Congratulations and Merry Christmas!

YAY!! We are finally done, and today is the last day of the term!! I wish you all the best of luck in the future, and to all MERRY CHRISTMAS and Happy Holidays!

Final week and some pictures...

So... I have had no real inspiration for what to write with this term almost over. Instead I decided to share some pictures I have taken with my new camera...

RE: Tannyd

While I agree that you should not revise your paper solely based on the reviews of your peers, I don't believe that peer review is a bad thing. They give an opportunity to receive feedback from the intended audience (or give feedback as the intended). Suggestions are based on readership... If you are reading something and it doesn't make sense to you, it probably doesn't make sense to other people reading it either. Also, everyone has their own strengths and weaknesses. So by helping each other out we are able to share our strengths and come up with the best possible overall outcomes. Even if you feel like you aren't the expert, you still have something of value to say! You have been learning the same thing as the rest of the class, but there will be areas that you are better at than some students. You might be able to think of something that the writer didn't because you have a different thought process or just an outside viewpoint. Occasionally in writing you can get stuck in something of a tunnel where you only see where you were going with something. Someone on the outside may be able to see things that you can't. Also utilizing the experience of several different students means that everything should be able to be covered by someone. Just because you have never, say, had to cite a personal interview, someone else probably has, so they would be able to help! Overall a good process for everyone.

Dravet's syndrome paper...

I will admit... I had a bit of an Ah Ha moment last week writing my rough draft... But it wasn't the kind you would think, or even the kind you would necessarily like... Mine was a realization that maybe I should have picked an easier topic. Easier in the sense that it didn't mean so much to me and now to my neighbor as she has been a huge help, but also now has high expectations. You see... Now that I picked this topic and have committed to it, I am realizing that I care WAY too much about how it turns out! I should have picked an easier topic where I would have only have had to worry about my grade and making sure I did everything I needed to get the grade I want. Now I have to also figure out how to make my paper "worthy" of the topic! I want to do this thing right... But the amount of pressure I'm putting on myself over it is instead only making it harder to do! AHHHRRRRGGGGHHHH!!!!

Thanksgiving

Happy Thanksgiving week to you all!
With this time of year upon us, I would just like to take a moment and bring everyone's thoughts and prayers to the military members and their families, especially those who are deployed or overseas. This is a great time of year for most people, but when you are missing part of your family it can be especially challenging. My sister in law right now is at home with a 6 year old and a 3 year old who are both missing their daddy, and she is missing her husband while playing the role of a single mother. He has been deployed to Africa since early spring and won't be back until almost next spring. I know how hard it can be to be the one that's away for the holdiays, but only now am I realizing what the families back home are going through.
This is also a tough time of year for those who have lost loved ones in the past year, so my thoughts and prayers are with you also. My Grandfather passed away 8 months ago now, and he was the rock of the family. We never realized how much until he was gone, but I know this is going to be a tough one for my Grandmother and all the kids, grandkids and great grandkids.
So to everyone that is having a challenging holiday... I wish you the best.

My little rant...

So... I am taking Food Safety and Microbiology as my other course right now and we were talking about some things that made me want to rant a little (and I did on the discussion board a little but need to get more out of my system I think.) We were talking about food safety of course, and it came up that people never used to do things like cook stuffing separately from the turkey to make sure it was cooked, they just stuffed the bird the night before, stuck it in the fridge, then cooked it in the morning. But it brought me back to an earlier discussion about why we can't do things the way they did "in the good old days" anymore... Historically that might have actually been safer than it is now (even despite better stoves and whatnot) because ingredients in that stuffing were probably safer. Historically ingredients were grown and sold locally, at least compared to the global mass markets today. Things were somewhat kept in the area, so cost and production were not as high because demand wasn't as high. But now that your product can be shipped anywhere, it is causing a greater demand for it, so it puts more pressure on the producer to --produce! Money becomes the bottom line and with it that productivity. So things like cheap chemical fertilizers and pesticides are used that would never have gotten near food going to your neighbors, and contamination and foodborne illnesses are much more common. Not only are they more likely because of this, but the outbreak of illness from contamination is much more widespread because that celery that you made got put in people's salads in one part of the world, sent to a company that made the stuffing in another and into soup cans somewhere else. Now not only is your ingredient itself causing illness, but everything it got put into and distributed as! That stuffing you put in the bird the night before just like your mother and grandmother is suddenly not as safe as when they did it... So what I said in my discussion board brought it back full circle... If you want to be able to do things the way it used to be done "in the good old days" then you need to start that good old process much earlier in the chain...

OK off my soapbox again and for the final time tonight. I just needed to say it somewhere, and also needed a blog post for this week, so what better way to kill two birds with one stone as it were? Good luck if you actually read it and I hope some of it made sense to someone! ;-)

Unit 4 Plagiarism Topic

So... Don't get me wrong, I am all about giving people credit where credit is due. If you came up with the idea, I definitely want to make sure other people know it was yours and know where to find what all you said about it. But... I have always had a hard time with the definition, or lack of definition for what is considered "common knowledge". That has always been the tricky area for me. Especially in the age of the internet where you can research one topic on a hundred sites in minutes, it can become sticky trying to keep straight what came from where and what just came from your own brain. When you think about it, absolutely everything you know you learned from somewhere... So at what point does it become your own knowledge? After you have known it for a day? A week? Month? Or maybe just once you don't know where you learned it? But even then it should be cited if it came from somewhere right? Even if you don't remember where? And what if a dozen different sources are giving you the same information? Does that make it common knowledge? Or do you just have to pick one to cite? What if you are putting pieces from all those sites together to form your thoughts? Then are they really your thoughts or do you have to cite all the sources that provided the pieces to your mental puzzle? I understand that there are some things that are obvious one way or the other. The sun is hot, that is common knowledge, specific quotes or statistics must be cited. But what about everything in between?

Writing for this week...

So... I'm never really sure what to write for this. I have no problems replying or commenting on other people's blogs, and some of you are VERY creative! But when it comes time to write on my own... the only thing I know is that I don't want to write about any of the things we were given as possible prompts this week... Being an online student is cool and all... but not something I feel compelled to write about. Yes, I would actually rather ramble on about not having anything to write about! ;-) I guess that's a good thing though... Some of you have a LOT going on in your lives right now. Traumatic things and exhausting things and even a few exciting and good things! My only excitement is that I go on leave for a week this afternoon! My parents are flying into Atlanta tomorrow and I get to drive the 5 hours up to get them and probably turn around and come right back so I don't miss my Food Safety seminar. I guess that is an advantage of online school, though... if I end up going somewhere else, all I have to do is find somewhere with internet! The other advantage must be that I can sit here doing this while I am at work and my students are taking a test... ;-)
Anyway, welcome to my brain... This really is how I think all the time... somewhat in circles and mostly just random! Good luck with all your posts this week and I look forward to seeing what you all come up with!

Welcome

Hi everyone... Thanks for checking out my blog. I am still not sure if I am going to like this, but so far it seems like it will be fun! The way I figure, I like to talk, and this way if you are not as interested, you only have to scan over it or just click away! Less threatening than if you have to walk away from a conversation with a physical person right? Anyway, I look forward to getting to know you all through this new venue of expression...

Try this out...

I have to run, my work day is over for now, but I just want to see if this works!