Reflection Final 2

Eric Lau, Period 2

Reflection Final

I have written many blog posts this year. I think that my best would be my response posts to the Dog In the Nighttime. To me, the dog in the nighttime was a very unique book, because it was unlike anything I have ever read. It was also the only book I reread 3 times, so I knew the story and plot inside out. On this blog post, I used a lot of feeling and emotion to refine my points.

“The book A Curious Incident of A Dog In The NightTime has a writing style that is very unique that hooks the reader right when the first page is read. The whole autistic point of view is the one that really catches the reader's attention and the author really connects to it as he writes the book.”

When I was writing about this book A Curious of A Dog In The Nighttime, i really felt the what the main character, Chris, was trying to show. Although Chris’s perspective on the world is much more different from mine, i could feel myself acting as him throughout the story. I remember asking myself questions on how Chris feels about this.. and that.. and about himself. In my opinion for writing to be good, the writer has to feel in concept of the topic he/she is writing about.

Blogging has made my life so much easier. Instead of having to print every now and then, I can just post my essays on my blog for my teacher to read. This relieves the stress of having to check if the printer has ink and the need to constantly go find some printer paper. Blogging has also made me aware of the Internet. After checking my stats, I realized that people from all over the world read my writings, and that simple keywords typed into google search that are the same as my posts can make my blog show up on the search list. in a way, I’m glad that many types of people have been on my blog. However, instead of having them stumble upon my blog as a mistake, i would like for them to actually come to my blog to read what it has to offer. To address this problem, over the summer I plan to continue writing on my blog and on the subjects that I think are interesting and ill catch attention. Instead of writing blog posts for homework assignments I would like to extend farther and write reviews, personal opinions, stories, and stuff like that. Having a blog really changed my perspective on writing. It has made me more interested in writing and think of ways on how it can pull the reader’s attention.           

A blog has also helped me put more emotion into my writing. With the privilege to type blog posts about books, I can express my feelings about the book through what I write. This has really helped me in the a lot of ways.

Another blog post that I think has a lot of feeling and emotion into it is my Pigeons: Natural Toilets.

In this post, i talked about how disgusting pigeon poop is and even added an example to help support my points. One thing that I think really helps support points are daily life examples. I think that these help build a bridge to the audience as they might have experienced the same type.
One of my examples are:
Here's a little story that i "heard." "There was once this guy who was enjoying a nice day in the park. It  was a hot day and he was melting so he went to get an ice cream cone. He stopped by a ice cream cart and asked for a scoop of vanilla ice cream. After receiving it he went and sat on a bench. It just so happens that a bird was flying above him and decided it was time to let go. When the guy wasn't looking (for he was checking out some girl), the pigeon pooped and the white poop flew onto the guy's vanilla ice cream and camouflaged with melting vanilla. Then the guy started to lick his ice cream and what happened next is :P."
In this blog post, I can tell that my story telling skills aren’t very impressive nor very descriptive. While I was writing this, I remember that I was only thinking about writing the ice cream, dude, and pigeon. I thought that it was descriptive enough and I didn’t touch on anything else. Now that I read it over, I can tell that the imagery is blah, it’s bad. However, I can say that my description on things have gotten better over time. Instead of only focusing on tiny part of what’s happening in that scene, I can expand onto what was happening in the background, the scent, the way the pigeon felt as he was soaring and much more. Although I can’t tell if that it will actually help the story, I know that the imagery will improve.  

Anyways, after looking at my previous work, I realized that I have improved in writing a lot. In most of my post, my grammar has went up, and my use of vocabulary has also improved. However, while writing this reflective essay I think that my grammar and has gone down. I’m frequently experiencing writer’s block as I write this so it’s a really hard.

Writer’s block is a real jerk. Even as I’m, writing this I’m experiencing writer’s block. I think that writer’s block occurs to me most when I’m really tired. Because I haven’t been getting much sleep in the last few days, my mind has been really jacked up. There is a way to deal with this though. Exercise! or get more sleep. I wish we had p.e in the morning because after p.e I would be really awake to start the day. Another way I fall in to writer’s block is when I’m not informed about an assigned posts I’m writing through this year there have been blog posts about books where I had no idea what to write about, because I haven’t either understood the book, or read it. However, for this type of writer’s block I have an easy solution: read the book again. even though it might take a while to read or understand it, in the end, writer’s block occurs less.

One type of writer’s block i really hate is when you’re trying to type a word that’s at the tip of your tongue, but it doesn't come to you. This usually happens when your mind really numb from the lack of sleep. For me, there is no other way to deal with this but to get more sleep.           
As a side solution I can also train myself  to resist  writer’s block my waking up earlier. By doing so my mind will adapt  to the lack of sleep and might be able to focus more on writing then on sleeping. Training my mind to writer’s block  might or might not work depending if I have the willpower to adapt. For the next semester, sophomore year, I hope to gain a higher level of vocabulary and improve my grammar and writing to make it more appealing. Another goal I have for the second quarter is to work harder on bettering my working methods. The goal is to stop procrastinating on my blog post and do them at the beginning of the week or middle, instead on doing them last second like i”m doing now. I’m not entirely sure i have a way to do this, but i think if i have the strength to wake up earlier in the morning by myself I can overcome procrastination too.

P.S: Mr. Sutherland, you have made freshman year, a great year to remember [:

I must admit when I first came to Asti, i was not expecting a teacher like yourself. Your style of teaching was nothing I had experienced before and I wondered myself in the beginning if it was good. However through this year, I have found that although it is laid back, when a student is willing to learn what you have to offer, there's a lot to learn. I really appreciated you being our teacher this year