Blog Post 4

I never realized how important writing would be to advance through college. I have been in college for 2 semesters and I think I have done more writing in those two sememsters then 4 years in high school. This has suprised me, I didn't expect the writing to be so intensive here. It has been difficult for me to do these writing assignments every week. It can be difficult to pull new information and formulate that into a blog post every week. Making sure that you don't repeat points you've made in previous posts can be aggravating as well. As the semester goes on hopefully it will become less of a problem for me.
One of the things that everyone told me about college is that you would have to write alot and write well to make it through. I didn't think it would be as true as everyone made it out to be. But it ended up being that way. Hopefully through this semester I can better grasp writing while doing these blog posts. Blog posts can be difficult sometimes, especially if you can't think of anything to write about. I struggle with writers block as i'm sure many of my classmates do as well. But what I have learned so far in this class, is that for me the most difficult part of writing is starting. Once started, words just seem to kind of flow. But once the thought is put down and it's time to start on a new topic. It's back to square one and the block returns.

Blog Post 3

Reflection is a big part of writing. You always have to go back and re-read and edit things before your final draft is ready. That is something that makes writing very tedious. Especially if your like me and don't like to go back and do the extra editing neccessary. I always feel like my writing is perfect when it goes on the page. Even though this is never the case for anyone. Nobody ever writes something down perfect the 1st time unless your name is Amadeus Mozart. Patience is something we all struggle with when writing. It's also something we must overcome to become better writers.

How Can Writing Help Me Be The Change I Want To See In The World?

I've always been a worldly child. Even in my younger years I would notice plights that people in other parts of the World were suffering from. Other kids at my age cared little for worldly problems. Which led to me being somewhat of an outcast in social circles. Whenever we would have writing assignments, I would always write about wars, social disputes, and other issues(as much as an elementary school kid could know about such things). Some teachers would often tell me my work was years ahead of schedule. Others would demeen my writing, telling me it was to dark for a child. But I always had a point to get across with my papers, I've always wanted to change the world. Now that I'm in college, I'm hoping I can learn how to better get points across. I know that if I do become a lawyer like I want, I'm going to have to write lots of legal documents and such. And I will have to do a good job at getting points across. There's always been a love-hate relationship between me and writing. I always hated doing it in High School, mostly because of draconian topics assigned by teachers and there strict adherence to some format called MLA that I never fully grasped in my 4 years there. But on the off chance we got to choose our topics I ran with it. Mostly doing what I did in elementary school and writing on social issues and trying to express the way I want things to be. I loved writing when I could use it as an outlet in that way. Even though my teachers didn't always appreciate my opinions. I hope that I can become more fond of writing in college so that I can maybe change the world through writing.

On the article.

I think the most difficult thing to keep from doing in my writing is rambling on and on about one point. Often when I write, especially when it's on a topic that I have a strong opinion on, I tend to get on my soapbox and take up maybe a whole paragraph just illustrating one point. I need to get my point across using fewer sentances and not just rambling on and on. Also taking pity on the reader. All through high school we were encouraged to use bigger words and make sure all punctuation was correct. So that the reader could decipher what we were saying. This article says keep things simpler for the reader, to "take pity" on them. It goes against everything they taught. But as I pretty much alreadyand the article affirmed that high school English teachers really have no idea what they are talking about. I hope that I can correct this over the course of this class. -Austin