ENGL000: Pre-College English

I have several steps that I must complete to prepare my vegetable garden for planting. The first step I take is getting the soil ready by mixing and overturning the dirt and dead plants with my rototiller. I simply walk the rototiller back and forth until the dirt looks dark brown and has a slightly moist feeling to the touch. When I finish my first rototilling, I grab my heavy bag of fertilizer and sprinkle it all over the freshly overturned dirt by handfuls. I rototill one last time to mix the fertilizer with the dirt. The second step I take is deciding where I want to plant each vegetable. I use colored popsicle sticks to mark off plots of ground, so I know what will go where when I plant. My tall vegetables, such as corn and beans, always go toward the back of my garden, so they do not block the sunlight from my smaller plants. I plant my squash and zucchini on the outside of my garden fence because they need a lot of room to crawl and grow. Other vegetables are plotted in alternating rows. After I have decided where to plant, my next step is creating my rows and walkways. I have plenty of extra roofing shingles which I use to create my rows by laying them down so each shingle slightly overlaps the other.  This also creates my walkways in the garden. Shingles are cheaper than landscape cloth and they work better at keeping down the weeds. My final step is fixing the garden fence. The chicken wire fence takes a beating from the winter's heavy snow accumulation and needs to be repaired each spring before I plant. After I assess the damages, I place new wooden pegs in the ground where my fence needs support and tie the chicken wire fence to the wooden pegs with string. This secures it and makes my fence slightly more sturdy. After I have completed these steps, my garden is ready for planting.

I prefer to drive long distances over other modes of transportation for many reasons. For one thing, I am alone in my car with plenty of space and I don't have to deal with the large number of people crammed into a plane, bus, or train. As a result, I have plenty of space to bring or take home as much as I like.  For example, I drove to visit my parents last year, and they sent me home with a cast-iron fireplace set that included a poker, a broom, a large tea kettle, and a log grabber that all together weighed about forty pounds. In my car, there was plenty of space and the weight was not an issue. If I hadn't driven, I would not have been able to take home any of this. All the germs from so many people in a small space also often results in me getting sick after air, bus, or train travel. This doesn't happen when it is just me alone in my car. Second of all, driving can be at a much more relaxed pace never involving the worry of missing a departure time. I don't have to worry about making scheduled times or having to wait at stops or layovers. I also can stop for the bathroom or a meal whenever I want. Most importantly, driving is much less expensive. The trip to my parents is approximately five hundred miles: a plane ticket is around $300, a train ticket is around $180, and a bus ticket is around $110.  However, if I drive, the cost is only around $70 in gas which is far more affordable for me. If I get the choice, I much prefer to drive places than any other mode of transportation.

I really dislike working as a First Third Bank call center representative. First of all, the job is extremely boring. I sit in a small cubicle staring at a computer screen awaiting calls for eight hours. Because my headset is plugged into the phone, I cannot get up or move around. In addition, I have nothing in common with my coworkers, so I have no one to talk to when I am waiting for calls. A second bad feature of the job is that the customers are often very mean and rude. At least once a day, a customer gets angry and hangs up on me when I am trying to explain why their account is overdrawn. Even worse, a customer just yesterday told me that I am "everything that is wrong with the world," as though it were my fault that she didn't qualify for the loan she wanted. Finally, the work conditions are unpleasant. My workspace is incredibly uncomfortable. My chair has a broken base, so it sits too low to the ground putting my knees in my face. There are also a lot of weird and restrictive rules that only make the job that much worse. For example, even though it is a locked call center, we are required to wear a collared shirt. To top all of that off, the building is kept freezing cold, and I have to keep a sweater at my desk even in the middle of summer. I hope I can eventually find a better job because being a call center representative is an awful way to spend forty hours a week.

My experience going to a haunted house with my friends last week was really scary. The experience started in the fear built up by my anticipation. For days before we went, my friends had told me how scary this place was. My imagination had taken it from there and all I could think of were gory scenes from horror movies. However, the anticipation was nothing compared to the fear inspired by the characters in the house. There was a bloody girl with hair covering her face who was pacing back and forth, but when she turned to look at me, there was no real face under that hair. Also a man in a black mask with a chainsaw jumped out in front of me and was only two inches away! Probably the scariest characters were the "prisoners" with blood dripping from their lips who screamed at me from cages from which they were almost free due to the bending bars. The most terrifying part of the experience was getting lost. I somehow got separated from my friends and ended up in this mirror maze with flashing lights and more scary monsters. I just kept taking new turns in that mirror maze thinking I would eventually find my way out, but I was starting to panic and was really grateful when my friends found me. I really didn't enjoy the haunted house and will avoid intentionally scary situations like this in the future.