Reflection on Open Letter Draft

We're here friends! We made it! Go us! Side note, Sean, you must go on Rate My Professor and look yourself up to cheer up when you're having bad days, because it is like literally so many great reviews its crazy. If you don't already, that might be a good thing to start doing, like seriously.

I peer reviewed Joy and Zayla's open letters in peer review, and in my LAST BLOG POST I will be talking about my draft and plans I have for it as the deadline looms.

Anderson, Jill "The Breakfast Club" 07/29/13 via Just Jilly.

At the moment I am almost done with my final project (good thing too, considering its due in a few hours) but I still have a few things to work on. I definitely showed that I have the ability to think about my writing and myself as a writer. In fact maybe a little too much, because I have plenty of material and I need to make it a little shorter still. Not to mention I need to make it sound more like a letter and less like an essay, that's one of the main things I still have to tweak.

 I specifically made sure that I showed examples of the things I was talking about in my writing by hyperlinking and quoting. Some of my analysis was what actually makes it a little long. I probably need to go back and explain why I made certain choices a little more, even if it is to say "I just felt like it was a good idea" or something.

I honestly had a super fun time in this class, and I am proud of myself for what I have accomplished here. Thank you all for everything!

Draft of Open Letter

Oh mah gawd no I don't like that this class is ending, that means its just gross chemistry and math from here on out, make it stop. But regardless, here is the draft of my open letter for your editing pleasure.

Mattox, Bailey "Sam" 7/16/15 via photos.

I feel alright about what I have.... but I still have a lot to improve on. For example I feel like its perrrrrrty long for a letter, but at the same time there is a lot of information to include. But how about the semi-formal letter conventions at the beginning of the letter? Perusing my peers' blogs, I've seen people doing it a lot of different ways, and looking up semi-formal letter conventions I get a lot of different results. And finally formality: I tried to stay within the conventions of a semi-formal letter, but I also wanted to let my voice show (its kinda hard to keep it in now that it's been let out, it's typically been the reverse in my past projects, huh).

Thank you in advance for the feedback!

Reflecting More on My Writing Experiences

THE END IS NEAR. Continuing to prepare for the final, I will be answering questions from my fans (jk just from Sean but I feel all fancy and egotistical answering all of these questions about myself) about some of my experiences in 109H. And also, as it is now December it is socially acceptable for me to post this picture of my dog in a Santa hat. Behold.

Mattox, Bailey "Sammy Clause" 12/25/14 via photos.

1. Biggest challenges this semester.

The biggest challenge this semester for me was finding a routine for homework time. I am used to just doing homework when I get home, but all of a sudden there was too much to just do that and I was getting overwhelmed constantly. I wasn't a happy camper at all. But eventually I realized that it was more effective for me to hang out with friends and go to games and have fun in the early evening and then do homework in the late evening and between classes. 

2. What did you learn about your time management and editorial skills?

I have learned through this semester that its all about experimenting to find what works. At first I was stuck in the rut of my old habits, but once I was able to let go and try new things, I had much more time.  But like I said before, I am very easy to bribe, and so that helped me become much better at time management. Not just pounding through ALL of the homework at once and interspersing it with breaks really helped me become effective. As far as editing, I never would have guessed that I would be able to give the criticism that I did to people I hardly knew. I think it was really good for me to have that experience, because it made me realize that I can give constructive and meaningful advice to most anyone, and give my honest opinion (while still not being mean and offensive). 

3. What do you know about the concept of genre? How is understanding this concept central to becoming a better writer? 

Genre to me is a matter of understanding the whole situation of the prompt you are writing for. I think that it includes knowing your audience, your purpose, your conventions and style, and basically everything that makes a good piece of writing. To me genre is directly tied to purpose and all of those other really important things that make your writing effective. So in regards to that, knowing your genre is essential in creating a piece of writing that does everything you want it to do for your readers.

4. What skills from this course might you use/develop further in the next few years of college coursework?

You know what, I feel like I actually did develop a lot of relevant skills in this course, It didn't feel useless and arbitrary like a lot of classes. For one, my planning skills have skyrocketed, and I really hope that outside of this class I am able to maintain and implement the planning process I was introduced to in this course. On top of that, I feel like I also really learned how to really understand the purpose of my writing and cater to the audience, and this is always going to be relevant whenever I am writing anything in the future. And I really learned how to step back and say "wait, what do I want them to feel?" Also I think I have gotten a lot better at sharing my opinions even through class discussions, and definitely in writing. I think that this will be really helpful later on, and I want to continue to expand on this stating of my opinion. 

5. What was your most effective moment from 109H? 

I think my most effective moment from this course was probably the planning I did for Project 3. I think it was all extremely important to the production of my final draft, and I felt like I really got in depth with it. It actually made putting Project 3 together pretty easy, which was fantastic. It also helped me to just have a really good grasp on the project overall (pending I guess, I don't have my grade for that project yet sooooo we'll see).

6. What was your least effective moment in 109H?

My planning in the beginning of project 1 was just awful. I hardly cared, and I didn't yet understand the importance and helpfulness of planning. Particularity when we had to do the annotated bibliographies in the beginning, those blog posts were pretty useless the way I did them. If I had done more little planning things before then maybe I would have been better about it, but the way it was I just didn't understand yet. And those gosh darn Clarity and Punctuation posts. The first rounds weren't bad, and I got to read on topics I may not have known SO much about. But the SECOND rounds just felt utterly pointless. I felt like during those posts I was once again having to force myself to just get it done instead of actually thinking about it like the rest of the course taught me to. 

Revisiting My Writing Process

LAST PROJECT CAN I GET A WOOT WOOT?! Now that I have completed 3 whole months in college and 3 whole projects in English 109H, I'm going to go back and reread my very first blog posts (awwww memory lane here we come) and reflect. Specifically I'm going to reflect on what has and hasn't changed since then and looking forward to the future of my writing.

Mattox, Bailey "Ruby" 11/25/15 via Photos

My Writing Process

At the beginning of this course and this whole blogging fiasco, I considered myself a Heavy Reviser, and perfectly content to be so. I honestly didn't expect to change much at all. But after all of the blogging and planning before every project, I really think I have changed into more of a heavy planner. I still tend to spew thoughts during the blogging process, but that is a way more productive spewing than what I was doing before. In my first blog post about my writing process, I described my first drafts and outlines as "a jagged jumble of thoughts". But one thing about this course is it literally forces you to start planning FAR before even your outline.  It is actually remarkably relaxing to piece the draft together because I already have so much of what I want to do planned out. As a result revision is pretty easy now, and that's actually pretty nice to have it all together by that stage in the game.Of course since now I spend a lot of my time planning in my head before I write, I still have a tendency to procrastinate on actually writing out what I want to say. But overall, I am pretty surprised how much my writing process has changed for the better because of this course.

Calendar Reflection

THANKFULLY my days have become much less homework-centric. In my Calendar Reflection blog post, I talked about how my time just flew away, and even today sometimes I just can't figure out where it goes, but now I've figured out how to manage my time.  I still haven't had much problem with time for Linguistics, Chemistry, and English, but math is still 4 hours per night. The main difference now is that I found out that I actually work well on a reward system. So for example that day we talked about those horror movie to romantic comedy trailers on YouTube, I started just watching them all. Then I realized I really needed to do homework, and so I made a deal with my self that every blog post I wrote I got to watch one. And so I kept finding things like that to keep me on track. It also kept the process of homework from getting too boring. I'll still get on kicks where I just don't want to do anything and then one night I do EVERYTHING, but now its much more balanced and I have found the time to hang out with friends and go to sporting events and have a life outside of homework.

Looking Forward

This is my last English class EVER and I was sort of expecting it to be nothing new. But actually I really do feel like I have changed and learned a lot because of this class as well as the whole college experience.  As a result of this class I have also begun to understand what is expected of me as a college student, and learned how to step up my game and be open to change.I think I'll always be a little bit of a procrastinator, but at least now I know how to regulate myself. This class was also a lot more self-motivated than I am used to, and this is going to come in really handy as I move forward in my career. I liked the feeling that I was able to figure things out and work for myself, and come for help when I needed it. All together my balancing skills have gotten much better because of this course, and in the future I hope to continue this improvement.