Final Reflection

This class was not what I expected it to be but it was worth the crash review of how to write well. I was surprised at how easy it was for me to forget the basic rules of writing. This class helped me in both my formal and informal writing techniques. I shall try to utilize what I learned from all that we did within the class, such as the blogs, research, paper, and prospectus to enhance my writing.

Within formal writings such as the research paper, I now know I have to work on my organization and structure of my essays. I need to take the time to revise and flush out my arguments to their maximum. I also found a better way to come up with ideas and get myself out of writers block if I get stuck. Also, grammar is a big issue. As soon as I finish a paper, I need to read and re-read to find the grammatical errors such as the misuse of the semi-colon. This, I am hoping, will affect how my papers are scored in the future.

Informally, my writing may still need a bit of work. I know I have strong voice in whatever I write, which sometimes can overpower the intended assignment, but the same issues that I have within my formal writing can apply to informal writing as well. I think the most difficult part of creating the blogs was coming up with a subject to write about. Sometimes I had to look at other blogs to get an idea of what I wanted to write about. It was a little nerve-wracking knowing that a blog is meant for entertainment therefore it must be entertaining. Especially given the subject of the class was TV, it was hard to judge what other people may have found appealing. Though I did enjoy having the freedom to choose whatever show and write whatever you wanted to say. It was like I was my eight year old self, except with a broader vocabulary.

In the revision process, I looked for more of the grammatical errors than anything else. I also tried to adjust the flow of the sentences so they made more sense as a quick read. It was relatively different than what I normally write. I could allow more of my own judgments and opinions to come across. I normally just write more for educational purposes, such as essays, research papers, and various other school related papers. It was nice for change to be able to not have so much focus on supporting the claim and instead just stating what I thought.

It’s interesting to note that after writing these blogs I see a television program differently. When I watch a show I am now thinking if it would be a good candidate to blog about. I almost want to keep blogging and see how others react to what I have to say, especially people outside of our class. I also want to look up more blogs on TV shows I wouldn’t normally watch. I feel like I could get the best sense of what the show is really like from an avid fan or one not so keen about it. I am glad we got the opportunity to create our own blogs because otherwise I don’t believe I would have ever created one. Out of my friend base I know that a lot of them watch the shows I do, so it was nice knowing that people are actually interested what other people watch. For instance, I would have never known about some of the shows if the people in the class hadn’t blogged about them. It was also nice to get feedback from fellow bloggers. Though some comments were more like, “I watch that show too” or “that was hilarious” it was comforting to know I was being read.

As my first time blogging, I had a good experience. It was fun, relatively easy, and a bit cathartic. I am not the best blogger and I know that there is room for improvement but hopefully these first five are just the beginning to my blogging endeavors. It was a good class, a little fast passed, but my writing reaped the benefits and hopefully that shows.