The Places My Mind Takes Me

    I figured I would finish this blog with a nice free write and see where my mind takes me.

I have learned a lot in college, I’m not saying academically, even though that is obvious, but just in general. I want to put them out there, in writing, for other people to see. In doing this, I also get to use my own voice, completely and totally my own voice.

Things I Learned

• The Snooze button can be your best friend and your worst enemy
• Procrastination is a terrible and wonderful thing
• Never forget to call home
• Be honest with your roomies and your friends
• Before you go to bed each night, think about 5 great things from your day, even if you thought it was terrible, you can always find 5 simple things, I promise
• Don’t make a promise you can’t keep
• Know that in the end, things will be alright
• Stand-up for yourself
• Love yourself, if you don’t know how to love yourself, how can you expect anyone else to?
• Walk barefoot in freshly cut grass and enjoy every minute of it
• Sometimes you need a person to put you in your place when you can’t seem to find it, find the person that does and hold on to them
• Laugh at yourself
• Give back to the world, what goes around does come around one way or another, and the joy from giving back is better than you realize
• Lastly, know that bad shit is going to happen, but you have to be strong enough to rise above it, you have learn from it or the same situation will face you again until you learn your lesson. Accept the bad, but hold on to the moments that made you smile when you thought you had forgotten how, the times you laughed so hard your stomach hurt the next day, and the people who brighten your life by just being there

This is what I’ve learned, it is what I am taking with me after I graduate. These lessons may seem simple, but they were learned through some rough times and lots of tears and chocolate ice cream. I hope whoever you are reading this, can hold on to even one of these lessons and apply it to your life now too. Thanks for reading

    I wish I would have used this blog as a place to really show the class where my mind wanders to, but unfortunately I am lazy sometimes. Having my own public space is fun and exciting, but I could have utilized this space much more this semester.

I love coming to the end of a semester and having a teacher ask for complete honesty, because I love giving it. Honestly, I hate having to communicate with people through blogs and such when I can just as easily write them a note and tell them what I think in class. Honestly, I hate blogging about my ideas because I feel like no one will see them and it is a waste of my time. Honestly, I wish I knew at the beginning of the semester how I feel about blogging now….I can honestly say….I do kind of like it, in certain aspects.

I like having a space I can free-write about my ideas, I just should have used it more. In class I would think to myself, “Wow, that’s a great idea, I could write about it in my blog” but I just never got around to it. I wish I would have blogged a week ago after class when we all connected everything we learned in the class together because I had some great ideas, I just don’t remember them anymore, and probably never will. This is my own fault and I am going to have to read through my notebook later today because this will bother me all day to not remember what I wanted to write about.

Writing a blog doesn’t make me feel different about myself as a writer. Blogging simply makes me feel like I have a place to go to and write if I so choose, but as a writer I still feel  like a college student, not a real writer (even though I graduate in 12 days). I don’t know how I will feel about being a writer then, but for now I still feel like a college student that only my teachers have to read.

As for the effectiveness of this blog and how it could have been made better, I would have liked to have an assignment a week. This assignment would be to simply blog about anything, response to class, something that happened with you and your writing that week, anything, just to get us all blogging. Then choose a person, read their blog, and comment on theirs. This would not only have people blogging more, but it would be on the topics they chose, and then they would have to read each other’s blogs as well, and it would hopefully become a sort of habit rather than an assignment.

I wish I had more ideas or something more productive to say, but this is all I have. I am being completely honest in this post, I am lazy and should not have been, but an extremely glad I had the chance to really have a blog. My mind took me to many places this semester, sadly I just never blogged about them all.

So, like my first paper revealed to the class, and anyone who chose to read my blog, procrastination is a large part of my writing process, and at 8:39am Monday morning, writing one of the final posts for this blog, it is clear that I am a true procrastinator. I spent the past few days reading over my classmate’s blogs and I chose to wait to write out the ideas I have scribbled in my speaking class notebook (it had more paper than my Writing Process notebook).

So, what I have I noticed while reading everyone’s blogs? I have been in a class with some amazingly talented people. This is not just in the sense of writing a solid paper or presenting in class, but in their blogging too. I openly admit that I had not read people’s blogs this semester, I am a terrible blogger and a terrible blog reader, so going through and seeing what my classmates were capable of outside of class amazed me. All I knew of many of my classmates was from their presentations or comments I heard during fishbowls if I did not read their papers, but now I had the chance too, and I was amazed.

One person I really enjoyed reading was Joey. I knew Joey before class and knew his writing would be interesting and enjoyable, but unfortunately I was never in a group with him so I never had to read his work for class. After reading his final paper, I am glad I got to see what Joey was capable of. I loved his ideas and exploration of the issue of really teaching voice in a classroom, especially since we learned about voice in class this semester. The idea of not being able to teach voice directly other than using exercises to build voice really intrigued me. I agreed with a lot of Joey’s paper, so I was excited to read it. The only thing that made me cringe was a typo in the last sentence of his paper.

As for another paper that I loved reading, it was Kelsey’s final Memoir. I enjoyed reading her paper originally, but to see where the paper went, I was amazed. I feel even luckier now to have been in a group with such a talented writer. Her ideas of how to include aspects of her teacher were great, but even more, I was amazed at her openness and honesty within this paper. By having such an honest paper, it made me feel closer to Kelsey, but even more it made me feel something. Kelsey’s writing made me feel something, and that to me is amazing, because most writers don’t make me feel things, but she did, and I got to be in class with her, I am so lucky

The other thing that I loved to see was the creativity of people’s blogs. Ashley McNabb’s blog struck me instantly with the line “Putting some Elbow grease into my writing… ha” as an add-on below her page title. I laughed out loud and woke my boyfriend up from a nap, he asked what was so funny, I felt like a dork, and he didn’t get it. It made me feel included in a group of people who would understand that line and it’s creativity. I loved it.

Another page I really enjoyed was Jocelyn’s. I loved reading her final papers, but even more, I loved seeing how they were formatted. The way she added the disclaimers and quotes from her journal into her “Am I a “Writer?” piece were not only a great addition to her paper, but fabulous for her blog page. The way these sections were included with large quotation marks made them stand out and had me going “Wow, I wish I was creative to come up with something like that.” Jocelyn’s page is really her own and I loved seeing that.

All in all I loved having to read everyone’s blog because if I didn’t have to do it for class, I wouldn’t have actually read anyone else’s blog (sorry everybody, but it’s true). Seeing how far everyone has come in their writing and seeing the creativity of the people I have been sitting with for the past semester was extremely enjoyable to me. Thanks for the chance to read all your blogs everyone!