User:Torigrace89

=Analytical Writing=

Critique
Tori's Paper

All in all Tori's paper was very good. She showed excellent detail in her past experience to engage to readers perspective on homelessness and whether it being a choice or not. Having the insiders view coming from a person who has actually experienced or is experiencing the homeless life-style makes the paper more interesting rather than going of facts and internet information. I find it really well put together from beginning to end with the information provided through the homeless shelter, the movie "pursuit of happiness", and the actual day to day working environment. She stayed pretty well on topic and made me realize that through some perspectives homelessness isn't a choice, it comes from all sorts of situations and predicaments varying the person or people and the way they live their life. I feel she could go into more detail on other experiences using facts outside of her own experiences that she has witnessed or been apart of just to tie into the essay a little bit more but the way she came about it was a very interesting outlook on different perspectives of being homeless and having a homeless life hit you in the face. Very well done tori! :) MadisonE

My critique of Madison East's paper

I thought your paper was very good and had excellent voice throughout. I was a little confused on the overall point. It seemed like you were saying that the homeless people didn’t choose to be homeless in the beginning and then in the body of the paper you were saying all of the reasons they do choose to be homeless… Maybe editing the intro to better say what the thesis or point of the paper is will help this. Also, from what I have heard, most homeless shelters have strict enforcement of not letting anyone under the influence of drugs or alcohol in and some actually provide over the counter medicine to those who are sick and in need. So wouldn’t this be good for the ones who don’t want to get sick and who are trying to kick bad habits?? Also, I think that the homeless people with pets might be trying to not be homeless by getting sympathy for the animal from people and getting money from them (they still aren’t allowed at shelters but I guess its about their priorities) Overall you did a really good job. Just some revising and editing of some sentences that didn’t quite flow will make it great!

Personal Essay
Homelessness By Tori Jones Analytical Writing Fall '09

I believe that being homeless is not always a choice. While there are homeless people out there that are perfectly content without a place to call home, there are others who are relentlessly trying to escape the self perpetuating cycle of homelessness. I was visiting San Francisco my freshman year of high school where we got to experience homelessness firsthand. We volunteered at several shelters, soup kitchens, and even elementary schools. While volunteering I spoke with a man who's story I will never forget. This particular man was a regular at one of the soup kitchens we were working in one morning. As a part of our mission we didn’t just serve the homeless food and then go about our day, we were told to go sit down and eat with them…get to know them…have conversations with them. This to be completely honest scared me at first. I mean, I had never really sat down with homeless person before. The man I sat down with was named Al, was dressed in a suit and tie, and looked somewhat out of place in the dingy cafeteria. I quickly learned that his story was one about a few wrong turns that led him to where he was. He was like any other married middle class guy but after his divorce things slowly started to spiral. The divorce led to a move, which led to lots of expenses (on top of the divorce expenses). He eventually sold his car to deal with financial difficulty. Having no vehicle led to challenges getting to work which eventually made him lose his job. Without a job, car, spouse, or any extra money he quickly realized he was in over his head and wasn’t going to get out of this hole any time soon. Although he was homeless, he still maintained his pride. If I didn’t sit down with him and hear his story I would’ve never guessed that he didn’t have any place to live. He was the fist person that made me realize that homelessness isn’t always a choice.

Al's story was very similar to the one in the movie The Pursuit of Happyness, which is based on the true story of a stock broker named Chris Gardner. He is left homeless after his family becomes financially broken and his wife leaves him and their son. He demonstrates an incredible amount of pride and works extremely hard to get himself and his son out of this situation. He uses all of his resources including homeless shelters and recieves an offer for a competitive internship at a financial company. No one at his job or at his sons daycare would have ever guessed that they were sleeping at shelters. This story demonstrates one man's persistance in getting out of a terrible situation that life unexpectedely delt him.

Another place where I can observe the homeless on a daily basis is my work. I work at the Nordstrom E-bar in downtown Seattle. This area is a popular one for the homeless crowd and they come into the store often. We have some regular customers that are homeless and dirty but we know that they are harmless. One of them is a man who shines shoes on the corner and sometimes uses his earnings to purchase a drip coffee or a cup of tea. Some of the others will just come in and ask us for some hot water and sit down for a few minutes. It’s other homeless people who give these harmless ones a bad name though. There is another man who also shines shoes a block down from the man I mentioned earlier, but instead of buying a coffee, he enjoys stealing mugs and chocolates from our retail displays. We are then forced to call security and either have them arrested (if they are caught on tape) or banned from the store. On one hand, it is heartbreaking that some people are at the point that they need to steal in order to eat; on the other hand it is hard to show them sympathy when there are so many other homeless victims who are honestly working hard to acheive a better life. Others will come in clearly intoxicated and badger our other customers for spare change, which also leads to us having them removed. The question is, how do you tell which ones are simply down on their luck and which ones obviously are contributing to there own awful situation?

I spoke with a volunteer for a homeless shelter in Pioneer Square and her words made me feel a little bit better. “I volunteer at a shelter that doesn’t discriminate. Some shelters turn away drunk and intoxicated people but we don’t have any of those rules. Anyone can come in and get a free meal. After working here I don’t feel as sad that I can’t give more money and food to the homeless people I see on the street because now I know that no matter how bad off they are, they do have a place to go get some food.” -Jennica Cassidy

I believe that it is important for us to understand where the homeless population is coming from and to experience it in some way firsthand, whether it be serving at a soup kitchen or simply talking to that guy selling Real Change on the corner for five minutes. Some people get themselves into it, but others have stories that could happen to anyone, especially in a time like now when so much of our population is living paycheck to paycheck and with little to no savings. We can’t judge the homeless as one whole group. They are individuals with individual stories just like those of us who have a warm bed to sleep in at night. Some are okay with their lifestyle. Others did not choose to be without a home and are desperately working hard to have one again.

Self Assessment
I do agree with past students when they say the this was the least amount of writing that they have done in a writing class. However, I feel like I learned alot more about other things and issues in this class. I learned to work in a group in a different way than in any other class I have taken. I have never had to write a paper as a group before and it taught me alot about communication and responsibility. I also really liked that we had choices of what to write about for our personal essays. I think I did well in the group stepping up and organizing things and who should take on what, I think I could have communicated on wikki better though. Some people in class complained about having to write our short fiction story in class but I really enjoyed it. I wish that we would have done a little more in class writing. Most of all, I enjoyed the in class discussion of the group topics as well as topics going on in the news, etc. I learned alot from the professor and my classmates. My one critique of the class would be to make the group project a little shorter and add another personal essay.