Essay Packet #2 Response

Savich- Crumbling Expectations- The way this short story begins tends to confuse me a little bit. Its like the story has already begun and the reader was just thrown into the middle of it. As a continued reading things started to smooth out and become a little clearer, still not knowing what exactly it is I am reading. The line "the book defeats itself for the things that make books worth having." I thought this was a very unique line, something i had never heard before or thought of. Also the line "as i had decided that talking to myself was the best way to learn to be a writer." This line made me think as how the author came up with this rationale, how can talking to one's self be the best way to learn as a writer? The very end of this story made me smile for about five minutes, the part about re-enacting the actions he had once read in a book.

Prevallet- I dont know where to begin with Prevallet's short stories. Like savich's story, i once again found myself lost reading the first few synthesis. What i did like is how each one was different, from "Mythology" to "Dream" and I love how Prevallet found a way to place poems into the story. I found it interesting how the author went into great detail about the life and death of a horsefly. It really opened up my eyes to see that writing can be about ANYTHING! There is nothing too big or too small that one cannot write about. I think this is what I learned from reading Prevallet's story, I love how there are totally different styles of writing throughout these few pages. I believe that Prevallet is one of the best writers whose work I have read throughout this class

Essay Packet #1 response

NOTES TOWARD THE MAKING OF A WHOLE HUMAN BEING:

The flow of this essay is very well put together. I like the way the essay starts off by describing the school and giving examples of how this school is different from any other. For example in the first paragraph the school is described as "a small desert college in the American West for which young men at eighteen are plucked from the East and delivered to a campus surrounded by mountains, the size of Manhattan, closed off from the world by a series of cliffs, honor, dehydration cattle guards, mountain lions, community censure, nearly fifty-three miles to the next human outpost, and the lure, at eighteen, of a world behind walls where boys can be boys,".

The description throughout this essay is very detail and it gives you a sense for what the college really is. An example of some of the activities students perform are " Locke and lassoing young calves to the ground, clipping their ears, branding their rears, cutting quickly into their one-year-old scrota"I think this is what really holds the essay together, description is essential for essay's and I think the author knows this which is why the details of the university and the boys are so vivid.