Over the past few months, i have written about many different subjects. First, i planned on writing about my daily life, but i found that boring to work on. The next thing i tried to accomplish was to blog about politics, but again, it was just too boring. I ended up writing about what ever was on my mind: I wrote about a past experience when i got hit is the head, “The Ball Game”, a book i erad that i thought would be a good class book “The Silent Boy”, and a story i wrote in writing class “Broken bones” (part 1 and 2) I also wrote many responses to others’ blogs: One about Bullying, one about Freshman Year, one about Racism, one about “LOL” and one about twitter. I also enjoyed writing a more academic essay about Of Mice and Men:
This first quarter surprised me. I found that writing two blogs a week have been much easier than i first expected. At first, i thought that I'd spend three or four hours a week writing two blogs, but instead it only takes me about one a half hours. This caught me off guard, but now that i think about it, i think that my writing has changed dramatically because of the summer reading assignments. During my three middle school years (and throughout my whole life) writing has come to me very hard. I could not get my ideas down on paper, organize them, and have them make sense. I first realized my major advancement in writing in either grade, where i learned to organize and make my ideas comprehensive. Then over the summer, i procrastinated a lot, and while i tried to cram all of my writing into a few days write, i realized that i made a major mistake, and i learned to never procrastinate that badly again. But from this, came a good thing: i learned how to get my ideas on paper. because i had so much to do in such a little time, i just wrote, and wrote, and wrote. I didn't look back and try to edit until i finished the whole essay or paragraph,which i had been doing and slowed me down. This is what i believe brought me to where i am today, but i still know that i have much to work on.
Even thought i learned my lesson to never procrastinate on long term projects, i still happen to do so during my blog posts. One of my goals for this next quarter is to work on procrastination (especially because the require has bumped itself up to three blog posts a week, instead of two). In the moment, i usually wait until the Friday night that it is due, and actually start working at around 10:00. It has not been a problem in me not having enough time to finish, but the constant thought of it haunts me the whole week. even with this constant pressure, it is not enough to get me to start working on it early. I think my problem is that i do not work well unless i am under pressure. Another problem with procrastinating is that if i am busy that day, then i will fail that week’s assignment. An idea that i have developed to fix this problem is to work on my blogs at the same time i do currently but for the next week. I would just have to set the blog to post itself after 12:00 that day. This way, i will not have to worry about that week’s assignment until the next Friday. It seems like the same amount of work, but this way, i will not be constantly reminded about the whole bunch of work i have to finish Friday night. Also, if i miss that Friday, i still have a whole week to complete my work.
Another problem i face is that, right now, i do not edit my posts before posting them. I do this out of laziness and tho thought that my writing was good enough the first time around, but while i was rereading my blog the other day, i found a lot of embarrassing grammar and spelling errors, along with some sentences and ideas that just do not make sense. From now on, i will proofread my writing before posting them.
Another thing that surprised me was how easy it was to write. Because of the open ended topics and different (a little easier) expectations, i could write freely, without the pressure of making all of my writing flawless, with many layers of editing. It is a way for me to express what i feel. In other classes, i feel confined when writing. For example, if i have an idea that seems “out there” i tend to not include that in my writing because i feel that the teacher may grade it based on that thought. also, i fear that i would not be able to display that thought strongly enough for the reader to comprehend. On the other hand, doing these blog posts, i feel confident enough to actually take off my mask and write my true feelings and thoughts. And once i started doing this, surprisingly, i found it actually much easier than i thought. i would just write down my ideas quickly, and then go back and tweak them. I think that the slackened pressure helped me do this by encouraging me to be brave and try a new thing, without the worry of crashing and burning. Also, this open ended prompt adds a little fun to writing. I actually wrote about the acronym “LOL”:
The novella, Of Mice and Men by John Steinbeck portrays two migrant workers who seek a farm of their own. Throughout the story, Steinbeck provides characters who oppose this, saying it is ‘impossible’. One of them, George, is very practical and straightforward. He really cares about his traveling partner, Lennie, and takes care of him even though he is a burden...They have a conflict with fate through out the whole book.I like how there is a balance between free writing and structural, more strict writing. So overall, throughout writing these blogs, i saw that i need a lot of improvement in writing, still, and that i actually enjoy writing in this class because of the open ended... everything.
This first quarter surprised me. I found that writing two blogs a week have been much easier than i first expected. At first, i thought that I'd spend three or four hours a week writing two blogs, but instead it only takes me about one a half hours. This caught me off guard, but now that i think about it, i think that my writing has changed dramatically because of the summer reading assignments. During my three middle school years (and throughout my whole life) writing has come to me very hard. I could not get my ideas down on paper, organize them, and have them make sense. I first realized my major advancement in writing in either grade, where i learned to organize and make my ideas comprehensive. Then over the summer, i procrastinated a lot, and while i tried to cram all of my writing into a few days write, i realized that i made a major mistake, and i learned to never procrastinate that badly again. But from this, came a good thing: i learned how to get my ideas on paper. because i had so much to do in such a little time, i just wrote, and wrote, and wrote. I didn't look back and try to edit until i finished the whole essay or paragraph,which i had been doing and slowed me down. This is what i believe brought me to where i am today, but i still know that i have much to work on.
Even thought i learned my lesson to never procrastinate on long term projects, i still happen to do so during my blog posts. One of my goals for this next quarter is to work on procrastination (especially because the require has bumped itself up to three blog posts a week, instead of two). In the moment, i usually wait until the Friday night that it is due, and actually start working at around 10:00. It has not been a problem in me not having enough time to finish, but the constant thought of it haunts me the whole week. even with this constant pressure, it is not enough to get me to start working on it early. I think my problem is that i do not work well unless i am under pressure. Another problem with procrastinating is that if i am busy that day, then i will fail that week’s assignment. An idea that i have developed to fix this problem is to work on my blogs at the same time i do currently but for the next week. I would just have to set the blog to post itself after 12:00 that day. This way, i will not have to worry about that week’s assignment until the next Friday. It seems like the same amount of work, but this way, i will not be constantly reminded about the whole bunch of work i have to finish Friday night. Also, if i miss that Friday, i still have a whole week to complete my work.
Another problem i face is that, right now, i do not edit my posts before posting them. I do this out of laziness and tho thought that my writing was good enough the first time around, but while i was rereading my blog the other day, i found a lot of embarrassing grammar and spelling errors, along with some sentences and ideas that just do not make sense. From now on, i will proofread my writing before posting them.
Another thing that surprised me was how easy it was to write. Because of the open ended topics and different (a little easier) expectations, i could write freely, without the pressure of making all of my writing flawless, with many layers of editing. It is a way for me to express what i feel. In other classes, i feel confined when writing. For example, if i have an idea that seems “out there” i tend to not include that in my writing because i feel that the teacher may grade it based on that thought. also, i fear that i would not be able to display that thought strongly enough for the reader to comprehend. On the other hand, doing these blog posts, i feel confident enough to actually take off my mask and write my true feelings and thoughts. And once i started doing this, surprisingly, i found it actually much easier than i thought. i would just write down my ideas quickly, and then go back and tweak them. I think that the slackened pressure helped me do this by encouraging me to be brave and try a new thing, without the worry of crashing and burning. Also, this open ended prompt adds a little fun to writing. I actually wrote about the acronym “LOL”:
I believe that the acronym LOL appeared because a person who easily laughed actually laughed out loud when chatting or text and got tired of typing “laugh out loud” and made LOL up, then people talking to him didn’t realized at that he/she was actually laughing out loud and that he just meant “hey that’s funny” or something in that content. They then started saying it and passed it on, and so on. Since the “l” and the “o” are right on top of each other, it is easy to type LOL quickly. It’s much faster than typing LQTM (“laugh quietly to myself”) or simply haha. It soon becomes a habit, and then now everyone is doing it.This is something that we would never write about in a “normal” class, but it just feels 'right' to write about this in this particular class. And it actually feels like we are in a creative writing class because of all the new perspectives that we look at, the different writing to pics, and just the over all freedom in writing this year. Personally, i enjoy the way Mr. Sutherland teaches more than the average English class.
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