Final reflection

I do not think I learned a whole lot this quarter about writing. My initial post about what kind of writer I am and what I have trouble with has not changed from then till now. I still have trouble with introduction and conclusions and my ability to write a longer paper was not exercised at all. I am thankful for the latter because I do not write that long of papers and hope to never have to. I mostly focused on trying to figure out how to start and end a paper, and nothing was overly new to me in the field of writing.

Writing and Critical thinking

By copying the format of the different sources I have use I was able to stretch my paper to the 4-5 page parameters of the assignment. I still think I could cut out a lot of stuff and turn this into a one page paper, but there is nothing that would be considered "fluff" so I think it follows a well reasoned/organized format.

Critical thinking does not seem like a difficult to acquire skill in my opinion. Finding two relevant points in a text is governed by the close reading skill, and being able to put them into an argument is as simple as deciding what argument they are trying to portray and then put them into your own words. After that it is just a matter of adding your own information as an example. 

Close reading and research

Finding an article for my research started out being somewhat difficult because general terms brought up similar things that weren't really on the topic I was looking for. After using a few different versions of the same words I had been using I found it produced different results. Using the database finder I was able to get an article after a few uses of the old thesaurus. I still find Google to be more useful, my original broad terms brought me more results that I could have actually used including the one I picked from the database.

As for close reading, locating key points was as simple as looking for the word "blog" and reading the surrounding sentences. Does not really seem like a skill to me, you only need the ability to pick a key word you want to look for.

Something about revision

Revision is a process to learn new information about something, in the form of learning what was left out or what is not relevant. In order to find what it is you want to say and how you want to say it. When revising a paper I generally want whatever I consider to be a finished product to be critically graded and then I like to go back and usually get in more depth once I know what kind of depth should be applied. Regular peer revision is not all the helpful because it usually consists of vague comments that I already knew and just do not know how to fix. Essentially I prefer if my reader thinks it is the finished product and not a work in progress.

Writing and research 7

Aside from maybe taking to much influence from West's article I think I followed the prompt well. My thesis is not highly defined so hopefully it can be found and someone can help me expand it. I reached a writers block at the three and a 1/4 page point and would like some feedback on how to expand my ideas to efficiently use more space.

My paper may just be missing the long explanation most of the other papers will have of the blog they are following because mine is an easily looked up resource that is harder to explain from an inside perspective.

Writing and research 6

I chose prompt 2 for my essay and I have found that it is essentially the same idea as the first essay. I have not found a blog yet to base it on but I am currently searching. The idea should be the same though, and I will apply the same criteria for this blog and explain it using West's method instead of my interpretation. I am struggling with finding all of my resources and I am not sure how I am going to smoothly incorporate all of the required resources into my paper. It my be easier when I have the personal blog to base it off of so I hope to find one soon.

Edit: Due to the difficulty of finding a suitable blog for this assignment I am instead going to use prompt one.  

Article for paper

I do not know if I forgot a step or if my terms were no good, but I could not find a suitable article to use in conjunction with Rettberg and West. I have a few questions regarding the topic for the assignment, and what I should be looking for in an article that would help me with the topic. I will have to come back to this post in order to do the blog assignment as directed with the annotated bibliography and all, but for now I am hoping to get away with a work in progress post.

Edit: article found,  The Psychology of Blogging: You, Me, and Everyone in Between by Laura J. Gurak and Smiljana Antonijevic, this is not a proper citation but I have a paper to write.