Journal # 6 - My friendships

It has been more than 2 months since the first time I arrived in the U.S. and I feel that the past weekends was the best that I ever had in the states before. The moment was specifically on Saturday, I had my hair cut by one of my friend, then went back to have dinner with bunch of my best friends. I was very late for the dinner that everyone had finished their food when i reached at my friend's apartment, but they left some food since they know that i will be late due to the hair cut. After the dinner, we were having some fun games with cards while enjoying our beers. It was a real fun on that night that we went on and on until very late at night. Everyone was tired yet insisted to continue with the fun time, as a result, all of us decided to overnight there. There were 2 among us that live in the apartment and 6 of us that are not belong there, but one among 6 of us went to share a room with his girl friend who stays there, and that made up 5 of the rest of us had to spend our night sleeping on the floor of the apartment's living room. We moved the table, put down a big blanket on the floor, borrowed some pillows from our friends who stays there, and lay down prepared to sleep without brushing our teeth. Before sleeping, everyone was chatting and joking one to another for awhile till slowly one by one got into their dreams. It was a memorable moment for all of us on that night that it made the bond among us grew stronger and closer. I felt so glad that I have a group of best friends whom I could share my moment with. Most of them on that night was not my friends untill I came to the States, and I feel so glad that I met and have them as bunch friends that are unique and special , and whom I am willing to share most of my moments in the states with. I really appreciate the moment with them especially on that night and I hope this pure and solid friendships will long last, forever if possible.

Journal # 5 - Newspaper articles

Article 1 :

The title of the article is Grooving on 'Guitar Hero' by Tom Hummer, a junior in English from Ames. The article was published on October 16, 2009. The purpose of this article is to pursuade the reader that playing musical games such as 'Guitar Hero' and 'Rock Band' doesn't discourage people to learn the real instrument, instead they are associated with the increase interest in the real instrument. The author started the article by sharing his personal experience of playing musical video games and introducing the criticism that 'Guitar Hero' got - "why don't people just learn how to play real instruments?". The author asked himself in the article "why do I play these games? Why don't I just pick up one of the real guitars I have in my bedroom?" which I thought is a very good tactics in writing. In my opinion, the author is overall quite effective in achieving his goal in the article. He stated some good arguement in the body of the article such as "According to The Annual Census of the Music Industries, the number of guitars sold from 2005 to 2006 - the year "Guitar Hero 1" came out and into the year after - went up by 41 percent." and also by giving example with similar phenomenon that happened in 1999 when "Tony Hawk's Pro Skater" was first released which caused kids all arround the nation, including himself, bought skateboards and started to learn the tricks they were doing in the video games which are good examples that video games actually encouraged kids to get off of the couch and go outside for a change.

Article 2:

The title of this article which published on October 16, 2009 is “Engage in ethics dialogue” by Ray Rodriguez, the health promotion coordinator for ISU and a member of the ACHA Ethics Committee. The purpose of the article is to inform the reader of the important of ethics in daily life. In the beginning of the article, the author used the term “preventative medicine” and “prevention education” to imply that health can be improved by the acting before symptoms appear. Next the author continued by asking questions, “But how do we use the ethics of our professions and organization to help us with prevention? How do we plan for positive ethical outcomes before ethical issues arise?” I think this is a very well done strategy of writing, it makes the reader want to continue reading. Then in the body of the article, the author shared his personal experience several years ago when he became aware of guidelines and tried to figure out who else was interested in it which I thought are very informative. Also, the author included in the article that ethical development and integrity are listed as a dimension of outcomes that we should be measuring to show inter- and intrapersonal competence which I think is very direct and informative. Thus, in my opinion, the author is quite effective in achieving his goal to inform the audience of the important of ethics.