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.