Gangs of New York

Link to story on my portfolio site:Gangs of New York

Week 8 Progress

Looking back on my assignments for this class, I am disappointed in how much I have missed out on. I had set in my semester plan to do as much of the extra credit as I could. So far I have done NONE of it... I bit off more than I could handle this semester and I am hoping to get ahead of things during the last half of the semester. I will knock out some extra credit this weekend and plan to finish most of the reading for next week so that I can get ahead on a story. This last half will be intense and tiring but I will make it!

Attack the day!!

I definitely have to work on time management and prioritizing assignments to make the most of what time I have. I have picked out the slow times at work that allow me to finish up work and I plan to use those times to stay ahead once I use this weekend to catch up. As much as I can, I need to avoid doing the assignments past 9pm because I usually go to bed around 10:30pm and I try to rush through them when it gets that late. This last half is the half that I win it all!

Week 8 Comments and Feedback

I think the feedback aspect of this class is great! I really like how involved everyone is and how easy it is to read and evaluate other student's posts. One of the only down sides is that everyone tries to be so nice that it makes it difficult to leave honest critique because we have never met the individual that we're leaving the feedback for. I have noticed that as the semester goes on, the feedback is getting more in depth and students are more comfortable leaving feedback other than saying good job or what they liked about the posts. I think part of that is because of reading the introduction posts and that by this time, most everyone has seen everyone else's introduction post.

Cheezburger

With that said, I noticed that instead of pointing out what needed to be changed, I just left feedback saying that I enjoyed the writing and what specifically I liked about it. I find it difficult to actually be honest and I try to be nice with my posts. I am hoping that as the semester continues, I will feel better about leaving feedback and see that feedback can be helpful and positive at the same time! That is why I chose the image above.

Week 8 Reading and Writing

We're half way through the semester! Going back and looking at my notes, it is interesting to see how I translated my notes to a story. One thing I noticed is that I like to change a lot of the story. I use the foundation, but not much more. I'd like to try and stick closer to the origin and see where that goes. I would say that writing isn't one of my strong points. What I like about these blog posts is that they are all different and contain new material each post. It makes it nice to split up all of the writing instead of writing eight to ten pages on a broad topic. That's part of the reason I chose a portfolio. I was worried that I'd stall out and run out of ideas to finish up a long story. I love seeing how others are writing their stories and seeing how they carry them on week after week.

Amba, a Javanese shadow puppet

I like this image because the story of Amba talks about how distraught she was and how she had really let herself go and did not care about anything other than her revenge. When I read about her appearance, I imagined this but with more matted hair. To me it is a lesson about focusing on bettering myself rather than letting myself go trying to get revenge on someone else.

I look forward to writing more stories and using my notes in different ways so that I can understand which technique fits me better and produces better writing. Instead of straying so far from the story and my notes, I'll try making smaller changes and see how creative I can get with the characters. Happy midterms!