What I learned about myself as a writer is that sometimes when I personalize my writing it actually can enhance my writing. Before I wasn’t comfortable getting too personal in my writing but over time with peer reviews and different assignments I learned to do this. This is a quote from my Unit 3 tik tok “For me music can be very relatable and usually relatable music helps me find things out about myself”. The background was a part of a song from Frank Ocean where he says “Sometimes I feel like I’m a god but I’m not a god”, this may not seem as personal but to me it was very personal and i think it helped my tik tok because my audience can see what music does for me, and this helped my claim. This is from my earlier writing pieces of the semester “Education is important, however some children can be easily manipulated into thinking that it is the only way to be successful, or that it’s simply the most important thing in our lives.  When this happens it can lead students into feeling like a complete failure if they do badly on a test  or aren’t the top of their class. In the skit the speaker  says that while everyone is making money i’ll be in school and ill have my degrees, and this makes me think about how some kids don’t always live their youth to the fullest because they are worried about how they will be perceived based on their educational status. This skit made me realize that education is important but it’s not more important than actually living life in the present, and that worrying too much about how successful I’ll be in the future according to my education is simply a waste of energy.” There were multiple times where I could have added a personal experience in this, however I didn’t because maybe I wasn’t comfortable enough yet, or I didn’t know the impact it can actually have on the writing. 

   This can help me in the future because now I know another way to sway my audience. This can help me in future English classes or if I want to apply for a job. This skill is very useful and I will use it to help me reach other goals. 

   When I compare how I read in the beginning of the year compared to how I read now I notice some changes. Ever since I did the  “How to Read Like a Writer” assignment, I notice that while I’m reading a text I think about the author more. More specifically I think about what was going through the author’s mind when they made the decisions they did in their writing. Why did they use this word? Why did they use this literary device? Questions like these have helped me to understand texts more. This is obviously a skill that can really help me with future English assignments, however, in addition to helping me comprehend texts more, it also helps me become a better writer because now i think of why i’m really doing things in my writing and the impact it can have on my audience. When making the rhetorical analysis we had to analyze the authors decisions regardless, but the “How to Read Like a Writer” assignments helped a lot. For example, in my Unit 2 final it says, “Salimpoor uses experiments to find answers to her question and these experiments are specific and precise. This can build a sense of trust in her readers.” The  “How to Read Like a Writer” text helped me to analyze texts and by doing this I was able to figure out why this author made this decision in her text, and this shows how something we did in the beginning of the semester can carry on to something we do towards the end of the semester. 

 Something that was very difficult for me to do this semester is time management on my assignments. At times I would do assignments just before the deadline and this probably stopped my writing pieces from being as good as they could’ve been. I would procrastinate a lot and this was hurting my writing and my sleep schedule. What I did to combat this problem was doing or at least starting my assignments right after class since I had a big gap in between my next class. Or I would make sure to start my English assignments before any of my other classes.