Half way through the semester.

So, I really liked filling out the blogging portfolio actually. It showed me what I need to do to improve my blogs, and I got a chance to read through my older blogs too. I got the chance to do the same thing while filling out the commenting portfolio too. Therefore, I think it was a very productive thing to do. Surprisingly enough.

As I am preparing for the mid-term, I have skimmed through a few stories and re-read the chapters in our literature book. It always surprises me how much I miss the first time I read something. I especially realized this as I was reading the chapters out of the literature book again. Of course, I don’t think I read them well enough the first time, so maybe that is why so much stuck out to me the second time around. Either way, I learned a lot.

I really liked the exercise of reading our short stories together and discussing them in small groups. Everyone had really good stories, and we had great discussion to boot. It was interesting to see how everyone’s personality kind of came out in their stories. A couple people wrote about something that was pretty prominent in their lives at the moment. With me, even though I didn’t necessarily write about something specific going on in my life, a few things came through that I didn’t even realize until after I read it again later on. I thought that was kind of cool. Like I subconsciously wrote about what I was feeling. It was a good experience to hear other people’s thoughts on each other’s stories. It kind of gave us new and different perspectives on each story. Some people saw it differently than the writer was intending and some just agreed with the writer. Anyway, I personally liked the exercise a whole lot, and to begin with I was sort of dreading doing it because I didn’t want to write a story and then I didn’t want to read it to other people! But it all turned out good. J