Cover Letter...Kind of

James Parker

March 27, 2011

Cline, Laura

ENG 102

Dear Laura Cline,

This first half of the semester has been extremely difficult for me as writer as well as a student who tries to stay motivated. My biggest challenge in this class has been trying to stay motivated with my writing. On top of working and relationships with people, I have cheated myself in putting time into my work, therefore making it less enjoyable to turn in work. Some of the material, because of the online style, has also been much harder to focus on and relate to, seeing as I am the type of student who needs someone in front of me talking so I can communicate easier.

The readings have been detailed enough to give me a taste of what war is like, which has changed my perspective on the wars our troops are fighting. Seeing different styles of writing on the same subject has been helpful to me, and the similar feelings and stories among writers make their stories hold truth, simply because a lot of the feelings match up. Analyzing these pieces has been different than other types of writing I've done in that it makes you write longer papers on more specific details, with less summary style writing.

With the second half of the semester quickly approaching, I intend to continue looking for motivation and time to work on my writing. Hopefully now I can turn in my papers and feel like I am letting my full-grown teen ager go off to college instead of sending a four-year-old.

Sincerely,

Jamie Parker

Sean Huze Blog

Jamie Parker
March 13, 2011
Cline, Laura
ENG 102
Sandstorm Response
Sandstorm, as a whole, was simply OK to me. The play format already started the story out with a negative feeling, so my biased hate for reading plays did not help (reading plays reminds me of acting out parts of Shakespeare in high school classes). Another downer was that the profanity of the play made me feel as though the author ran out of creative adjectives—or simply didn’t want to try using any. Cussing was one of the things my grandfather said was a lesson learned in war, but (after being critiqued in writing my entire life) I expect something more unique in a piece of writing.
The lack of emotion (besides the last scene) was very hard to relate to. The story’s graphic details, swearing, and straight forwardness, were realistic but distant. A perfect example was with the soldier who tripped over a foot and started wandering around all dazed. It would have been cool to somehow include some details that were less raw to include people who hadn’t been to war before. Other than just relating to the story I also wanted to be able to relate to, and understand, what the soldiers were going through thinking back to my family members who have served in the military.
Overall it was realistic which was good, and was another resource to try and understand war with. Having different characters had potential to be entertaining, but wound up annoying, leaving me a lot of time to try and figure out who was talking. It was difficult to stay focused, making the reading last much longer than it should, due to the play style format. I did not hate the play, it was just very frustrating for me to get into and read.
For the image:

Website for Sean Huze:
http://www.seanhuze.com/stageplays/the-sand-storm