Blogging Around 2

I commented on Margot's best of week because her topic of group collaboration utilized a concept that our class needs to work on. I really liked how she explained what she did that helped her have fun while studying. Margot's overall theme was that working with groups can be fun and it gives many perspectives on a problem/prompt (essay in this case).

Margot, I really liked this blog post of yours. It was especially great to read because of your truthfulness. Along with your appreciation for studying with friends, you also admitted that we all get distracted. I find it hard to get quality work done while working with my friends. It’s wonderful that you find the right balance of fun, food, and focus. I think it helped me to go somewhere other than someone’s house. By going to Panera, the group of students I collaborated with was forced to focus because we had a limited amount of time and we couldn’t disrupt the people around us. Also, I found it really smart of you to realize that group collaboration can be used for other events in life other than our King Lear project. Overall, I thought your post was very truthful and insightful. Great Piece!

Next, I decided to comment on Marika's best of week about heroes and villains. It seemed very important and current because we just finished King Lear, which had a lot of villain hero mix-ups. Marika questioned how villains become the way they are and why we choose heroes to be the good people. Her observations and questions really interested me.

Marika, this post was very insightful. It raised so many intriguing questions, some of with depend on opinions or on the plot of the story. I really like when authors are able to make the “good” protagonist do horrible things but people still root for him or her over the villain. I find that situation to be more interesting than when the people prefer the villain over the hero.
Your questions at the end of were the best of the entire post because they question the reader and the intentions of the author, especially Shakespeare. I think the underlying question at the end is not what is a hero or a villain but how did they become that way, especially if you believe that they weren’t born innately evil. This was a very thoughtful piece. Great writing.

From all the posts I've read: Interesting topics and truthful writing!

Metacognition: Poem

As I was revising my poem I realized that most of the verses I wrote were really overdone, so my goal was to refine the content form of the poem. My poem was centered around two main subjects, music and my cousin. At first, it seemed to start out as two seperate poems because the beginning was devoted to a portrait of my cousin while the later half of the poem was only focused on the music aspect of the story. My main goal was to infuse the music aspect into the poem sooner and gradually make the turn occur.

To eliminate the cliché pieces throughout my poem I changed words so that they became more descriptive. By altering the ambiguous words and making each line original I was able to successfully, I hope, fix all those parts. I found that some actually fixed themselves once I started to shift the direction/focus of the poem. When I started to talk more about the music, the predictable pieces disappeared because I began to fill the places that lacked information. When only talking about my cousin's picture lacked detail and cliches began to form, the music subject would take their places.

I actually ended up erasing the entire first two stanzas of my poem because I felt, although they were detailed and fluid, they didn't fit in with the entire mood of the poem. Those few lines were too solemn while the rest of the poem was more about curiosity and disappointment. Instead of a long introduction, I cut to the chase and the poem was more interesting. This relates to the idea of avoiding starting essays with quotes because the reader is confused. I originally opened with a ton of detail and unnecessary information. Once it was cut out, the poem was more precise and less confusing.

Overall, I think my edits and revisions improved my poem. However, my worst fear is that all the changes that I just explained really impared the poem. I hope that all the changes were for the better.