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I think a chameleon best represents me and my abilities. A chameleon easily adapts to the color of the surroundings. A chameleon, whenever in danger, changes its color to adapt to its surroundings, thus, changing the outcome of what could have happened. The same way I like to think preemptively and solve problems. I think that I never waver from a difficult situation, instead I like to draw inspiration from people and things that are happening around me, in a similar way that a chameleon takes inspiration from its surroundings and changes its color, and creatively try to solve the problem, which I might not have if I did not imitate a chameleon.

I can be any color, but I now I am “Blue and Yellow”, and I couldn’t be prouder. Since, my admission to Emory, I think I have become more decisive.

Avatar Photo and Explanation

Student Posts
Photo Credit Hans Nater

I chose this photo of a line of trees for a number of reasons. Firstly, trees symbolize giving. From a scientific perspective, they provide oxygen and power our ecosystem. From a literature perspective, trees have long expressed wisdom and generosity, whether as Ents in Tolkien’s Lord of the Rings or as the tree in The Giving Tree (I confess, the latter of these two was low-hanging fruit, pun not intended). I think giving is an important aspect of being a member of society, and in many ways, trees anchor this sentiment. Secondly, trees offer a source of comfort in an ever-changing world. Most species live to one hundred years or less, with some notable exceptions being Giant Tortoises and certain Jellyfish, but many trees can live for thousands of years. Some trees that are alive today were around before Christianity and Buddhism. Acknowledging trees like these keeps me grounded, especially during times where it feels like the world is changing too much for my liking. Other mini-reasons I chose this photo are my interests in biology, science, and photography (somewhat). Finally, this particular photo is quite pretty. It reminds me of a joyous occasion I attended when I was very young, so nostalgia played a role in my choosing this photo as well.

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This is the image that my cousin, who is major in art, created for me in her spare time. I chose this because of multiple reasons. First of all, the skills of my cousin are very exquisite that she painted the picture with matching color and great layout. The girl in the picture looks like me at some point. I am particularly interested in the style my cousin chose; the overall clothing seems very comfortable, which might be my pick. Secondly, I like the emotion behind the picture that this is a gift that one of my relatives gives to me. When creating this badge, I was having trouble uploading this picture clearly since I need to convert it from a paper version to digital version. With good lightning and technology, however, I successfully took the picture and uploaded it onto the website.

Narrative Reflection

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Link to the Narrative

The pre-writing exercise really helped me while constructing ideas together. Following the steps on the pre-writing, I found that writing could be easy. These steps saved lots of time for me while writing the essay too. I did not feel strange about doing the pre-writing exercise first. Back to high school, my English teachers always suggested the class to do the pre-write first as well as you.

Before heading to the pre-write exercise, I read the prompt first. While reading the prompt, “the key experiences that shaped the way you read and write”, I have already had an idea. “Writing was one of my biggest fears.” This sentence perfectly summarizes my history reaction to writing. With a conversation between me and a little boy, I want to start my essay in an amusing and compelling way. By the end of writing this narrative, I surprisingly found that I was not taking that much of time, realizing writing was not my biggest fear anymore.

For me, the most interesting sentence from my essay would be, “There is no right or wrong.” This sentence means a lot to me; in order to show that, it has repeated three times in the essay. It was the turning point for me to realize that there was nothing I should be afraid of. Confidence is the key, with the confident mindset and eliminating my dependence on erasers, writing has no correct answer.

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cynti19. “Disney’s Peter Pan Photo: Wendy Darling Screencap.” Fanpop, http://www.fanpop.com/clubs/disneys-peter-pan/images/36193498/title/wendy-darling-screencap-photo.
“Video Game Controller, Handle, Game Handle, Recreational Machines PNG Transparent Clipart Image and PSD File for Free Download.” Pngtree, pngtree.com/freepng/video-game-controller_4830279.html.

I chose the image of English book as the background. Thinking about the main topic of ENG101, English literature should definitely be the key. Recently, I went to Qingdao, which is a costal city in western China. This picture was taken by me while visiting Qingdao. I love the sea, enjoy spending time sitting there and listening to the splash of sea waves crashing against the rocks. I have lived in San Diego for four years. Visiting Qingdao reminds me the sea that I used to see in San Diego everyday when going to school. Video games should be another key element of this course, I also included the images of controller handles. A little fun fact about myself is that I named myself Wendy after watching the Disney movie Peter Pan. Therefore, I included the image of Wendy from Peter Pan as well.

Literacy Narrative

Student Posts

Science can be tough for every child growing up. We learn about these different topics and theories that seem to come from nowhere. This culmination of ideas are given to children to help them gain a more diverse sense of knowledge about the current world and how things and life function between one another. These different properties are a bore to most, but to some it is a new way to express ideas. The most common expression in the science/education community of these ideas is by having students research topics and ideas on their own and present them at a place we all know as the science fair.

For many, expressing their ideas and findings in a neat poster may be simple and come as second nature, but for second grade me it was cruel. I spent countless hours planning and researching ideas that might appeal to me, and when I found one. I decided that it would work and I carried out the experiment and recorded the results. Now for the tricky part which was spending the next couple of days typing out pages of reflection about my process and how I came to my final conclusion. Transcribing so many thoughts took a lot of time and energy out of me, but I had to keep going, regardless. From this I was able to build upon my mental endurance as a writer, in retrospect the longest I had written up until this point in my life was an elementary five paragraph hamburger style essay. 

Honestly another point in my life that helped me finally reach where I am currently in my english career was writing my college application. I was not your normal student who did the 650 words of common app, but instead I applied through Questbridge (an organization that helps lower socioeconomic, high achieving students attend college.) Their application consisted of sx essays that all dealt with personal life issues and questions that allowed applicants to share their individual story, something I was not used to from my traditional writing courses in high school. This allowed me to develop personal matters that I didn’t know were such a big issue when defining myself. I had a sense of purpose in life, but not so much a reason for where my beginnings had come from. This hindrance blocked me for many years with writing personal narratives. 

These two skills allowed me to become a stronger and more confident writer. My science fair project allowed me to develop a passion for scientific research and build up my writing skills. My college application although short in space allowed me to flourish my emotional side of writing. This expansion of skill that was gained from my getting in touch with emotions now feels stronger compared to the endurance that I learned at a young age. However, my emotions and ideas can not be expressed without having just one or another. Learning how to utilize both skill sets has allowed me to become a stronger writer by being able to express myself in a way that allows for full coverage in many forms of writing, not just lab reports. 

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Low Poly Portrait Photo edited by Ryan Song

This image is a portrait of myself edited into a low poly portrait. This photo was actually an assignment I had done back in high school. I thought it was appropriate to use here as the website icon so I have reedited it and posted it here.

I chose this image to represent myself because of the multifaceted feel the triangles that make up my face in this picture gives. To me this represents the many different sides of myself I have developed while experiencing different cultures and learning different languages. Aside from my different interests, this icon also shows my interest in the arts.

Badge

Student Posts

I created this avatar when I first got my phone. It’s meant for sending emoticons using one’s own face (as opposed to yellow faces), although it’s probably not as popular as Apple would have liked. I chose to use this avatar because I was able to play around with the faces. I also added a blue beanie, because if this was an in-person class, I would have been wearing a beanie most days. The criteria said to choose an avatar that speaks to this class, so I chose one with a thinking face (“Play Make Write THINK”). I also found it fitting that the avatar be thinking given that it shows up when I comment on a discussion post (“here is what I am thinking”).

Some difficulties I had while creating the badge were adjusting the photo size and adding my name on, but when I used Pixlr, those problems were quickly resolved. 

Links are for humans; URLs are for computers

David's Posts

URLs are for computers.

They are specific addresses that tell the web browser where to go to fetch data and show it to you in one form or another. The URL for the resources page on this site is https://eng101f20.davidmorgen.org/resources/. The URL for the oldest post on the course blog is https://eng101f20.davidmorgen.org/davids-posts/header-image-credits/. With a little awareness of the syntax, you can decode that information. If you wanted to read the page or post that I just referenced, you could copy that code and paste it into your browser to get there.

Sometimes people just paste URLs into emails or pages that they’re writing, and some applications (like the few most recent version of WordPress) will convert those URLs into links so that you at least don’t have to go to the trouble of copying and pasting the code as separate steps to get to the pages referenced. For example, one way to show you Gavin Aung Than’s comic adaptation of a quote by Jim Henson would be to just do this: http://zenpencils.com/comic/150-jim-henson-a-puppeteers-advice/. However, most of the time readers will find URLs confusing and uninviting, and it’s difficult for you to effectively contextualize that information smoothly.

Links are for humans

Links use HTML code to turn URLs into something that is readable and clear for humans. One way to create a link is manually, by inserting some HTML code around text that makes the text into a link, so

Check out Gavin Aung Than’s <a href=”http://zenpencils.com/comic/150-jim-henson-a-puppeteers-advice/”>brilliant comic adaptation</a> of a quote by Jim Henson.

looks like this in your browser

Check out Gavin Aung Than’s brilliant comic adaptation of a quote by Jim Henson.

Most of the time, though, you don’t need to insert links manually. When you’re in your WordPress post editor, you can create a link by highlighting the text or image that you want to become a link and selecting the button that looks like the links of a chain, then pasting the URL into the dialog box. But if you want to add a link to a comment you’re leaving on this site, you’ll need to know the HTML code to do so.

This distinction between URLs and links is important for our class because our first learning outcome states that over the course of the semester, you will “demonstrate understanding of audience” and learn to “use and adapt generic conventions, including organization, development, and style.” Using links instead of URLs is an important first step in understanding the reading needs of your audience and is an important stylistic and generic convention of writing for the web.

This distinction is also important because using links opens up a whole range of more interesting options for you that are unavailable when you merely drop URLs into your work. Jokes can be goofy commentaries or can offer useful insight on the topic at hand.

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Student Posts

I started watching the anime Demon Slayer a few weeks ago, and the protagonist really inspired me. He is a character I aspire to be like, so I decided to make him my avatar. The anime starts with his whole family getting killed by demons, and his sister as the only survivor. She was not human, however, but was turned into a demon. Despite this, and despite her not being herself. Tanjuro (the protagonist) still stays with her, and devotes his life to trying to turn her back into a human. Throughout the whole anime tanjuro gives out kindness without the expecting anything in return, and his braveness and selflessness is somethin I inspire to have.

The main difficulty in creating the badge was getting to be a perfect square. I had to crop the edges continuously. Another challange was chosing color that did not look of place in the image, but also was visible. I chose white on green because it fit the best.

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