Month: September 2017

This is just me putting down a memory into a paragraph for another idea for the Literacy Moment:

My whole life in school (well since 8th grade) my teachers have always stressed the importance of MLA Format. They always said “You have to use this in college otherwise you will fail.” and “If you don’t use this your professors will not accept any of your assignments.” So they drilled into my brain that every piece of writing or assignment I do must be done in the exact same format. But now that I’m here none of my professors require it or have asked for anything done in MLA format. It wasn’t all for nothing but the amount of stress it made me feel to have to learn it perfectly was pointless. There was always something to do and if it wasn’t done in MLA then it wasn’t accepted. In this way college is easier than high school. There was one teacher that ruined my love for writing by confusing me more and more everyday with MLA. She would tell us to use MLA in 8th grade and we wouldn’t know what that meant. And when we asked she wouldn’t tell us how to do it but expected it to be done and gave no guidance.

This is just another Idea for the rough draft of another literacy Sketch:

My whole life in school (well since 8th grade) my teachers have always stressed the importance of MLA Format. They always said “You have to use this in college otherwise you will fail.” and “If you don’t use this your professors will not accept any of your assignments.” So they drilled into my brain that every piece of writing or assignment I do must be done in the exact same format. But now that I’m here none of my professors require it or have asked for anything done in MLA format. It wasn’t all for nothing but the amount of stress it made me feel to have to learn it perfectly was pointless. There was always something to do and if it wasn’t done in MLA then it wasn’t accepted. In this way college is easier than high school. There was one teacher that ruined my love for writing by confusing me more and more everyday with MLA. She would tell us to use MLA in 8th grade and we wouldn’t know what that meant. And when we asked she wouldn’t tell us how to do it but expected it to be done and gave no guidance.

Reading long amounts of literature isn’t hard but sometimes I either get bored or I get tired of looking at one thing for a while. Last night I read “I Just Wanna Be Average”  and I did have to split it into two sessions of reading. I did one half of it, took an hour or so long break, then read the rest of it that night. I read the first half in the library and the second in my dorm before bed. I probably should have  done the rest in the library because I don’t remember it that well.

Dweck’s TED Talk was very enlightening recently in the debate of growth vs fixed mindsets. She talked about how most children liked to be challenged and that when they were challenged their brain’s activity spiked as they tried to figure out the problem. That was for the children with signs of a growth mindset. The children who showed signs of a fixed mindset showed signs of stress and no interest in the problem just because it was a challenge they didn’t know how to do. I printed the transcripts and annotated them to show my point of view of the situation.

Welcome to my site! My name is Michael Conry (big surprise), I am 18 years old from Londonderry, NH. I have done sports my whole life and this is the first year I hadn’t so far.  I played football, basketball, lacrosse, soccer, baseball, ty-kwon-do, MMA, and kick boxing. Recently I have been trying to branch out more and do some more “artsy” things like taking and editing photographs and videos. As of recent I have been wanting to help people. Maybe one day I will be in law enforcement, or in a medical field.