Monday, May 23, 2011

Final Reflective Essay

This year, Mr. Sutherland had the entire freshmen and sophomore class make blogs. Everybody has one and we were assigned writing assignments to post on the blogs. Anybody around the world could go online and read our posts. At first, we had free posts, where we wrote about anything, and response posts, where we responded to someone else’s response or free post. We subscribed to each other’s blogs on google reader so that we all have a way to keep track of each other’s posting activities. Whenever the class read a book, there would be posts where everyone reflected on what they read. There were books like “The Kite Runner” and “The Color Purple.” This is the second to last week of school; summer vacation is just ahead. Looking back at past works, I can see great improvement in my writing.
My blog posts and my writing has improved magnificently over the course of this school year. For example, I find that my conclusions have gone from terrible to so-so. My very first response post of the year was a response to Aakash’s post on God and higher entities. My conclusion sentece was, “These are more reasons why people believe in God.” This can be improved so much. My conclusion was literally as sentence instead of a paragraph. Several months later, I already found a great improvement in my conclusions: “All in all, these blogs have affected me and many others in more than one way during the first quarter.” This was the last sentence in the conclusion paragraph in my last reflective essay. You can see that the conclusion in the reflective essay had a transition and reflected on everything that was in the paragraph. The conclusion from the response post barely stated anything about what was in the post itself. This was the progress I made in several months in Mr. Sutherland’s class. It is remarkable and fascinating at the same time.
Mr. Sutherland shad all classes do Quickwrites once in a while. We thought about our topic for 3 minutes, and wrote for 10. We were instructed to write even if we didn’t know what to write; we would write about how we were stuck or what was going on in the room. The goal was to keep writing for the full 10 minutes. I’ve had writer’s block occur on every single Quickwrite I’ve written. It’s frustrating and annoying. I would forget the ideas I had in my head a while ago and everything would fall apart instantly. I find that writer’s block stops all ideas and it doesn’t go away for a long while. I can’t write for the next 5 minutes or so when I get writer’s block. I usually tend to get stuck the moment there are no more ideas I have to put onto paper. This happens because I write fast and I can’t think of more ideas. In the end, I find myself in writer’s block. The only way for me to get unstuck from writer’s block is to get someone to tell me an idea or to wait for the writer’s block to pass. I usually find myself doing the second option because not many people talk with their neighbors during Quickwrites; it is supposed to be silent.I have noticed that I usually get writer’s block when I do not make some kind of organizer for my ideas. If I organize my ideas, I can follow me original ideas bit by bit and never get writer’s bloc because I am not thinking of more topics and all my ideas are already on paper; I can’t forget or lose the ideas unless I lose the sheet of paper. I only noticed because we have had so many Quickwrites this year. I had many opportunities to experiment with writer’s block and notice a pattern. I have begun to organize my work on outlines; I have noticed a decrease in the number of times I have experienced writer’s block. With more practice, I can get even better at avoiding and escaping writer’s block in the future.
I usually get blog post topics from the dictionary instead of by myself. This is because I lack creativity. I only want to do this because I find myself only hitting the 250 word mark when I choose my own topic. Since I couldn’t choose my own topic, I decided to let the dictionary choose for me. I wrote about procrastination, school time, and suffrage. Whenever I let the dictionary choose the topic for me, I find myself barely meeting the minimum amount of words necessary for the blog posts. However, it is better to meet the minimum on a topic I dislike than writing about a topic I like and not meeting the minimum. But there was one occasion where I decided to write about a topic because Saber and Yazen were making fun of m at lunch. They claimed that I probably do  homework all day or whatnot. So I wrote a post about what I do on a normal school day. It was pretty accurate, but my sister decided to counter my statements. She obviously was on crack and I wanted to tell her to stop stalking me and watching everything I said on the net. Other than that one time I wanted to get Yazen and Saber to shut up, I have always depended on the dictionary to provided me with a topic. It has never failed me before and it can be better than asking someone for a topic.
This year, I have made remarkable growth in Mr. Sutherland’s class. My conclusions have improved greatly in several months. I experienced shorter writer’s block because I began to organize my work before writing; that way, I wouldn’t lose my ideas and get stuck because I was forgetting. Finally, I have always looked into my dictionary for help with topics. Sometimes, I would look into the dictionary for more information on a topic and for more ways to bullshit a topic. Now, I don’t bull shit topics as much. Thanks to this class, I have become a greater writer. I hope Mr. Sutherland will not lose his job next year and he can stay and teach me again.

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