On this Christmas day we pray,
Lord be in our hearts to stay.
For the year ahead may he guide our way,
For the days ahead may we not be astray.
We see the babe in manger lay,
Where cattles feed and donkeys bray.
The King of kings clothed only in hay,
The Lord of Lords in such lowly array.
He is the answer to our sins of yesterday,
He is the answer for our troubles today.
Lord help us remember we are but clay,
And mold us into what you may.
Lord, on this Christmas day we pray,
That Christmas begins in our heart today.
A Christmas poem I wrote on facebook and decided to archive it in my blog =)
Saturday, December 26, 2009
Sunday, December 13, 2009
My memo for my English class LOL
English – Not only for Academic Writing =)
The first day in 76100 class was interesting – there was the usual introduction among instructor and students, briefing of the course syllabus, and the … ABSENCE OF A STUDENT?
Coincidentally, I happened to be the said student who was impertinent enough to skip class on the first day. Either you should believe that or there was another legitimate reason for my absence. Of course, the latter is true; being an international student, visa issues delayed my arrival to Carnegie Mellon University and it was not until the second week when I finally showed up in class – totally suffering from jetlag.
In retrospect, I was initially furious to be required to take the English Placement Exams. I had my SAT and TOEFL results and was my school’s valedictorian. What more did CMU want? Overestimating my abilities, I took the placement test lightly and I only have myself to blame for being placed into 76100 (or rather, failing to be placed into 76101). Harbouring thoughts of bitter resentment, I entered the 76100 class thinking it was inferior. Boy was I wrong.
As one could probably infer from my present structure of writing, I am no fan of serious scholarly writing. Puh-lease, those are for the high-and-mighty, pompous professionals who pontificate profound phrases profusely and ignore pragmatic prose to present … okay you get the point. However, there was no escaping from the clutches of 76100 – and it was probably a good thing I stuck through the whole semester because I learned a lot of things I thought I already knew.
See that thing on the upper right-hand corner? Yep, that was one of the few things I learned in this 76100 class. NO I did not learn how to COUNT! @@ *faints* That is part of the MLA formatting style which is used often in academic writing. (It IS reading and writing in an academic context!) Prior to this class, I had no experience whatsoever in using the MLA style of writing. That is because I am an international student and English is taught as a second language back in my country Malaysia. Of course, SAT and TOEFL did not prepare me for this, so I, being the ever-so-concerned-about-only-anything-on-exams Asian I am, never bothered reading anything about MLA formatting. Fortunately for me, 76100 rectified this problem before it became nasty.
On the discourse of nasty things, that term could only be applied to the readings we were forced to endure throughout the semester. If only it were something about mathematics, quantum mechanics or string theory, I would have gladly embraced the piles of processed pulp. But no! We had to go through a series of (seemingly irrelevant) debates spun by authors regarding the digital generation, ie the generation who uses facebook daily, studies while MSN-ing, derives random new words such as in the previous clause, and attaches an emoticon to every available and possible sentence =P However, upon further reflection I realized that 76100 has forced me to include academic reading into my genre of fantasy and science fiction. At least now I can successfully read through a 50-page research paper (without yawning too many times!).
Having a second look at my previous paragraph, I am sure Mark Bauerlein would say that I am full of “puerile sentiments” and disagree with my conduct vehemently. Oops, I better put a (Bauerlein 132, par 2) behind those quotation marks! And this incidentally brings me to the third thing I learned from this class – citing sources. Back in Malaysia, we never had to write a formal paper, and thus citing sources was never an issue. Of course, I am now a university student and hopefully would have the chance to write a thesis paper one day. It is impossible for me to have no link from external sources. “Rome was not built in a day”, inasmuch as I would have to build upon the findings of others, there would be others who will use, God willing, my findings to expand a particular field. Regarding this matter, I surely would be upset and angry if those who used my findings did not acknowledge my contribution to the field. Hence, I have realized the importance of citing sources appropriately to avoid plagiarism.
As the semester comes to a close, I am satisfied that I have endured the torture of writing four academic essays yet I am reluctant to leave the warmth of the classroom. As I write these last few sentences of my 76100 course, I realized how wrong I was to think that it was only second-class. In my opinion, the readings were harder than those from 76101 and we even had the chance to perform a social science research! So to those who are taking 76100, if you ever get the chance to read this, I say, 76100 ROCKZ!
Best,
Mark Wong
P/S That does not mean I am looking forward to 76101 =P
The first day in 76100 class was interesting – there was the usual introduction among instructor and students, briefing of the course syllabus, and the … ABSENCE OF A STUDENT?
Coincidentally, I happened to be the said student who was impertinent enough to skip class on the first day. Either you should believe that or there was another legitimate reason for my absence. Of course, the latter is true; being an international student, visa issues delayed my arrival to Carnegie Mellon University and it was not until the second week when I finally showed up in class – totally suffering from jetlag.
In retrospect, I was initially furious to be required to take the English Placement Exams. I had my SAT and TOEFL results and was my school’s valedictorian. What more did CMU want? Overestimating my abilities, I took the placement test lightly and I only have myself to blame for being placed into 76100 (or rather, failing to be placed into 76101). Harbouring thoughts of bitter resentment, I entered the 76100 class thinking it was inferior. Boy was I wrong.
As one could probably infer from my present structure of writing, I am no fan of serious scholarly writing. Puh-lease, those are for the high-and-mighty, pompous professionals who pontificate profound phrases profusely and ignore pragmatic prose to present … okay you get the point. However, there was no escaping from the clutches of 76100 – and it was probably a good thing I stuck through the whole semester because I learned a lot of things I thought I already knew.
See that thing on the upper right-hand corner? Yep, that was one of the few things I learned in this 76100 class. NO I did not learn how to COUNT! @@ *faints* That is part of the MLA formatting style which is used often in academic writing. (It IS reading and writing in an academic context!) Prior to this class, I had no experience whatsoever in using the MLA style of writing. That is because I am an international student and English is taught as a second language back in my country Malaysia. Of course, SAT and TOEFL did not prepare me for this, so I, being the ever-so-concerned-about-only-anything-on-exams Asian I am, never bothered reading anything about MLA formatting. Fortunately for me, 76100 rectified this problem before it became nasty.
On the discourse of nasty things, that term could only be applied to the readings we were forced to endure throughout the semester. If only it were something about mathematics, quantum mechanics or string theory, I would have gladly embraced the piles of processed pulp. But no! We had to go through a series of (seemingly irrelevant) debates spun by authors regarding the digital generation, ie the generation who uses facebook daily, studies while MSN-ing, derives random new words such as in the previous clause, and attaches an emoticon to every available and possible sentence =P However, upon further reflection I realized that 76100 has forced me to include academic reading into my genre of fantasy and science fiction. At least now I can successfully read through a 50-page research paper (without yawning too many times!).
Having a second look at my previous paragraph, I am sure Mark Bauerlein would say that I am full of “puerile sentiments” and disagree with my conduct vehemently. Oops, I better put a (Bauerlein 132, par 2) behind those quotation marks! And this incidentally brings me to the third thing I learned from this class – citing sources. Back in Malaysia, we never had to write a formal paper, and thus citing sources was never an issue. Of course, I am now a university student and hopefully would have the chance to write a thesis paper one day. It is impossible for me to have no link from external sources. “Rome was not built in a day”, inasmuch as I would have to build upon the findings of others, there would be others who will use, God willing, my findings to expand a particular field. Regarding this matter, I surely would be upset and angry if those who used my findings did not acknowledge my contribution to the field. Hence, I have realized the importance of citing sources appropriately to avoid plagiarism.
As the semester comes to a close, I am satisfied that I have endured the torture of writing four academic essays yet I am reluctant to leave the warmth of the classroom. As I write these last few sentences of my 76100 course, I realized how wrong I was to think that it was only second-class. In my opinion, the readings were harder than those from 76101 and we even had the chance to perform a social science research! So to those who are taking 76100, if you ever get the chance to read this, I say, 76100 ROCKZ!
Best,
Mark Wong
P/S That does not mean I am looking forward to 76101 =P
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