Rules for Writers: Chapter 46

   The topic of chapter 46 is about reading actively, meaning to annotate and engage in what you are reading. When annotating you are highlighting, underlining, circling words and sentences, asking questions, or taking notes to capture main ideas or key points. After reading an outline should be created to sum up all the main ideas. Then summarize it. Summaries should be kept short. This helps make judgments on what is important. Afterwards, analyze and observe the text. This opens up the point the author is trying to make.

   I plan to use this information in everything I read. Sometimes I get confused when I read a paragraph from a book or an article off a newspaper and yet I'm still not understanding it. The chapter mentions about rereading helps discover what we don't notice when reading the first time. This is true. I find myself reading paragraphs after paragraphs several times to understand the point. The information read in this chapter will be helpful. I will continue to make notes, highlight sentences or underline words I am not familiar with that I can later search in a dictionary. Outlining the annotations is a great source in understanding the points of articles as well and I will definitely follow these steps. In doing so I believe it well help me sum up main points of my readings.

Freewriting Exercise

   Freewrite is like conscious thoughts written out loud for ten minutes. It's basically raw materials; no editing, no spell checking, and no stopping at writing. The technique collects your initial thoughts and ideas on a topic. Kind of like a source of brainstorming but not quite. You can write randomly from subject to subject even when you can't think of anything to write about, at least until you get back on subject. I don't think it is the same as automatic writing. Automatic writing is which a person is writing without conscious thoughts of what they are writing. But I can agree that it has it's similarity.

   Freewriting is a way for you to be more comfortable about writing and discover topics to write about. The benefits of the exercise helps you get better and reduce time spent editing and eventually make better rough drafts in future writings. Practicing regularly will also help words come out more easily. It will gradually pour out of your thoughts or feelings. People are always concerned about making mistakes and tend to edit their grammars, punctuations, and perform spell check. Because there is no feedbacks or evaluations provided, you can't fail. There is no wrong way of writing in freewriting. If so, correct me if I'm wrong.

   I never heard of freewriting, but it sounds interesting and fun. Kind of reminds me of third grade, when spelling, grammars and punctuations wasn't as serious than the following years. Writing was just writing and no one knew the meaning of creating paragraphs. What I find interesting is that people actually use this technique or exercise to improve on their formal writings. Though the article speaks about being "careless", it's kind of hard when you try not to think about being careless about how you are writing and trying to keep the topic on mind at the same time. It's funny how that work, you would think that it would be easy without stopping and wanting to edit your work. I look forward to working on this exercise more often. I think I can benefit from it in many ways.

Autobiography Introduction

     My name is Susie Keobounleuang and I am Laotian. I was born in Modesto, California and lived there until my seventh year. My family and I later moved to a very small town called Weed, which is an hour and a half away from the border of northern California, with a population of approximately 3,300. I’m a middle child of five children consisting of all girls; no boys. My father has always wanted a son, instead he was blessed with four of us girls except my oldest whose a half-sister. Growing up in a house with no boys, we had to work as hard as one.

     During the fall seasons we use to go to the forest and chop up loads of fire woods to prepare for the winter, go fishing, yard maintenance, take out the garbage, and any normal chores a male in the family would do. At the same time we also had to learn to do traditional chores that were expected for young Laotian girls such as cleaning, cooking, provide hospitality for guest and obey orders from elders. I can pretty much say my parents had the benefits of having both "sons" and daughters.

 Both my parents felt that violence happens more often in big cities with a larger population, and moving away from Modesto would save us a lot of common troubles and worries that are encountered on a regular daily basis.
     Weed is so isolated it takes thirty minutes to go to Wal-Mart, an hour to a mall, and we shared one grocery store. I would like to describe it as a quiet setting very much on the country side. This is where I was raised for twelve years of my life. A true Podunk town.

     Living in such a small town would have not taken me very far, so I decided to moved out of Weed in August of 2003; the summer I graduated from high school, while my family stayed behind. I came to Santa Rosa to live with my relative so I could find a decent paying job and further my college education.
     A few months after residing here, I found a job at Redwood Toxicology Laboratory. We run lab test to detect drugs in urine, saliva, and blood. The company provides services for all types of clients such as rehab facilities, probation, court, schools, employment, and many more. I worked as a data entry tech for five years then transferred to the GC/MS department as a lab administrative assistant for another two years. I have been there for over seven years and still plan to continue my employment there. At this point I know I want to be in the medical field but I'm still undecided as to what exactly I want to spend my life doing. I am trying to get back on track with school. I took a break for a couple of years to focus on work and dedicate my time to family.

    I am taking this English class simply because I love the subject even though I may not be the best at it, but I try. And also because I need to fulfill my prerequisites. The best thing about this course is that its online and this will help me get my work done anytime through out the day. I like to work in fast pace and definitely need to be a little more patient. I tend to put things aside and forget what goes on in my surroundings. If I start losing track of my studies I begin to procrastinate, so I do prefer to try and get work done early.

    The time I spent in Santa Rosa, I met my husband here as well through a close friend. He is very supportive of me in anything I do and that is important to me. We both share several common interest and I am happy to have him in my life. Together we have a five year old son named Jayden who is in Kindergarten and loves to say “I did a good job!” I can honestly say he makes me proud everyday.

Four and a half months ago my husband and I decided to finally tie the knots after being in a committed relationship of over seven years. We had a great big traditional american and Laotian wedding ceremony and shared it with over three hundred guests.
    Things don't always seem to happen in order for me. Normally some people would expect college education first, second comes career, then comes marriage along with a baby carriage. Not for me. But either way I am happy just the way things turned out. I learned to grow and change as time went by. I may make mistakes sometimes, but I don't necessarily regret any of them because it makes me who I am today and the knowledge I have gained from such experiences.