Contrast Essay

Contrast Essay
Then and Now and the Who and How of English 101
It’s September 1989 and I’m sitting crossed legged in this cinder block room with blaring Journey music on one side of the wall and the sound of a bass vibrating my head from the other wall I sit at my typewriter looking at the blank space on the new piece of typing paper. One side of the room looks like a white and pink lace princess exploded and the other side looks like a paint splashed world filled with eccentric art. The floor is laden with pizza boxes, beer bottles litter all free space beds desks windowsills, furniture is covered with clothes, beds are covered with shoes and chaos is abundant. I stare at the typewriter and the blank white piece of paper and read again the explicit directions that I must compare and contrast to family members in a 2 page document. It’s March 2010 and I sit cross legged in the chair at the desk in dining room with my laptop on and gaze across to my living room. My sage green tall living room set has it cushions perfectly plumped and my oak coffee table has magazines in the corner (mostly Bean) all alphabetized, there is a rainbow swirled candle holder perfectly sitting in the middle. The rug is vacuumed and the stands and entertainment center perfectly arranged and pledged just today. There are no dishes, no bottles, no pizza boxes and everything is in its place. Now this is a contrast as I sit at my laptop watching the cursor blink against the white screen and I laugh as I type English 101. I review the examples and there is no words telling me to compare and contrast the two family members. I look up at the wall and laugh at the crazy paintings and fall out of the chair laughing because I know that giant peace sign is upstairs on the wall faded and framed now in a hand painted wooden frame. English 101 is it the same game with new rules for a new Cindy? Or is English 101 a new game for an old Cindy?
English 101 is a rite of passage for any individual seeking a degree and there is no way to avoid it unless you can test out but I don’t think they even allow you to do that these days. I think the Accuplacer may be a way to rate your writing but they still don’t allow you to test out of the class even if you get all the points. I think the class objective is similar in that they seek to teach us to write organized thoughts and communicate in a professionally manner though I think they are marked differences in the way we achieved that goal in 1989 and how we achieve it in 2010. I think the differences are in presentation, type of work, and value of work to be meaningful for your future.
Presentation of the work is so different. We used to have to handwrite drafts and then type them on a typewriter as word processors weren’t all the rage in 1989. The papers then were handed into the professor in the class and he graded them and gave them back to us about 3 classes later all written over in red pen. In 2010 we mostly write using word or some other word processing program and rewrite our drafts on the computer with backstrokes and copy and paste rather than erase and scribble of the old days. In 2010 we post our work on a blog which is so foreign to me. A blog sounds like a noise made when someone is getting ill. So we submit our work out there for not just the professor or our