I can not believe that this week if finally here! In a way, I could not wait for this class to be over, and then in another way I could not bear for it to end. Shortly after this MRP is due, I will be heading to the beach for a week of sun and relaxation. But, then I have to come back to the fall semester! Which I am only happy about for one reason-- it will be my last fall semester as an undergraduate student! One good thing that happened this week is that I fixed my powerpoint sound clips. I think something wwas wrong with the two clips I was trying to use because I did the same that as did with them with two more and they worked. I am sure there is someway to get those other two to work, I just can not figure it out! Now to the assignment-

What can I say about my summer school experience?
Well first of all, I congratulate myself for taking two summer school classes. Next, I will give myself a pat on the back for my much deserved A in Math! That has been my biggest accomplishment in college! Well, not really, but probably one of the most deserved A’s I have earned. I also am thanking myself right now for taking this class in the summer. I know that there is no possible way that I could have turned in the quality of work that I am submitting in the fall semester (well, that is if I wanted to have some sort of life in the fall). I have also read at least four books this summer, which is a big achievement for me (I hope to read one this week and at least two more at the beach next week). Before this summer, I had not read a book for pleasure for a very long time. I can honestly only think of one that I have read since I began college. I feel so guilty, reading for pleasure and not reading a textbook!

What can I say about myself?
One thing I can definitely say is that I have learned so much! I have never been a major procrastinator- I usually do not wait until the last minute to turn something in (maybe the next to last, though), but I have learned to get things done. I made it a point to try and complete all of my assignments by Friday, so that I could have the whole weekend just for me. I must say that was a brilliant idea. I have thoroughly enjoyed my weekends because I have had nothing schoolish to think about. I also have become more aware of the way disorders and diseases affect others. My boyfriend has a Nursing research class right now too, and I have been editing his paper. I am even thinking about his paper in multigenre terms!

What can I say about the work that I have done in this class?
I think that I have done a pretty good job. I have doubted myself many times, but I think all the doubting is due to the fact that this is a new thing for us and everyone has a totally different project. I congratulate myself on my hard work. I also think I had a pretty good idea for my integrating theme- a television interview. I think that was unique and something that no one else in the class did. I am also proud of myself for taking this class seriously, though it was in the summer, and putting it first, before the pool and everything else. I have also learned a lot about myself, like my learning style, my views on education, and how I become a lifelong learner, this summer through the work that I have completed.

Words of Wisdom to future Multigenre explorers:
 Type EVERYTHING to Word or some other program & save it. Then cut and paste it to your blog. Do not type directly in your blog if what you are typing is going to take a while(like more 30 minutes or more) because your blog will do something funky and kick you out and you will loose everything!
 Do not procrastinate. The best thing that I did in this class, was make sure that my work was done before the weekend. It was a big relief!
 When you first develop the genres for your MRP create a new topic for each genre. Do not put everything into a topic like MRP (you will find out why later!). This reduce the amount of work you have to do when trying to organize your MRP.

See you all next Monday! Enjoy our last week before school starts!

What a week! With Bible School, trying to get all the kinks worked out in my project, and work I have not had time to think about anything else! I have not made it to the pool once this whole week! :( (I know you all are saying Poor Baby!) But, I must say the kids at church were much better than expected. This is the third year in a row that I have worked with the exact same group and I do not know if I am just getting used to working with them or that they are maturing, but they have been so good. They still wear me out, but they are good, so I do not mind. Up until today, the week has been wonderful. Today, I ran out of gas (for the third time since I started college). I knew I was low but my check gages light never came on & ironically I was on my way to the gas station.

My goal for the week was just to get through it. At this point, I have completed or almost finished every assignment for this week. I have completed my references in Word, but have no posted them because I am thinking about scanning them and converting them to pdf format before I put them on my page, so that the format is correct. I also have completed the process & premise sections, but not the content, yet.

This week I began really tweeking my MRP. I mean really looking at it carefully for mistakes, organizing it, and then putting in my citations. I know I should have done the citations as I wrote, but I did not. Luckily for me, I know remembered all the places in which I used information from other sources. I also added links at the end of each section of my MRP, which was not difficult, but ended up taking longer than I thought.

The only assignment for this week that I dreaded was the Reflection. I usually do not mind doing them, but I thought that there would be so much to write about and no possible way that I could remember it all. But, I started with the premise and my memory came back. It turned out that the reflection was not that bad.

I have a list of a few things I still have to change before turning in my assignment next week. One thing that I meant to do this week is fix my PowerPoint sound clips. Between taking my mom for an endoscopy and cutting out feet for Bible School, I have not had time to go to MU and redo those clips. I know how to correct it. It is just that I can not hear the clips in the library so I did not know that I did them wrong at the time.

I am beginning to think that I have a good project. Since adding the table of contents and the links, I can see that it is coming together. It is turning out pretty much the way I want it to...I just hope it is the way you want it to be! :)

Well I have no questions, so I am getting off the computer so I can wait for Allison to call. Some of you had asked about her. She is coming back from her summer in Slovakia today!! I am not going to tie up the phone line anymore!

I started out week 8 by sleeping til noon on Monday. That may sound good to some, and it did to me at first, but then I felt like crap all day. To top it off, I had to go to work, where I chipped a tooth on some candy. It is all my manager's fault. She always buys me candy & I just have to eat it!! But I must say, as the days went by, the week got a little better, although it still was not the best.

My goal for the week was to finish reading my latest Patterson book, Cat & Mouse, which as of this posting has not been accomplished, but the week is still not over yet! My problem with reading is that I am staying up too late doing other things (like watching TV) and then when it is time to read I am too tired. I am going to have to work on that! I also made some changes to the NSSLHA page that I am developing for the fall. If I also wanted to do a lot of revising!

After reading Mrs. McComas' comment on my interview, I got a new idea. I was going to make my interview a segment on a news show. My show is based on the show that Katie is going to be getting soon. It is like those specials with Barbara Walters, Jane Pauley, & Stone Philips. I have been working on it a lot and I still feel that it needs something else. I would really appreciate any suggestions!!

I have also been working on my powerpoint presentation. My problem has been my sound clips. I have not figured out what I am doing wrong, but I am not giving up. The problem is that in the MU library I can't hear the clips & they don't have head phones anymore. I have to wait until I get home to see if I did them right, which is a really big pain! Then I have to run back down there, which I have not done yet.

I made a few minor changes to my referral letter this week, but I am still going to make more, I think.

The new things I worked on this week were the preface, acknowlegements, & about the author sections. It was kind of hard to come up with reasoning for why I chose my topic & why I put things in a specific order. I had to think back 8 weeks ago, which is all a blurr to me now. I feel that my acknowlegements and about the author sections are too short & that I wrote too little, but I can not think of anything else to add.

Revision has been my main focus this week because next week is going to to a toughie! I am teaching Bible School at church. I have 2 different age groups: pre-k & K-5. The K-5 is the hard group because I have them all at once & their attention spans & just their levels in general are so different. It is the third year in a row that I have had these same kids, so I should be getting the hang of it by now! (You would think!) I am sure that you all will get an ear full next week! (Aren't you all excited!!)
Overall, despite chipping a tooth, this week has been pretty productive. I can really see my project coming together. I am starting to feel excited & proud of my work.

Well I am off to the mall-- can't wait to face those tax-free weekend shoppers!

This week really flew by! I feel like the week is over & I have not accomplished much of anything. I finished Jack & Jill, which was one of my goals from last week, & I have started another Patterson book. My goal is to read as much as possible before school starts because I know come September, all I will be reading is textbooks & notes!!

My goals for the class this week were to finish a powerpoint presentation & referral letter, and continue researching & revising. I have not revised much this week. I did a lot a research & with no luck. I did not find any information on different types of artificial larynges anyway on EBSCO & I really looked and looked, so I had to turn to the WEB. I have used five different peer reviewed articles already, so that is ok, according to the instructions. When I used the internet sites I tried to make sure I had an author & date & revision, but I think one of my sites did not have that ( I cant remember for sure).

Powerpoint is not hard at all, but it is really time consuming. I do not have powerpoint, so I went to the library to complete it, on two seperate days. There are still a few things that I am going to change now, though, so it is not exactly complete. I thought of Mrs. Simmons when I did my powerpoint & how generous she was when she ran off copies of her presentations for us so that we did not have to write notes. I decided that that is too much work & that if I ever become a teacher, I will not be that generous. My students can take their own notes!! I too, thought about putting music with my presentation, but I have decided that it is not necessary for my topic. I did though put some samples of what different artificial larynges sound like. Those samples were on someone else's page & I emailed him for permission to use them. I was glad he gave me permission. Now that everyone is talking about copyriting, I just hope he got permission! I saved his email to my filing cabinet, just in case!

The referral letter was really hard for me to develop. I may need to get a better format. This was the only one of my genres I was dreading to do & I think it is probably my worst genre. Probably some correlation there. I just realized that, so that means the referral letter genre is the one I am going to have to really work at.

I have been a little disappointed with the mailing list that I chose. The miling list was a good one, I just make the wrong choice. Through searching this week on the web about different types of artificial larynges, I found a mailing list that I wish I would have found earlier. I think it was WebWhispers or something like that. Anyway, it was for laryngectomees. That would have been a better choice for me, but hey I got an email from Dr. Boone, what more can I ask for? :)

Now, I am off to the pool!

Just one question- I looked on the internet for some formats to use for the referral letter. If I decide to use one of those formats or use it but make my own modifications, where do I cite that? (All my questions lately seem to have to do with sources!!)

This week has been pretty good. I got an A in math, I am just now beginning to look like I have a tan, and I having started working out again. At the beginning of the week, I set a few goals for myself: workout everyday, finish my assignments by Thursday so that I can enjoy my weekend, and finish my book, Jack & Jill . The only one I successfully completed was that I finished all my assignments by Thursday. Hey, but one out of three is not bad!! .

This content was not that bad this week (I say that every week!!). Research was mostly addressed. We did do some peer reviews this week too. I think that was the hardest part for me, the peer reviews. I hope that I did not offend anyone. That is one of the problems with doing that online, because the person is only reading what you write, not listening to you talk. I hope I did not sound too harsh or anything. I hope my group remembers that I am just trying to help when they read their comments.

I have to admit, when I read assignment 2.3.1, I was dreading it. I had so much trouble last week finding 5 articles, I thought that there was absolutely no way that I could possibly come up with 5 more. I used PsycINFO this time and changed my keywords a little, and I found oodles of articles. I even found a really good article that had good references that I can use. I also went on an adventure yesterday afternoon. I made my first visit to The Stacks . Boy was that an experience! I was watching my eight-year old cousin, so I had her with me and she almost got lost! That place is like a huge maze! I am so glad we have the Drinko! Research is so much easier now! After visiting The Stacks, I felt sorry for my mom, who went to Marshall in the seventies and had to use the Morrow to research!

While reading the assigned article, I thought a lot about how I use writing as a method of inquiry. Not only in your classes, but on my own. I often can sit down and start writing and then have a light bulb come on. A new idea or view sometimes just comes to me when I write. The article mentioned that teachers should meet students where they are at, and I thought about how that rarely happens. I have had so many teachers that just start teaching where they want to and tell us that we have to catch up “on our own”. They care more about “covering the material” according to the department, university, or even county (in high school) and they feel that they do not have time to meet the students where they are at, which is a shame.

I have really learned a lot more about my project this week. I have rearranged the placement of my genres in my interview about 50 times. I keep getting new ideas. I am even thinking about changing my interview a little bit. I have put off the hardest genre to last. I consider the hardest genre for me to be the referral letter from the doctor to a SLP. So, I am going to really be thinking about that the rest of the week. I have a pretty good idea about what I want my powerpoint presentation to be, I just have not had the time to sit down and do it yet.

Just a few questions- Is there a way to just change the font for 1 genre? I want my journal entries to look like handwriting instead of type, but I can not figure out how to do it. I tried to use the HTML code sheet, but everything I tried did not work. My other question is about the MRP. I am using an interview to link the project together, but I was wondering if I can put a poem written by the client in her journal, if the entry already meets the criteria. It is just a thought. I think it might flow better if I did that.