My role as a grandmother is very exciting.  There is never a dull moment in my life.  My grandchildren want me here and there.  They are definitely a big part of my life.  It’s the instinct in me that wants to nurture their every desire.  I am so grateful that I can provide them with that great gift of time.  I am proud that my grandchildren enjoy doing things with me and feel they can come to me about anything.  We have that relationship of dependence and trust that we will always be there for one another, and we all have that friend in Jesus. 

     My three oldest grandchilden are always active with the youth group of our church.  I try to participate in some of their activities, especially some of the trips that the youth take.  My grandchildren count on grandma for their security and support, and MONEY.  Thank you grandma.  They are very grateful children.  I know I don’t have to and most of the time they don’t ask.  I just step up to the plate.  I will always be their biggest supporter and their biggest fan as long as God continues to bless me with health and strength and finances.   I can’t be there with them all the time, but they know grandma is with them twenty-four seven in spirit. 

     My grandchildren look up to me as their role model.  We are very happy together.  We laugh a lot.  My oldest grandson lives with me, but the second grandson comes over every week-end and the third grandson comes over every couple of week-ends to spend the night, but I see him all the time.  The younger ones come as they want to.  I take them to the mall, or we go watch a movie or rent one to watch at home.  They sometimes invite some of their friends over and we order pizza or have popcorn.  I take them out sometimes to their favorite places to eat.  Guess where.  Mexican place by the name of Don Juan’s.  They each have a Don Juan tee-shirt.  We do things together that their parents don’t have time to do with them due to their jobs or not enough finances.  They enjoy hearing stories of my childhood days.  That’s the fun things we do, then grandma get’s real serious. 

     My main role as a grandmother, is to raise my grandchildren in the admonition of the Lord.  I take them to church every Wednesday night and every Sunday morning and Sunday night.  I have taken them to church since they were born.  I have taught them to have respect for God’s house and for the pastor preaching God’s word.  As a grandmother I feel my role is to see that my grandchilden come along well in life and if they always put God first, they will survive.  Everything has it place and they now have a place in my life.  I pray for my grandchildren and that is an easy role for any grandparent to play by serving God.  I give my grandchildren a lot of love, but nothing compared to the love of God.  I can always be their best friend, but they know they have a greater friend in Jesus.  This has been my greatest role as a grandmother teaching them about the right paths they need to take, and watching them grow in their faith of choices they make.  I love this job.  I love them.

          One of my favorite places to visit is the beach. To me going to the beach is escaping into a different world. The water can be so calm and at other times it can be like a volcano erupting when the waves come crashing in. The sand and water seem different on some beaches than others.

         I was twelve years old when I went to the beach for the first time. My first beach I visited was Myrtle Beach. Back then the beaches were not as crowed back then as they are now. It was such a thrill for me to see the ocean for the first time. I was fascinated with the water and how the tide went in and out. It would leave you in the morning and return to your feet in the evening. The waves when they are coming in real strong would knock you down.

          When I visited Daytona Beach it was in the winter time. The beach seems so different in the winter. There such a different atmosphere then. They were people driving on the beaches. Seeing people in their coats instead of in their bathing suits seemed very strange. That left more of a feeling of being cold and miserable.

          When I visited the beaches in California it was more like going back in history when they were drilling for oil .You could see the oil rigs that were left there. Eating at Hard Rock Café and looking over the ocean was a comforting atmosphere. You saw a lot of scuba divers on the beaches there. It must to be a wonderful sight to see all the different plants and the many types of fish that swim under the ocean waters.

           The most beautiful beaches I ever visited were in Hawaii…The water was far more beautiful than you could ever imagine. It was almost like looking into a mirror, because the water was crystal clear and you could see the bottom of the ocean as clear as day.

              In summing up the beach with its beautiful soothing feeling when the water is calm and when the waves come crashing in it is like a thunder storm going over. This makes the joy and thrill of it all.

            I’m not going to bore you with a really long scientific meaning to this question. Urban legend gives us so many more interesting answers. One legend about bad dreams is: you have bad dreams by having bad actions. I’m sure we all can remember being told or telling our children. “You had that bad dream because you were acting badly all day yesterday.” Come on, I know I wasn’t the only one! And no, my mom wasn’t mentally abusing me by telling me this. It is just a way to remind kids to mind their behavior. Sometimes it worked, and sometimes it did not.

            Another legend about bad dreams is that your bad dreams come from what you had eaten the night before. This has to be my second favorite legend ever. We have all heard it before.”That sandwich I ate last night gave me nightmares. Really, does a certain food make you have a certain kind of dream? My doctor tells me to stay away from tomato based dishes because of my GERD, but not because it will make me have a nightmare about getting my head cut off.

            My last and favorite urban legend about bad dreams is the one about if you have a dream about falling and you hit the ground, you will not wake up. Where did this one start? Who defied the odds and lived to tell the story that they hit the ground? Why can’t anyone hit the ground after them? Until I meet this person I’m staying asleep.

            See, I told you this would be more entertaining than a scientific explanation. Urban legends about having bad dreams, do you have any?

You can do simple things like ask a neighbor if they need something while your out to the store. Helping  a person out like this, can save them some gas money. You can also drive past your neighbors home, if they are gone. This might hinder a burglar or catch a fire before its too late.

Volunteer work is also a good idea. I volunteered for habitat for humanity when I was younger. It taught me a  little about construction. I felt better about giving someone a home. A great idea to help out those in need is to donate money or food. There are many people without homes and food. I see people struggling every day with foreclosures and homelessness.

The last thing that many people don’t consider is giving someone a ride. It can be dangerous today but  it is kind. There are many dangerous people out there who give strangers rides, so why cant a good person. All I am saying is we need to stop focusing on ourselves and lend a reaching hand to our brothers and sisters. If we do simple things like the things mentioned above we better ourselves and give  our children an example to live up to.

They say college is for unmarried young people straight out of high school with no responsibilities. After multiple attempts at going to college I say they are vividly correct. College courses are designed with the eighteen to twenty year old single student with no responsibilities in mind. Most instructors will agree with me in this, and in large follow this guideline.

Most classes take up several hours each per week, and at least double this number in homework. If you are married, have children, and work then college is going to be a severe struggle for you. This is not to say that you cannot go back to school and attain a degree, but just do not expect it to be fast or easy. Most college instructors show no sympathy for the married adult with children and a job. They expect the same out of you as they do the nineteen year old with no job that still lives at home. I have been back in college now for about 6 weeks, and during this time I have been keeping a keen eye on my surroundings. I have noticed that the majority of students in this semester are about sixty to seventy percent older than what the college curriculum was designed for. In large part they are married and work a full or part-time job while attending college, and many of them have at least one child.

Times have changed a lot since the time that most of these college curriculum’s were designed, and I for one say that the current system needs to be looked over. I have completed several assignment’s that are not at all associated with my major, and some assignment’s are not even associated with the class that it’s for. There are things that could be changed to make the homework load easier to manage, and to make the class time more relevant to what students do and do not need to be taught. So in the end I say that the school board in general should go through the college courses and do a major overhaul, and change things for today’s college student’s instead of leaving them the way they were designed in the past.

     I have found that writing is hard work.  I know I don’t  have the ability  to write well at this particular time,  but knowing and understanding what to do and what to write about  makes it less difficult.  I feel that being able to create imaginary ideas would be much more creative and much more interesting to the audience than to try to transcribe something that they have already read or possibly seen.

     Good writing is suppose to respond to the interests of the readers or an audience.  It needs to make a clear point.  The information should start well and conclude well and definitely should be clear with your good choice of words and with correct grammar and punctuations.  Good writing takes a lot of practice and good judgement of what we write about and whether we want to write.  We need to have a good attitude to trust ourself  that we can do this.  It is a personal thing to be able to create a good writing and to listen to good teaching.  Good writing also comes with a few simple tools; paper, pencil, or pen, good computer or whatever your professional good writer feels necessary.  When completed, proofread your writing.  If you are not completely satisfied with your draft, there are other ways to rewrite.  Ask someone else to read what you have written about, or read to yourself out loud.  I read out loud all the time to get a better understanding.   

     I find it a lot easier to write about a book that I have read, or even a movie that I have seen.  When I am writing I go in a room of privacy where there are no disruptions.  I drag out some magazines,books, looking for ideas to write about.  I hope one day to be able to sit down and enjoy writing an essay about my life as a young girl growing up.  I want to be able to put forth that effort of mind and will.  I don’t think I want to make writing as a career and depend on it for my income, but it is very interesting to know how our world is evolved around good writers.

            What is good writing anyway. To me writing is like a journey. It’s like traveling in another person’s world. Writing takes you places you can’t go on your own. It is like traveling above the world to swimming deep into the sea. In the Ideal Essay, Alan Lightman agrees saying, “I feel that I’m going on a journey. The essayist is searching for something and taking me along.” My writing will never be as good as Alan’s but we seem to have some of the same interests. I noticed in his writing his view on the words capturing your imagination is the same way I feel when I’m reading an essay.       

            When I read Homeless On Campus, I related because it was a true story about students that were homeless. Eleanor J. Badger wrote about some homeless students that were lucky to have completed college. She says, “But few homeless students are so lucky. Each year a national conference homeless students come forth to share their stories.” I relate to this because I prefer a true based essay versus something fictionalized. I’m very passionate about these type’s of essay’s because they show the worlds realism and not just ways of life that aren’t based on true facts.

            In good writing you have to get the readers attention and use supporting ideas. To define good writing you have to get the readers attention starting with the introduction following to the conclusion. The body is also very important because it’s the focus of the entire essay. We also need to identify the difference in our speaking and writing voices to complete and interesting essay.

            The question is does my writing fit my definition of good writing. I feel that I am very weak in my writing skills but I hope this class gets me more familiar with better writing. Being able to express my words in writing is the hardest thing for me to do. Although even in writing this essay I’m finding strong points in my writing. It feels like a balance beam because at certain points I know that I need lots of improvement and at others I feel like I’m doing an okay job.

                           By Ann.

A good writer puts a piece of themselves into their writing, whether they are writing about something personal or impersonal, as long as it has feeling and meaning to it. Professor Alan Lightman agrees by saying that “In reading an essay, I want to feel that I’m communing with a real person, and a person who cares about what he or she’s writing.” So what I define as good writing when I read an essay is a sense of personality and feeling in the writing. They say a good essay has structure, and is grammatically correct among many other things. I say that a good essay must have these things, but that they are not at the top of the list for importance. Like I said above I think a good essay shows heart, feeling, personality, and you can feel that the writer put a piece of him or herself into it. With all things considered even though I feel that this makes good writing the essay still needs structure, grammar, and overall should follow the topic.

Recently I read a novel that has great writing in it. The book sucked me in and made me feel like I was actually there witnessing everything that I read. I would like to give you an example of writing that I believe fits my definition. On page three of the tortilla curtain T.C. Boyle writes, “AFTERWARD, HE TRIED TO REDUCE IT TO ABSTRACT terms, an accident in a world of accidents, the collision of opposing forces—the bumper of his car and the frail scrambling hunched-over form of a dark little man with a wild look in his eye—but he wasn’t very successful. This wasn’t a statistic in an actuarial table tucked away in a drawer somewhere, this wasn’t random and impersonal. It had happened to him, Delaney Mossbacher, of 32 Pinon Drive, Arroyo Blanco Estates, a liberal humanist with an unblemished driving record and a freshly waxed Japanese car with personalized plates, and it shook him to the core. Everywhere he turned he saw those red-flecked eyes, the rictus of the mouth, the rotten teeth and incongruous shock of gray in the heavy black brush of the mustache—they infested his dreams, cut through his waking hours like a window on another reality. He saw his victim in a book of stamps at the post office, reflected in the blameless glass panels of the gently closing twin doors at Jordan’s elementary school, staring up at him from his omelette aux fines herbes at Emilio’s in the shank of the evening.” Even though this may or may not be from the writer’s on experience it shows passion and feeling, and to me that shows great writing.

I find it hard to define my own writing, but I will try to give you the best comparison that I can think of. To compare my writing to my own definition of good writing would be like comparing oak logs to a pristine oak dinner table. I am just getting started with my writing, and like the oak logs that you can make a pristine oak dinner table from, I am still very rough around the edges. I need to be planed down, shaped, sanded, stained, and lacquered. I guess what I am trying to say is that all of the pieces are there but I need some help putting them together. I think that my writing follows the general rules of essay writing, and I always try to put heart and feeling into my writing, but I still have a lot to learn before I become a good writer. I always try to keep in the back of my mind though that with hard work, dedication, and a great teacher that I can become not just a good writer, but a great one.