It costs 5 cents a page to print here (regardless of whether the page has on line on it or a full-page worth!!)
Easy Bibliography (Works Cited)
My English Composition teacher introduced me to this. I wish I known about it in high school when I had those huge papers!!
It’s a website called www.easybib.com and you can put in a book, or website, or magazine title (and so much more) and choose which format you need your bibliography (works cited) in. MLA is the most common and is free but they also have APA and Chicago/Turabian but those you have to have a paid membership.
Hope this has been helpful!!
~jojo
Why I Started Random Ramblings
Did you now that you all are guinea pigs for an experiment I’ve been conducting the past eight months? Well, you are, and you’ve behaved wonderfully. 🙂
When I go back to that first post from January 4, I look at how bubbly I portrayed myself. So let’s start there: I am not a bubbly extroverted person. I am a shy college kid who has no idea what she is doing and would rather be left alone with my books than make myself heard. I have always hated writing. I love history, science, and math but I hate anything that requires me to write something. Now here I am at college studying to be a pharmacist and I’m stuck with an English Composition class where all we do is read about writing, then write about what we read, and now we’re writing papers arguing about how students learn to write. On top of that, my science classes require me to write papers as well.
Now you’re probably wondering how this all ties in to you, my few but faithful followers. I started this blog as a hope to become a better writer. I did it on my own and it worked, but it wasn’t my first attempt. I’ve started so many journals at the suggestion and sometimes order of my high school English teachers. I never was able to go more than a week, so I never developed a habit of writing consistently. I just felt ridiculous writing things that no one would ever read. After seeing that a few of my friends had been blogging, I decided to try it. Even though I didn’t have a guarantee that people would read my stuff, it was more likely than when I was writing for absolutely no one. Some of my followers ended up being people I already knew (hi!), others I have never met and likely will never meet. But I try and keep putting stuff out there for you guys because I know how much I hate it when blogs I follow haven’t had new posts in months.
Another goal I had in mind was to make my writing more flexible. Even though I hated writing with a passion, I always good really good grades on papers and teachers would often try to get me to enter into a writing competition. Unfortunately, whenever I wrote, I wrote from a purely academic standpoint. I could write about other subjects, yes, but they would consist of big words and took on a distant, mechanical persona. I was spitting back every grammar and research paper rules I had been taught. I didn’t understand why I never placed. I had no imagination; the paper was boring; and on and on the judges’ comments went. Finally, it hit me when a friend was proofreading a paper for me. She remarked that if she didn’t know that I had written it, she would never have been able to guess. All my writings didn’t have a personal aspect to them because I wasn’t putting my self into them! I looked at my texts and e-mails to friends and even those were dull and boring. They could give an accurate picture of what happened but none could convey the emotions involved.
I tried write short fictional stories, but they always ended before I meant them to. I knew what I wanted to write and how it would end and the story always went faster than i intended not matter what I tried. Finally, when I started blogging I took a different approach. Because this wasn’t something I had to do and I knew there would be actual people reading what I wrote and judging me based on that, I began to put my heart more into writing. Whenever I go to write a post, I think of the general outline beforehand and then type without thought later. I try to do it all in one sitting and edit later as needed. I try to bring in a more conversational tone and so far it’s worked. I actually don’t mind writing so much anymore, which is good, since it seems that’s all I ever do anymore. I sprinkle in some smiley faces just ’cause I can and try to just talk about things that matter to me.
My grades are even better on my papers now and I don’t hate my English class. I attribute this to the fact that people can learn anything so long as they’re interested enough in it to try. I forced myself to write constantly until it became a habit that I enjoyed. If teachers would help their students develop a passion for a subject, they will see greater results. I chose the path to writing that interested me and now I can apply it to the other more important aspects of writing. Don’t misunderstand, I have a lot more to learn ahead of me, but at least I’m on the right track now.
~jojo
Random Ramblings 