Dakotah’s Journal

I have never really had a writing process in my career of writing. I’ve never been a huge fan of brainstorming or drafting or revising and editing. When I thought comes to my mind I put it down on the paper, and I just go with that. I reread my paper and fix any errors I might have made, but, for all this time, that’s really been it. This class has helped me realize that that is not a very effective process, and peer review is extremely helpful to utilize. It has been very resourceful. To be able to have another persons point of view and opinion on your writing, and checking for things that you might have missed, has proven to me to be a literal saving grace.

Additionally, this class has broadened my worldview. The readings that we were assigned were all vary different from the ones I had been assigned in high school, and they displayed a number of important, yet often not talked about, issues that are happening in our world right now, such as readings that center around race and feminism. It was really refreshing to be able to read these and to be able to have a better understanding of these issues, as well as being able to talk about them in a pretty diverse class. I cherished my classmates opinions and views of these readings, and they helped me to learn more. Throughout class discussions, I always felt like my opinion was heard and valued, and it was very cathartic to be able to talk about some things that you wouldn’t be able to bring up in every day conversation. I think that it is important for people to read Writing that might be outside of their comfort zone, or different from what they usually read, because in the end it’ll make them better and more nuanced writers.

Now to the question- how is writing a process? I think writing is a process because as I’ve learned this year, great writing rarely goes from your mind to the paper without any form of revision. There There is room for so many errors to be made when writing anything, so it’s important to have a good and thorough process. It’s important to plan out your writing and to write down any ideas that you have before you start writing because it may help you write  faster, since you already know what to write. Also, if you sit down before writing and write out any ideas you might have you will be able to reference it later when you might run out of ideas of what to write about. Next, it is important to revise and edit your writing. This is made easier with the help of a peer, or a teacher/mentor, because as I stated before, it is helpful to have another persons opinion or point of you on something you’ve only been seeing from your point of view. After this class, I view writing as more of a stepping stone type of deal rather than a straight mind to paper thing.

Overall, I very much enjoyed this class and I learned a lot despite it not being my most difficult class. Honestly this was my comfort class and I enjoyed and looked forward to coming. If you need any music recommendations, don’t hesitate to reach out 🙂

essay 1- https://dlayne.wp.txstate.edu/2021/09/22/journal-6/

essay 2-https://dlayne.wp.txstate.edu/2021/10/18/journal-9/

essay 3-https://dlayne.wp.txstate.edu/2021/11/17/essay-3-reflection/

essay 4-https://dlayne.wp.txstate.edu/2021/12/09/journal-13/

favorite entries-

Specificity exercise

Journal #4

Journal #10

I would say that essay number four was one of the toughest ones that we have written this year, purely just because I have never written an essay like this. my process of writing this essay was going back through my two pieces of literature that I chose and reading through them again and annotating them with a little bit more detail than I did the first go around. I would also say that this one was a little bit more difficult for me to write, personally, because it came at the end of the year heading towards finals and my time got a bit more crunched, so I wasn’t able to spend as much time as I allotted for the other essays on this one. It was also a bit more difficult because I had to constantly go back-and-forth between my writing and the readings, and it was no longer as opinionated, in the subjective sense, as the others. in retrospect, I should’ve allotted more time in order to write this essay. I wasn’t able to peer review it, and that also kind of messed up my process a little bit, and, if anything, it has further strengthened my opinion that peer review is very helpful and highly crucial to improving your essay. my final product was definitely not my best work, but I learned a lot from writing the essay, as again, I’ve never written an essay like this nor have I ever been really taught how to write an essay like this. In my English class in high school, we mainly wrote rhetorical analysis, so don’t get me wrong this was very refreshing to write it just wasn’t what I’m used to writing.

I liked being able to analyze the posters for essay three. I like being able to analyze literature, music, and movies, so this essay was pretty fun. I have always been really interested in the hunger games, and I’ve always found it very interesting how they advertised their movies. Honestly, they really outdid themselves with Mockingjay. Whoever came up with the idea of advertising their movie like it is propaganda for the actual capital and rebellion needs a pay raise effective immediately.  My essay  could’ve been better worded, and I did have a little trouble fully laying out my thoughts. I feel like I didn’t expand on them enough, and when I tried to expand on my thoughts, I felt like I was repeating myself. It was kind of hard for me to find words to elaborate on, because I feel like everything I wanted to say I had already said and I really couldn’t find another way to rephrase it. As always, peer review helped, but I feel like the feedback that I got wasn’t as helpful as the other essays. Not saying that my peers did a bad job reviewing my essay, but personally I feel like I wasn’t able to grasp a better understanding of what I should do like in the other cases. I liked writing this just about the same amount as the other ones, so it really wasn’t that bad. Overall, could’ve been better, however, Red (Taylor’s Version) just came out so I hope you’ll be a tad forgiving as I have been very busy analyzing that.

What I’ve chosen for my media for essay #3 are the movie posters for the third installment of The Hunger Games trilogy, Mockingjay pt. 1. The posters are meant to look like actual propaganda from both the capitol and the rebellion. They provoke a sense of uprising from the rebellion and compliance from the capitol. The “propaganda” from the rebels evokes pathos, creating a strong sense of anarchy and anger at being wronged by the capitol. The capitols “propaganda” has a more ethos-centered stance, portraying calmness, authority, and compliance. The posters thank the districts for their respective contributions, giving a false sense of order and mutual respect. In the viewer, it gives a bit of insight into what people in the districts felt like during the rebellion. As most forms of media are commentaries on society, some of the posters look very similar or have the same themes as those during the Holocaust and Mussolini’s rule.

It was a successful argument between my friend Cathy and I over which Mamma Mia was better (I argued the second was better (it is) and she was for the original). It was in Junior year and lasted two whole class periods. An hour and 40 minutes. It was successful because it was fun and no one’s feelings got hurt lol. She said that nothing tops the original which is BS because Cher is in the second one. Also, the Fernando scene ALONE tops the entire original. Also, who cares about Sophie anyways? I wanted to hear about Donna. And the fact that Lily James played her??? My future wife??? Iconic.

Again, I didn’t really have a process and just wrote. So, consider this a small interlude, as I am here to add to my word count. Do you see the sentence I just wrote, the very first sentence? Dumb. End of Interlude.I had trouble at first really figuring out if I liked and could be able to write about my topic, but I trudged through. While we were having our meeting it was very helpful to hear that sometimes you just have to tough it out, and, looking back, I really don’t know why it mattered to me so much that I liked what I was writing about because if I was a good writer, I would be able to write about some thing I didn’t like.It all could be improved, but it’s what works for me. Hi, another interlude, it does not work for me, and I found that out a little too late. End of Interlude. I wouldn’t change peer review because I find it helpful, and will never stop singing my praises for it. My final product could absolutely be better, but I feel like I did pretty okay considering this is my first time writing an essay of this format. I learned from this essay how to write in the IMRaD format. Overall, this essay was very informative, both in the information that my research produced, and in the way I was able to learn about how to write a type of essay that I had never experienced before.

My method for my essay will be an poll on Instagram, composed of 3 questions

1. Do you feel like you’ve had a less productive day after being on social media?
2. Has social media given you more confidence or insecurity in your physical appearance?
3. Has social media ever influenced your self worth, good or bad?

I will then analyze the data based on sex and age.

I believe that technology is changing everyone that uses it for both the better and the worse, especially in regards to beauty standards and self confidence of social media users. It can be a double edged sword of either inspiration or self-doubt.
To help my research, I am going to utilize one of the most convicted criminals of comparison: Instagram. I am going to conduct a few-question poll on my story, which will be available to my followers for 24 hours.

The process of writing my first essay, like every other essay I’ve written in my lifetime, was produced through no planning. I usually just write down what I think on the paper, or in this case the Google dock, and go with that. I mean, don’t be worried, I do revise and edit as I go, but I usually don’t reread my work and I don’t plan. I wrote a draft, anything that came to mind, then took out what I didn’t like. I don’t think it could be improved purely because it works for me, and I’ve never really resulted in anything productive by planning. Hi, little interlude from me weeks after this was written, this whole paragraph is embarrassing. It feels like looking at a picture of your middle school eyebrows with all the knowledge you have now. End of interlude.

I wouldn’t change anything about the peer review; I actually enjoy the process and feedback. We’ve never really done anything like that in any of my other English classes, so it was very refreshing and helpful to be able to have another perspective.

I’m not sure of how proud I am of the final product, purely because I was unsure of what to write about at first, so this was me scraping together content. Hopefully it doesn’t show. Another interlude, newsflash: it does show. Sorry about that.

From writing this essay, I’ve learned that peer review is a necessity from here on out, it is very helpful and resourceful.

The most trouble I’ve had when writing essays has been staying on topic. I’m good at giving detail and elaborating, but I always tend to stray a bit off topic, or misinterpret a prompt. And since I try to drive my points home, my whole essay ends up sometimes talking about something entirely different from the prompt.
I’ve also struggled with the structure of essays. I haven’t been able to hit certain points in the middle of rhetorical analyses. I like to have examples, or clear rubrics of what points are to be hit, and what structure the essay must be conducted in.