graduate in the Spring of 2020.

 Experience

·      Lawn and Landscape care for DKS Construction                    (June 2015 – current)

o   Mow lawn for various places in the Menomonie area.

o   Landscaping care such as: planting grass, picking rocks, building retaining walls and other structures.

·      Cashier at Cenex Gas Station/Convenience Store                 (August 2015 -Current)

o   Worked the front counter as a cashier mostly.

o   Worked with 1 or 2 other people during shifts.

o   Helped maintain the cleanliness of the store and restrooms.

o   Restocked shelves and materials.

·      Shoveling and Plowing for DKS Construction in Menomonie, WI      (Nov 2015 – current)

o   Snow removal for various businesses in the Menomonie area.

o   Worked with the business owners in finding out what snow they wanted and needed and by what time they needed it done by.

o   Sometimes worked on a tight schedule when I needed to have certain businesses cleaned by opening time.

o   Kept and organized list of how long and the locations of each place I shoveled

o   Learned to do it right the first time so you don’t have to do it a 2nd 3rd or 4th time.

Skills

·      I am a very fast and adaptive learner to anything that I do. If I can’t figure something out, I’ll keep trying to figure it out until I succeed.

·      Hard worker

·      I can work affectively with others

Activities

·      4 year, 2-Sport Athlete

·      Member of E-Club (Varsity Letter members)

·      Member of the National Honor Society

Various charity and volunteer opportunities in the community

APPLICATION

Brandon Bohl

E9132 639th Ave

Elk Mound, WI 54739

February 9th, 2017

 Custodian Opportunity Polymer Technology Company, LLC

5120 Eagle Point Road

Menomonie, WI 54751

  To Whom It May Concern:

           I am writing in response to the post on Monster.com about the part-time custodial job at the Menomonie Locations. I have confidence that I have the skills and abilities to successfully do this job. If there are some things that haven’t done before, I am a fast learner and will be willing to pick up on things along the way.

           I am a freshman in college at the University of Wisconsin-Stout, planning to major in Criminal Justice and go into law enforcement. Attached in my resume are my skills as an individual, but the one that would be in interest to you is my work history in the Cenex Gas Station/Convenience Store. Working there, I had to go almost everything. I cleaned the building if I closed at night, I had to restock shelves occasionally, and in the summer, I did some utilities outside of the building like lawn care and repainting things when necessary. I have also had a few harder laboring jobs that have taught me my good work ethic and making sure you do it right the first time so you don’t have to redo it. Those jobs included, mowing lawn and shoveling snow all around Menomonie for DKS Construction. I would also help them with whatever they asked. Help around the shop, working the counter at the rental store when needed, or even chipping ice in the winter.

             I would love and welcome the opportunity to put past learnings and experiences to work for your company in the Custodial position. I would also welcome the opportunity to advance within your company in the future. I can be reached at 715-225-9824 or at brandonbohl11@gmail.com. Thank you for considering my application.

 Sincerely,

   Brandon Bohl

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Spoken Word Poem

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=qr2ID4JwDFM

This video is about a guy named Inky Johnson. He grew up in a bad neighborhood and was really poor. He devoted his childhood to working hard and pushing towards a goal he set to make it in professional football. He wanted to do that to have success in his life but also to provide for his family and get them out of the bad situations. He is projected to get drafted in the first round of the NFL draft, but has a life changing injury. He almost dies, but recovers except for the fact that he can never play the game he loves ever again. He then devoted his life to talking to people about how they can do anything they want in their life if they put their mind to it. He talks about perseverance and gives motivating speeches to kids across the country. He is very good at using his words to have kids believe that they can do anything they want if they truly put their mind to it. After the first time i watched this video, it truly moved me to reach my full potential and to try to achieve my goals every day.

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Why should you recycle?

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Why Buy Local?

Do you ever wonder why small locally run businesses fail more than they succeed in your small rural areas? Big corporate companies and companies that import their goods from other countries take that business away from the small businesses that rely on people near and around them to keep them in business. Buying local is a great idea because, you know where the food or good is coming from, when you buy from a local store you are helping support the economy in your area, and the food is more likely going to be not have as many chemicals put on them to preserve them.

There are many good things about buying local. One of the biggest ones is that when you buy locally you know where the food is coming from. Local businesses often get their foods very close by because they can’t afford shipping food across the country. When you know where the food is coming from you it gives you a sense of security because you know that the food isn’t lathered with pesticides and chemicals to preserve them.

Buying local also helps the local economy and helps keep businesses in your area up and running. Many small local businesses depend on the community’s business to keep them in business. Local businesses don’t get people from a long way away to buy their product, so if local people don’t buy from them they will go out of business quickly eliminating jobs from the community. If communities have to outsource to get their food supply, then it’ll cost the community more because they have to import the food compared to getting the food from a farm down the street.

A couple of the biggest arguments against buying local and not outsourcing everything are; it is cheaper in the long run to get your food related products from other states and it is easier to get and have all foods year round if you buy them from states where you can grow them all year. For example, in Wisconsin, you can’t grow any foods in the winter and even in the spring and fall depending how the winter comes and goes. So, if you get your foods from states like California and Florida you can get all sorts of foods whenever you want. The other negative thing that could come from buy local foods all the time is that locally grown foods are usually more expensive because they need to have the cost higher to stay in business.

There are a lot of people that think each way of getting your goods and services are good and bad. Coming from a small rural area and seeing how important helping the community by buying locally and keeping jobs in the area, I think that buying locally is more beneficial than outsourcing everything and buying foods from across the country. So, next time you go grocery shopping, think about buying from a local grocery store instead of a corporate one because you are helping keep people employed, you know where your food is coming from and how it is treated and you will be giving back to the community.

Spriggs, Katherine. "On Buying Local." Lunsford, Andrea, et al. Everyones an Author. New York: W.W. Norton and Company, Inc, 2017. 150-157.

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Take a stance on Nike’s Commercial

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=43QTjFCPLtI 

The article about the Nike commercial showed how anyone can cross the barriers and boundaries playing sports so why can’t you break boundaries with social issues like racism, sexism, and other issues. I agree with Nike’s thinking on this issue. We as a country cross boundaries all the time in more than just sports, even the littlest things. For example, if you are going faster than the speed limit, you are crossing the boundary. People do that all the time and think nothing of it, so why can’t everyone treat everyone equal and break that stigma of races being different? Why can’t everyone be treated fairly no matter what gender, race, religion, ethnicity the people are?

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Why participate in High School Athletics and Extra-Curricular Events

Participating in athletics or extra-curricular events in high school is one of the best things a student can do while in high school. Whether participating in those activities are beneficial or not is one of the biggest discussions that surround the students. There are many things that back up and show why the high school athletes should participate in athletics or extra-curricular events. The time when kids are in high school are the most important time for the students to find out who they really are as a person. Also during high school is when most people grow up and really start to mature, and what they experience during that time is what will shape them for years after high school.

           A study from the University of Kansas shows that high school athletes perform better in school and tend to graduate more than non-athletes. Angela Lumpkin, a professor of health, sport and exercise sciences, and Rebecca Achen, doctoral candidate and graduate teaching assistant at KU, showed that athletes attended school at a higher rate than not athletes and the athletes also had a high percentage of graduation rate. Athletes also showed that they drop out less and did better on the Kansas assessment test. This study was performed in 2012 in grades 9-12. One of the reasons that the athletes are in school more often is because there are rules that say that the student have to take and complete so many credits in a given semester in order to be eligible to participate in their sport. Nationally, percentages show that students who graduate high school have a higher economic potential than non-graduates.

           When you participate in high school athletics or extra-curricular events, you learn and acquire many skills that benefit us for the rest of our life. Being a part of a team like you are in many athletics and extra-curricular stuff helps you learn teamwork and cooperation. During the event or sport you are all pushing together to try to acquire a certain goal. The students have to be able to work together in order to achieve that goal and in doing so, you learn teamwork and cooperation without even knowing it. Those skills can help you later in your life when you get a job and have to work with other groups of people for various things. In extra-curricular events and especially athletics you are led by a coach or teacher who is a very important positive mentor in your achievement in your goal and in life. Speaking from personal experiences, the coaches I had for sports in high school and the teacher that led the extra-curricular events played a huge impact in who I am today as a person. What they taught me and pushed of me as an athlete and person benefitted me more in life than in the sports or group I was in. Along with the mentors you are with you also become very good friends with the people you are with for those sports and events and you usually stay friends with them for the rest of your life. When you are competing together and trying to accomplish that goal together is strengthens that bond, along with all the time you spend together in practice and games and even outside of sports.

           There are a couple things that parents and students might think are bad about sports and extra-curriculum groups. It can take up a lot of your time in some cases. You have your regular school day and then practice for a couple hours after that and then if you put in extra work your day is almost over. For most cases athletics keep you going all year round with the seasons and off season stuff that you do to get better. Some sports can be a little expensive depending how you look at it. For example, for hockey when you are playing on a traveling team you must pay for hotels every weekend when you go to tournaments, you must pay for all the gear that isn’t cheap, and if you get extra help from specialized trainers to make yourself even better than that will cost some money too. In my opinion all the positives in why you should participate outweigh those negative things.

(Krings)

(Chen)

Revised Position Paper

https://drive.google.com/open?id=0BwVZI1eU3pJ8SmQwR2NVNW1MN3M

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Revised Voices from Rural America

1.     All the kids that were interviewed did a really good job of complementing the article. They brought their real-life situations into the story. I can relate to this article well because I grew up in a town of roughly 800 people. My graduating class was only 80. In the article, it talks about how high school students both rural and suburban are being pushed into careers that they don’t want to pursue. The article says, “They are putting kids who want to be accountants into welding classes.” None of the six profiles talked about how someone in their high school pushed them into something that they didn’t have interests in. In the profiles, Ryan Lee talks about how he doesn’t want to go to a 4-year college. He wants to start working right out of high school in diesel technology. In the article, they didn’t talk about why kids might NOT want to go to college and how not going to college could be good for some kids or benefit them more than if they went to college.

2.     I think that the people that are likely to return or stay around their hometown are Ryan Lee and Emily Steele. I think Ryan will stay around home because he already has a job that he plans to continue working at in the future. I don’t think he would leave his job if he is making good money and enjoys doing it, which he is. The fact that Emily Steele picked a college near home so that she knew she would be safe shows me that she doesn’t want to be away from people she loves. She might move a few miles away from her hometown but she isn’t going to venture out on her own far away. The people that I think are going to move away from home and “start a new life” on their own are; Autumn Crawford, and possibly Amanda Wahlstedt. Autumn wants to become a lawyer and is going to Ohio State University. She even said it herself that if she wants to become a lawyer she will have to move to a big city and probably away from home. I believe that she is dead set on becoming a lawyer and won’t change her course and because of that, she won’t return. I’m on the fence about Amanda, John Dunn, and Richard Livingston. I have the same thought for all three of them that makes it hard for me to decide if they will stay or go. They all want to make a difference, whether it be what is best for themselves, breaking the bad family trends, or proving people wrong. But, you could do all that in one of two ways. You could move away from your hometown and start over and make your own life without people influencing you, or you could go back home and try to make a difference with your situation around your hometown and try to change the things that are bad.

 3.     The best thing to know when you start college is to just be yourself. Don’t overthink things. There are lots of people around you that are just as nervous or maybe just as scared as you are. I think the biggest thing to do to succeed in school is to not fall behind in homework in any aspect of school. Once you fall behind you may be struggling to catch up and in the process, you aren’t learning the stuff that is being taught during that same time as well as you should be.

  Dear Ryan Lee,

The best advice I can give you for after high school is continuing to make friends either through tech school, work, or just being out and about. Most of your classmates and friends that you had in high school will be going off to college and moving away and you won’t see them much at all except on summer vacation. When I went to college for my first semester, I didn’t really talk to anyone except people on my baseball team and my roommates. I mean I knew other people but I wasn’t close to them and it would be kind of awkward to hang out with them. On the weekends when my roommates would go home (because they lived closer) I wouldn’t have anything to do besides sit in my room and play video games and watch TV. Now, I was okay with doing that all weekend because that is the type of person that I was. But if I had to look back at it, I would have tried to make some more friends and got involved with a lot more things on campus. So, once you graduate from high school, keep going out and trying to find new people otherwise you may not have a lot to do except work and hangout by yourself.

[the-english-guru-blog]

Voices from Rural America

1.     The first person. Autumn Crawford who lives in Minnesota, mentions the fact that when she goes to college at Ohio State University her friends and family won’t be able to see her whenever they want anymore because she isn’t within an hour’s drive of everyone. In the introduction to this article, they talk about how these kids are usually the first in their families to go to college and graduate. John Dunn confirms that statement when he says that he was tired of seeing people in his life fail. The article asks the question do kids have the same values as their parents? Ryan Lee thinks that he doesn’t need to go to college to be successful. Odds are, his parents or someone really close to him in his life didn’t go to college and they are now living comfortably. What are parents do very greatly persuade the kids in what they are going to do. If your parents went to college, you are more likely to go to college and if they didn’t then you are not likely to go.

 2.     I think that the person that is the least likely to come back home in Autumn Crawford because, like she said herself, if she wants to be a lawyer than she will have to live in a bigger city in order to maintain her employment and make a living. She wouldn’t be able to do that back around her home city of 250 people. In my opinion Ryan Lee is more likely to stay around home for multiple reasons. He isn’t moving away to go to college. He is going to a tech college around his home. After he gets his diesel technology degree from there, he plans to continue working at the same job he has had since high school. If he got that job in high school, it must be relatively close to his hometown. He might move from house to house but I don’t think he will move far away from the area.

 3.     Dear Ryan Lee,

The best advice I can give you for after high school is continuing to make friends either through tech school, work, or just being out and about. Most of your classmates and friends that you had in high school will be going off to college and moving away and you won’t see them much at all except on summer vacation. When I went to college for my first semester, I didn’t really talk to anyone except people on my baseball team and my roommates. I mean I knew other people but I wasn’t close to them and it would be kind of awkward to hang out with them. On the weekends when my roommates would go home (because they lived closer) I wouldn’t have anything to do besides sit in my room and play video games and watch TV. Now, I was okay with doing that all weekend because that is the type of person that I was. But if I had to look back at it, I would have tried to make some more friends and got involved with a lot more things on campus. So once you graduate from high school, keep going out and trying to find new people otherwise you may not have a lot to do except work and hangout by yourself.