Theme 7 and Reflection

As I was looking through my writer’s notebook, I realized that I didn’t really write about anything too important. Mostly, I complained. I complained about writing the journal entries, and I complained about Mr. Juliani’s class. I also complained about school in general. So I thought I would take this opportunity to complain a little more.

I think Mr. Juliani’s class has been a great learning experience for me in that I have definitely learned I do not like analyzing poems and quotes that I personally feel do not need to be analyzed. I feel, sometimes people just say what they mean, and there is nothing else to it. Yes, people can talk about what they said and debate about what the hidden meaning could be, but what’s the point; you will never know what they really did mean unless you personally ask them.

Another thing I learned from Mr. Juliani’s class was, I am not a good writer. I have tried very hard to write very strong papers and yet they all seem to come back with C’s as a grade. I no longer fight him about these grades but have learned to except the fact that language arts is not my subject and I am not a great writer.

The next thing I learned from Mr. Juliani was that I am a very slow writer. Despite how long he said our tests should take, I would never finish. I have not finished one of Mr. Juliani’s tests this year, and am fairly confident that I never will. I write as fast as I can and I usually know most of the answers but I cannot figure out a way to get all my thoughts down in forty minutes. But apparently there is a way to finish these tests because, most people in the class find a way to, which further proves to me that I am a slow writer.

Mr. Juliani’s class has also allowed me to learn that I am not very creative. With all the different projects, free writes and fun activities we have done in his class, mine have all been boring. I always thought that some cool, creative idea would come to me, but none ever did. No matter how much I thought about it, my ideas were always kind of boring.

The next thing I learned from Mr. Juliani’s class was that there are two types of reading, the first I was always aware of, just reading to read. But the second kind of reading also included interpreting. I was never aware that interpretation of every character’s actions was an expected thing to do when reading. When it came to the tests and discussions on the book they were never about what happened in the book, they were always about the interpretations of the characters and their actions. I learned very quickly that simply reading was not enough.

Mr. Juliani also likes to change his due dates and requirements for projects a lot, which I think is unfair. I am not usually the type of person who does things in advance but the few times I went out of my way to do so for Mr. Juliani’s class I ended up having to change something, due to a requirement change or the due date was changed and I could’ve had more time. This has taught me that waiting till the last minute to do things is actually better.

The last thing I am going to complain about is the word requirements for our blogs. First of all, I do not truly believe that Mr. Juliani really counts all the words or reads everyone’s blogs, but I still try to make them the correct amount of words. I do not see how achieving a certain word requirement can help my writing in any way. I always thought writing was not supposed to be forced. For example, right now I would be done with this paper if not for the word requirement making me feel the need to add this paragraph. I have been wrong about most other things in this class and apparently I am wrong about this too.

Mr. Juliani’s class has been quite the experience for me so far this year and I cannot wait to see what is still to come. I think that I have actually discovered a lot of information from this class whether I enjoyed it or not. And I am sure that one-day be I will be thanking you, Mr. Juliani, for teaching me all that you have.

Reflection

I think that this theme was very fun because you got to write about whatever you wanted and didn't have to write about something you don't really care about. 

I changed my conventions the most because in my rough draft I got all my ideas on paper in an organized way. But I didn’t really worry too much about the grammar and spelling. For my final draft I went through and changed all the spelling mistakes. I also went through and changed any sentences that didn’t flow very well. I tried to make sure that all my conventions were correct. 

I felt that I had an excellent focus in my rough draft so I didn’t really change too much in that area. I only wrote about what I disliked about the class and nothing else. 

My style was strong in my rough draft because I wrote about something I care about but I still had some places that needed help. 

I also thought that my structure did not need any changing from my rough draft because I spit it into paragraphs with an intro, conclusion, and body paragraphs with one idea in each paragraph. 

The content of my paper needed some changing because some things I wrote about tin my rough draft I did not feel as necessary anymore when I went to revise it. I took out a point that seemed redundant. 

Overall my paper did not need too much editing and revising from the rough draft to the final because I worked hard on my rough draft.