Blog Post 40: Encouragement Letter to Future Self

Dear Future Self,

Next semester is going to be a difficult one. You're going to have a large workload but you can handle it. Just remember you are going to have to work hard at some point in your life so why not work hard now. If you work hard and get everything done you won't have to work as hard when you're older. You will have the opportunity to relax and do fun things by putting in a little hard work now. There is also tons of opportunities to get help such as study groups, tutoring, and other resources. You can always go and talk to your counselors or teachers and they will all help you. Plus you are going to take some high level STEM classes and you will have a lot to brag about. After this learning you will have a great chance of getting a job out of college and you will be set for a while. It will all be worth it in the long run. You may miss some sleep now but you will get it back in the future or over the summer. No one ever said they wish they had gotten more sleep. The most important thing though is make sure to remember bear down and to pipe it up.

From,

Past Self

Blog Post 39: Letter to Self

Dear Benjamin,

After looking back at this semester I have a few recommendations for you. First off don't be stubborn, create multiple drafts of all papers and do all of your pre-writing. This leads to significantly better papers and drafting becomes significantly easier if you do good pre-writing. Otherwise you have to organize all of your jumbled ideas while attempting to write a high quality paper. Second take advantage of office hours and peer editing. It can be difficult to find problems with your own work but it is easy to fix them after someone else points them out and you realize they exist. The last piece of advice I have is time management. Avoid procrastination and don't save homework for one day. Do chunks of homework every day and you will thank yourself when you want to go have fun on the weekend or watch football on Sunday. Follow all of this advice and your papers will be ten times better and you will have a more fun, less stressful first semester.

Sincerely,

Future Benjamin

Blog Post 38: Reflective Essay Organizing Ideas and Thesis

Thesis 1:

Through continually practicing rhetorical analysis, not only my analysis skills but my critical thinking skills have improved due to peer reviewing other's papers, viewing new types of text, and using new techniques when going through text.

Thesis 2:

In past english classes I would write one draft and have no specific audience in mind besides the “general audience”, but after a semester in english 109H I have learned the value of drafting, many new techniques for pre-writing, and how important a specific audience is to the success and clarity of a paper.

Thesis 3:

After one semester of college english, I have developed many new strengths from practice and learning new strategies, but I still have weaknesses that need to be addressed.

Thesis 4:

Over the course of the semester the three class goals that I have made strides towards achieving are rhetorical awareness, critical thinking and composing, and reflections and revisions through learning new methods and techniques and practice.

Thesis 5:

My writing process has greatly improved this semester due to tools and skills such as clusters and outlines, but some areas I still need to address are revising papers and avoiding procrastination.

SOAPSTone:

S: The speaker is me

O: The occasion is that the semester is ending and I am reflecting on what I have learned

A: My audience for this paper is Dr. Bell and maybe my english 109H class

P: The purpose is to explain what I have learned over the course of the semester

S: The subject is the learning I have had over the semester

Tone: Mastery

Blog Post 37: Audience and Invention for Reflective Essay

              For my reflection I am choosing to examine my writing process and how it has developed over the course of the semester. I want to show my reader all that I have learned and how I have used it to make myself a better writer. The primary audience for my reflection is Dr. Bell and myself. Through this reflection I not only want to show Dr. Bell how much I have learned, but also show myself and look for areas that I can still work on. The audience has already seen some of my drafts and all of my final drafts of assignments this semester but hasn't seen any of my previous work. So I am going to present my material and include comparisons between my writing and writing process from this year and pieces that I did in high school. The order of my reflection will be similar to the organization of my writing process where I will address pre-writing first, then drafting and revising, and then writing style. At the end I will then include areas that I can still improve and then a conclusion.

http://www.jholko.com/data/photos/641_1polar_bear_reflection_svalbard.jpg

Blog Post 36: Discovering Your Writing Process

I consider myself to be a procrastinator. While writing I am slow to start and then once I do start I get distracted very easily by anything and everything on the internet. However over the course of the semester I have been changing my writing process in order to become a more successful writer. Some change I have made is the inclusion of more pre-writing to become a more heavy planner. The main activities that have had an influence on my writing process are when we learned SOAPSTone and having to make more detailed outlines. I found these to be especially helpful in pre-writing and also found them to simplify the writing process and make it easier to write organized and thoughtful drafts. Throughout the semester my writing process has changed and become more heavy pre-writing. I use multiple pre-writing techniques before I write my papers or create a public argument. Some new things that I tried are heavy pre-writing and I also started to write multiple drafts during my writing process. One thing that I could try in the future if I have more time while writing is have some of my later drafts peer-revised. This semester it was usually only my first or second draft getting peer-revised so also having my later drafts revised could have the potential to significantly improve my paper.