Conclusively, the blog posts we did this year and the concept of blogging has led me past the first step of critically and freely analyzing life and literature. I find myself being comfortable writing about whatever pops into my head, concerning a certain topic. Throughout the year, the subject of our blog posts depended on what the class was currently learning, be it Romeo and Juliet, Great Expectation, or Poetry Out Loud. But one thing I was always grateful for was how general all of the blog prompts tended to be.
The first large thing I want to mention is how I grew as a writer because of the blogs and shown through the blogs. At the beginning of the year, I felt like majority of my blogs tended to either ramble on and on or be very short and non-specific, also usually having no real structure or format for the reader to follow. Now, however, I feel, after writing so many five-part paragraphs I've finally started to get a hang of the specific idea, support, and connection idea that the writing structure emphasizes. Also because of this, my ability to regulate specificity and meaning of my writing has greatly increased. Overall, blogging has incredibly exposed me to the "science" (of sorts) of writing, with all it's calculated, multi-faceted aspects.
Another way that blogging has helped me is in the area of creative, freer writing style. Prior to this year, the only creative-type writing I really did was for two or three weeks in 7th grade, where we wrote our own completely unprompted stories (besides length and plot lines). I found this writing incredibly refreshing to "make-up" my own story without any requirements because it just opened my mind to all the different things I could possibly do. But, looking back now, I realized how childish and fragmented the story I wrote was compared to something I would write now (which is how it should be, hopefully!). This taught me that creativity and ideas is not all there is to writing which, honestly speaking, is what I originally believed. In actuality, writing is a combination of thoughts, emotions, creativity, believing, hard-work, critical thinking, asking others for advice, and the ability to deeply analyze your writing. For this blog I found a quote that I believe shows the most important factor of writing. The author tells said that “...everything in life is writable about if you have the outgoing guts to do it, and the imagination to improvise. The worst enemy to creativity is self-doubt.” (The Unabridged Journals of Sylvia Plath). I firmly know that the this blogging experience has given me a cool chance to experience creativity in writing.
This last part, I would like to briefly blog about my Freshman experience in general. I would not call it amazing, but I think I'm most definitely a changed person due to Honors English and all the rest of my classes. I starting to have a better self belief in my capabilities as well as seeing the need for myself to change and become more mature. In retrospect, this year has been strangely quick but at the same time awfully slow. I can still remember some week in January, me thinking to myself "When is this year going to ever end." yet, now in a weeks time my one-and-only Freshman year is about to be over. It's somewhat regretful thinking about the things I could have done better or tried harder on but, had I never done anything incorrect, I never would have changed to the person I am now. Freshman year has been filled with friendships and new found peer-pressure stress and I'm completely glad to have experienced it all.
