SLO Reflection

For close reading I would say I have learned some.  Such as reading Rettberg's book and finding how blogging has changed society.  We used the library and EBSCO database to find Kathleen West's article. We learned how to search the library to find other sources narrow down the search results for finding an article that is relevant to our argument.

Something about Revision

Revision is taking past work and comments on this work and puting them together to make it better.  It is taking what you and other people have found wrong or something that they think should change in your work and themn going back to edit it to create a better piece.

State of Essay 2

My essay 2 now needed to be revised isn't my greatest work.  It is probably not even close to the top, but I think for the topic and knowing how I write essays it's in OK shape.  I really use West's framework to look at the blog I was analyzing and I find what the identity of the bloggers is and I state that clearly.  Part I am having trouble with is connecting it all and that is something I will work on in my revisions.

Essay 2 Plan

My plan with essay two is to go with option two.  I just found the blog that I am going to look at using West's framework today.  Other than that I haven't done squat with it.  I plan on using the charts West used in her article for analyzing the blog I'm looking at which is called "The Biased Video Gamer Blog."  from what I've looked at it is two guys reviewing games and talk about their experiences with gaming and gaming related events.  right now I'm struggling with getting started just thinking of my thesis and what my main points are going to be.

Essay 2 bigger and better

Right now I am thinking of following option 1 or 2 but most likely 2.  In West's article she does a really good job at analyzing more in depth about her students identities.  She was talking about things I didn't even notice and after reading how she analyzed them it easy to see what she meant and to identify it.  This is what I liked most about her article that she examined three bloggers and she got really into them about what they really showed about identity.  That is something I want to do with my essay is really analyze it, to not just scratch the surface, but to fully understand and elaborate on how they show identity and what it really shows about them.  I will probably apply West's essay by maybe looking the same way at a blog someone wrote.  Identifying the ways she found and analyzed identity in her essay and do the same.

Essay 1 and my magical writing adventure

I learned that when writing my paper this time that I really just dove into it.  I did no outline for this paper and I believe it turned out just fine.  Going into it though I did have somewhat of a plan of attack on what my thesis was going to be after my initial look at the blog.  First I looked at the blog found things I thought fitted my bloggers identity and figured out how she showed them.  After writing conferences and presentations I felt like I had a good argument after revisions and that it was pretty solid.  I found that I wrote better after I had a nice break from my day’s adventurous activities of sitting in class listening to lectures.  Writing late at night wasn’t a good choice for me because I tended to nod off and rush in ramblings of nonsense as I cruised facebook.  While writing I need to take multiple short breaks to browse the cupboards for something to eat or do pretty much anything besides writing.  Most helpful were the breaks.  I loved those felt a tad refreshed after each one allowing me to focus better on what I was writing.

Essay 1

Overall I think this first essay went really well for me.  Usually I always fall short of the length requirement and I found that this time I had no trouble with that.  I feel that this is because I analyzed and elaborated a lot more than I usually do.  That is something I struggle with, but with this essay I felt like it flowed easily.  My ideas laid out nice without hours and hours just thinking what the heck am I going to write about.

Presentations

I thought my presentation went really well.  I clearly stated my thesis and my main points without getting side tracked.  Also I spoke loudly and clearly so that everyone could hear and understand me.  Some things I should have added in my presentation were a conclusion instead of just saying one have a separate slide for it.  Also I would have liked to add the pictures that I talked about on my images slide.

Blogging and my Essay

My plan to reference the book Blogging is to just use Rettenberg definition of blogging in my intro paragraph.  Most likely just an opening to what blogging is.  I may use what she says about someone using a blog to show identity after revising my essay, but for now just a definition of blogging.

I heart writing conferences!

After my groups writing conference I had a better understand of how I am going to look at the blog I am researching.  What are the areas that show my persons identity I got a lot of help on and completely changed half of my essay.  Although the identity of my blogger remains the same in my essay the way I'm looking at how her identity is displayed will now be written better in my essay... I hope.

Reasearch

So far researching my blog isn't too hard. I'm finding a lot of things to use for identity, the only problem I'm having is to analyze it.  Mostly because it’s hard for me to see below the surface.  The blog I have chosen however I think I will be able to analyze easier than I usually do.  The blogger’s personality is very clear and you can see their identity pretty easily, so I think I will be able to look at this and be able to analyze it easier than I normally would.  Now I must hope to meet the length requirements.

Reading...

I was searching for a passage to blog about then I decided that I am going to go back to chapter three of Blogging.  It is about strong ties and weak ties between people and how a group of strong ties can only get new information if someone in that group has weak ties with someone else (Rettberg page 60).  With that, it stated that any two people can be connected through six degrees of separation.  Which means any two people in the world can be connected by six other connections in between them.  I liked this idea just because thinking that any two people can be connected by at most six other connections was pretty cool.  Such as I am dating my girlfriend, she has a father who is in the military, he reports to the secretary of defense, and he then reports to the president of the united states.  I have just connected myself to President Obama through six degrees of separation.  It is a really cool idea that I agree with.

My Interests

My interests are few pretty much just video games (Starcraft 2), anything to do with computers and probably swimming; although now that I am out of highschool swimming isn't too huge anymore, but I still love to swim.  Outside of school I really do nothing because there is so little time for me with being enrolled in the AFROTC up in Seattle, a lot of my time is commuting which I have grown to hate over this past week.  Choosing a blog it would probably be in entertainment mostly video games, obviously, because that is pretty much my only interests besides computers so possibly blog on technology.
-TyPow

Who am I as a writer?

As a writer I am one who builds on the past.