After a full week of online classes, I can say something I never imagined I would say, I miss waking up for our 8 am class! I certainly miss all my friends at school and our beautiful campus, but I seriously miss going to class. At first, I thought going to class online would make it a bit easier and stress-free but I’m finding the opposite to be true. In our English class, nothing much has changed and I look forward to seeing everyone again.
Personally, this week was very stressful. I had two exams in a totally new format surrounded by people who may have missed my company a little bit too much. I had to find a new study space after I had recently found a really cool one. I also dealt with an internet outage Thursday. My number one stress reliever has always been sports and without those I’ve been reading more than ever. Mr. Blom has said since this situation began, that it is important to be patient and help each other. Our class is very good at helping each other out. I think the patience thing is still coming along for me, but I’m trying.
The second week of our online instruction was slightly different than last week. We couldn’t meet Tuesday, but we still received instruction via a recorded video Tuesday night. In the video Mr. Blom talked about our new citation style for our next unit project, MLA 8th. He also talked about creating a thesis statement. Mr. Blom went over what exactly he was looking for and expecting in our citations and wrote them out for us. I followed along with him while he was going over them and I feel really confident about my citation. He gave awesome examples of thesis statements that clearly show us what is expected. I had another assignment due this week and I used those thesis examples to help me with it as well.
Thursday I wasn’t able to attend class because of an internet issue but the lecture was recorded and posted for me. In it, we had a typical feeder workshop and broke into groups. I personally get a great deal out of our in-class workshops. I’ve been extremely lucky to get such smart and nice groupmates this semester and I was bummed I couldn’t see them Thursday. The class also broke down a few textual analysis essays as examples for our feeders and projects. Towards the end of class, we had to wrap up our unit 2 projects and post our videos.
My short story for Unit 3 is about Vietnam and War stories. I chose this because my grandfather was in the Vietnam war and frequently tells me of his experiences. I may ask him how he interprets the story and gain a different perspective on it.
I believe that our class is doing great at adjusting to online classes. Mr. Blom is helping us every way he can and my classmates are more than willing to adapt to whatever may come.
