At the Barnes & Nobles counter I was not thrilled with spending $16 on a book called “The Immortal Life of Henrietta Lacks”. I didn’t want to spend my money on a book that I wouldn’t read. However after just the first few pages on the book, I found my self quite interested, amazed by myself that i was not only reading but actually enjoying the reading. Rebecca Skloot’s way of telling the story of both an interesting topic in science and the story of Henrietta Lacks keeps me entertained. Throughout the first few chapters she constantly hops back between the story of Henrietta’s life and the topic of her cells making a significance contribution to science, which keeps me from getting bored of the reading.

Overall im truly excited for the rest of the book. Taking into account how long the book is, I’m interested on how Skloot will use this much length to describe the story of Henrietta Lacks and Hela, which are her immortal cells. Knowing that the death of Henrietta is approaching in the book, my guess is that the majority of the book will talk about Hela, which I’m excited to hear more about. My interest in Hela come from the fact that it is an interesting topic and that Hela is a very controversial  topic. I have a feeling that Rebecca Skloot will not disappoint me and continue to have me interested as I read “The Immortal Life of Henrietta Lacks”.

I agree with Lukas, this book is turning out to be much more interesting than I anticipated. After reading Brooklyn over the summer, I’m not gonna lie, I was very much not looking forward to reading this book. But after the salesperson in my local Barnes and Noble spoke about this book with such excitement and after reading some of the review excerpts on the flaps of the book, I must say, this is one very good book.

Now I’ve only read about 70 pages, but every time I pick it up I keep reading much more than I anticipated. Her life story in the early parts of the first chapter to me read like a movie. In my mind I could easily envision how this would play out on the silver screen. And now with seeing how her doctors treated her, and how her family wasn’t compensated for all the advances in medicine literally taken from Ms. Lacks’ cells shocks me. This isn’t some work of fiction, this is something that actually happened in real life.

Anyways, I’m actually excited to see what happens next.

After reading “The Immortal Life of Henrietta Lacks” i couldn’t help noticing that the reading was actually interesting. The author Rebecca Skloot was able captivate the reader using details and different perspective making it a much easier read than say a book like “Brooklyn”. What made it even more interesting was the issues that surrounded the Henrietta Lacks situation

In the case of Henrietta I believe the doctor’s abused the signed the patients consent and perform unethical procedures. First of all the doctors failed to inform the patient with any details of the procedure or the biopsy that was planned. I feel like the patient should have the right to know what is going to happen to her. I mean if it was me and i was on the surgery table i would like to know what the doctors are going to be doing to me. In addition they never mentioned to Henrietta the level of risk that comes with the procedure. Radium is very dangerous and potentially deadly and without informing her of that they just stuck it inside her and went ok we got what we wanted and our job is done. It just seemed in general that the doctor couldn’t care less about her which bothered me severely. I don’t know what do you think?

After reading “The Immortal Life of Henrietta Lacks” a thought came to me, ethics have changed vastly over the past hundred years. So much so that racial diversity has become a much more accepted phenomenon since the 1940’s. But one thing that has not changed is the ethical value of a human life. So has humanities value of ethics in general been lessened?

The average person believes it to be unethical to do wrong to another. But in the nonfictional novel the doctors saw no problem with taking tissue from Henrietta Lacks without her permission to pursue their own interests, some might say that “it did no harm to Henrietta so why would it be wrong?” this is an example of the decrease in humanities value of ethics because those who believe this also know that it is still considered unethical to use a person, whether you want to use em in order to further your own goals and you don’t see how it causes harm to them it is still unethical. Just cause you don’t see how it causes harm to someone does not mean that it doesn’t cause harm to them. Henrietta’s family was devastated when they found out what doctors had done so harm was done. This has become very common among people although they know its wrong. This is especially seen with large companies that do not care for the individual but instead care for their own profits. In conclusion human value of ethics is slowly lessening and we need to ask ourselves, what would humanity turn into if ethics were ever to fade away completely?

The Immortal Life of Henrietta Lacks is much more interesting then i expected it to be. This is probably because 95% of the books I had to read during my high school career were absolutely awful. This book actually kept me engaged both because of the topic is pretty interesting and the way it is written keeps me interested.

The only real complaint I have is that I dont like books that jump around with the timeline, but now that Im writing this and thinking about it the story probably wouldnt really be as interesting if it the timeline was how it really happened. If that were the case it would simply be a biography followed by the author writing out the process by which she wrote the book, which would be boring.

The first draft for the paper was really hard for me. I couldn’t think of a thesis so basically I just started writing about the stories, summarizing them. Personally I think it’s going to take a while for me to get better at the writing process and be able to formulate a decent paper.  Even after this draft I feel like writing the final copy is going to take forever.

The rough draft process was extremely helpful. The most helpful part about it to me was the peer editing process. Through the peer editing process I was able to realize the faults in my essay and see the essays of my of peers, which laid out a format of what my essay should model. Not to forget that without the rough draft process I would have wrote an essay on the wrong essay topic.

After I had seen the essays’ of my peers the revision process became a lot easier to me because I had more of an Idea of what I should prove in my essay as well as what techniques i should use to prove it. As a result of choosing the wrong essay topic, my revision process was a rewrite of my essay. Choosing the thesis, quotes and examples to my rewritten essay was simple for me, where I struggled was incorporating the right amount of anaylsis needed to prove my points. I also had a difficult time with the conclusion process. In my last rewrite I did not write a conclusion but I plan on writing the conclusion once the body of my essay is completely edited, in order to write a correct and relevant conclusion.

Have starting my revision process of my rewritten essay and meeting with Professor Kaufman, I’m excited to work on the parts of my essay that need improvement. After the tips that my peers and Professor Kaufman have given me I know what I need to fix and add in order to prove my thesis and write a fully developed essay.

After reading Rebecca Browns “Forgiveness” I wasn’t sure how to approach my paper. I was very uncertain and honestly took a shot in the dark. Thankfully though, thanks to some guidance from Kimberlyn and James as well as Professor Kaufman, I feel like I’m close to an actually decent paper.

It’s still not perfect and I have some more work to do on it prior to submitting it, but I at least feel like I have a direction to go with it. I’m actually now looking forward to finish up this assignment and seeing what my final paper will look like.

After i read “The Birthmark” I didnt really know how to start the case study. After sitting in front of my laptop I just started typing and the ideas started flowing. The ideas, however, were very sporatic and very general. I also had trouble formatting the case study in an organized way because of this. In the end I left the draft as is on the first run through so I could change it based on criticism.

Knowing what i know now about my draft I need to focus my ideas and write a stronger thesis. I also need to pay more attention to grammar and organization, neither of which have ever been my strengths.

This first essay was very complex at least for me. Writing it became an issue because everytime I did I had to delete it and start over. It got annoying after a while. However, after I changed the topic I was going to write about it went about smoother. To be honest I have read my paper a few times and I know it is not perfect but I do not know how to revise it. It could use some tweaking but I’m scared that if I start tweaking I might mess it up or change the topic completely. I am struggling with coming into terms with my thesis. I don’t know if it’s strong or not. If it connects with my points.

I am excited to get this paper done, to see the “masterpiece” complete. I am excited to recieve positive criticism on how to make my paper better from those that know better. And I’m excted to see the grade; see if I wrote a good one or not. Hopefully people see my pooint of view through my points of arguments 🙂