Thlogging 9

Grammar is an intense topic. There are so many little areas that are within each other that they all kind of just jumble together. For example, the many applications of semi-colons and colons in sentence structures. As always, I appreciate any refreshers and tips I can receive to improve my writing especially with something like grammar. I feel like I start to concentrate so much on the content of what I'm writing and forget to pay attention to little things. Simply listening to the examples of the semi-colons, parallelism, headge language, commas, sentence structure, and flow reminded me of the possible mistakes I have been making in my writing. It will deifinitely help when looking over the writing projects for the portfolio, especially for me because I hate re-reading my own writing which is where I create dumb grammar mistakes. The semi-colon presentation was extremely educational because to be honest, I've never really used semi-colons in my life. I have always been super intimidated of using them incorrectly that I just would not use them at all. Hopefully, I will be able to use them more often from now on. 

The semi-colon topic reminded me of this comedian who briefly talks about semi-colons in emails, and I thought it was sorta, kinda relatable to me because I pretty much feel that same way about semi-colons. Here is the link if anyone wants to watch it, I just thought it was really funny. 

I hope that I can incorporate all of these presentations in my writing portfolio. 

Thlogging 8

We are officially done with all of the Writing Projects! It feels pretty great, although now we have to begin working on the Portfolio and finish up the presentations. WP Numero Tres was pretty stressful because I wanted to create really good genres. I was extremely difficult to look through millions of Gifs and not get distracted(you don't even know). The good part is that throughout the WP, I was laughing really hard and actually enjoyed what I was making. I definitely admire the writers that continuously produce Buzzfeed posts because it is not as easy at it seems and way more time-consuming than I thought.

At first glance, the portfolio seems really complicated and lengthy, but I hope I will be able to learn a lot from it. I know working on this portfolio is going to take a loooong time but I'm sort of looking forward to it, and I am going to try to break it up as much as possible. I hate re-reading my own writing, which is why I have a lot of little, shitty mistakes, and I hope this will allow me to look more deeply into the way I write. I really want to improve my writing by being able to go back and changing it. I also want to pay attention to the flow of my WPs because I rarely do that after writing anything, and I know it is a big part of making the reader understand a piece of writing as easily as possible.  I'm sort of dreading the Portfolio but also enthusiastic about it.

Thlogging 7

I hate it when I can't think of anything to say for my thloggings, so I'll just start blurting everything at once. Thinking of an idea for WP#3 wasn't as difficult as I thought it was going to be. I definitely didn't try to force ideas out and instead waited for something interesting to catch my attention. I'm pretty glad that the idea I had wasn't awful and can actually be done. I feel rather hopeful for this writing project and plan to start first thing tomorrow. The comments I received from my classmates were extremely helpful and successfully got me thinking about where I could expand my ideas and consider other aspects. I truly enjoyed reading what they had to say and how I could make my ideas more clear.

I always enjoy the practices when we look at different genres because it reminds me that not every single item from the genre is going to have the same conventions. It allows me to begin thinking about all the different conventions that could be within a genre but don't have to be. I plan to use this little activity in preparation of the two genres that I will be creating. I hope it will help in getting my first order though process started, so that it will be easier to go ahead and actually create the two different genres. I want to de well on this WP, so I'm working hard to start to early instead of leaving it till the end.

PB 3A: Getting Old

As I've stated before, I don't really consider myself a very creative person, therefore thinking of ideas for WP Numero Tres has been considerably difficult for me. It wasn't until class that I became slightly inspired by the idea of making a funny birthday card for an older person, in their sixties or seventies, but then I realized that wasn't enough of a genre I could translate a scholarly article into. However, the birthday card led me to the topic of the emotions people feel when getting older through two different age stages.  I actually found two articles that would somehow go along with the topic titled, Change In Subjective Age Among Older People Over An Eight-Year Follow-Up: 'Getting Older and Feeling Younger?' and Age Differences in Emotion Recognition Between Chinese Younger and Older Adults, both in different areas of psychology. I know I need to choose one, but I want to break both down a little bit more to see which is more related to my topic. 

It is sort of interesting to me, how most children and teens are extremely impatient to become older and gain freedom. As tweens, they feel so much excitement to be eighteen and then to turn the glorious age of twenty-one, but at some point as people get older, most start dreading their birthdays and begin feeling old. Once individuals are in their fifties, sixties, etc, most want to truly ignore how old they are becoming and some will stop saying how old they are turning. The excitement of celebrating another year alive is definitely gone and it nearly all becomes consumed with dread.

Because of this topic of getting older, I decided one of the genres I would like to turn my academic article into is something similar to a Buzzfeed post about turning twenty-one. The audience for Buzzfeed posts are usually individuals in their late teens up to their early thirties. Specifically for my post, the audience will be people in their late teens and twenty-year-olds actually turning twenty-one. The post is going to slightly amusing, informal, probably contain images that are related to the topic, a really interesting title, and so on. All of these are common conventions of these types of post. I'm not still exactly sure what route I'm going to with, either the positive parts of turning twenty-one or the negative parts.

The other genre that I want to turn my academic article into is a personal letter to my grandma wishing her a happy birthday and comforting her about turning eighty-seven years old. The objective of a friendly personal letters is to demonstrate a strong personal connection between the writer and the reader in a way that is more touching because it takes longer to construct that a simple text or email. Even though personal letters can be sent to complain about a company or something similar to that, this letter is to convey a specific emotion. Because personal letters can be sent to anyone, the audience is rather large, although younger generations don't send personal letters as often as older generations.

I'm still wondering if these genres will be enough to satisfy the requirements of WP #3. 

Thlogging 6

WP Numero Dos is over and done with but we now continue to Writing Project Numero Tres. I do think I could have worked harder on WP#2 and done a better job, however I think I improved the overall flow and purpose of the essay. I do not think my thesis was the best thing I ever wrote but I also don't think it was horrible. It could have been more debatable, and I'm just glad it is over.

I'm pretty nervous about WP #3 because I'm not a very creative person and needing to make something up on my own is going to be pretty fucking difficult for me. I hope that I get some cool ideas that will allow me to be inspired instead of dreading the whole thing. I really want to do a good job and be satisfied with the work I turned and not be bored throughout all of it.

The online class was definitely a new experience for me, so that was preeetty interesting. I enjoyed "going to class" while being in the comfort of my own bed. Except, I had too many distractions and I'm not discipline enough to pay attention virtually. I much prefer the experience of listening to a teacher and having that interaction. It was a little crazy when I first logged in with all the questions, comments, concerns, and all that jazz. After twenty minutes though, I got it together and was able to follow the outline pretty easily.

Questions on Bob Ross

• What are some "moves" you see in these videos? 

Bob Ross' move when explaining his thought process is being so dam specific. He starts off by naming a very particular paint color, paintbrush, and amount of paint, etc. 

• How do these artists describe what they’re doing?  What do the artists refer to while they describe their work?  What do they talk about?  What do they direct our attention towards?  

Ross tells you when to get more paint and how, "pull the paint through, and wiggle it", the type of stroke you should be performing, and how many types you should be doing. The Disney Artisits refer to their artsy jargon-texture, diffuse light, pressure, distinct, subdued, etc. 

• How would you characterize each artist's style, and what impact does their style have on you (a viewer/audience member)?  How have these artists chosen to portray their subject matter?  

Each Disney Artist did their own thing while painting the same tree. One artist was really creepy and reminded me of like black magic. Another one was more abstract, he says he wanted to keep it simple and not add many details. Each of the artists had their own goal of what they wanted to present the tree as-decorative, detailed trunk, textural for movement, architectural.  

Journal Questions

Q1. So, in the end, how’d your WP2 paper go? What were you happy with?  What weren’t you? Why?
I tried really hard to improve the overall flow on my paper, and connect paragraphs and sentences to each other. I'm happy I focused on a specific similarity and difference between academic and non-academic texts instead of going all over the place like WP#1.  I still wasn't one-hundred percent satisfied with my thesis,  I was continually going back and forth between two different ones.

Q2. Which 2 or 3 comments that you received yesterday were the most helpful for you?  Why?
A helpful comment was when I was told to connect my quotes and add more analyzing on my part. It was great that was pointed out because I wasn't planning on explaining the quotes much more. Another comment given to me was being more specific on with my thesis but in the end I still didn't love my thesis.