Reflection Essay

As I started blogging for this course I was not afraid to state my opinions about what we were reading. I really read deep into what we as a class were focusing on and by doing that I felt that I was able to create good solid ideas that were reflected in my blog posts. As the quarter went on I will admit that I did not put as much time and effort into what I was writing. It defiantly showed because the comments that I was receiving from my classmates were becoming more and more negative and quite frankly I started to lose confidence in my capability of forming a strong blog post. But when I started getting grades that I was not too happy about I began to shape up and really take my time to go over and revise what I was posting to my blog. I believe now, at the end of the quarter, I am back to really caring about what I produce to my classmates as well as to my professor.

My first blog post, She Had Some Horses, I really think I nailed it. I had good arguments and good evidence to back up what I was discussing. I argued Joy Harjo was referring to the “horses” as emotions. I received six different comments from my classmates. They said that they really liked what I had to say and I made them think of the horses in a different way than they had originally thought. That was a good confidence boost since it was the beginning of the quarter. It made me feel like what I had to say really mattered. In the next post, again, the comments from different people in the class were positive. Even my professor noticed my idea that I found the animals as a very important part of Ceremony.

When I wrote about Decolonization of the Mind by Gloria Bird, the comments were not as positive as they had been before. This was the point where I started to get discouraged. I started to lose a little confidence in what I was writing and I did not want anyone in the class to be reading it. This pattern continued until I did my last revision for the Summary/Application blog post about Sherman Alexie and his humor. I really worked hard to revise it and the professor could tell, so I ended up with a better grade. This brought back my confidence in myself to be able to produce a worthwhile essay.

I felt that my comments on the other classmate’s blog were decent. I told them if I felt that they could have answered a question more thoroughly and I also told them if they did a really nice job completing the assignment. I think that by commenting on other classmates’ blogs, they were able to get another point of view of what they had wrote. By receiving opinions by other people they are able to see where they could have improved and also where they made a really good point. It’s always nice to be complimented on your good work regardless of the subject.

Knowing that my blog was public I wanted to write something that had substance and meaning. I did not want to just write a bunch of junk that no one wanted to read. I looked for the approval of my classmates when they would leave me comments. I really appreciated their feedback, even if sometimes it did hurt when they did not have many good things to say about it. Above all else I wanted to impress my professor because in the end, he is has the final say about how well I have completed each assignment. I really hope that I have made some type of impression on the readers of my blog and I hope that I have helped spark new ideas and interpretations of what we have studied this quarter.