The Most Dangerous Game

Well this story was kind of confusing to me, I just don't get what the exact point of this was, I mean one way I kind of looked at it is the way we hunt each other. While we don't literally hunt one another, we often get bored and find enjoyment out of someone else's expense. Maybe I just totally misread this piece and that's how I got this result, but I just thought of the awful things we do for a few minutes of fun. People are always picking on each other for a few laughs, or taking the kid no one talks to's backpack because its funny to see him freak out. We hunt each other's emotions I guess you could say, because we get bored with the other things that are going on. People will keep going and going until they get the reaction that they want. I think I might have totally misread this piece so I'm interested to see what everyone else thought because I'm not sure exactly what this piece meant.

Omelas

When I read this I was pretty confused, and it kind of bothered me but then I really thought about it, people sacrifice their own happiness all the time, and other people hardly have the chance to be happy. It is almost a numbers game what is worth more to you, your happiness, or a fair chance at happiness for everyone? When I read I thought wow maybe that is really horrible, but then I thought about it and it really isn't as bad as it could be. In our society there are so many poor people, and they get paid such low wages so the people at the top make the most profit, leading to their happiness. If you want to have this kind of superficial happiness it requires someone else to have unhappiness. The only difference is that in our society you have people to be unhappy with. That makes everything better when you have people that understand what you are going through, but this child doesn't have anyone. While I like to think I would sacrifice my own happiness for the good of my town, friends or family I can't even really say that I would. So when it comes to sacrificing my own happiness as well as everyone else's for a child's chance at happiness I don't think that it is a fair or even trade. It is truly awful for the one person that has to deal with it, but sometimes life is really unfair.

Writing Process

Writing this paper has been pretty difficult for me, because I'm not totally sure if the way I wrote it makes sense to someone else, so I'm unsure if I should continue writing this way, as I find more research or format my paper entirely differently. Since I'm not sure where to go from here, I had problems getting to just 5 pages this is because I'm not totally sure if I should include more subtopics or elaborate more on the things I referred to already. One of my other problems has been I'm not sure exactly how long to make this rough draft, I have more research that I can include in my paper, but I'm not sure how long this rough draft should be. Some people I have talked to have said their papers were much longer than mine, but I don't know where to go from where I am now. This unsureness has been the biggest problem, I think my paper will be much improved when I get some feedback from someone about what things my paper is missing or could use more or less of.
The research at first wasn't bad, because I didn't have much problem finding my articles once I got into doing the research. I found articles then I was able to find different words or ideas to look up to find different articles. This process has been really helpful to me because I was able to find so many articles, which will definitely help on future research projects. The biggest problem for me was getting through all of the research, especially when they talk about their method of studying because it is so dry, and most of the words were pretty confusing so it took a pretty long time to get through it. Overall I think my paper has a good start but it can definitely be improved a lot.

Evaluation of this Semester

My least favorite thing about this class, is that we have so many papers at one time, it kind of frustrates me to work on all 3 of these papers at the same time. I know that this is how all of the English classes are, but it makes more sense, to me, to write a paper, do all of the drafts and corrections then hand it in and be done with it. Since we are working on multiple papers at once, I stop working on one when we have to do things for another paper. That's probably more of a time management issue.
My favorite part of class is when we have discussions about things, for several reasons. I think its easier to talk about things when its more your opinion than to answer a question, like what is this concept from the book. I also think its easier to have a discussion like that when you can really see everyone, like in the circles. The only thing I don't like is when someone is put on the spot during discussions, because sometimes people don't say anything because they don't have their thoughts together, or haven't decided their opinion on a subject.

Chronic Offender

For my research paper I want to write about the chronic 6 percent, or the 6 percent of criminals are responsible for a disproportionate amount of crimes. I'm not sure exactly how to narrow this down though. Some of the questions I've thought to ask are
1. What are the causes of this? Is it more biological or social?
2. Can this be changed?
3. What are some of the early signs of this behavior? Can we tell who these people are going to be before they commit all of these crimes?
4. How should we react to these people after they have committed these crimes? Are harsher sentences such as the three strikes and your out rule, fair?
5. Is there any thing we can do to prevent this?
6. What are the impacts this has on society?

This is life. You have to kill

When I read the language of War is Killing, I was completely torn and that really really frustrated me. It bothered me that he was claiming to be similar to someone as important to Americans as George Washington, but when I stepped away from emotions I started to understand. Since I knew so many people that were affected by the attacks on 9/11, I didn't want to believe someone that said this. I didn't want to believe that there were any good intentions or ideas behind it. I still don't completely buy that he had good intentions or that he did it completely for independence of his country, but it reminded me that there is always more than one side to every story. The last line kind of bothered me because it seemed too true, but also too simple. I understand that there is going to be war in our world, but I don't know how to make war acceptable, or needed. Looking back, it seems like the revolutionary war was completely needed, but it's hard to make comparisons like that when we don't have complete hind site.