Last Blog Ever (maybe)

I attribute my success this semester to online learning. It’s not often I feel like doing English work on a set schedule. Having the flexibility of the online class has enabled me to work on an assignment on my time, when I’m in the writing mood. When I’m asked to be somewhere, not necessarily attributed to desire, and asked to present English work; I think it’s fair to assume I’m not going to produce my best work.

As far as challenges, in my particular case, I don’t allege the fact the class was online to any struggles I endured throughout the semester. The struggles I endured were do the fact it was an English class, which is chock full of English problems.

Technologies that best benefited me? Let’s just get my opinion of blogging out of the way. I feel like it’s an unnecessary void to fill mandatory time a student is required to write to acquire credit for English 102. Nothing against people who blog, in fact, I would encourage anyone who blogs on their own free will to keep doing so. Perhaps if I was a published photographer or a famous artist of any sort I could probably find a use for one. Google on the other hand, is a real life saver to have. I usually have access to it, at least in the previous in class English classes I’ve had.

I really enjoyed being able to complete work whenever I want. I fully understand life rarely presents a leisurely time frame for a deadline, but I sure enjoyed it. I think the technology of the internet is what provided this luxury to me, and you can bet I will be using a lot of it. Within the internet I used a lot of Google, and online thesaurus and sources for information. These are all things I will use until the end of my time. Aside from everyday use, I will really apply these technologies throughout the rest of my college career.

Reflecting

From an early age I have always seen the value in being able to write, this semester has only strengthened my belief.  Generally speaking in college, with very few exceptions; everything requires writing.  In the real world, I’ve found being able to put pen to paper to convey my exact thoughts with the attribute of conveyance to be a very competitive edge.  I strongly believe it has been the factor for my resume being picked up instead of an equally matched competitor’s.  Though I remain very selective of what I would like to write, I see every opportunity as grounds to get better at it, resulting in endless opportunities for someone that uses writing as means to stand out and be picked first.

To my surprise, I found the readings throughout the semester to be conveying; surpassing my preconceived feelings of reluctance.  Changed by them?  No.  I still credit the literature (both the book & film) Fightclub to be the “one” that impacted home enough to merit change in my perspective.

Writing for me, is slowly, very slowly, turning into a closet hobby that like any other hobby is best enjoyed on your own terms to yield the most satisfaction.  When it comes to my writing process, I still hold true to the most against-the-grain methods.  I still find four-squares, webs, outlines, ect., to be a painstaking waste of time.  A word processor allows me to butcher the spelling of a word, and inject it with a thousand milligrams of terrible grammar without skipping a beat.  When I’m liable for my terrible penmanship and constant anguish of wondering how a word is spelled on parchment, I bewilder myself to have any brainpower for the things that matter: ideas, structure, fluency, word choice ect.  For the same reason I produce my best quality of writing via word processor, I feel like going out of my way to conform to a pre-writing process is detrimental to the nature of the bigger picture; the final product.  My energy is best spent scrambling 80 words-per- minute, chockfull of red and green underscores.  

As always, the things not meant to even faze a student were indeed my biggest struggles.  I can honestly say I spent more time worrying about making an introduction video than producing all the essays combined.  The little things like PowerPoint’s, being creative, and picking colors that appeal to others will always be a hurdle for me.  

I LEARNED THIS:

Real world

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