End of term

Time has gone by so fast and I can't believe how much I have learned. What I have strenghtened throughout this process I would say is how to do research on good sources. I managed to keep my notes very organized and on topic. One thing that I still need to work on is APA format. This is something that I really had trouble especially on the reference page. An advice to students taking this class in this future would be, " Do not procrastinate" this can really be a problem in this an all other classes. Everyone have a Merry Christmas and a Happy New Year!! Wishing everyone the best!!

Final Paper

As of right now I am still adding and revising details in my paper. I am definitely exhausted, nervous and anxious about the outcome, but hopefully I will be fine. After all I think I have done a good job and have met the lenght requirements. The only thing that I worry about is APA format. A topic that I would like to do some research on is stem cell research.I have read some of the papers of my fellow classmates and found that it is an interesting topic to know more about.

Blog

I have enjoyed having this blog even though I haven't received any comments so far. It helped me in letting me say what I felt with each experience through out the process of writing this paper. I don't think I am going to continue writing on this blog after the course ends. The reason for this would be that I am not the type of person that likes to write in an every other day thing and especially not about personal things. I wrote because I always had a topic that I had to write about but if I don't have a topic then I don't have nothing to write about.

Peer Reviews

Personally I didn't want to do a peer review, just for the fact that if I didn't know if I did my own paper correctly, what gave me the right to be telling someone else how they did. I tried to be honest as much as I could and didn't even bother with the citations since I know I did mine wrong. All I looked for was if the paper sounded good, if it had enough information to support the topic and the spelling/grammar. Overall I think I did ok even though don't look forward on having to do those again. I liked that when someone did mine they where honest and they helped me with tips to better my paper. I am very open when it comes to suggestions of when I did wrong. It was a good experience after all!

The pastsix weeks

At this point I am really stressed out over the final project. I had first decided to do my paper on fetal alcohol syndrome. i focused on that and did my research and everything. But then I found out that it would be a good topic since there wasn't a way to argue about it. So here I am week six, rought draft is due and the outline on DB and I had nothing. It's hard to try and do a paper that is due in such short time and with all the research I had ahead of me. So now I decided to do it on preventing teen pregnancies and right now I just finished posting the outline for the DB and still working on my rough draft. Hopefully things start going better for me this coming weeks since I also have another essay due for my AP1 class. I know I can get really frustrated with my school work but all I have to do is take a deep breath and remind myself that I can do this!!

My personal writing process

When it comes to start writing an essay of any type I get very nervous then very overwhelmed. I can write and write and write and end up with nothing I actually want to use on the final draft. First I write my own ideas and the knowledge I have on the topic. After this I start doing the research on the ideas I came up with. Sometimes I don't have any knowledge on the subject like right now with the paper for this class. So it has been very informative learning about the effects on babies with fetal alcohol syndrome. After I gather about 6-8 good resources I started getting the best information on each one and start forming sort of like a outlining where I can move around my ideas until they sound just right. Sometimes I look at it like if I was baking something and I love cooking too. Getting all the ingredients together to come up with one perfect dish or cake, depends on what I'm cooking. I enjoy the writing after the research is done because its faster and I could see the shape my essay is taking. I still have some trouble with the citations but feel comfortable that I will get the hang of it by the end of this term.

Plagiarism

Hi everyone! The first time I heard the word plagiarism was my first term here at Kaplan. The three classes I took and every class I have taken since then, stress out the importance of plagiarism. How it can effect us here in college and in any other situation. It is important that if you are writing a paper and you take some information from an article or a book that someone else wrote the right thing to do is to give them credit for this since we are using their information. If we don't do this it is somewhat like stealing, this is my opinion. I never did this although when I was in high school the papers or essays that I would turn in never had a reference page but I would have to tell the teacher were I did my research. Now after the past terms I have had a lot of practice on how to do citations and specially the reference pages. I still need some work though but I think I will get through it.

Being an online student

Well I really don't know where to start. At first I thought about going to the college here in town but decided not to since I have my kids. Taking them to and from school, then having my three year old with me all day and I really didn't want to put her in daycare. I feel that I should be the taking care of her until she goes to school. Then in the evenings having my husband at home and the kids practices from the sports they play in, I felt taking online classes would work out better. I could say that they have even though I had my doubts at the beginning. This was because I didn't think that you could actually take online classes and get a degree with even going to an actual class. Well I did some research and found out it was possible. It's amazing how far technology has gone now. I like the way we are able to communicate by the discussion boards even though it feels weird to communicate with classmates that you don't know how they look. Thanks to the blog I have seen several of the pictures other classmates have posted and now its more comfortable when doing my DB. Other than that I think everything is great. The seminars are great, especially because we have the interaction with our professors. I have a cousin that is taking online classes in another university and she doesn't have seminars. She says that the professors just post what needs to be done and what needs to be read for the week, but she doesn't have a class were she can actually hear the professor teach. I am glad I am going to Kaplan!

A little about me

Hello everyone, my name is Alma Bustamante. I am 27 yrs old, going to be 28 in December. I am happily married and been for 10 yrs. now. I have three beautiful children, one boy and two girls. Their names are Herbey 10, Yamelin 7, and my little one Itzel going on 4. I have been a stay at home mom since I married my husband. I had the privilage of seeing my kids grow up and haven't missed a thing. I thank the Lord and my husband for that. Now I have decided it was time for me to do something with my life and decided to pick up I left off. I went and got my GED since I didn't graduate from high school even though I was very good. But for obvious reasons I had to leave that aside for a while. Then I took a course in the university here in my city, to get my training to be a CNA. I am currently waiting to take my state test to actually get certified and start looking for a job. Mean while all this was happening I got enrolled here at Kaplan to get my associate's degree in health information technology. I am still not sure how that is going to go but I have faith everything will be okay. I know I love working with computers and I wanted my profession to do with something in the medical field so here I am.