Growing as a Writer

Becca Russell

Eng 151

17 March 2011

Growing as a Writer

The first day of English 151 with Samantha Mudd was nerveracking. I became even more nervous when she said everyone was going to have their own blog on blogger.com. I’ve never had a blog before nor did I know how to work one. I’ve seen other people’s and always wished I would make time out of my day to write my thoughts down on something. I’m not really good with just coming up with things off the top of my head and being able to write and write about it for a long time, but I feel like I grew better at that in the last ten weeks that I’ve been in English class. The first blog, ever, that Samantha made us write was what we perceived “Sense of place” as, and I wrote:

“The term 'sense of place' has been defined and used in many different ways by many different kinds and types of people. Some people seem to think its more like geographic places, while others believe it to be a feeling or perception held by people. Sense of place is used to make certain characteristics special or unique. I'm pretty content with my sense of place in the world as of right now. I don't thrive on attention or anything of that sort; I'm pretty much humble. It's important, I think, to have a sense of place because it just makes that person feel wanted and feel like they are apart of something; not just like some lost soul in the world looking for where they belong. It may take some time to find your right sense of place, but you will eventually find it, and when you do, it's great and you will feel so much better about yourself and be happier person all in all.” Now that I read this and really think about it, I believe now that I could have wrote a lot more about it and gone into more depth. That post was written on January 10, 2011, and it’s now mid March, so that gave me about two months to grow as a writer and think more into things. Pertaining to sense of place, I would now talk about the bullying aspect of life. Those people are so, deeply hurt down inside, and they really don’t feel like they have a purpose in this world, nor even like walking out in public because they just know what is going to happen and what’s going to be said. I could give real life experiences that I have witnessed to add more credibility to what I am talking about.

In the past ten weeks, I just think that I have been able to expand my thoughts and really think about things on a different level; sort of like thinking “outside the box.” Being able to think outside the box makes you a much better writer and makes for great stories. It also pulls your audience’s attention in more closely and makes them want to listen and read about what you have to say. Some things that I think that have stayed the same would be my use of language. I’ve never really been a big word type of person. Even though I hear people use big words all the time, I just never really adapted that characteristic. I may use them here and there, but they really aren’t apart of my vocabulary. It would be nice if it would be, but I just wasn’t born and raised around people always using big, technical words. Using a blog for English class is great. Most English classes just make you read from a book and write papers, but English is all about expanding your mind and being able to write about everything with a good imagination and thought process, and a blog is perfect for that. After we would have speakers come in, we would go on our blog and just write about what we thought. Samantha would come up with questions pertaining to the speech as well. One researcher, Douglas, said, "Our research results are conclusive. The more forms of communications children use the stronger their core literary skills, or at least, the more children are accustomed to using the written word, the more confident and comfortable they will be with written communication in general.”

In conclusion, these past ten weeks in my English class has really taught me a lot. I saw myself grow as a writer with opening my thoughts and minds and really opening up to myself and my audience. I also expanded my knowledge with rhetoric, which I think is very good. I’m happy with myself, and I’m excited to see where I become as a writer later down the road as I grow up.

WORKS CITED

O’Dell, Jolie. “Researchers say the Social Web improves kids’ literacy.” ReadWriteWeb. 3 December 2009.

http://www.readwriteweb.com/archives/social_web_improves_literacy.php.