Writing Blog Post 5

Dear English 110 Student,

First off, you all need to take a step back and take time to appreciate the fact that you have THE Leslie Chambers as a professor. Honestly, she is a great teacher who truly cares about what she does and will not give up on making you a better writer as long as you are willingly to cooperate. She is not by any means an easy teacher, but she appreciates hard work and, even if you’re not a strong writer, you can still have a successful English class. In order to be successful in this class, they’re three key points you, as a student, need to be aware of…

1. Come into English class willing to accept the fact that your course theme is sci-fi and there’s nothing you can do about it. Honestly, I hated the fact of this day one and it took me a while to start to like it. At the end of the class, I wouldn’t say I was a fan of sci-fi, but I can say I appreciate it, understand, and don’t hate it. The more you watch of sci-fi, the more you understand it and the more you can follow what is going on.

2. The second thing I would recommend for this class is to never think that your paper is perfect. Another set of eyes really helps in your revision process. I can say that at the beginning of this course, my drafts for my ARP were always good in my eyes, but then again they were the only eyes that read that paper. Long story short, it wasn’t that great and I had to start over my topic for my ARP. During my revisions process the second time, I really took Leslie’s comments seriously, and used the writing center as another reference source. Needless to say, my grade improved and I continued this on to my next paper. You will never really appreciate the comments that Leslie makes on everybody’s paper until you edit one yourself for Commonplace and it takes forever for just one paper.

3. The last piece of advice I have for this class is to BLOG, BLOG, BLOG!! Seriously, do not get behind on blogs and always comment on others. At first, I was skeptical about blogging, but as anyone in my class will tell you, I developed an addiction for blogger, so much that I still want to blog next quarter. Blogging doesn’t take up that much time, but that doesn’t mean you shouldn’t spend a small amount of time on them. It will only take about 15 min or so to develop a good blog with an extra 5 to 10 min in there for comments on other’s blogs because nobody wants a lame comment.

In conclusion, this class with Leslie might seem like a lot of work and unfair (especially if the people down the hall only have like 5 blogs the entire quarter, and don’t have to watch hour long sci-fi thrillers frequently), but in the end, it was quite enjoyable and I think will help me in the long run way more than I expected.

Warm Regards,

Sam Garea

Farscape Blog

Well I can definitely see why Leslie saved this show for last. Despite it’s very bizarre list of characters, I actually found this show very compelling and it kept my interest. I really liked the storyline of how they started out on Earth with a simple rocket launch test, and somehow John ends up in a wormhole and is transported to another end of the universe where apparently there’s life. I kept watching for an explanation about where is he or the better question when is he. Since the technology seemed so advanced, and there were some characters that resembled humans, my guess is he launched himself hundreds of years in the future. Overall, I liked the show, but I thought the alien characters acted and looked really weird. That short little green ruler guy was just plain ridiculous.

As for a comparison to the other sci-fi series, this one is obviously different. Based on the fact that it was one of the last series created, it seems like the writers had to be really different with this one or else it would be just like all the rest. They creators decided to use one human mixed in an alien war rather than a crew of humans like BSG, Firefly, and Star Trek (yes I know the crew on Star Trek isn’t all human but the point is they’re all on one team). John is just thrown into a situation where he doesn’t know what side to take. Also, the bizarre looking aliens were new as well. Every character looked either had 20 arms, or blue skin, or looked like a tauren warrior, or was a short green thing with a splitting head. The scariest character was definitely that monster thing with like a thousand teeth. Overall, I like the creativity of this series, I just wish they had better writers and a better set because everything looked so fake.

STNG blog

Contrary to popular belief, I know little about STNG in comparison to the original series. Though I only viewed this one episode from STNG, I still feel like I can compare it to the first series. First off, the crew is very similar. Data is the replacement for Spock is the aspect that he brings the thought of pure logic. This is evident is his poker playing ability when he logically concludes that he would lose based on the opponents betting, and is puzzled with the opponent ends up bluffing. While Data is entertaining and innocent, he is no Spock. In this series, they changed up the role of captain a bit. Captain Picard is a much more wise and conservative captain than Kirk was. Kirk seemed to be more risking and ballsy than Picard, which makes him to be more entertaining. Also, the emergence of a woman with high power makes STNG more progressive than the original series. I definitely like the crew from the original series better because it is tough to beat Spock, Kirk, and Dr. Bones, but this crew is interesting in a different sense. My favorite crewmember is definitely the Worf, who I wished had a bigger cameo in this episode.

As for how the episode itself differs from the earlier ones we’ve watched, I would say that this episode was a lot more focused on issues within the ship, rather than the surrounding world. In the original series, the concept was find some unknown planet or ship, explore it, get caught in a problem, and work through it so nobody gets hurt. This episode centered around the argument whether Data had rights as a person should, since he was an Android, or if he was just another piece of machinery. I could see where the writers were going with this one, exploring the possibility in the future, when technology has advanced enough to create artificial life, whether or not they are classified as humans in the sense of their rights. I thought it was an interesting concept and I enjoyed the trial they had, but I prefer Kirk and Spock fighting their way out of unknown planets any day.