What the Infinite Blog Taught Me

Taking Composition I and II with professor Hodges has taught me a lot about writing. I feel like my weak point in writing was always trying to convey my point clearly to the audience. After all of the feedback we received in composition II I can confidently say that I am now a better writer. I will use the techniques I learned in this class for the rest of my life and hopefully I will continue to improve m writing.

Understand that writing is a multi-stage, recursive, and social process. (In particular, students should address how they have engaged in self-directed revision.)

Writing is definitely a multi-stage process and taking this class taught me that perfectly. Rarely does someone convey their ideas perfectly on the first draft. Even professional writers do multiple drafts before finalizing one of their works. The feedback we would receive on our posts was always to help us improve our writing. I would go back and revise my work multiple times before I felt it was perfect. What I also learned was that professor Hodges was not the only person capable of giving useful information. Most of us as students would comment on each others drafts and give feedback as to where we thought the person could improve. The blog was a big help to me improving my writing because I was able to see where other students were making improvements.

Understand how texts represent meaning and how the processes of writing and reading create and interpret meaning.

Text must always have a meaning to it for it to be useful at all. I learned that I must be perfectly clear for the person reading my writing to interpret the meaning just as I do. I had to revise some of my essays multiple times in order for the reader to understand what I meant. There were multiple times when Professor Hodges knew what I was trying to convey but told me other people could interpret my writing completely opposite. The process of continuously revising my work has definitely helped me become a better writer and will help me in the future.

 Understand the role and use of information in writing.

Throughout the semester I was required to write many essays which I had to do research for. The information in the essays had to be correct or else there would be no point in writing about it. In order for me to obtain the correct information I had to search the internet and multiple databases so my essays could be taken seriously. I also had to read everything I searched to help educate myself on the subject I was writing about. After all of the research I did this semester I learned that even a website that seems credible may not be and I have to search multiple cites in order to obtain the correct information.

 Understand the power and ethical responsibility that comes with the creation of written discourse.

With the creation of written discourse comes a huge responsibility to convey the topic properly without plagiarizing. When writing my research paper I had to educate myself on both sides of the argument in order to make sure I was not writing false information. People read research arguments to obtain information and educate themselves on the topic. To lie in a paper where an audience relies on you for the correct information is immoral. Plagiarism is also very immoral because it is stealing someone else’s work which is why I would always read up on the information and incorporate it into my essays in my own way. I would also cite every source I took information from in MLA format so there was no question of plagiarism in any of my essays.