Sunday, December 5th

So I've been taking these classes at night to try to finish up my bachelor's degree and although this isn't going to get done over night, it is going pretty quick.  So today, as a  special treat, I thought I would let you read my first paper of the semester, which of course, I got a perfect score on.  It was an introduction letter that was supposed to follow real essay format ( you know, introduction with thesis statement, supporting paragraphs and a conclusion)  So without further ado, here it is:

            The idea of starting a new class is always scary enough, but having your first assignment be to write an introduction about yourself can be a bit daunting because you want to make sure to not come across as a teacher’s pet, a moron or arrogant.  Hopefully, the information in this essay about how I came back to school, my writing and writing experience as well as my goals for this class will show I have none of the above mentioned annoying traits. 

            After losing my job in January and sitting home for a lot of days in a row in my jammies, I realized some interaction with other human beings in the same room, some feedback that I was doing something well and the challenge of learning something new might be exactly what I needed, so, since I had some time on my hands anyway, I started to look in what it would take to finally finish the bachelor’s degree I started 17 years ago.  I did some research and found that the business program at Upper Iowa would take a large amount of my credits from before and offered classes that would be useful to the new job I had just started.  So here I am, majoring in Business Management.

            Never been one to shy away from class that had an emphasis on writing, I have taken several classes along the way that were not traditional English classes, but required significant writing about topics like psychology, history and biology.  To date, my favorite project was a semester long biology research paper on hemispherectomies for the treatment of epilepsy because I found the topic just amazingly interesting and challenging.  Both my experiences with literature classes were at MATC where I took a class focused on Woman’s literature and one where we read classics such as Othello, Frankenstein and other works along those lines.

            Even though I like tell people I am a know-it-all, I realize that I really don’t know it all, especially because things keep changing.  I mean, when I learned to type, it was on a typewriter, now, having said that, I am hoping to get two things out of this class.  Knowing that conventions change over the years, I would like to make sure that I am up to date on the current rules of formatting written work, be it anything from formal correspondence I might initiate at work to research papers in an academic setting.  (I’m a little hazey if people even still use formal footnotes anymore at this point.)   

             So there is my formal introduction, which was much less painless than I originally anticipated.  Hopefully you will now have a better idea of what brought me back to school, my background as it applies to this class and my goals for this term.