Reflective Essay (final)

Over the course of this year I have written about many things. A lot of which are responses to books or peoples blogs. My first few blogs were responses to the summer reader, and the questions we had in there. The rest of them have been a miscellaneous mix of responses and debates. My writing started out very formal and slowly went down hill. I came across my reflective essay post which was somewhere in the middle of formal and not formal at all. Looking back and reading my reflective essay I have realized that I have not fulfilled many of my goals I had planned for myself.

    Some of my goals have been to not procrastinate and to plan out my writing before I put it on my blog. If I procrastinate on my blogs it will never get done. This semester my procrastination goal has not been met. This upsets me because I have been procrastinating on many things throughout my school life, in almost every grade. I would like to fix this and have been trying to throughout this year. I find it easier when we have time in class to plan out our work and start a rough draft. If i plan and work everything out before I need to do it then its easier to piece together and it gets done faster. For example, in out book report or our independent book , I wrote out a draft in class and it was a lot easier to  write the final thing because I had time in class to work on it instead of procrastinating and writing it at the last minute.
    In the beginning of the year my writing was a lot more formal and organized. My writing teacher was always on me last year about how I write and how to improve it. This year I neede to learn to improve my writing habits and eliminate them. In my third post, Sex, Drugs, And The Extinction of Dinosaurs, my writing was very formal and way more organized then it is now, in my opinion. As time went on my writing got less formal and less organized . I believe it was because I began to get lazy and I didn’t put as much effort into my writing. For example, in my response to a quote on Ebone’s Blog about the N-Word and who should  it and how. I still had main points and everything but my writing was not as formal as it could have been. In my Post as a response to Ebone’s response to Rokhsors post about religion I got my point across very well and I said what was needed to say but it was not as organized or formal as it could have been. As I progressed into the year I tried to change this. I believe my writing has not improved but it has not worsened. When I looked back on my previous writing and compared it to recent posts, my writing seems a lot more organized and well written. I believe the reasons for this is my writing was not planned out when I wrote these. In my responses to the summer reader I had them already written and I could edit them as I went along, I did not do this with the other posts and I believe that’s why my writing seemed less formal and organized.
    When I organize my writing I tend to do the easy parts first. For example, if i have an essay due I write the body paragraphs first and then move to the introduction and conclusion. The introduction and conclusion are the hardest parts of an essay for me to write, because of this I write them last. My body paragraphs are my idea’s and main points and its easiest for me to get my main points out there. My introduction and conclusion are a summary of ideas and for some reason I have a lot of trouble writing these. My draft and my rough draft can be very different. Depending on what topic I have, I may have a lot to say about it. My first rough draft will be a series of ideas that are just strung together. As I move into the editing process, I start to smooth out the transition between ideas so my writing won't be a list of idea's. I also add my introductions and conclusion to my rough draft.

This semester on my blog, I believe my posts have mainly been responses. I did not necessarily do all my posts that were due this semester which is not a good thing. Because of this, I have mainly book responses this semester. I have not been able to approach different idea's. I am sure if, in the future, I tried different topics it would be a learning process for me.

       Over the course of this year I would say my blog has not improved but it has not necessarily stayed the same.  As I have said before my writing has gotten a lot less formal. I do not believe its worsened. Having a blog also was not the easiest thing for me. Because the blog is computer homework and I get easily distracted When I’m on the computer. If I had one again next year It would be easier so then I could manage my time better. If I push myself to manage my time and plan my writing out then my writing would be more organized and straight to the point. I also believe if we did not have a blog next year it would be easier too, because then we would not have to worry about the computer and getting it done on a certain date, where as in class, with written homework its due a certain day in class and not at a certain time. If its due at a certain time I may forget but if its due in class on a certain date then it would be easier for me to get my work done on time.