week 15 blog

Throughout the semester i have only missed two days this year, when i missed those days i made sure that you knew ahead of time and that i completed any work that needed to be done. I have also completed all of my blog postings and had them submitted on time. I have never had any late assignments and i have always given one hundred percent all of my works. I have also tried to participate in class when I had something to contribute. All of these are reasons as to why I think I deserve an A in this course. I already have and 88.something and I have been spending many hours trying to make my final portfolio look professional and trying to keep everything moving along smoothly with our group project. I had to take 20 credit hours this semester in order to stay on track to graduate next Christmas, and it has been difficult finding time to complete all of my assignments on time and have them be grammatically presentable, but I think I have done an alright job of this which is why I feel that an a would be an appropriate grade for me. I do not feel that all of my works are A+ material and that they were the best writings in the world, but I do feel that I put as much effort into them as I was really able to. Whatever my grade ends up being, I feel that this has been an educational and enlightening course.

week 14 blog

I already have the general layout of my portfolio finished. I set it up so that my blog postings are all on one page, but I thought it would look weird if I were to put three drafts of the same essay on one page, so I put all of the different drafts on separate subpages. I chose this form because I thought it looked the most used friendly, and it seemed like the type of layout I would want someone else to use if I were looking at a website similar to this. I thought it would make it a hassle to have to click on a separate page for each one of my blog postings so that is why I chose to put them all under one page. I decided to keep the website clean and simple, using a dark gray background with white font and blue font for the titles; I also plan on incorporating more pictures when it is appropriate. I really haven’t thought a lot about how I am going to make my portfolio more personal, but an “about me” page does sound like a good way to do that, I could bring in pictures of me and things that represent me and write about them.

week 13 blog

I think that the way that I write my essays has changed more from high school to now, than it has just through this semester. I used to write my papers about just random stuff that really wasn’t important to me in any way, shape, or form, but now I’ve been putting a little more thought into my writing, and I have been writing more about topics that relate to me. I find this more and more true as the semester goes on. One of the things that I thought was the most beneficial, or the thing that I liked the most about the class, is that we got to choose our topics based on very lose criteria so we could really write about pretty much anything. Also we didn’t have to follow any specific writing style, we could write our papers the way that we liked to write them and we didn’t have to try and reword everything so it sounded like you wrote it. One of the things that I didn’t like so much was the fact that the deadlines seemed to come up pretty fast, and sometimes it was difficult being able to get everything done on time since I am also taking six other classes.

week 12 blog

In my econ class that I am taking, we are required to do group projects periodically. There are supposed to be five to six people in each group and my group had three people. This made the workload for each person in my group quite a bit more than what it was intended to be. Also, one of my two group members had a tendency of showing up to class once a week, if that. This made even more work for me and my other group member which resulted in more of a negative experience than a positive one. My partner and I decided to merge with another group in the class who was having a similar problem; thinking our workload would decrease, I then realized that I was the only one out of four people who even had a slight understanding of how economics actually worked. When working with a group I am always concerned about whether or not the other people are going to put forth as much effort as me. There are benefits of working with other people in the sense that it does divide up the workload so one person is not responsible for everything. Other group members can also bring in different viewpoints and perspectives that one person alone may not have thought of.

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week 11 blog

I don’t know that my writing process has changed a whole lot since I have started this course, I guess one thing that has kind of changed though is the fact that I don’t seem to procrastinate quite as much as I used to. I feel like the essay that gave me the most trouble out of the three that we have written for this class was the “inventing arguments” essay, due to the fact that it has very few guidelines. Often times when I’m writing it helps me to have some sort of guidelines or structure for the different paragraphs. I think the rhetorical analysis essay was fairly easy for me, due to the fact that you had laid out examples of what you would like to see in it structurally and how it should be put together. If I am trying to get a point across to someone who is too stubborn to hear me out, I prefer to write down what I would like to say. The reason I like doing this is because they have to listen to all of my points when reading, as opposed to a verbal debate where they can try to catch me in a contradiction, say whatever they were wanting to say, while making me forget what I was going to say. Right now writing plays a large role in my life because I am in college and most of my assignments are written. In my future I feel that it will also play a considerable role since in most work environments there is a lot of paper work and things of that nature that always need to be done.

week 10 blog

1. Do you feel that our social security tax is a good tax to impose one everyone or do you think it would be better to drop the tax completely?
I think this is a good question to ask someone because there is a lot of money being put into social security each year and many people realize it won’t be there when they are going to retire and feel that they could make better use of that money if it was theirs to invest.
2. How do you think the government should resolve its problems with social security?
Many people think that the government should drop social security all together. Others feel that maybe it would be better to raise the tax, or just change it.
3. Do you think it would be safe to rely on your social security for retirement or do you think a separate retirement fund is needed?
Most people today do not even think of social security when planning for retirement because most people realize it probably won’t be around a whole lot longer and if it is, still around by the time they wish to retire, they probably will not get enough money back to live off of.
1. Do you feel the government is better at managing your money than you are?
Many people have a knack for not being able to manage money, while others feel the government has a knack for blowing money like it is nothing. I like this question because there are people who can relate to both sides.
2. Do you think it would be difficult for you to receive anything greater than a -1% return on your own retirement plan?
This question is pretty self explanatory, if you were to take the same amount of money the government deducts from your check, put it in a coffee can and bury in your back yard, you would get a better return on it than you would if you give that money to the government.
3. Will you rely on social security for your retirement?
Many senior citizens are relying on social security right now, unfortunately the money they are getting is barely enough to live off of anymore. Most people now do not plan on relying on their social security for retirement but I still thought it would be a good question to get people thinking.
4. Do you think that people should have an option of whether or not they want social security?
Some people believe it would be a good idea to revise the social security tax and give people the option of whether or not they want to be on it.
5. What percent of your income do you think social security takes out?
Most people believe that somewhere around 13% of your income is put into social security, you pay half and your employer pays half, however, when it’s an employer’s market like it always has been the tax is actually divided up unevenly and almost ¾ of the tax is paid by the employee… even though it looks like it’s getting divided evenly.