SLO Reflection (Part 3)

This final blog post is mean to reflect on me as a writer and how I perceived myself at the beginning to the course compared to now. In my intial blog post, I compared myself to a year round high school athlete who excels in the various sports they participate in. In terms of writing, that would mean that I do well in the different types of writing. At this point in time I realize that I may not have excelled as well as I initially thought. Mainly with argumentive writing, I struggled on my first research essay by summarizing more than arguing. Thus I spent alot of energy making sure I could argue a point better through words and this is the aspect I believe I improved the most on through this class. An element of writing that was somewhat new to me was rhetorical awareness or being able to jump into an already occuring argument. Being new to me, this is the point I believe I should monitor in future writing since I've never really thought much of it before the class. The class will benefit me in the future by making rhetorical awareness an element worth looking at.

SLO Reflection (Part 2)

This blog post serves the purpose of reflecting on my critical thinking and writing skills. I honestly believe that through the class my critical thinking skills have become better. Particularly, the use of the "precis" as an assignment allowed me to better identify what the main points of text were as well as supporting points and the reasons behind the text being written in the first place.I also believe that the ability to synthesize multiple writings into one argument was also developed through this class mainly due to the research papers we had to write. I definitely improved my writing in the class. On the first research paper, I did more summarizing than argument and I truly hoped to fix that. I came back with the 2nd essay and based on feedback I had made a big turnaround by having highly defined argumentation as well as analysis.

SLO Reflection (Part 1)

This blog post serves the purpose of reflecting on the objectives for the class and seeing if I've improved in those aspects. Particularly for this post I'll be focusing on Close Reading and Research. In terms of close reading I believe I have improved through various activities provided in the class. Particularly, the task of having to create a precis for the main readings definitely helped. I believe that is the main thing that helped with my reading. For the precis we essentially have to effectively summarize a piece of writing be it an article or an entire book and the precis is definitely a tool I'll take to heart in future reading. Research wise, I dont believe I improved too much. This isnt due to the class though. I did learn how to use the UWT database to find viable sources and that will defeinitly benefit me in the future. Aside from that, i dont believe my research process was affected much. Nonetheless I indeed benefited from this class and hope to retain everything I've learned in the future.

"Performance, Feedback, Revision"

To me revision is just going back through a paper I've written and improving it in as many aspects as possible. For starters, grammar is usually the initial revision and with this I tend to check if the paper flows well based on the words I use to get my point across. Aside from flow I also look at the points I have highlighted and decide whether I want to keep those points in the first place. After getting feedback, some points may not be viable anymore and thus I feel I should change up my writing. Along with the revision comes the sense of precision as well because by that time you know exactly what you want to say and are able to 'clean' up your writing so it fits  your criteria.

State of Essay 2

Having written a rough draft for essay 2 and turned it in, I would say that the essay is alright at this point in time. I dont believe its too over the top though. I dont see it as overdone or underdone. I believe I put the right amount of time into it, but there always room for improvement. Particularly, I'd want to see if my argumentation is done well. For essay 1 I was critiqued for doing more summarization as opposed to argumentation and that is definitely something I would like to fix. Personally, I'd also like to include West's article a bit more into the essay. Considering the prompt is to use West's framework to analyze a blog, I want to incorporate her findings and methods more in order to strengthen the essay. The methods may even help me to further discern identity and thats always a good thing.

Plans for Essay 2

At this point I just wanna further develop my essay. So far I only have one key point so far in terms of finding the identity of the blogger. Also this is a very good point, I still want to add more to it so my argument is made stronger. I suppose in short I want just get my argument together and get a complete paper done. Afterwards I can revise and such. I'd also like to take the 3step quotation process to heart and incorporate it well into my essay. The activity in class actually spawned a decent paragraph from the quote I used which I intend to put within the essay at some point. In terms of problems I cant think of anything in particular other than just staying motivated and staying focused when I'm actually writing. I tend to get sidetracked and I dont want this to interfere with my writing since I may go off topic. Other than just myself I dont see any other problems.

Annotated Bibliography (Practice)

Huffaker, D. A., and Calvert, S. L. (2005).Gender, identity, and language use in teenage blogs. Journal of Computer-Mediated Communication, 10, 1. http://jcmc.indiana.edu/vol10/issue2/huffaker.html

This article essentially starts off by saying how identity begins in infancy and ends with the culmination of ones life. The article then focuses specifically on Adolescent identity and says how it is significant in that it allows for youth to establish their self identity in ways that weren't otherwise possible during childhood. Specifically, the ability to reflect on one's own thoughts is mentioned and is said to lead to a "new dimension of self discovery. From then on the writers analyze the language and emotional codes that adolescents use to express themselves in blogs and elaborate on their particular findings such as the use of emoticons and diction.
I believe that this article can hold relevance in my future research seeing as the upcoming essay requires the analysis of a blog and personally I was hoping to observe a teenage blog for the sense of being able to relate. This article fits perfectly with what I hope to do in that it essentially focuses on the key things worth looking at in terms of teenage blogs. It would be extremely useful for my research.

Essay 2/West's Article

In this blog we are meant to reflect on West's article and how we plan to apply it to our next big assignment, essay 2. Personally I've taken a liking to the second option presented for the assignment which is to apply West's framework in order to observe a blog and show how identity is formed online. Considering West did this very thing in her article it should be easily applicable towards this particular assignment.Although I havent yet chosen a particular blog for this task, the things to look at will more than likely be similar to West. Things such as the writer's choice of words as well as how they begin their blog posts will be taken into account as well as the separate concepts which they mention. These things should allow for an identity to be found when closely looked at although a few other initial things can also be observed such as the layout of the blog or pictures if they are present. I believe that overall the West article would certainly pose a pertinent reference for this essay assignment. The article gives a very nice idea of where to start in terms of analyzing the blog as well as what can be looked at to find identity and this should make it a perfect match for this assignment.

The Article (Weblogs and Literary Response)

This blog serves the purpose of looking into the article we were assigned to read. Although we were supposed to do the 3 step quotation analysis, I tried opening it and it wouldnt open so nonetheless I'll just talk briefly about the article. Well in the article, a teacher has assigned the task of using a blog to students with the purpose of having them analyze different books they are interested in and have them comment on those books on their own blogs. The blogs had no format they needed to follow as well, so students could express themselves as they pleased.Knowing this, the writer of the article (teacher) picks out 3 individual students for observation in order to see the identities they form for themselves through their blogs. Upon reading each of these students posts, the teacher was able to form identities for each one of them. For example, one of the students was described as a 'rebel' and it was evident to the teacher this was the case because of the way in which he talked during posts. He had errors, started off saying he wasnt in the mood to write, and even used "wtf" in the post. I believe that this article is significant to this class in that we are trying to find identity through blogs and even more so because our next big assignment is to analyze our own blogs in order to see what sort of identity we formed for ourselves.

Writing Process

This blog post serves the purpose of reflecting on my writing habits. First and foremost, I noticed that I never really make a outline of what I plan on writing. By that I mean I never really stop and make a chart or list of the points I want to highlight. I tend to make a mental image of what I hope to write about and then as I write more points pop into my head to write about and I just continue from there. In terms of when I write, I find that I write best late at night. I don' really know why this is the case but my mind always seems more clear late at night so my writing is always better at that time. Another noticeable thing I do is that I absolutely cannot write without listening to music. Considering I can't go a day without listening to music, it's only natural that I practically NEED it just to write. Also, I have to be multitasking in order to write. By that I mean writing just can't be the ONLY thing I'm doing at the time. I tend to be on Facebook, chatting with people on Skype/MSN, maybe watching television, etc. Aside from preventing me from getting bored, it also gets my mind working more since I have to be thinking more in order to do all those tasks. Lastly, I tend to have to write long assignments in segments. I can only write for so long without tiring myself out and trying to write an entire paper in one sitting just doesn't work for me.

Writing Process (in class)

At this point in time it is important for me to look back and reflect on how essay 1 is progressing in its development. So far I've found that I have written it very focused. I always stay on topic with my points and each point is plainly relevant to the paper and its purpose. This has been identified as a strength to my paper so far during the rough draft stages and I intend to keep it that way as the paper develops. However, I believe my thesis may still not be quite what I'm trying to say. It has been highlighted as rather unclear and considering the body of the paper is based on the thesis, the problem is obvious. Although I've recently changed it based on feedback, I still need to look more into it so it serves its purpose as well as to make sure it's clear and concise. Overall, I am feeling alright about my paper so far. I wouldn't say it's a bad paper so far, otherwise there would've been no positive feedback; but its still far from an excellent paper and I hope to tailor it so it fulfills the criteria while also emphasizing the point it attempts to portray.

They Say, I Say...

I believe a key concept to take away from the book would be chapter six in general which describes how people may come with counter arguments for the points I may highlight. I believe this could go toward improving my essay in that it encourages me to "hit harder" or develop my points to where they just cant be counter argued without a great amount of evidence. Of course there will always be someone who may disagree with what I say, but revising my essay around counter arguments could make it so fewer people care to contradict my argument. All in all, what I've taken away from the book is just to make my points clear, concise, and support them to the point where counter arguments will be discouraged by the depth I put into my argument.

Presentation (Sorta)

Although this blog is meant to be a reflection on my presentation, I was unable to present seeing as I was unable to get to class. I woke up feeling horrible. Shivering, runny nose, sore throat, couldn't speak very well...nothing short of jut plain bad. However, I'm still obligated to write this blog as an assignment and I shall indeed do that. Hopefully I can present next class. I plan on speaking with the professor really soon on this and hope she understands my condition...

"Blogging" related to my essay (Late)

With the task of having to find a section from the book Blogging, I have looked back through the book and found something I can relate my essay to. The section that I found significant to my essay would be the Topic Driven Blogs paragraphs starting on page 15. I believe this is pertinent to my essay in that I am following a football blog particularly focused on the San Diego Chargers team. Thus it's evident that the blog I am following is a topic based on seeing as the topic is the San Diego Chargers team and the blog exclusively focuses on it. Considering I am writing about the blog, the topic driven section within the book seems easy to relate to as my blog falls into that category.

Changes For Essay (Late)

Based on the writing conferences it is evident that I need to make my thesis more clear and concise.I also would like to make the identity a bit more clear as well seeing as that is the assignment. Those are my two primary focuses in editing this draft. The content of my paper was positively received and was described as focused and staying on topic. Little change will be made to the content by I do intend to put more details into each individual topic.

Research

As of now my research has been going quite well. I’ve been keeping up with the San Diego Chargers blog and keeping mental notes on their progress. As opposed to my initial proposal to try to find identity in each blogger, I have decided that it would be more sensible to observe how the identity of the San Diego Chargers is formed through the writing of the bloggers. Research wise I suppose the main challenge at hand is just trying to observe an identity for a team as opposed to an individual. Each of the individuals have different identities so trying to observe the culmination of each individual collectively seems challenging. Also, considering this is a sports team their identity is really only formed based on their actions during the game. If the team isn’t playing then there isn’t much to tell about them. But nonetheless the team can still be described and their statistics can really show what this team is made of and how far they may go. That is in essence what I hope to find out. What does this team hope to prove to the rest of the league and do their stats support that? So far it’s unclear seeing as the team is 2-3, but they may stage a comeback as they have in previous years.

"Blogging" Passage Response

“For instance, one front-page story on Slashdot in December 2007 was that of the convicted rapist who was murdered by a neighbor who had found his name by searching the ‘Megan’s Law’ database of sex offenders and said that he killed the man to protect his child from being molested…This story is of particular interest to Slashdot users because of the questions of privacy that are raised when we can access increasing amounts of information about individuals online.’ (104-105)

Walker Rettberg, Jill.  Blogging: Digital Media and Society Series.  Cambridge: Polity Press, 2008.

I’d personally like to jump in at this point seeing as I feel that this is somewhat ridiculous. How can a person just go and kill his next door neighbor all of sudden? I’ll admit the neighbor was indeed a convicted rapist but I really don’t think that’s ample reason to just go and take away his life. The man killed the rapist in order to protect his daughter when in fact the rapist had never even done anything towards children as he was an adult rapist. It just bothers me how the rapist hadn’t done anything to his neighbor or his children and the guy decides to kill him. It really doesn’t seem like he has a sensible reason for taking away another man’s life. Also, the fact that the information was readily available online is also a topic of discussion. I find it rather interesting that you can just go online and find a person’s criminal record out of the blue. Sure the guy was a convicted rapist but something of that privacy level should at least be found via another method such as on television or radio, not floating around on the internet. I can’t completely side with the man defending his daughter strictly because he didn’t have a true reason in my opinion. He assumed his daughter would be inappropriately touched and thus acted on an assumption based on misleading information.

Interests

Considering it is football season right now, my most relevant interest for the moment is of course the NFL. Football has been an interest of mine for quite some time and regardless of whether its the NFL season or not, I'm always looking into it and watching videos of it. Because of this, I would much enjoy to study a blog that is football related. Particularly I would like to follow my favorite team, the San Diego Chargers. By studying different blogs about my team, I hope to learn how other fans (or critics) of the team think. Post game blogs would be very interesting as it would give an opportunity for me to see how people react to how well San Diego performs during the game. I have my own opinions of the team, but I'm interested in seeing how other people critique my team and whether or not they have similar views to myself.

Who am I as a writer?

In short, I believe myself to be much like a year round athlete in high school. I participate in different sports and yet excel in each of them. I believe myself to be like that with writing. There are different types of writing such as creative, argumentive, informative, etc. and I feel that I am experienced in each one. I believe I excel in more than one category, much like an athlete can excel in more than one sport.