Final Blog

In my first blog, I talked about my reading skills and my researching skills.  I said that I was an above average reader with good reading habits.  As of now, ten weeks later, I think that I am still a good reader, but have picked up on some better habits such as; critical thinking and analyzing.  I struggled with constructed an essay, but now I find myself quite organized and productive with my writing and reading. In researching, well, I'm naturally curious so researching was a joy for me in this class. I feel that I left this class with a larger understanding of all the different types of resources I can use to reflect on my writing or help with my writing.  Overall, in the past ten weeks,  I feel that I have a better knowledge about weblogs and society, better reading habits, constructed an essay with better organization, and a larger understanding of resources there are in communication, researching, and how to find myself as a writer.  

Critical thinking and writing

During these past ten weeks, I have learned quite a bit about weblogs and how relevant they are to critical thinking and writing. In the beginning of the quarter, I thought I was pretty good at critical thinking and analysis. Well, I was wrong. I didn't think too much about in depth well reasoned and clear analysis too much. But as I grew as a writer and as a critical thinker, I discovered that I can easily transition from an "easy thinker" to an overall textual and wordy analyzer. I can produce a well in depth informational summary of an article or even a paragraph. In doing so, I could write a 4-5 page paper in a flash. With all of the textual evidence and supporting data that I can provide for my essays now, I can produce a well constructed and developed essay. I am now well organized, constructed, and a thorough writer and reader.

Learning through research and close reading.

Throughout my TCORE101 writing class in Fall quarter, I learned how to locate key points from text. No matter the difficulty of the material that is assigned to be read for class, I learned how to annotate thoroughly and find the meaning of what the author wants their audience to understand. In researching, I learned how to navigate through the University of Washington Tacoma library system online. It was frustrating at first but after a couple of tries, I got it under control! As writer, I think I've grown from a rambler to a more constructed academic writer.

State of Essay 2 Draft

By far, essay 2 has been really enjoyable to write.  I did not get a lot of my draft done because I was struggling with the structure of my essay and am being too picky about what textual evidence would fit better with my thesis and go with my supporting data. I think my essay 2 compared to essay 1 by far has more context and textual evidence to support my thesis which will make essay much stronger.  I'm looking forward to getting constructive feedback from the two peers that are reading my essay.  I would love any type of advice, but would really appreciate advice on a better thesis.  Essay 2, here I come! 

Where am I going with Essay 2?

With essay 2, I plan on using more textual and concise evidence to build a strong and productive essay.  I am going to be using Kathleen C. West's article, Rettberg's book, and a source of my own to support my researched blogger's identity.  Nick Sundt, the blogger that I am following who dedicated his whole blog to climate change awareness is very passionate about what he is doing.  What I am struggling with is constructed my essay and where I should place each precise details in which paragraph.  Otherwise, I think I will do pretty well on this essay.

Essay 2 & West

I think I am going to go ahead with prompt 1 or 2.  I am caught in the middle between which of the prompts I want to do.  I want to learn more about myself as a blogger and find my true identity as who I am as a writer by analyzing my blogging styles and voice.  I loved how West used connections with three of her student's blogs with her own and how they found their identity through blogging.  I am excited to learn more about myself and my writing with prompt 1 or 2 for this specific essay assignment.  In her article, she used a guidelines chart that I might be overlooking as well to find my identity.

Myself as a blogger?

What I have noticed so far about my own blog entries is that I am pretty descriptive and engaging. In my last blog, I talked instinctively about Kathleen C. West’s article, "Weblogs and literary response: Socially situated identities and hybrid social languages in English class blogs," and discovered that I tend to write in a story telling angle rather than an explanatory angle in this specific blog post and others as well. I noticed that I use simple language throughout my writing.  I identified myself as being descriptive and juvenile.  For example,”... she talks about the effectiveness of web-blogging and the importance of students interacting with each other through blogging rather than literacy.” I am precise and descriptive in the above mentioned quote from my previous blog by using simple language.  

Significance of West

Kathleen C. West's article, "Weblogs and literary response: Socially situated identities and hybrid social languages in English class blogs," West seeks to find the nature of communication through web-blogging.  I find it significant that she has a lot of supporting data from researchers and statistics that show how communication is more likely to be higher through internet interaction. I find it more interesting that her article is so in depth with information-it sort of like a novel (essay written).  In Kathleen C. West’s article, she talks about the effectiveness of web-blogging and the importance of students interacting with each other through blogging rather than literacy. 

Essay 1 taught me...

Essay 1 taught me how to construct my ideas through argumentative writing.  I reviewed outlining my ideas into sections labeled; thesis, body paragraph 1, body paragraph 2, body paragraph 3, and conclusion.  I sectioned off each key element of identity into a body paragraph and gave each paragraph a transition word.  I took my thesis statement and used it to follow up in my conclusion.  Outlining helped me construct my ideas because my ideas are usually scrambled all over my essay and placed in any given paragraph I started to write.  I noticed that I am more organized about writing an essay such as this one due to my essay outline and I will continue to use this throughout my life when writing an essay or constructing a simple letter.  Therefore, essay 1 has taught me how to control my ideas by constructing a outline.  

They Say, I Say relations with revisions

From reading parts 3-4 in the book, They Say, I Say- what I can do to my essay revisions is by connecting all my sentences together and figuring out the flow of my essay.  I can disect each of my sentence and see if I can replace some words with better more descriptive words.  I can use better transitional words, cause-effect words, conclusion words, and comparison-contrast words in order to make my essay a better one.

Reflection on Presentation

During my research presentation, I think I did pretty well.  The only thing I think I needed to do better is to make more eye contact and to elaborate more on the identity of my blogger, Nick Sundt when I was presenting. My research presentation was on PowerPoint, and I think it was visually great.  I gave evidence of why I thought my blogger's identity was PASSIONATE through links that directed you to the website to show you why organization, links/evidence, and language played an important role in his passion.  I thought I could of elaborated more on how passionate Nick was about climate change and how it affects all of us especially the numerous numbers of animals that are becoming endangered because of climate change.  My strengths of this presentation was my visual aides throughout the slideshow, the in depth information I've given on the the each slideshows, and the amount of evidence I provided to support my thesis and research of why my blogger is passionate about his blog.  My weaknesses I would say are: barely any eye contact, and nervousness. I rambled and just went through the presentation pretty quickly even if it was a 6 minute presentation.

Blogging in relation to my essay

On page 82 of Jill Walker Rettberg’s book, Blogging-Digital Media and Society Series, she talks about how ‘self-documentation has always been incidental and deliberate.’  We all have taken pictures and placed them in scrapbooks, shoe boxes, or photo albums to look at later in the future and remember the memories that were taken place during the photo.  Now, with blogging, anyone is permitted to voice what they are doing and write whatever that comes to mind.  There are many different blogs that are specifically dedicated to a topic of choice and the blogger specially blogs about that topic.  Or there are informal blogs such as facebook or twitter where you update your status and let your friends know what you are doing.  In the blog that I am currently following, Nick Sundt’s Climate Blog, he specially voices out about how we can prevent more climate change and the world issues that occur daily.  He incidentally and deliberately writes about his topic yet brings professionalism to the table.  He supports his opinions and articles with many different contexts, videos, and links.  

Making Changes to Draft

The changes that I intend to make on my essay due to the feedback I received during my writing conference are the following: more control content, context, and choosing a between the blog or the website for my research paper.  When I first turned in my essay, I felt really good about it.  Up until I went into class and got my evaluations about what I needed to do to improve my essay.  I knew I had a problem with rambling when it comes to writing.  I don't have structure.  Although I tried constructed my essay carefully, I needed to specifically narrow down which web site I wanted to research about, whether it is the World Wildlife Fund overall website or specifically the climate blog within WWF's website.  I intend on making an outline of my essay before I start revising my draft about each element of identity I find is key and captivating to a reader and what evidence I have.  I need to construct, construct, construct! Outline, outline, outline! I think my essay will have a better flow and a better sense of my direction after I construct and outline my ideas and thoughts.

W.W.F Climate Blog Research Process

I am currently reading up and following a World Wildlife Fund Climate Blog.  When I read a blog from WWF, I start by reading the title to try to prepare myself for what I am going to read.  I start to read their blog of the day and try to annotate in my notebook about their article about climate change.  Their blogs are in depth with really detailed information and data about their topic of choice about climate change with a lot of context and supported evidence.  If I do not comprehend a statement or understand a word, I try my best to break down the sentence/statement to grasp a better understanding of their meaning.  So far, the identity of the World Wildlife Fund’s Climate Blog demonstrates how strong of an organization they are about how serious they are about climate change awareness.

Signing off with love,

Stephanie 

New era journalism

Jill Walker Rettberg’s passage from her book on page 98, Blogging-Digital Media and Society Series (2008) states, “These words are moving precisely because their author  is a participant in the events, and because they are so immediate: we can read them seconds after the blogger typed them and pressed the ‘post’ button.”  It is true that most of us have twitters, facebook, and myspace accounts.  What fascinates us about these social networks is because we can update our statues conveniently and look up other people’s statues to see what they are up to.  Rettberg’s passage makes a lot of sense.  Rettberg gave an example about a student who was on campus during the Virginia Tech shootings on April 16^th, 2007 who was updating his Livejournal diary throughout the morning.  His post stated, “The first shooting took place at around 7am I went to class at 9am.  They didn’t close campus until 10am.” Following, “Just like that.  We topped Columbine.” And finally, “Please God, have none of them be my friends. Please.” We, as an audience or a “follower” are captivated by these posts because this student is involved with the shooting by being on campus and witnessing it as he is updating his Livejournal diary.  I admit, I am very much intrigued with what my friends are doing, so I check my facebook live feed. Blogging, or even just simply interacting with others with the internet has traditional journalism in a hurry to catch up to a new generation journalism.  

Signing off with love,

Stephanie

Interests

Hi, my name is Stephanie, and this is my first blog in a long time.  I'm hoping to learn more about people in the arts through blogging because one of my interests that I want to follow back up on is the arts. 
My interests goes a long the lines of being a social butterfly and meeting new people.  I love learning about other cultures and religions and keep an open mind about how different yet similar everyone is to each other.  Other than perspectives and growing new knowledge of others, I love volleyball. I started playing volleyball during seventh grade.  I loved it that much I continued to practice at home and joined a club volleyball team called Club Wahine during eighth grade.  What do you know, practice makes for perfect and I joined my high school varsity team as a freshmen and continued both varsity volleyball and Club Wahine volleyball for about four years year round.   I have lost touch with my artsy side that began back in elementary school and stopped in high mid-high school. I want to get back into pottery, arts and crafts, and water color painting.  When it comes to reading book or novels, I am an absolute "twi-hard" (Twilight fan) and a Harry Potter fan! I love books with in depth details so I can envision the specific scenes and feel that emotions of the characters. Music is a universal language, and I love all types of music minus the heavy metal, personally I get tension headaches from stress so heavy metal will not be the cure of my pains. And along the lines of music, I'm interested in musicals, I find them catchy and fun to watch! GLEE, the television series is a to die show to watch. It's riveting and addicting.   So, I think you met Stephanie-she loves volleyball, arts, music, hp, twilight, and glee! 


Signing off with love,
Stephanie

Self-Assessment Narrative Reflection Test Blog

I believe my reading skills and habits are above average.  I enjoy reading challenging, in depth novels such as Hamlet, by William Shakespeare. I love to read and try to comprehend different perspectives and narratives.  I absolutely love all of the Harry Potter series and Twilight saga.  I think that I am a strong reader.  I annotate when I want to review passages or words that interest me or have no idea of what they mean.  I wish I had more time in the day to pick up more books to read because I find reading a great way to escape from reality. 

Although reading is one of my strongest assets, I am not as strong as a writer as I am a reader.  Writing comes easy to me when there is no structure involved.   I feel confident in writing in journals, and not so confident in writing in long essay papers.  I have written more than a 5 page paper because it was required in my previous classes, but I struggled.  I am familiar with academic argument essays along with the MLA citation form because I had taken a writing 101 at a community college.  Because I am a not so strong writer and seem to ramble in my essays, I use a lot of writing strategies to help me structure my essays that I write.  I usually brainstorm my topics on a piece of paper and find at least three main sub topics/arguments I can write about along with my topics.  I come to a decision and chose my topic and start my thesis statement and outline my three arguments and conclusion.  After I finish my first rough draft, I usually go through my essays and quietly read them to myself to hear my written process out loud, then handing it over to a peer to edit it. 

Drifting away from writing, I am a strong researcher.  I believe that because I am mindfully curious and find learning new things very interesting, my researching skills are very through and collective.  I feel very comfortable researching at my own risk because I end up being very productive and resourceful after my findings.  Research papers are my favorite types of papers to write about because I feel that I am naturally curious and I can find endless facts about the researched topic. 

Although I am a strong reader and researcher, I do not think I am a strong critical thinker.  I am a compassionate person so I do think about other’s perspectives on a topic or situation before judging.  I try to look at other’s opinions and figure out why they might think the way they are thinking and connect the situations or topics to a related situation even if it might not appear to be related in any way.  I do not have a structured problem solving process; I just go straight to collecting facts and opinions before judging and assuming a situation. That is why I think that I am not a strong critical thinker.

Therefore, reading, and researching are two of my strongest assets in this writing/blogging class this quarter because I am naturally curious, and reading is very interesting to me.  However, writing and critical thinking are my weaknesses in this writing/blogging class this quarter.  Because I ramble and do not have an automatic structured process in writing, I feel that writing is one of my top two weaknesses that might hold me back from my full potential.  I do not have an automatic thinking process either and just automatically see other’s perspectives without a problem solving process.