Self Reflection on Chapter 1.

I’d like to think that I am a decent writer and note-taker, however this new way of implementing note-taking strategies have been a bit difficult for me to catch on to. My strengths in taking notes for this I would say are my ability to write in detail. I tend to do really in-depth research, and thinking about what I am reading and then my thoughts just kind of pour all out into this really unnecessarily detailed mess. I also would like to think that I am good at summarizing what I have read. The way I do this is I take notes in the margin and summarize each paragraph or main idea that I’ve  read. Then I put them all back together which turns out to be one long summary of the whole article. I would also like to think I do well when it comes to finding main ideas and key-terms. When I read I find words or terms that I am not familiar with or that pertain specifically to the article, I will highlight it and see if I can find a definition online or if I can use context clues to see what it means.

Now I’m pretty biased about some of my strengths, but I also recognize that my writing also has many flaws. One of them being my grammar. I can spell and read and write perfectly fine, but I can’t figure out where commas go to save my life. I hope that over time my grammar will improve and my sentences will one day make sense when I’m writing. Another flaw with my writing is I’m not very good with word placement. I tend to just write whatever I’m thinking and my thoughts aren’t all that organized so it kind of just splurges on paper and most of them no one really knows what I’m writing about. It also comes off as very unprofessional. For example: I just used the word “splurged”. That’s not a real word. Someone somewhere down the line made it up and it became a way to describe how one freely spends money… I used it to describe the word vomit that you’re reading right now. SO not only is it the wrong word choice, it’s not professional. At all. The final flaw I have is I have a lot of very unpopular opinions on certain subjects. That’s not the issue though. The issue is my opinions are often viewed as negative and attacking. I have had several professors tell me that I need to change my statements and rewrite because when it comes to writing my opinion I go on tangents and rant a lot. Normally I don’t care about a whole lot, but then I find the one thing that absolutely bugs me and I fly off the handle. I am still working on that portion of my writing. I tend to also not have an end goal for my writing so my writing tends to seem like it’s dragging on and on with no real end goal or objective. All in all I am excited to write in a bit more of an informal format and take notes freely and learn different things in this English class.