Using a blog as a reflective tool for my writing class was very effective. The blog offers a space where I can go to write my thoughts and reflections about the assignments given to us in Writing 101. It also gives me a space where I can collect and organize my writing process, as well as who I am as a writer. Keeping a blog for the entire semester has given me something that I can use to reflect upon my own learning. I will be able to learn from this blog not only now, but any time I choose to go back and look at my writing. It is fascinating to see my growth as a writer in such a short amount of time. Although the quality of my blog may not be top-of-the-line, it does do great job of explaining what all I went through and what all I learned about this semester.

Keeping a blog for this semester made me an exponentially better writer. We were given quite a few assignments that instructed us to go find a piece of writing and analyze it. On the surface, this may seem simple. However, I came to find out that there was much more beneath the surface of writing than I had previously thought. Knowing about your audience is one of the strongest tools available in writing. Being able to shape and mold a piece of writing so that it better reaches an audience will improve one’s writing extremely. When writing reaches the intended audience, the readers are able to clearly read exactly what point the author is trying to make. Keeping in mind the intended audience while writing my blog helped to reinforce the idea that all of my writings should have a target audience, and they should all address said audience appropriately.  I plan to use this concept of intended audience to strengthen all of my writings.
Another important benefit I gained by keeping a blog was the ability to read more effectively. Now that I have a clearer understanding about why authors make the choices they do, I am better able to decipher what the authors main point is. This allows me to “trim the fat” off of any piece of writing and study the main points. I feel that this makes me not only a better reader, but also someone who can learn easier. Now that I understand how to look for and identify a writer’s (or speaker’s) purpose, I am better able to respond in a manner that is beneficial. I plan to use this skill not only when I write and when I read, but also when I speak to people. The ability to identify an intended purpose or main idea will be extremely helpful in all of my future writings and readings.

I feel that the area I grew the most in by keeping this blog was my ability to critically think. I feel that keeping a blog helped me to organize my thoughts and to become a clearer writer. Throughout my blog, I analyze many different articles from the NY Times. This analysis helped my critical thinking skills immensely. Because of keeping my blog, I now feel that I am a much stronger thinker as well as a much stronger do-er.

One thing I wish I had more of in my blog is personal reflections that have nothing to do with academia. I wish I had taken the time to write more about my every-day life. It would be very beneficial for me to be able to look back at some of the struggles I was facing in my personal life and see how I grew from them and how I overcame them. I also think it would be a fun way to look back and reflect upon my life a few years from now.

In my blog, I mention a lot about tools to strengthen your writing. I like to imagine that people as writers have a sort of “tool belt.” This tool belt is filled with all the different strategies and techniques one can use in his or her writing to make it more effective. One example would be the use of ethos, logos, and pathos. Using these three different tools can do a lot to strengthen or shape one’s writing. Pathos is used to draw out an emotional response from your audience. This will cause the reader to connect the emotion with the writing in his or her brain. This causes one’s writing to be memorable and impactful. Ethos can be used to strengthen the credibility of one’s writing. By making statements or by drawing upon credible sources, one makes his or her writing much more credible and reliable. Logos can be used to add details and statistics to your writing. When invoking the use of logos, a writer can effectively describe situations more clearly because of the use of data and statistics. Using logos will also help to strengthen the credibility of one’s writing, because well-organized facts and data help to add to the overall credibility of the argument.

After careful revising and completion, I have added tags to my blog. Tags are short words or phrases that are used to sum up or categorize my posts. For example, one of my tags is “Purpose.” If you click on a post with the Purpose tag, it will take you to all of my other posts that are related to purpose.  The tags that I have chosen to organize my posts, as well as the blog posts that I created are a representation of my understanding of what it means to be an educated person.