Who am I as a Writer Now?

As a writer, I still need to focus on following through on my work with the same amount of energy I start off with. I need to be able to work on longer pieces of writing without being distracted or discouraged. I still have trouble with papers that are four to five pages long. Though I still have trouble with long papers, I am getting used to writing longer papers. Now I have an easier time working with writing longer papers with quality. I feel that if I had more time with certain pieces of writing I will be able to add length and quality to that paper.

Critical Thinking and Writing

At this time I feel like I do a pretty good job of summarizing and getting to the main point. Whenever I have to deal with large pieces of texts, I am usually able to summarize it using a very short amount of words. I have always felt like that was one of my strengths. One problem that I do have with critical thinking is comparing two pieces of texts and using evidence. For some reason I just do not like comparing written work and have a hard time doing that. The same goes for using evidence when writing.

When it comes to writing, one of the biggest problems I have is writing long papers. Unfortunately one of my strengths, being able to summarize my thoughts, also happens to be one of my weaknesses. No matter what the topic may be, I always struggle writing a paper that is 4-5 pages long and what results of it is usually of poor quality.

Close reading and research

Since starting this class, I have gotten a little bit better at close reading. I still have a very hard time staying focused on long pieces of writing, but I have gotten better with how long I can stay focused. I also have a bit of a struggle with finding key points in certain pieces of writing, due to the lack of focus I have when reading certain types of texts.

When it comes to my progress so far in researching, I still seem to struggle with finding a variety of resources to utilize. One of the areas I seem to have a very difficult time with is utilizing some of the resources in my writing. Every time I try to make connections between a resource and my own paper, things seem to become forced. The flow of my writing seems to lack a natural feel to it. Even with all of these problems, I still feel like I am getting better with my ability to utilize different resources.

What Does Revision Mean To Me?

Revision is the process of improving a certain piece of work. This process is usually used several times when creating something, but is utilized most right before finishing the final draft of something. It allows the person to have an audience's view on their work, so that they could fully see any mistakes or errors they may have made. Sometimes the creator may choose to bring in other people to help revise their work. This is usually done so that he or she could get different perspectives on his or her work in order to catch certain mistakes that can not be seen by the writer themself. It is a very crucial part of creating something, knowing that people tend to make plenty of mistakes.

Essay 2

With my essay I plan on using West's article as a framework for finding the identity in a blog. I plan on using this framework to find the identity in my research blog, cagewriter. At first I had a hard time finding a good blog to analyze. Of course I have one now, but I am still a bit unsure about it because I am a little worried about how things may unravel as I get deeper into my essay. Some other problems that I have encountered so far are putting together an adequate thesis to go along with my essay. I wanted to come up with some solid points in my thesis that I could support efficiently. Another issue that I had to deal with was finding enough evidence to support my points. Even though I had some evidence to support my points, I wanted to make sure that I had enough evidence to have a strong argument.

My Article

The article I will be using to help with my research essay is called Students express themselves through blogs, and it is by a woman named Deborah Zhang. As the title suggests, she basically looks at the different ways that students express themselves through blogs. In order to support her argument, she brings up a bunch of cases where students, mostly high school students, use blogs in order to further express themselves to the world. She uses a very broad group of students to show that all of this self-expression through blogging is not limited to a certain group of students, but that all types of students rely on blogging to express themselves. Since the article is about students expressing themselves through blogging, I can use the article to help me see how people may do certain things when blogging. I can use the article as a tool to help identify unique things in blogs that may not be as apparently to me.

Applying West's Article

When looking at West's article or essay, I have a hard time seeing how I would like to apply that to my essay. Seeing how most of West's article is about personal experience and how students would have an easier time learning if they were doing something they enjoyed, it may be hard to relate that to my research essay, especially since my essay is about how I would identify someone through their blog. When looking at the introduction of the article, she does talk about some stuff related to a framework, and that could be used to help me with my essay. The choice that would seem to make the most sense as of now is to use West's article as framework for my essay. Hopefully using the article as a framework for my research essay will give me a chance to use the article and enhance the quality of my essay.

Weblogs and literary response

The article by Kathleen C. West has several points that I find very interesting. The most significant point that I found is about how students will perform well when they are having fun. She mentions this when she talks about how her students enjoyed blogging. She said that her students learned more about their own writing and each other's by blogging. The blogging allowed for the students to be more successful in class. The blogs allowed the students to feel free with what they wrote and they made the students feel like they were getting away with stuff. This shows that if students had fun they wouldn't feel like they were working, thus allowing them to work without feeling like they were going through torturous work.

What I learned from essay 1

After finally finishing the essay, I feel like I've learned plenty about my own writing habits. There were many habits that I noticed that I felt I need to work on. One of these habits is how I like to write different parts of a paper and eventually put it together. The problem with this is when I put it together, the essay does not flow that well and sometimes there are errors throughout the essay. Another one of my problems is how I tend to procrastinate sometimes, and when I come back to my paper I have an even harder time trying to restart on my paper.

They Say, I Say

With all of the work that I have done so far on my research essay, there are some grammatical and structural things I can correct in my essay. When it comes to some of my revisions for my essay, the book “They say, I say” can give me plenty of help. Some of the things on my essay that I can use help from the book on is sentence structure. I have some issues when it comes to writing long sentences. I have difficulty with putting the sentence together properly. In my essay, I have plenty of long sentences, so that portion of the book could help me a lot.

My Presentation

Unfortunately, I was unable to present my presentation this past Thursday, due to the lack of time. I do have a feel for how my presentation would have went. If I would have given my presentation this past Thursday, I think a strength of my presentation would be my thesis. I also feel like I have a decent amount of visual aid to make sure the viewers don't get too bored. In order to improve my presentation, I could add some of the examples I already have that supports my thesis. I could also organize my presentation a little better.

Blogging

My essay is basically about a topic based blog and how it shows a certain aspect of the writer. The topic of the blog is college football. The fact that the blog I am following is a topic blog is the only way I can think of, that my essay about the blog I am following is related to the blogging book. My blog is very straight foward with information. It does not have any of the writer's own opinion, which does not give me a chance to relate it to some of the other blogs mentioned in the book.

Changes I plan on making

After the writing conference, I plan on making plenty of changes to my research paper. I expect to completely change the direction of my paper. Instead of figuring out the personality behind my blog, I plan on trying to understand what it takes to be a certain person, and in my case that person is a huge University of Hawaii football fan. I will have to look at different aspects of the blog then I planned to look at when I first started my paper. Hopefully, all of these changes will make it easier for me to finish my paper.

Difficulties with research

So far I've had a relatively easy time with my research, but I did have some difficulty with certain issues. At first I had a hard time finding a good blog to analyze, but I finally found one. After that, I had a bit of difficult with figuring out which parts of the blog to analyze. I didn’t know which areas of the blog to look at that would help me understand the identity behind the blog. Fortunately for me, I was able to eventually figure out which parts of the blog to focus in on to help me better understand the identity of the person.

Quote

One danger of online social networks is their visibility - in some cases, they work too well (Rettberg 77), that is, online social networks are dangerous because of how widely available the information on these networks are to the public. Many people who are on these social networks don't give it any thought before they put down very personal and important information. Due to how accessible these social networks are to the public, a stranger or someone you don’t know too well can easily go online and obtain your private information. There has been a case where someone announced on Facebook that they would be attending a certain event that evening. One of her friends from awhile back would eventually come across this information and break into her house. This case goes to show that people sometime give out information without knowing just how important it is. The problem with online social networks is that you don’t know who has access to all of this information.

Interests and Blogging

My interests vary from television shows to maintaining an active lifestyle. Eventhough I have many interests, I probably enjoy watching sports, such as football and MMA, the most. Though I can keep up with sports through television and some of the sites online, I don't get as much information as I'd like to. With blogging, I hope that I could possibly learn more about some of my favorite sport teams, like any recent trades between teams or injuries to players. Keeping updated with all the breaking news around the leagues should allow for more enjoyable sport seasons.

Who am I as a writer?

I am a writer who struggles with following through with work.