Before the goodbye

In my eyes, this class was very successful in its methods used, the assignments given, and all around criteria of the semester. I enjoyed taking this class for the simple fact that it provided me with something that I enjoy and that is to write. I also learned a lot about bloging, which, previous to this class, I had never done before, and interviewing. This class expanded my understanding of how online journalism works and how an online journalist would go about doing their job.

The tools, recourses and other means of information and teaching material that I found most helpful to this class were the discussions, the blogs and the correction process. I liked the discussions because, when you didn’t understand something and needed to ask a question you were not simply limited to having the teacher answer it, but you had access to everyone else in the class. I found the blogs helpful because they really helped in preparing me for the news and feature article. What I liked most of all, though, was the correction process. I benefited a lot from how, when you’re work would be adjusted, the corrections would be flat out. At least in my own case, I knew exactly what I needed to correct and how to do it, which helped me to learn.

Overall the items that didn’t help me all too much were the information pages that were given to explain subjects. I had read through them through, but didn’t find them to be much help. I did learn some things, and I wouldn’t take them out of the class, but they didn’t seem to provide me with an extensive amount of knowledge. I suppose it could be because I’ve taken journalism classes before and knew somewhat of the topics covered in the reading, but I felt that you wouldn’t have needed to read them to write the blogs and other assignments. Other than that, however, everything else in the class was very helpful, from the discussions to the articles, they all helped to, hopefully, broaden my field of writing.

"Enemy of the People"

School has always been a big part of our lives, both as an individual growing up and as a community. We all take part in sharing events that the educational system as to offer, whether it be a school fundraiser, a football game, or even the classes you take. This week, in my community, the local school of Forest Lake started its practice for the yearly spring play, which is issued to open next month.

Each year, during the months of both November and April, the Forest Lake High School puts on either a musical or a theatrical presentation open to the public to view. Past performance has shown that the students who take part in this semi annual event show extreme dedications to what they’re trying to do.

This years performance features the play “Enemy of the People” done by Henrik Ibsen’s. Enemy of the people is a political and social drama, about how a town lead by corrupt politicians are guiding the common people down a path to contamination, and the one person who would stand up against this. The Enemy of the People tends to bounce off of the idea of one person standing up against the vast majority, which, in most cases, is what happens in life
The theater has always been place where people gather to view stories of all kinds and has been a part of our life since the very beginning time. From telling stories around the campfire, to watching it on the big screen, these theatrical performances have been enjoyable for ages. The Forest Lake High School drama club has continued on the tradition of recreating these performances to make sure that this historical pastime carries on.

Blog #4

In life there are certain things you can always count on as being true like in the end everyone has to die, no matter what if you skip school your going to get into trouble and, although we work hard to change this, there’s always going to be problems in your community. In order to handle these issues in life there are certain people, often elected by you and me, to stand on a board and solve them. After reading through as many Internet sources as I could keep track of I managed to stumble upon the fallowing five names, Stev Stegner, Susan Young, Bo Bogotty, Jackie McNamara, and Jim DuFour, according to http://www.ci.forest-lake.mn.us. These five officials were the top members on my committi board and the key leaders in my community. In order to get a feel for what concerns arise in the minds of the people I decided to hit the top. Stev Stegner is the mayor on our community and is the person I wanted to speak to. After a long, in-depth questioning session I descovered that there were only two topics widly inhabited in minds of the people in our community. One of these topics was traffic control. In our town between two certain hours, lots of traffic tends to build up over five or six trouble spots. Apparently the town council is trying to succeed in making these trouble spots go away. Another widly taversed subject is new building projects which Mr. Stegner says gets brought up a lot. Out of all the issues that could possibly plauge our town, these two issues seemed to be the most brought up.

Blog #3

The only real place that our community gets together to discuss issues and solve problems is our community hall. This place is a fairly small meeting area, but is vastly used for discussions over economy, traffic, improvement and other areas of reform that needs take place in our community. I have only been their once and that was to vote in my first election because I was old enough to vote this year. The roomthat I was in, and the room that holds the meetings was pretty big, yet dreary. No forms of color were on the walls or anything, but I suppose if there were color it might distract people from the real issues they're trying to address (I wouldn’t know I’ve never been to a meeting before). Although I have not witnessed this for myself, I can only take time to appreciate the people who spend hours together trying to figure out solutions to problems in our community and the community halls is the place where these solutions are thought on. I don't know what the other rooms in this building is for because there are a lot of them, yet I have not seen any being used for myself. If I had to guess I would assume they are used for smaller discussions over little issues, rather than the large decisions over everything. Either way, if you want to know what place in my community we meet to talk over what's been happening, that place would be our community hall.

Covering Communities

Throughout life you are always going to be surprised by something. Whether it be from a person or a pet, there's always something new to learn from the creatures that are closest to your heart. One of the best examples of these surprising encounters is from the people that build up your community. Being that I live in the country you may think that there’s not a lot to learn about the people who live there. No more than twenty houses surround my own and spending almost nineteen years there you may figure that you would already know everything there is about everyone who lives there. Even though this may be the case in most instances, there are still a few things I learned about them over the past few weeks. One of these things is that, no matter what seems to happen in your life, when you live in a small community like mine, everyone knows about it. I suppose it’s not necessarily a bad thing, but it is slightly funny how quick things get around.

Blog #1

There are thousands of different ways you can express your opionions and thoughts through a number of different writting techniques, blogging is one of them. People use blogs to tell others things about themselves, things about their family, stories in their life and what they are feelng. What sets a blog apart from any other form of literature, or in other words, what makes a blog a blog, is that they are short overviews of a spacific thought or feeling of a single moment in time. If you asked me what i like most about blogging i would have to tell you the word play. I love making paragraphs, sentenses and words flow together and sound elegant with each other, but in turn this is the thing i struggle with the most. I find that structuring sentences and making them sound good is what is most challenging for me, besides the spelling, i'm no good at that either. :)