What I've Learned

A major change in my writing this year involved building of a thesis statement. I have learned to write a better persuasive paper by building off my thesis and developing more ideas. In the first persuasive paper I wrote I didn’t have a strong thesis statement or a topic sentence. Through many revisions and hard work I have really developed when it come to the structure of a persuasive papers. Suh as my one from my letter I wrote to the U.N. from Paul’s prospective, “As one who is witnessing all the killings…, I plead you to please the Interhamwi. I am still not a pro but I have really in proved. I technique I learned to help the structure of my paper be stronger was to plan out what I was going to write before I put anything down. I would plan out my thesis my topic sentence and my support then bled it all together in my writing. Doing this lead to a more organized and thought out paper.

In my reading I have learned a lot. I have been able to dissect a piece of writing and figure out the true meaning. The first time we read The American Scholar by Emerson I was lost. I had no idea what he was addressing or how this related to Global Ed. It took three days to really brake down the article word for word and make sense of each sentence. By the end of the week I had developed the idea Emerson was talking about how people are changing to more of a me culture which is hurting our society. For this experience I’ve learned how to take on big and confusing pieces of writing and brake them down.

For me the Rwandan genocide debate was one of the most interesting and fun things we have done. I have learned when going into a debate you can’t just prepare your selves to attack others opinions but you must ready yourself to be attacked. We came up with a couple of questions we knew we were going to face. By answering these ahead of time we were able to look ready and focus on questioning our foes and back our allies. We were representing France, and we knew that the question of us getting involved with the war just to keep the French name alive would come up. Of course if did we were able to deflect the bullet and then help back our good friend, Juvenal Habyarimana.

Another section I have learned a lot in is how to find a good article or information on a topic. I have given up Google and graduated to Infotrack and Mel. These sites lead me right to a creditable source so I don’t have to spend my time looking at each site that is brought up. Learning how to find reiable sources has also helped me when it comes to finding information. Now I don’t have to go to Wikipedia to learn about South African history and worry about what is true and what is just made up.

I have learned so much about Rwanda I don’t know where is start. I loved learning about it cause I knew so little and it scared yet fascinated me that 800,000 people could be killed and I not know about it until 9th grade. I learned that the tension between Hutus and Tutsis started way before the killings. The spark that started the fire was the plane crash of Juvenal. The fact that the power had just been turned back over to the Hutus before Belgium left. Their were Hutu extremists that lead the attacks from a radio station. These are only some of the 100's of facts I learned while studying Rwanda.

A Stromberg Tradition

Christmas is a time of gathering with family and sharing memorable times. Every year my family attends the 11 o’clock Christmas Eve candle light service. It was December 24th 2001 and little did we know that this year’s Candle light service was going to be one of the most memorable nights ever.
For those of you who don’t know at the end of the candle light service you grab a candle, light it and stand by while you sing Silent Night, this is the story of the most exciting 3 verses of my life.

Verse 1- Silent Night, Holy Night, All is calm all is bright.

We grow quite as the candles begin to light and the first verse begins. We walk down the aisle collect our candle light it and file back into our pews. I was only 8 at the time and being super responsible it was my first year with my own candle, but the flam only lasted a few minutes and went out.

Verse 2-Silent Night, Holy Night, Sheppard Quake at the sight.

My mom takes priority and decides to light a itinerary and then transfer the flam to mine. She leans over and lights the itinerary from my dad’s candle. Unexpectedly the paper goes up in flames faster then she can react. Protecting herself she drops the fire ball on my sister’s fake fur coat.

Verse 3- Silent night, Holy night, Son of God, Love’s Pure Light
The coat immediately catches fire and my whole family reacts by stomping on the coat over and over again. At this point we forgot about being discrete and had caught the attention of the people around us. The fire finally went out and the lights came on. As we surveyed the damage we had mixed emotions, we were sad yet couldn’t help to chuckle. There was a pretty significant black spot on the rug and my sister’s coat looked like road kill touched will gas then lit on fire.

We never attended another candle light service at the same place. Actually we left that church about 2 months later. Now every Christmas Eve we have to retell the story of our own Christmas miracle.