Malloy, 1 Conner Malloy Ms Connie Douglas English 1102 13 March 2014 Midterm Reflection Before English 1102 I had

personally never had to keep a daybook as a form of study. I will admit that the completion of the daybook is no intermediate task and requires a great deal of time, effort and thought. Although the completion of daybook assignments may be tedious, the assignments themselves are straight forward but insightful and made me want to put effort into my responses. If I had to give myself a grade on the daybook assignments I would give myself a 'C' and here's why. By fault of unfortunate circumstances I was not able to secure a textbook at the campus bookstore, in which to utilize to complete the majority of my daybook assignments. In response to bookstore having to wait on the arrival of my textbook, by fault of my own I misinformed myself with the arrival date of my textbook and neglected to track down my textbook in order to complete assignments. The majority of my daybook assignments however have been completed, excluding the completeness of a few Chapter 5 assignments and the Chapter 7 assignment I lost track on as I developed a new, different line of inquiry. I plan to complete Chapter 7 with my new line of inquiry as the preceding exercises show how I became lost and developed a new line of inquiry. You may be asking yourself at this point why I have not given myself a grade of a 'D' on my daybook. This is because I do believe my effort should be recognized because my enjoyment of the assignments helped extend the effort I was able to put into completing them.

Malloy, 2 Thus far in the semester my participation in class has been a primary focus after formerly becoming lost in the assignments I was not able to complete because of my neglect of a textbook. As I said earlier a majority of our assignments being out of the textbook has helped me to become engaged in-class, whether listening or contributing, because our topics of discussion are interesting to me. This semester we experienced many of our class sessions becoming canceled due to inclement winter weather. I believe I have used all of my allowed absences this semester before I am required to have a letter grade deducted. This total lack of appearance in-class leads me to give myself a 'D' in participation. Currently we are researching our own developed lines of inquiry. Developing a line of inquiry was difficult at first because I wanted to pick a topic in which there are no clear, concise answers that separate themselves from other possible solutions to the topic. I received mixed results in regards to my topic during my research proposal session. I believe this was because I had not accurately gained perspective on many different influential viewpoints on the issue. After my research proposal I continued more research, convinced that my issue was arguable. I so far have developed a list of seven sources that are of many different genres. I wish I would have had my current sources for my research proposal as my current sources provide me with information I can use to convince my audience that my line of inquiry is in fact a real issue with no definitive answer. It is tricky for me to decide an overall grade for myself at this point in the semester because of my inadequacy in completion of some of my daybook assignments. However, because of my completion of a majority of the daybook assignments, the level of effort / insight in my responses (because of my interest in the material) and my developed line of inquiry that I am currently successfully researching; I would present myself with the overall grade of a 'C' since I have not yet reached the limit regarding the absence policy. I hope I will be able to earn at least a 'C' in the course

Malloy, 3 by the end of the semester after completeing all of the work that was required of me. I would hope to earn a 'B', however that would only be possible if I was able to go above and beyond with my research and future assignments. Currently, referring to the success of my research being extremely recent (most sources published last year), directly relevant to my topic and reliable (databases are of psychological and economical research), I may be able to go above and beyond in order to mend my behavior during the beginning of the semester. The first entry from my daybook that I selected is in response to Brett A. Sokolow's essay How Not to Respond to Virgina TechII. I chose this entry because I agree and disagree with certain aspects of his suggestions on preventing violence on college campuses. While I agree with Sokolow's logic behind the easily debunked solutions such as allowing students personal locks and not excluding those with mental health conditions from admission, I disagree with Sokolow's logic behind not allowing weapons on campus because by focusing on mental health campus officials could exclude flagged individuals from the alleviated gun laws, therefore reducing the threat of a violent individual carrying a weapon while providing good people with protection against possible violence. This entry stood out to me particularly because I was able to become aware of my own perspective using the convincing and non convincing arguments presented by Sokolow. My second and third selected entry's from my daybook is a combination of responses to Guns don't Belong in the Hands of Administrators, Professors, or Students and There's a Reason They Choose Schools. My responses to the first essay were in agreement of the logic presented in the argument, faculty is not qualified in the same regard as police officers to assume the risk that comes with using a weapon. However, I did point out that the author did not logically think through the possibility that an accident may occur while protecting the campus from violence with weapons still presents the possibility of reducing harm caused by the violent individual. In the second essay, the

Malloy, 4 author uses examples of shootings on college campuses which have been ended swiftly by the allowance of firearms on campus. In contrast with the death toll at Virginia Tech I became convinced that guns on campus swiftly deter further violence and aid in protection. Referring to the second essay however, I was able to conclude that the author's somewhat arrogant defensive tone was detrimental in aiding his credibility on the issue at hand, are his opinions emotional or logical? I chose these two entries because together they helped me conclude my own opinions by properly assessing logic of arguments, and properly assessing the pathos and logos of opinions presented in the arguments. My fourth selected entry in my daybook was Exercise 17.9 where I wrote an ethical argument in which I considered the topic, How far should colleges go to keep campuses safe? I selected this entry because it shows that I learned how to write an ethical argument, using information from selected readings to enhance my own critical thoughts on the argument. In my ethical argument I believe I properly assessed two sources of information which expressed their own unique logic and opinions regarding the issue at hand. All in all, at this point in the semester I am continuing to complete my required assignments so I can stay current with my responsibility as a student. I have experienced effort in learning in my daybook as well as a success in researching my developed line of inquiry, which I hope will present me with the opportunity to write an interesting paper which explains the controversy of my issue.