The final blog!

Looking back at all my blog posts made me realize the importance of blogging. Throughout the year I never looked forward to the weekly blog, but now I see that a blog is a way to express yourself. Everyone got to type their opinions and share them with the many other students in Mrs. Gilman's English class; even the quiet students who rarely ever share were given a voice. My blog has taught me to open up and share my ideas. After reading my blog I noticed that the first few were very organized and sounded like an essay, but as the year progressed my writing style and voice transformed. My writing began to sound more like I was speaking to the reader or like the reader was listening to my thoughts; I could see where I began to feel more comfortable expressing my own view on a situation. Also, my opinions have definately changed. While reading my past blogs I continually disagreed with what I wrote, for example in the "Writing About Reading" blog I wrote that I can read in loud places, but once I read that I immediately realized that now reading isn't an easy task for me when there's noise surrounding me. One of the blogs that I read that I was amazed by was the Animal Farm project. For the project I wrote a poem and the thing that amazed me was the little details that I put in it; I felt proud that that was the poem I had written. Speaking of animals, I noticed that I used birds as metaphors quite a bit...okay well only twice, but those were about the only two times where we had to think of a metaphor for the book we were reading in class. Throughout the year the blog has helped me develop a multitude of skills. It has taught me a new way of writing, embedding/citing quotes, supporting my main points, creating imagery, finding themes, literary analysis, and many more skills that will help me throughout my english(and possible college) career. Seeing my development through the year is a great experience. I get to see that I have learned and matured throughout my year in honors english. Also, we blogged about almost every book we read in class and we had to discuss the literary analysis behind each book multiple times. I discovered just how much I worked on analyzing those books and how it paid off in the end. By reading the blogs for the books I saw that Great Expectations was definately the book that I seemed the understand the most, even though it was very long. I feel that this blog is about self expression and learning how to state your opinions and feelings. Don Miguel Ruiz once said, "The freedom we are looking for is the freedom to be ourselves, to express ourselves." By expressing ourselves we find who we are. The blog has made my voice louder; I've learned that sharing your ideas not only helps your brain develop, but it also helps you develop who you are.