Commenting on a Classmate's Work

I won't mention any names, but the portfolio essays that I reviewed and wrote a letter about helped me to learn a lot about what I can improve in my own writing. Her essays were in a narrative-style rather than a formal essay-like one, which made them much more interesting and engaging. That is something I must consider for my own writing in the future; I often make my writing to formal and it ends up sounding dry. I shouldn't be afraid to add a little personal touch to what I write, because it will only make my peices more appealing to the audience. Sacrificing formality for interest will probably be a good exchange nine times out of ten.

Halfway Through my Reflection Essay...

I honestly think the reflection essay in our portfolio is more difficult than any major assignment we've done this semester. It's very difficult for me to remember exactly what I have changed in assignments that I haven't seen for months, and even still writing multiple pages on how I have altered a peice of writing is proving to be quite a challenge. Then there's the section about how I "understand them as peices of writing", which I'm not even entirely sure what it even means. I hope this turns out ok...I'll probably have to re-do it because I really don't even know what I'm doing...

On the plus side, I do like the fact that we can go back through our blog and cite entries for the essay. I definatly understood my writing better back then than I do now!

Revising the Initiating Action Project

For the draft of my flyers for the Initiating Action Project, I used Microsoft Word to create them. At that stage, it was most important to me to just get a design/idea of what I was going to write down on paper, and not worry so much about the aesthetics. Then, when I got feedback from Professor Scott, it was suggested that I used Publisher rather than Word to create them. This turned out to be a fantastic idea, since in Publisher I could add color and interest without using pictures, but simply by the placement and designs of my text. I really think they turned out well the second time around, and after minor adjustments to my E-mail and article feel confident about my project as a whole.