Second Essay Information

  My essay is indeed rough.  I know that I need to work on the main points to be clearer and allowing the strengths of it to flow through.  Overall though I feel the body does run well together. I give points from my article i'm searching as well as using West's article for support for identity.

Essay plans

In my essay coming up I plan to approach the idea of identity, but instead of researching on how to find identity I will come from the viewpoint of written identity or personality versus actual identity.  I will also add to this argument the standpoint of blogging being a great source for educational academic writing. After this essay is finished I hope to have found what it is that I am looking to share with the readers, but I'm not quite there yet. Until then- C.E.

Caught

I made my decision to do option number one and reflect Kathleen West's article to my own, but I am honestly stuck to figuring out and focusing on what it is that I am actually doing.  I know myself pretty well and studying the way I write should help me with connection to Kathleen's point of identity.  I am a writer who has my own identity, but the main question is: "how is my identity through writing different to me as a person?".

Application

   To tell you readers the truth from Kathleen West's article, I have no idea what I am going to do with my essay from it. Typically if I chose something to write on, I know for a fact that I would change it completely by the end of my essay. I could write my piece about true identity vs fake identity or on identities through writing and how they vary to who the person is in character traits; I have so many choices! Though, as of right now I am just testing and brainstorming. Let's see where this takes me! -CE

Finding Significance

Tonight I read over Kathleen C. West's article "Weblogs and literary response: Socially situated identities and hybrid social languages in English class blogs" and as of now I am supposed to write down what the significance is of the article. Which, to me, was overall the whole entry.  She touched on the differences of blogs that her students wrote and how to interpret them to find identity. I think it is great with what it was that we, as a class, needed to do in our first essay.  Now, having said that I wish I would've read this before I started my research. I found that this article is mainly about the different identites of the bloggers; and either informally or formally written the blogs still held true to who the person was as she knew them.

The Learning Process

    Do you remember in my first blog I posted that as a writer I am an explorer?  I saw that ideology come to life with the writing of my essay and during the research process.  I explore to learn and seek out new information that might tie into what I am doing.  Though, I also learned that searching in writing requires risk.  The risk of a loss of time, as well as the risk of having to change a lot of things.  Mind you it doesn't always have to be that way, but in me being adventurous in many situations, I prefer a challenge.  My essay came out to what I hoped it would be and I realized more of how I truly do like risk in exploration.
    

Reflecting on Essay 1

  What to say about my first essay?  I think I would have to use the word challenging for my description. In the beginning of the first draft I was confused on what to write about but I kind of swerved myself into the loop by asking questions and learning the details that mattered.
   Most others said that finding a blog that was suitable for their topic was difficult, I however found something pretty quickly, and I am thankful for that.  
   Though after my essay was formed, I kept looking back to decide if the things were really what I wanted to be talking about. And they weren't. Changes were made and challenges were overcome for me mainly by just exploring the essay itself and the blog I was researching.  Without that I wouldn't have had the feedback that came from others, which really was only to reword the thesis and switch around the paragraphs.
   Overall, I think that I did pretty well and I am proud of the outcome of my essay titled, "Travel through Identity".