March 31, 2012

Self-Reflection and Evaluation

     Today I will be reflecting on my experience of writing blogs.  I have written three so far and the one that I can say I am most proud of is, "Summary of Poem: Bitch."  Writing this blog gave me a chance to analyze the poem, "Bitch."  Analyzing is something I do in general, especially with people, so writing the blog entry was sort of exciting.  I really took my time with it and I think I did a pretty good job.  The poem itself, I can relate to because I myslef have been in a similar situation. (But who hasn't?)

     What I have learned so far about writing about poetry in my English class is that it is extremely overwhelming.  It's easy to read something and talk about it, but when you have to write your thoughts about something on paper it is not a simple task. We have done a few activities in class to teach us the steps on how to write about or summarize a poem.  Writing blogs 1-3 was not easy at first, and is still not easy, but i am getting more comfortable with it.  Dr. X's brief lectures on symbolism, allusions, images and metaphors was a big help because, learning the meanings of these terms gave me a better understanding of a poem when I would read it.  That made it easier for me to summarize poems.

     One of my favorite activities that we did in class was working with my House members on helping another class with their work for Emily Dickinson's "I felt a Funeral..."  I enjoy doing group activities because I love to hear others ideas and opinions.  This activity was similar to the others we do in class because we had to summarize the poem and give our opinions on what we thought the speaker was talking about.  It was different in the sense that we were doing this to help another class.  I felt pretty good about turning in our group response because I believe our House did a great job analyzing this poem. I would do this group project again because we all worked really well together. There were no disagreements and it went so well that the time in class that day went by pretty fast. 

     I enjoyed reading my classmates blogs because everyone has their own opinions and in writing these blogs we are kind of forced to express our opinions.  I don't know everyone in my class but reading their blogs gave me an impression of who they are.