Today in class we learned about fanfiction which was not something I was familiar with. Fanfiction is when fans of certain TV shows, books, movies write their own fiction versions. Today in class's we got to write our own ending to Dracula which was pretty interesting. We made ours pretty suspenseful with Mina running away with Dracula because his power had fully taken over her. It was a lot of fun to write our own version and make it however we wanted to.
here is a link to some fanfiction of twilight!
http://www.fanfiction.net/book/Twilight/

We had our Vampire Symposium last week! It was fun to do something different with our projects. I really enjoyed the trivia and we got candy. I also enjoyed the projects because I learned a lot of interesting facts about vampires and the history of them. All the the history has influenced how much people are so interested in vampires today. It has even got to the point where people are starting their own vampire community. It was also neat to see how vampires have turned from such ugly creatures to desired ones. I'm glad we did the third project like that, it was a good idea.

We are going to give our presentations this week. We have been discussing different ways to improve  presentations and being able to present. We want to keep the audiences entertained and not bored. We need to make sure that our information is organized and correct. We are going to practice presenting to also improve the organization of the presentation. This will make everything feel more prepared and easier for us to present. Here is an article on how to improve your presentation skills!
http://www.inc.com/guides/how-to-improve-your-presentation-skills.html

We have started our third project and we are going to do a presentation instead of a paper. I really like this idea because it something different than just a regular comp paper and gives us an opportunity to have the experience of doing presentations. Me and my group are doing Religion,Folklore, and Voodoo influence on vampire craze. We came up with the idea of doing a vampire time line and how the histories of vampires have influenced their popularity today. One main interest we have are the people who actually consider themselves real vampires and how they use the history to influence the way they. Here is a short video of some people who follow this belief.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=knKCKvJ-icE

We have started reading Carmilla chapters 1-4. I like this book so far. I can tell that it relates to the other pieces of literature we have been reading. It hasn't said it straight forward yet but I'm guessing the girl Carmilla is a Vampire. It talks about how she is very beautiful and how she draws Laura in. These are similar characteristics that the vampires in the twilight series and Lord Ruthven. All of them are extremely attractive and draw people in with their desirable characteristics. This book so far reminds me of a mix between Northanger Abbey and the Twilight series. I'm excited to keep reading!!

I'm doing my next paper on the social problem of women being to dependent on men. I'm using the book Northanger Abbey and the Twilight series to show this issue. I'm going to compare the role of the two main actresses Bella and Catherine. One of the parts I am going to use for Bella is when Edward leaves her in New Moon. I am using because of how much she lets it affect her life. She becomes very depressed and shuts everyone out.This is very unhealthy for women to do and is a problem. Here is a clip of Bella from new moon to show how depressed she was.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?feature=fvwp&v=GNQASF3STWM&NR=1 

Today in class we went over the poem the Giaour. When I first started to read the poem I was pretty confused about what was actually going on. However, today when we went over it together step by step it was a lot easier to understand. Another thing that helped was defining some of the words that we were not sure of the meaning. The thing with understanding poems is that it helps to break it down line by line to understand.the Giaour was a little hard to understand because it jumped from one thing to another. Other than that it is a good story so far. Here is a link that gives advice on interpreting poems!!!
http://www.webster.edu/~armbruka/engl1030/handouts/interpretpoem.htm

Im thinking about doing my next project on the role of women. I looked up some articles about Bella and found this one. It is questioning if Bella is a good role model for the girls reading the books. I think over all Bella is a good person, she cares about school and her family. However, there is a question as to whether or not if she is to dependent on Edward. When bella is dumped she acts as if she has literally died. Young girls do need to know that it is not the end of the world being dumped. You should never let a guy have that affect on you. It is good that in the books they have Bella being with jacob to show that having people who care about you around can help when you hurt.
Here's the article!
http://www.huffingtonpost.com/meg-hemphill/twilights-bella-swan-role_b_354121.html

We finished Northanger Abbey which was a book that I really enjoyed reading. Today in class we watched the last part of the movie that went with the book. It was a little different than the book but it was still good. I love to watch movies from books I have read. A cool thing that was in the movie was the symbolization of the vampire. How Catherine had accused Henry's dad of being a horrid guy and maybe have harmed their mother. I liked how Henry said that he was not literally a monster but still acted like one, maybe like a vampire. This is because he had "sucked the life" out of their mom by just using her for her money. This is also intresting because the whole vampire symbolizing relates to other stories we are reading in class. The ones that actually have vampires in them.

We are currently in the middle of our first project and I am enjoying writing this paper. The paper is different than my comp one papers. I am use to writing more formal and this paper is less formal and more article style writing. I enjoy writing this type of paper because it lets me experience a different type of writing style. I also enjoy this assignment because it lets me write in more of my own style and express my opinion. One cool thing I learned today in class is citing in your article with a hyperlink. You choose a word and insert a hyperlink. I have never done this before and I find it pretty neat.
Here's an

example!!!

I never thought of reviewing as reading with a critical eye but it seems like a much better way to go when reviewing your paper. You do not want to just briefly review your paper, critiquing it yourself will help when the next person reads your paper and hopefully leaving them with less to critique. Revising is something I do the most, just going over your paper again and again making improvements. Also letting another person revise your paper is good especially if they don't know much about the topic you can ask them if they do after reading your paper. Editing is something else I will do over and over. I also like to go to the writing center for advice because they are a lot of help! The work I did in high school was much different than this. I guess you could say I did not review, revise, and edit my papers as much as I do now. My layout of papers is a little different to, they are more organized since I have had more experience. Last semester in my comp one class we had peer review.I received useful advice on grammar and another persons opinion was good to have also. This made editing my paper easier.
Here is a link on revising a paper! http://homeworktips.about.com/od/paperassignments/a/revising.htm

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=1r5HwLkdGeE
This is a link to a video that is the first part of Northanger Abbey. After reading one through five I looked up to see if they had made a movie out of the book. One of my favorite things is when they make a movie out of a book because I love to see books come to life. I also enjoy seeing what characters they pick for the movies and how well they play the part of the character in the book. This is one reason why I do enjoy the twilight series because of the movies that have came out.

For class today we had to read Violence,Agency,and the Women of Twilight. I was really interested in the article and the views of the author. The article begins describing about rape culture and how in today's society that it is "the girls fault" for dressing the way she does or her fault for being in the wrong place at the wrong time. The phrase is also used a few times that people will say "boys will be boys". I definitely agree that there is no excuse for rape. However; I do not really see a connection between twilight and the problem of rape culture. Yes, the book portrays that violence is "sexy" in a way but I believe that the book is just portraying the whole "bad boy" cliche not necessarily that rape is good.I believe the words given in the examples for Jacob and Bella kissing are being twisted a bit. When I watched the movies and read the books I never got the idea that Edward or Jacob were being violent.

When I first started college writing I did not really feel like I was very prepared for it. I was a little worried about this but once I began writing papers I began to feel more confident with my writing. The hand outs that the professors provide are very helpful to me when writing so I can be sure to include everything they want in the paper. If I were to give a high school senior advice on college writing I would tell them first off to not procrastinate when they receive the paper. I would began researching and brainstorming ideas for the paper as soon as possible because the more time you have to work on your paper the more you can improve your paper. I would also advise them to be sure to make it clear to provide all the information in the paper that was assigned.

Alrighty this is my first post, I have never really had a blog before so im a little new to this.
So far I really enojoy the english course its something different than a regular comp2 class so it makes it intresting. Today we did the pop up reading which i really enjoyed because it let us look at quotes from a different view or allowed us to show visually what came to mind when were read the quotes.