First post reflections

I just looked back on my first post at the beginning of the quarter and realized I didn't say all that much. I said I was unsure and uncomfortable with my writing capabilities and it was true, I think that I was and now through this quarter I believe I have become alot more comfortable with them. I am alot more sure of my writing capabilities. As far as being a contractor in my writing I believe that stays true because I leave up sign posts and have my paragraphs organized and my paper the same way. I believe I have grown as a contractor though from the beginning of the year. I still have a bit to work on though but that is just natural no one is perfect.

Critical Thinking and Writing

As far as my critical thinking has grown I believe that it has in some aspects and not really in others. I have always been abe to sythesize information in my writing I just never really knew what it was called. But now that I know its name and everything I have been able to work on it and I am able to better sythesize information now because of my ability to make a better analysis.
My wiritng has always been decent at a base level. I was never really all that good at coming up with a awesome thesis, but now I think i can and since my analysis skills have become greater it helps out the process tenfold. As far as the citations and everything I could use a little more work but I almost have it down.

Close Reading and Research

Over this quarter I have grown alot and learned many new things.
This quarter I have grown alot in my Close Reading skills. I learned how to pull out main ideas from scholarly reading and articles better than before. The fact that we practiced alot of precis and annotated bibliographies. They taught me how to condense the main points of those scholarly readings into a summary.
As far as Research I already knew how to synthesize information I just didn't know that was what it was called. But I learned how to better make an argument in a paper and to better analyze the information inside of it.

"Performance, Feedback, Revision"

Revision to me wasn't really all that of an important concept to me before college. In high school I never wrote a draft just the final copy. Now that we have been writing all these different drafts I can see how much I can improve my work.
Revision is putting something just that much closer to perfection. It is making sure you get your point across to others clearly and perfectly. It is making a strive to perfection something we think is unattainable. Which is why Brinkman's rap holds true.
You may think your work is perfect at first but then you gain feedback. Feedback lets you learn your mistakes from the thoughts from a single person. And something else I truly became aware of in college is the diversity of the viewpoints of every single person. Which is why if you gain feedback from as many people as possible you can attain perfection. With every person's feedback you fill a blind spot and makes the whole ending product that much more great.
Perfection is the key word. It is an unattainable goal, yet it is a concept any person wishes to attain. You can't assume you are perfect off the get go because you won't be, someone else will always find a fault no matter how minute.
This is why I believe revision to be important now because like every other person in the world I wish to attain that great prize of perfection....

Memo for Essay 2

As far as my essay goes dear readers my main point was to utilize West's research methods into the author of the blog I was looking at. So the main parts I would like you to focus on are the analysis of the four-step process used in West's article. Other than that, just small typos or grammar issues, and places where the writing doesn't really make sense because my writing is full of them.
Thanks for reading for me!

Choices, Choices.....

Well in this post we are supposed to figure out which ofthe three options we want to use for our second essay. I truthfully have no idea which one to pick. So I decided to work my way thru both the ideas i like best.

My first choice would be the second option which is applying West's article to a blog of our choice. This one entices me because I find it easier to talk about others more than myself. Second, because I would choose the same travel blog I did for the first essay, which would make me much more acustomed to it.

My second choice is the third option, which involves the sythesis option. Personally, I enjoy using sythesis considering I also used it in the first essay as well. But the problem is I haven't bothered to start researching outside sourceswhich could take some time even considering the time increase because of the new option choices.

So as far as my choice I am leaning towards option two but you never know it may turn out option three will work out better. So thus my title. But to start the brainstorming prcess at least I decide choice two. So now to refresh my memory on Chris Adams, peace....

Blog Article Response

I found West's article to be a bit dry but, intersting at the same time. I liked how she introduced blogging to her students and had them respond to the novels they were reading. I can see how she learned alot about her students in the process as well. One can see how observing her students writing can tell them alot aobut the student. For example, how she talked about Evan's post, how he said he "felt kinda sick" and "didn't feel like writing". This shows his reluctance to do the assignment but he continues to do so anyways.

Reflection on Presentation

Sorry this is late, work has been killing me.

My presentation seemed to go really well from the feed back that Professor Thompson gave me. I was really nervous to present in front of everyone because I sorta have a bit of stage fright. But the presentation seemed to go well, especially because I presented on a draft that I hadn't written yet based on feedback from writing conferences. But it all turned out well, in retrospect though I could have involved the audience more and included some more eye catching visual aids

Reflection on Essay One

As far as essay one, I had to change up my writing process a little bit. I'm used to just writing a rough draft and then revising for a final draft then presenting it to the class. But, with this essay i had to write out a proposal, something I am not used to. Also i had to make constant drafts instead of one, i ended up making a total of four rought drafts; and the presentation in the middle of the draft process really threw me off because I had to present on a draft I had not written yet. So then I had to later change my essay to fit the presentation but, I did change one of my definitions. So as far as essay one I definately had to change it up quite a bit from my high school writing style.
Even the essay was different as far as the subject and how I decided to write it. I had to tye in something I was intersted in so I could do a good job writing it. So I had to make a strech for the topic to apply to the blog, because blogging really isn't all that interesting to me personally. So I am glad I was able to find a topic I could tye in to interest me.

Update after writing conferences

Well during my group's writing conference I learned that I have a ways to go beforeI have a good essay on my hands. As brought up by Emily and Professor Thompson I plan on defining a citizen and world citizen in my essay, a crucial part I left out. Also I plan on maybe using some out side knowledge of international institutions like the UN to help futher my point. Also I must further explain my last part of my thesis where I explain the world culture and citizen and compare it to Chris Adams to it

Research on Essay 1

So far I have been reading up on my blog and have been learning about all the experiences the author has had. I'm starting to form an idea of what I want my definition of a world citizen to be like. But I have learned that the author is a Stanford business a student and I have read all of his explorations in South America, I plan on reading up about Europe now. They only real problem I may have is that I need more information on the people not the place in his posts. This will probably have me falling back on implied and my own knowledge.

Blog Reading 10/10

In Rettberg’s book Blogging: Digital Media and Society Series, Rettberg talks about blogs being a mirror of self exploration for their writers. They can show their authors sides of themselves that they did not know existed before. Rettberg specifically quotes an excerpt from Rebecca Blood’s blog called Rebecca’s Pocket. In Rebecca’s blog she realizes that since she had started writing the blog she has found out her real interests. And another part of this passage is that bloggers that use blogs in forms of self exploration usually hide behind some sort of veil whether it is cropped pictures or limited posts on their blog. Another main point is that bloggers in this bracket tend to write as if they were talking to close friends. To elaborate, they might write about funny stories or serious life changing questions. Finally, they tend to live in the moment, they will not archive their posts or have links to archives, and they live for the moment and make the best out of it.

Rettberg, Jill Walker. "Blogs as Self-exploration." Blogging. Cambridge, UK: Polity, 2008. 120-21. Print.

Blog and Research

I hope to follow a few travelling blogs spefically ones that involve world countries. The reason for this being is that I enjoy to learn about foriegn countries customs and culture. I enjoy learning about this because I love geography. It's one thing to know the map like the back of your hand but, its another to know about the maps diverse people and customs. So by looking into these blogs I hope to learn new countries customs and hopefully make my mind more worldly. Some specific countries that interst me are Italy, Greece, Denmark, Japan and the Philippines. There are many more that I want to learn about but, those are going to be the first I plan to look up. Some aspects of the culture I wouuld like to learn about are thier religion, history, food and their landmarks. So with this in mind I hope to find a blog that will offer me all this information....

Who am I as a writer?

As a writer I definitely and a newcomer and a beginner, I am not really the best writer or totally confident in my capabilities, but I am comfortable with them. I have much to learn in writing and I need to be more creative with my writing. As far as metaphorically I would classify myself as a contractor because I need to have a plan and a layout for my writing or I wouldn't know where to begin. So I hope to be able to learn to plan my writing better in this class....