1. hello. im ersin levent. i was born in georgetown, d.c. but i grew up in rockville, md and have lived there for my entire life up to this point. i went to elementary school and st. francis in potomac, maryland and attended the Landon school for 3rd grade thru highschool. i decided on maryland because i wanted to study business and maryland has an excellent business school. i am going to major in finance.

2. i have done all sorts of writing in highschool, from short in class essays, to longer 4-6 page papers, to lengthy 10+ page length term papers. so far at umd i have only done one short essay. outside of school i don't really write. just texting, email, and facebook

3. i spend a lot of time thinking about the topic and developing my argument. from there writing the paper goes smoothly. the early stages are the hardest. after that writing the paper is easy i think.

4. writing of any length on a topic that is connected to me and that i am very passionate about. this makes is seem less like writing a paper and more like speaking your mind.

5. it was a paper called an i-search paper in which i had to connect a book and a personal experience to the "american experience" and it had to be around 12 pages long. it took many weeks to prepare because i had to read a book, then think of a personal experience and then connect the two to the american experience and create a thesis. i learned that its better to work hard and efficient in the early stages to set yourself up well for the writing portion of the project.

6. i learned alot about creating an effective thesis that made sense and that i could easily follow and argue for the entire paper. i learned also to not over complicate things and write what comes to your mind first then go back later and revise. revising too much on the fly can become tedious and confusing which can cause you to lose track of the big picture of what you are writing about. 

7. my strength is being able to write quickly and efficiently once i have set my goal and realized my thesis. it doesn't take me long to write papers it takes me a long time to do the research and preparation necessary to write the paper. sometimes i have a lot of trouble coming up with a paper topic.

8. definitely the preliminary stages, not the writing part. once i know what i have to do i can do it with relative ease. but in terms of finding a topic and doing the research to develop a thesis, i can be really slow and i get bogged down quick and a little discouraged.

9. i like to write about topics that address the global community. topics about wars or the environment really appeal to me. also writing about anything concerning athletics is cool too. im really into athletics and i watch a lot of ESPN. 

10. i associate the term argument with a discourse between two people or one person against many people that aims at learning more about a certain issue and helping others to do so as well. this helps us a society learn and grow to become more successful and efficient. it is not necesarrily two people yelling at eachother; not literally and angry argument/fight. i am glad that this course focuses on argument. it was a key component of my humanities class i took back as a junior in highschool when we learned about the ancient philosophers so im looking forward to learning more about argument and how to become a better arguer.