entry 13: goodbye, lted 618!

Honestly, I am surprised at how much fun I had writing this blog this semester! This form of writing was very new to me, and writing in general can be a very overwhelming task for me, so I initially wasn't too excited about it. But once I started adding images and colors and allowing myself to be more creative with my blog posts, I started to really enjoy it!

This blog helped remind me that not all writing is formal. Blogs can be both formal and informal, depending on who your intended audience is. This blog also helped me practice writing for different purposes by having different prompts each week. I think having different prompts allowed me to practice writing for different audiences and purposes.

This blog was initially very difficult for me because I'm not used to free-writing. I think having to practice it every week allowed me to improve my free-writing skills without even realizing it. This blog also helped to teach me that reading and writing are interrelated. I constantly would reread my writing before publishing it to make sure it all made sense and that I didn't have any errors. I also spent a lot of time reading my peers' blogs and reflect on their thinking and how their writing about reading influenced me to think deeper.

I think having checkpoints was also beneficial. I made sure to write one blog (sometimes two) per week to stay on track, and receiving feedback about how the first half of my blogs were written influenced my writing on the rest of my blogs. I also often referred to the comments left under specific blogs about what I had done well and what I could have done better.

This semester, I learned that writing can be fun. Writing does not have to be stressful, overwhelming, or always be so formal. I have learned that I find writing to be much more intriguing when I have choice in what I am writing, and when it can be more informal. I always put so much pressure on myself, and sometimes my best writing is when I take a deep breath and just write whatever comes to mind. I think incorporating blogs into this course was a great way to deepen my understanding of the writing process, to meet the Student Learning Outcomes outlined in the syllabus, and to get to know myself as a writer.

Goodbye, LTED 618!

Sam