Source: PhotoFunky
Starting in grade school I always got in trouble for writing too casually. Perhaps it was due to the immense amount of Lizzy Maguire I watched, a show where the narration was in the style of a stereotypical middle school girl’s diary, or maybe it was because my ideas best flowed out my head in a way similar to if I was verbally communicating them. So, I like writing this way, “casual” is the tone of my outlines and notes, but theres a lot more to an essay than tone (i.e. content).
With that being said, I would like to refresh your memory to my first introductory blog post. Oh yes a sweet innocent girl a mere one week ago who thought this “pursuit of blogging” would be easy; so easy, in fact, that I took the 5 extra steps to insert this Legally Blonde gif at the end of it (reproduced below for your reference).
Source: TheOdyssey
Yes, Leslie. It was hard. But not all challenging things aren’t fun! Honestly, I feel as if hypothetically I got a bad grade on this blog, this low number really wouldn’t affect my opinion on myself. Will it affect my grades? Yes. But will it reflect how I feel about myself as a human being? No.
To me, this blog has been therapeutic, I get to be myself, talk normally!, and even reflect on something I have been thinking about since the first day of school. I feel like this blog resembles me, and I am proud of who I am. To be brutally honest, this topic made me reflect a lot on who I am, if I can stick to my values, if I am at school for the right reasons, if I am going to this particular school for the right reasons, and if I know and am acting on the reasons for why I am at school! This class as a whole (and the very difficult time I have had adjusting to college) has made me rethink why I am on this earth. Is it to be in the business school so I can make money and have a dog and house when I’m older? Or am I completely off course and should follow what I am passionate about, maybe not what I am good at? This class, and the synthesis essay in particular, has made me rethink my life. Where do I get my motivation from? What are my passions?
Source: NewGirlBlog
So yes, this was hard. But revising Essay 3 into a blog has made me think more and more about what I am saying I believe, and as I write it in a more casual tone I start to realize I need to act on my beliefs.
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Back to the nitty-gritty stuff: the changes I made specifically to my synthesis essay I did through a series of strategic moves. First, I reread my entire synthesis. Then, I highlighted key paragraphs, phrases, or general claims I made. Next, I organized them into an outline and wrote down real life examples of each. After that, I decided: “scratch the individual examples for each claim!” and instead have one clear and personal example that I could follow up with throughout my blog (this was Dom’s story). After that, I started writing. I wrote way too much, and am still in the process of cutting it down. I am a very experienced diary-writer, so I got too into it. Gosh, the best part about writing diaries is not that you let out your pre-teen emotions and angst, no no it is going back years after and laughing at what you wrote. So In a way, that is reflection. The primary act of blogging in a way is reflection as well, so then I guess this reflection of my blog is then reflection inception, refleception if you will.
Source: Tumblr
WAKE UP!!!
The best part of this web logging experience was finding images to go along with my writing – it was hard but similar to the “picture essay” workshop we did in that it was creative and out of the box, both adjectives I extremely enjoy. The images add a little mind break and can more creatively force the reader to make connections (so instead of above saying of refleception was my joke that relates to the move Inception – I put a nice gif of Leonardo DiCaprio being woken up in that very same movie!)
Making it clear that my target audience was prospective college students, current college students, as well the recently departed graduated was really hard. In order to be more apparent in who I am speaking to, I used a technique I also used in my synthesis – a call out. I say, “so you college students!” and call them out, bring them into the conversation, and make this problem more relevant to them so that they really consider what I am saying. This act I believe is a huge expectation of a blog, and should be used in writing of all kind.
Blogs are for enjoyment, for tips and advice, a distraction from your own life and a focus on another’s, or in some cases perhaps a magnification/reflection on your own life. We expect blogs to be easy to read, funny (sometimes), and a call out to something (a product? a lifestyle? a thought?). So as a “climb” to write this blog (please reference the gif below in order to get a sense of my experience with this assignment when I say “climb”)
Source: Opinion As a Movie Freak
…I honestly think I did pretty well! Like I said, it was hard but fun. I stayed true to my voice and my opinions, made it funny (hopefully) and interactive through the lists and media sources. I also tried to make my blog template amusing and pleasing to the eye while still carrying the motif of the college experience (*nudge nudge* header photo).