The Grand Finale!

Well I’m glad that summer is around the corner and spring semester is about to be over. Its felt like the semester has been going on forever. Even though it wasn’t that long. I am happy that I decided to take English 101 online. I was a bit indecisive at first because I had heard many negative comments about the class. I also thought there was going to be a ton of work to complete. But I saw for myself that this online course wasn’t so bad and the work was very easy. Professor Gross was very helpful and understanding throughout this semester. I have a wider perspective on peoples opinions on music and their views. I liked the discussions that we had on music because it was interesting to know what everyone had to say. I found it interesting ti understand other’s opinions as well. The blogs were very helpful in communicating with others and to learn different concepts on music. Aside from the many topics that we have gone through as a class I found the different writing techniques to be more successful towards my writing skills. I think the scratch outline, the blogs, and the discussions were a great practice towards writing. They have helped my writing structure along with being able to extend my vocabulary usage. I enjoyed the essay questions in from the readings because it has developed and improved my critical thinking skills. I believe I did a great in answering the questions to the best of my abilities. I found the thesis statement tutorials to be very helpful. the breakdown of how an essay should be written was also important to me and I have based all my writing on it. The different handouts that were made available were also helpful. Especially the handout on how to create a works cited page. That was helpful because I wasn’t so sure on how to do that. Also on learning what internet source is useful and which one is not has helped me to determine which site would be trustworthy on academic papers. As a community I believe we did an all right job to stay civil with each others opinions and views on different topics. I like how no one had an altercation based on what we thought in our blogs. It was a great sense of community. The work that we did this semester was a little intense and very time consuming but it was easy to get done. I had to push myself to do it of course. It was hard to stay on task considering that you work on your time when it comes to online courses. But I liked the suggested week outline of how things should be done. It helped a lot. I also believe the different essays that we did were hard but it helped to develop my writing skills. This English class was overall a great one and probably one of the easiest ones that I have had. I really enjoyed taking this online class. 

My Improvements

Throughout this course I have improved my writing skills a bit. I learned new strategies such as the scratch outline that has been vital in collecting the information that I needed to remember. I learned to organize my thoughts and views in proper order. I also learned how to do block quotes which is necessary to know when you want to cite a long quote. I found that my spelling has improved as well. I can now catch my mistakes much easily now.  I used to repeat some of my points and now i have learned to slow that down. I feel that if I go through my writing a few times instead of just once I can catch a lot more errors than I used to. I also thought the blogging was a great way for the class to communicate with each other. The various different blogs were very interesting in reading because everyone had either a different opinion or the same view. It was a great way to build up my typing skills as well as being able to read long essays. At first I wasn’t so fond with the blogging because it seemed time consuming to me. Soon afterwards I found it to be very easily because what I had to say just came flying out. My blogs were complete in no time. I was a bit sketchy about taking an online course at first but with my busy schedule it had to suffice. I was a little afraid that I might fall behind on my work or I met get lost in the midst of the course. Instead I found it easier since it works around my schedule and I am able to complete my assignments with much ease. What made this course so difficult for me was when I became ill. It was very hard to have the urge and the energy to keep blogging or read the assigned essays. However, I did my best to try and finish my work. I’m just glad that this course is coming to an end. It felt as though the semester had just started and now it is almost over. I feel good about this course coming to an end because I won’t have to worry so much about completing my assignments on time. 

I feel that this course was a great experience for me. It was useful in many ways and it shows me how easy it is to work on your own schedule. It showed me to become more of a responsible person. By being aware of when my assignments were due. I almost mastered that part. I feel this course helped my writing skills tremendously because I worked on my own time and I had enough time to figure out my flaws and learn to better my skills. Also the recommended schedule to complete my work was helpful to keep me on the right track of things. I will be taking more online classes next semester because of my hectic schedule. I just hope they will be as easy as this one.

Culture vs. Craft

One of the biggest divides in hip hop is culture versus craft. By culture I mean, the appearance an artist will reflect to their fans by the quality of their music. By craft, it’s mainly about the lyrics and how powerful the rhymes an artist can put together are. Many famous artists believe that they should have the appearance of hip hop culture rather than worry about what they have to say. They try out new things in their songs by imitating the beat with their voice. Its what they use to stay creative and to keep their fans to continue on listening. They also take the approach to ignore their voice and focus on the sound of the music. The artists who choose culture over craft pay less attention to their voice and more attention to the music. Other artists would rather worry about what they have to say. They mainly focus on their lyrics and figure out what words go together to make their song powerful. Although, I believe a true hip hop artist has to be motivating, lyrically speaking, rather then worry about creative new ideas to make their music presentable. This divide between craft and culture is a never ending story. There are various artists who go in both directions to suit whatever their hip hop image is. When a hip hop artist does use their creativity to emphasize their music, it can sound great but the words are just irrelevant. I do think that the lyrics of the song are of more importance because it grabs your attention more than the awkward noises and bizarre voices. People can choose to listen to a song that emphasizes their creativity but have absolutely no idea what the artist is trying to say. I would rather listen to a song where I can relate to or where there’s an impressive story in the rhymes. I’m not saying using creativity in their songs is bad because it can be catchy when you listen to it. Those types of songs catch your attention because of the beat and the rhythm. However, the choice of words are important. The choice of words is what helps you determine whether the artist is great or not. If an artist can pull words together and make a great song it shows that they are passionate for the world of hip hop. It also shows that they are very much capable of maintaining their status in the hip hop world. The things that hip hop artists choose to rap about is what ranks them to be number one or become at the bottom of the list. Aside from hip hop artists being able to rhyme it also matters what beat they use. The beat helps to emphasize the lyrics, it helps the words to flow together. This shows that craft and culture do not necessarily need to be separate from each other. Many artists choose to use both. This growing divide can change the way that people interpret the world of music. Rapping will always have a role in hip hop but it is up to the artist on which route to choose. 

Research Paper

The research paper is the largest paper so far. The worst issue I’m having so far is getting quality information. With people being able to post anything on the internet it has become very tiring sifting through all mis-representated information. With being sick the last couple weeks it has been real hard to put the needed time into it. I have put all my paragraphs together and set up my paper. I plan to finish my paper within the next week. I am currently working on the completion of my work cited page and my in text citations. I have overcome a couple obstacles while writing the paper. One of the biggest was I didn’t save my paper and the power went out mid paper and the whole thing was lost. That was the biggest issue I have encountered so far. Other than that finding the credible websites has been the other biggest problem. It’s funny how people can just post a bunch of non-sense or opinionated information that only shows half the information. I have been trying to keep everything on track to make sure it’s done on time. Time is the biggest obstacle I think I have had to deal with. With everyday life and work and my current health issues having pneumonia it has caused a wrench to be thrown into my schedule. But hopefully after I get caught up with the homework I will be able to get this paper finished. The paper being five pages with five citations hasn’t been difficult to complete as the information I have found has been more tha n enough to get me started. The first draft is pretty rough as I’m just getting the information on paper then will re-arrange it. I have completed my scratch outline which has really helped me see what the actual organization of the paper will be. I found that breaking down my paper into segments helped me get it completed faster and with more detail. With the class now coming to a close and only two weeks left I find it harder and harder to stay focused. The semester has been very trying and challenging. I have learned so much in the class and trying to use it all on this paper. Hopefully it will meet the standard set as I have invested lots into it in regards to lost sleep that is. This paper to me has been more of a marathon that a sprint. Long drawn lots of re-writes and corrections have helped me get this paper almost done. The research paper has been a worthy challenge but with my eye set on getting it completed I set myself up for success and not failure. 

No One Eats For Free

Internet Piracy is one of the largest theft rings in the world today. It use to be  before the internet that you would by the * track or the tape or Lp and obtain music that way. But now you can go online and download anything you want for free. The file sharing industry has basically broken the music industry. All it takes is one person to upload a song into a file sharing site and a unimaginable amount of people can download the song. The sales of CD’s has dropped dramatically due to this problem. The only way to stop this problem is to eliminate the file sharing sites. But this is far from realistic because  it seems like four more open when another one gets shut down. Plus even if we were able to some how stop the file sharing online would we really stop people from burning a copy of a CD for there friends. Yes  its true they say  they put a block on the CD so people can’t burn a copy but I know there are geeks out there who break the lock and start burning copies. To me this is a never ending war. It reminds me of the war on drugs. It is not possible to control what every person does all the time. Crooks will find a way to continue to break the law. The fact is there are too many people in to many countries to stop this from happening. The internet gets hacked seems like monthly anymore and a credit card company sends a were sorry letter to the customer informing that some of there information may have been obtained. This is closely linked with how music is being stolen basically. But the one that is really affected is the artist. The artist is the one not benefiting from their music being sold to customers because people can get it only for free. Which reminds me of a saying I learned growing up “ No one eats for free”. That is so true because the theft of the music not only effects the artist and label and producer and all the underlying people who make money off the song but if no one is buying the music then the people trying to sell the CD like Best Buy , Target and Wal-Mart don’t need to employ people to sell it. So the people who are stealing it affect the whole water fall of people for downloading a CD. And for the most part the people who are downloading it for free are the ones working at the Best Buy, Targets and Wall-Marts. So they are only hurting themselves in the long run. Maybe if people would stop trying to get everything for nothing then we wouldn’t have all the issue we have today  in regards to lost jobs and to failing companies. Remember this if nothing else “no one eats for free”.

The Ultimate TV Show

The show Ultimate fighter comes to mind when I think about reality shows. Maybe because it is more real life than all the rest. To survive on this show you must actually win in a cage fight.  If that is reality I don’t know what is. Now true shows like survivor and the apprentice are entertaining but I get this feeling like they are rigged some way.  Now on the other hand you have the UFC fairly new as a recognized sport and growing fans by the thousands daily  who come out with a show  where guys who want a shot in the professional MMA world come and just beat on each other until just one man is left is just great as a viewer to watch. For me it is like watch a college sport verse a pro sport. The pro guys already have the big contract and fame where as the college kids are killing themselves day in and day out to achieve the dream of being a pro. So the appeal for this show is that , guys killing there body day in and day out training so that they might get that contract at the end of the show. It also shows a little bit of history about the contestants and they tell why they chose to come on the show and what it means for them to be there. A lot of the guys left there jobs and families in hope of making it so that they can better there families situation. People as a viewing community eat this type of stuff up and get emotionally attached and tune in every week just  to see what happens next. The show has now been around for six years and continues to grow just like the sport does. So maybe it seemed in the beginning like it might be a season or two long show but as long as the fights keep getting scheduled then I believe the show will continue. People compare the sport  to a modern day Roman Gladiator event. And I would agree. These guys are warriors. They fight with broken bones , dislocated joints and knowingly fight with a chance of death. The public knowing this comes together like a pack of wolves stalking a injured animal. The crowed always wants more. Now the show has gone International and has brought fans from all over the world. So as the sport ages and grows it seems that it controls it’s own destiny with  regards to the TV show.  There is no lack of support form fans or sponsors who‘s list includes very high profile companies like Budweiser, Coors, Miller, Pepsi, Coke, Red Bull and Monster. There are also smaller companies that sponsor fighters and get adds right on the fighters shorts. So the sport is well rounded in including small and large sponsorships. So all in all the sport will be around for as long as there  is a want to see people bash each others brains in.

Reality Based Lyrics

 Eminem has gained a lot of popularity and fame over the past ten years. He has crossed the poverty line to his current status of super stardom. Eminem has done so because he speaks about real life events. His lyrical value is more than words just on paper. Eminem has done what no other artist of this current generation has done by crossing all gender and race lines. His fans are not just White because he is but his fallowing has just as many Blacks and Hispanics. His words allow you to place yourself in his shoes and feel in your soul what he is talking about. The reality based lyrics he uses only strengthens his crowd. His songs talk about situations we all can relate with. He is not your typical phony thug that talks about how much drugs he moves or about how many people he has killed when we all know it’s just a lie. But he talks about being white and growing up in the projects and how because he overcame the obstacles of being a white rapper. He talks about the love for his daughter and how he had no father growing up and was always moving because his mother couldn’t afford to pay for rent. These are real life situations that people are living everyday and kids can understand what he has gone through because they have had the same experiences. In these troubled times kids don’t have much to lean on but music offers a way to escape the current situation and while connecting to Eminem kids are able to feel in a sense like they are not going through it alone.  One song mentioned in our text talks about the song “ cleaning out my closet”. This song to me at least touches home because I grew up in a single family home on that it was my father that was around and my mother was gone. Everyone has skeletons in there closet and it might be how they grew up like in the instance of Eminem. The ability to relate to his audience using his real life lyrics is what makes the biggest difference between Eminem and an artist like Ludacris. Not to knock on the music that Ludacris puts out but its more aimed toward the club scene and not to relating with fans. I believe that is why Eminem has such a huge fallowing, because when the club ends kids put on a Eminem CD and start cruising to that music not the music aimed at making people dance. The real situations, emotions and feelings is what drives the rage in Eminem and it is also what reminds us listeners of how we felt and or what we did in those situations. He is one of the few rappers I actually listen to because I do and can relate with the songs he writes and sings. I don’t listen to it because I think I am a thug or want to be something I’m not but listen to it because I remember times I had in my life that were real similar to what he’s is singing.