Blog 5

Considering that this is the last week before our final exams, I have been very busy preparing for the tests and stressed. This is my first semester and also the first time that I will be taking final exams in the university. So I am sort of do not know how to prepare for it. A lot of things come up such as many projects have to be finished, I am trying to handle all of them. Hopefully, I can do well on the exams next week.

Blog 4

          I started working on the fourth draft of my memoir essay this week. Looking back to my first draft, there was no inside in the story,  I did not know what exactly I was going to write about. then I keep working on the draft and trying to make it clearly, so the readers can understand what I want to say by this story. I can see there is a tremendous progress from the first draft to the fourth. I changed lot things and added more details of the story to make it perfect just like the saying that practice makes perfect.  

Blog3

We wrote a letter to ourselves in class this week. Thinking back to my youth that reminded me things happened when I was 17 years old that year changed my life. I came to United States alone to study, I left my home, my country, then came to a totally different place to start my new life. I have never thought about that until I got on the airplane. I said goodbye to all my family and friends, and also said goodbye to my life there in my heart. My host family was waiting for me at the airport in Raleigh, they were very excited to see the new member of their family and have a life together. They did not know that I cried all the way from China to United States, almost 17 hours. But I stopped crying and dried my eyes before I saw them, then I had a big smile on my face because I knew it was time to get into the new life here. I studied so hard and also tired to get alone with my host family. I had such a hard time. Looking over back now, I am glad that I chose this way of my life, I know how to take care of myself and be independent, not just be a “mommy’s girl” anymore.

I am not good at remembering things, and I always ignore some good things that happened in my life. Through this writing practice, I learned to look closely to my life.

Blog2

We started to write our “I believe” essay that makes me think a lot. I believe a lot of things. There is one thing I learned from a movie, which is about a girl failed her job and university, and also her father got disappointed at her, she was having a really hard time in her life, then she was trying to leave where she lives and run away from all the troubles she got. Before she got on to the airplane to another place where is far away from her home, she finally found out that she could not even say goodbye to her family and life here, because she belongs to here. By watching this movie, I believe that whenever we have a hard time in our life, don’t try to run away or give up, we should fight for our future and chase our dreams no matter what.

Blog1

            It has been more than half way of this semester, I learned a lot, and I also had some hard time. This is my first semester in the university, my life completely changed when I came here. I don’t speak English very well and I am scared to talk to people, so I got no friend at the beginning of this semester. I also felt so helpless because I did not know what to do such as what class to take or who can I ask if I need any help. Two or three weeks later, I felt better and got to know what to do, and also I was doing better in class. However, I still have a problem, it is hard for me to make friends because I think I am a little bit self-abased, so I only have a few friends here now that is not really good.

What is good to me is I do learn a lot from this English class, not only academic knowledge but also some significant lessons in my life. I start reading books that really help me a lot with English, and by reading books, I learned how to live my life better. Life is a big topic, we have to learn it all the time. We have to deal with trouble, learning to make friends and accept fail. I came all the way to the university in United States because I want a new life and experience things that I have never known before. I am trying to do my best in all the classes and my life.

Interview

By reading the two articles, I presumably learned how to do an interview.  First, interview can be flexible, but I have to strongly know what information I want to get from people and list all the questions done. Second, to make sure all the information I get is correct so that would not mislead other people. Third, try to record everything I hear, I can use voice recorder. Forth, ask for people’s contact information at the end.

There are many types of interview. I am interested in local history and community life so I can know the cultures and interesting things by listening the stories from them. I would know a lot of things that I have heard before that will make me so excited to know them more.