Did she do it on purpose?

So far through the semester i feel like i have improved on my ability to blog. On my first blogs i was just focused on getting enough words down and finishing it. However as i read my newer blogs i can clearly see that they have a point and nothing is being rushed. I have noticed that throughout blogs,people have become more open with themselves and have been telling stories about their life and personal details about themselves. I guess this is good because then when you write something you can get a personal aspect to it, but i seem to have a hard time with sharing my personal life and feelings with people over a blog. It's not that i don't share my life with people, i just think it feels weird to just put out my personal information about myself out on the internet for all to see. Maybe on one of my next free-write blogs i'll just go for it and tell a personal story about myself and see if that changes anything in how i feel about my writing. I have noticed that writing papers has become a little bit easier for me. I use to kill myself with thinking of what to put and then actually putting it on the paper, but ever since we started blogging its been a bit easier for me to process my thought onto the paper. Which makes me think, did she do this on purpose? Did my teacher know that this was going to be helpful in improving our writing ability and help us become more comfortable with writing? .....naw.

Peer Review

I found that the peer review was a helpful resource in writing my paper. i tend to have a real hard time with writing papers. i get very distracted and find it hard to stay on the topic within the paper. once i start writing a paper it's best for me not to be interrupted. While staying on task might seem great to some people its not always the best for me. If my idea doesn't really have anything to do with what the paper is about then i don't have anything from stopping me and just rambling on about the wrong topic. Having our peers review the paper really helped with directing the idea of my paper towards one that fit the prompt. It helped because it seemed that everyone had some comments that were similar so i knew that those definitely needed to be changed or re worded while they each had some comments that the others didn't which also helped with rewriting my paper.

I found it really easy to make comments on others papers for the peer review. Although i will say that i thought it was more productive in a group setting than just commenting on word. While on word i only have my thought to guide the person and have to think of the technical words and terms. If we are in a group discussion setting in class i found it easier to get the point across. It also helped with thinking up new ideas on what to add to the paper or to elaborate on since there were more people to brainstorm with. Overall i liked peer review and thought it to be a very helpful resource.

Bilal's Stand

So today I went to see a movie in the union theater. It was called Bilal's Stand. Going into the movie i had no knowledge of what it would be about so i had an open mind. The movie is about Bilal, a Muslim high school senior who works at his family's long-owned taxi stand. "The Stand," as they call it, has been the source of all activity and money for the family for the last sixty years and it seems like Bílal is about to carry the torch. He secretly applies to the University of Michigan and takes up the art of ice carving in order to win a scholarship. However, he is forced to decide whether he will continue working at the Stand, the only life he's ever known, or take a chance at social mobility. Surprisingly this was a really great movie. I truly enjoyed watching it and would definitely refer it to everyone i know. As weird as it sounds, I talked to one of my old teachers about the movie and she said that she had seen it and liked my idea of turning it into a fun assignment for after exams or midterms. I tend to be a movie buff or i guess it's called an addict because i tend to watch movies over and over again until i learn just about every line, phrase, or joke that's in them. This movie is on one of those levels where i just want to watch it over and over again. I recommend that you take the time to see this movie cause it's really worth a watch.