Understanding Sondra Pearl

There are many important aspects when it comes to Sondra pearls article “Understanding Composing.” To me the most important contribution in this article to me was her take on Projective structuring. Projective structuring is defined as rereading bits of previous discourse as well as reusing key words that relate to the topic, particularly when the writer is stuck. Sondra Pearl interperates it as taking an outside view from your paper and thinking outside of it in a third person point of view to see what you can change/improve on in your paper. Projective structuring is not an issue, it’s a great teaching tactic, however it sometimes causes big confusion and drifts writers away from their own personal thoughts and feelings. The main issue with it is when a writer takes that structure and only focuses on that but wonder away from talking about what they would actually like too because they think it’s best to stick with what they were taught. As Sondra Pearl states, the reader starts to question themselves with statements like “is what I’m writing correct?” and “does it conform to the rules I’ve been taught?” In my opinion that is a major issue in a lot of students writing. What I interpreted from what she was stating was that sometimes writers avoid writing about what they feel. Instead they are too paranoid on what others would think and focus on the main structure that was given to them because that’s what they think will give them the best paper possible. In reality a mixture of both is what they need. Otherwise if everyone stuck with the same structure on a topic, everyone’s paper would be the same and it wouldn’t make their personal paper unique. Which I personally think is the receipt for a successful paper and a unique thought.

Anything can happen at any moment part 2....Reposted blog

            It was a beautiful September morning. The weather was still a little warm but a bit chilly because fall was right around the corner. The sun was out and shining as bright as ever. It was nothing but a regular school day for me. I was in the 5^th grade and we had just started school. I was at a new school this year because my family moved and as a 9 year old you don’t really keep in touch with your old friends, so I was on my own. As the last year of elementary school, I had a lot of catching up to do and everyone already knew each other except for the new kid that just moved here. The only time people would speak to me was when they had a math problem they had trouble with, or if they needed a pen or pencil.

Sooner than later, things started to pick up for me though. I was a pretty good basketball player at an early age, and sports opened me up to new people and new friends. I finally made a couple of friends and it looked like the year was going to go great. On this specific day, things were different though and I would realize this later on in my day. We just got back from lunch and me and my friend Michael just got back to our class room and wouldn’t stop talking about the basketball game we just played as we took our seats. I took out my notebook and wrote my header on the top of the page. Name, Joseph Atala…Date, September 11^th 2001.

 “RING RING…Hello? Ok…Michael you’re going home” said Miss Redman. Miss Redman was my 5^th grade teacher and I can still say till this day for some apparent reason she really didn’t like me. She was this old wrinkly lady with red hair and an angry look on her face almost majority of the time. A phone call was made to our classroom and Michael was going home. I thought to myself great, the only person I really talk to was leaving and now what am I going to do? Michael got his stuff together and went home and Miss Redman decided to get back to class.

“RING RING…Hello? Ok…Stacy you’re going home! This was the second person to go home in a matter of five minutes but this was nothing new and Miss Redman decided to get back to class once again. “RING RING…Hello? Ok…another phone call was made for someone to leave and now things were getting weird. Before I knew it in a matter of 30 minutes it was me and two other kids left in a class of 25. Something very strange was going on and the two other kids and I had no idea what was going on. Miss Redman was on the phone and left us to play games on the computers in the back. She then started breaking down into tears and another teacher walked in to comfort here. I had no idea why she was crying but my initial thoughts were, wow she actually cries? Something really strange was going on.

We had an early dismissal from school and luckily I lived only a block away from school so I walked back and I saw ridiculous amount of traffic on the way. I walk through my front door put my bag down lay on the couch and turn on the TV. Every single channel had the same thing on and it was the news showing that an airplane had crashed into the twin towers. Immediately I was shocked and really scared because of the fact that my dad works in Manhattan. This was one of the scariest moments of my left as I was home alone and had no one explain to me anything. I was confused and worried about the many lives that were in that building.

Finally my parents got home and told me what happened and it was one of the saddest things I have ever heard of. It was a long quite night and no one wanted to speak. I found myself going to sleep early just wanting this day to be over. The next day I went to school and we had a long announcement and moment of silence for the people who died. It was a long depressing day and my friend Michael came into school late that day with tears in his eyes. I asked him what was wrong (Besides the obvious facts of what happened the day before) he responded to me “my dad died” and broke down into tears. For the first time in my life I was speechless and couldn’t even say anything if I tried. From that moment on I finally realized and understood death and how anything can happen at any given moment which leaves a scare in me till this day. This was defiantly the most memorable day of the 5^th grade for me and one of the most memorable days throughout my life as well as my life in school period. Feeling that kind of confusion not knowing what happen and my best friend’s father dying made this one of the most emotional and scary days of my school career and it will never be forgotten.