Category Archives: Posts

ENG 210- New Beginning

Dear all, 

I am excited and eager to be in this class with you all. We all came into this class with different backgrounds and experiences. Some of us are first-year students trying to adjust to the new college life while some of us have been through the process. Some of us have never been in a skilled English writing class while some of us have been through many. Some of us are thinking about pursuing writing more seriously in the future while some of us just want to know how to write decently well. Whatever the case is, I know that all of us are eager to improve ourselves through ways of writing. All of us want to become better critical thinkers and look into issues through different lenses. All of us want to sharpen our writing skills and never cease to stop our writing just because it is “good enough.” All of us are trying to do our best in this yet again new period of online learning. 

One of my main goals in this class is to be a better writer. I did not start writing at a higher standard until my junior year of high school when I took an English composition class. I learned a lot about writing but was not able to get a lot of personal feedback from my teacher during the pandemic and got a little “lazy” in the process. I think all of us as writers have amazing ideas, but we don’t flesh them out. I hope that we give each other helpful feedback and encourage one another to do our best. I know that I will do well seeing that I have such respectful classmates and a professor who is so eager to work with us this semester. I look forward to the wonderful discussion that we bring to the table. 

Regards,

Yingrong Yang

New Year, New Goals

Dear class,

Every school year I try to achieve new goals and create expectations for myself even though they could sometimes seem close to impossible, these goals can be academic and/or social. Starting my second year, not only do I expect my writing to improve, but to mature and become more knowledgeable as I continue to grow through my college journey. Some of my goals are to improve as a writer and analyst through the different books, excerpts and stories that we read and write about. I expect myself to also engage in the other aspects of writing such as preparation, organization, and time management. These are things I have struggled with in the past and I hope that I can change that in this new school year.

A major goal of mine is to create new relationships with my peers and engage in as many class and group discussions possible. I expect my classmates to be helpful when sharing work but also honest. As a peer I would like to hear the constructive criticism someone else would like to offer as long as it comes with good intention. Although this may sound like a lot, I will do my best to be hold myself to the same standards and expectations.

Although I am only in my second year, I haven’t had the best experience with my previous English professors. From the first day I entered class, they would try to come off intimidating, and they provided no help when it was severely needed. After that I experience I was nervous about taking this class, but from the first three classes alone my mindset automatically shifted to how I think about English. I know the work can be rigorous but I expect my professor this semester to be someone who is understanding, patient, and most of all, for the students.

Sincerely,

Panagiotis Krampis

The Promises for ENGL 21002

Expectations are beliefs that something is going to happen in the manner that we expect. Even if what we expected did not occur, it was still an expectation because that was what we expected to occur or how we expected someone to act. The name of this course, “Writing for the Social Sciences”, leads me to believe that the class would focus on human behavior and relationships. Social science is the study of society and how individuals interact with and shape the surrounding environment.

I expect this class to dive deeply into each reading assignment, analyzing it along with our writings and thinking critically. In the previous semesters, we had a lot of group discussions and from the previous classes we had, we would most likely have many breakout group discussions along with whole-class discussions which I am looking forward to. Even though breakout rooms are a bit awkward at times, as long as someone speaks up, everyone would chime in at some point. I expect the professor to help students create friendly relationships with each other by trying to engage us in small groups and as an entire class. Although it might be a bit difficult because of covid, having the small breakout rooms and going in person once in a while would definitely help in creating wonderful friendships.

What I expect for myself, is to finish every assignment and try to interact with the class in some way. I’m usually a person who sits back and doesn’t really raise my hand to talk, even if I know the answer. But for this semester, I’m hoping to break out of that zone and at least try to speak a few times. I expect myself to ask questions when I’m confused and when I need help, and I expect this for my classmates as well. Communication is an essential in life and I hope we can all communicate with each other if anything is confusing. In conclusion, I am looking forward to working with everyone this semester.

Pressed For Time – My Course Expectations

When I first enrolled in the course, I was pressed for time to pick a major and ended up with sociology, banking more on my work experience with technology and IT than anything to propel me forwards, and getting certificates. However, this does not mean that I came into here for no reason. I feel that it is very important for me to learn about sociological research methods and sociological concepts so that I may become a better informed citizen and give me a skillset that could potentially lead me to working in a nonprofit or government institution as well.

Now that we are a few classes deep, I have formed some expectations based on the format of the class. I want to improve my writing, particularly my research-based writing of course (my last time doing a research paper was the fall 2018 semester!). However, there is a very important discussion and analysis part of this course as well. I want to learn to better work with others to improve our writing and how to provide helpful feedback and commentary that may better help to develop my own writing as well as those who share their own with me. It will be interesting to see how that dynamic plays out in an online class, versus a in person class like I experienced 3 years ago.

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My Expectations

Dear fellow classmates,

When I enrolled into this course several months ago I did not know what to expect. However, after attending the first couple classes my expectations and excitement for this upcoming semester have grown. Firstly, I am excited to have some in person classes this semester. Due to Covid-19 the in person experience is something I have not yet experienced in college. For my expectations in this class I believe their will be many debates between each other as we try to break down each of the stories we read. I also expect myself to be enlightened into learning new ideas and opinions from my classmates and professor. Lastly, I expect my overall writing capabilities and my ability to break down text to be enhanced. All of these reasons have led me to be excited and optimistic for the future. I believe this course will help guide me in my future classes and endeavours.

– Demetri Tzanetatos

Class 03 (Sept 2): It’s always something isn’t it?

Good morning, all. I hope the big storm that has closed campus today has not affected you, your homes, or your loved ones in any major way. We had a big leak in our apartment but nothing a baking sheet and a garbage can couldn’t handle.

Anyway … today’s class continues where we left off Tuesday. That day, we introduced a reading practice (previewing) and a technology we’ll use to perform that practice (Hypothes.is). I asked you to broaden the evidence you’ll draw on to make your “Pick a Book” arguments in a few weeks by reading and annotating “The Cover of My Face” by Meredith Talusan. For Sept 9, you’ll read two other pieces, “La Otra” by Jaquira Diaz and “Quick Feet” by Kiese Laymon. These “group reads” give us a shared context to explain our individual arguments. More on this over the next few classes.

Campus is closed today due to the storm but we also have some scheduled days off coming up. There is no class due to holidays on Sept 7 and Sept 16. In campus-being-open news, though, our first in-person class meeting is scheduled for September 9, next Thursday, in NAC 5/108. Hopefully the city won’t experience a plague of locusts, a meteor strike, or a visit from the Stay-Puft Marshmallow man between then and now…

I look forward to hearing your reactions to Talusan, and to reading the blog posts you’ve included for today. You’ll respond to each other between now and the 9th.

If you’re not on our course site, please email me ([email protected]) from your Citymail account so I can invite you. If you’re not on Hypothes.is, please follow these instructions (https://web.hypothes.is/quick-start-guide-for-students/) and join our group (https://hypothes.is/groups/qwY42A5B/engl210-fall-2021).

As always, I’m around on Zoom before and after class, and on email whenever possible (replies within 24 hours, but faster at this time of semester). See you soon!

Expectation Letter

Dear ENGL 210,

I would love to have a close connection with you all. I am clear on what I want my objective to be for this course. First, I am more than willing to help you all in improving your writing skills. I hope that you are all open to help me and our peers to do the same. To my Professor, I hope that you’ll help guide us with tips and comments on what we should look for in the text. From myself, I expect to participate whether in the chat or with the mic to give comments or suggestions with honesty. In the end, I hope that this course will go smoothly and hope it becomes one of my favorites just like AP Literature and Composition was to me in high school.

Thank you for your time,

Yaminah D.

My Expectations in Learning

Dear Reader,  

In all honesty, I am not too sure what to expect from the class but what I mainly think is important is that I develop an understanding of the class. There have been many times I didn’t get to fully understand something during this whole online experience due to a lot of circumstances. This semester I am extremely hopeful that it will be different and believe that it will help me learn about myself and gain different skills. From what I know there’s a significant amount of research and reading that goes into writing for social science, just like most classes you must write in. And as it says in the name, you would have to be social too. I really hope to put those skills to use and improve on them. I believe this class could possibly help me in the future and might actually help me in the major I want to pursue right now, and also just help me with tasks in everyday life. Lastly, I hope that on my part and everyone else’s that communication won’t be as difficult, and we can understand each other. 

I look forward to what’s in store for this semester,

-Ashanti

Main Expectations

1 September 2021

Dear Class,

This semester we will be introduced to ways of improving our writing. For some of us this may be one of the few English courses that we will take, and for others it might be the first of many. This course will hopefully allow us to be able to get our points across clearly and also analyze things well. Writing is one of the few ways that we can communicate with others, and this course will lead to us becoming better in communicating through a social science lens.

Throughout the course of the semester I hope that we can strive to build a community. Hopefully, we are willing to listen to each other and prevent conflicts from arising. Since no one person thinks alike, we have to be willing to work through those disagreements that may occur. In some classes discussions get heated, and while that can be fun because it shows how passionate people are about a topic, I hope that this class will be a bit calmer, especially since it takes place so early in the morning! Overall, I think that if we can successfully communicate our thoughts I think that we will have a successful semester. 

Another expectation that I have is for Professor Dalton. While it’s obvious that everything can’t be explained concretely, I hope that he is able to guide us through this course so that we can do well in it. Although we need to put in the effort to succeed as well, it’s more assuring when we understand what is needed and wanted from us. Additionally, I hope that our student-professor relationship builds up to be a nice one and that we all become comfortable participating in class.

All in all, I truly hope that all of us can do well in this course, and that we can also learn how to use these new technologies efficiently! Somethings may be confusing right now, but with practice I’m sure that we can get the hang of it!

Here’s to a successful semester,

Ashley M

Class 02: Some last logistics and some first looks at our books

Good morning. We’ll spend today wrapping up the introduction to our course — going over the rest of our syllabus and schedule, signing up for grading contracts, and doing a test run of Hypothes.is and the Commons blog before using them in earnest.

The big details, as always, are on the “Chalkboard” Doc. Readings and the like are making their way into the Commons Group library. And all the other details are under course information, the landing page of our Commons site.

See you in a few