My Thoughts on Blogging and the School Year. [English Final]

1. Explain one or two ways audience feedback helped you grow over the semester. (It doesn't have to be stuff Sutherland said.)
• Have you been tracking your blog's traffic with Google Analytics? If so, you can respond to this prompt using the rich data that Analytics provides: Where is your audience reading from? What are your most popular posts (and why do you think they got the most traffic?) There are lots of possibilities here...

    In my first literature circle blog post for "Patient Zero", the actual author Jonathan Maberry commented on it. This was a tremendously surprising thing that happened to me and it actually made me feel motivated to dedicate more time and effort into the whole Literature Circle process. For example, my Confessions of an Economic Hit Man book review took me a considerably long time compared to the other one's I've done. This is made evident in my use of multiple quotes found in the novel (which took longer than I would have liked) as well as my analysis of the quotes and some themes that are shown. Peer feedback, well any feedback in this case has proven to get me motivated. It lets me know that people are actually taking their time to read what I have to write and it doesn't feel like as much of an assignment anymore. This aspect of it has definitely made blogging/writing more enjoyable. 

    The introduction of Google Analytics really made me pay attention to my blog more often. I would check out the site every now and then out of curiosity about what kind of data it would read. Actually, I posted a post about how cool I thought it was. Since then my blogging data has evolved a lot. As of November 27, 2009 I had a total of 63 views with an average of 1:38 spent on my blogspot. Looking at it now, I have a total of 366 views with an average time of 1:07 being spent there. A surprising little fact is that my original statement of purpose has had 66 page views alone, 47 of them being from different computers. Now this is one of those things where I have no idea why it has become like that, but for some reason it's the most popular/viewed post that I have to date. My absolute favorite aspect about Google Analytics however, would be the Map Overlay feature which shows where in the world people have visited your blog. I have 366 page views from 19 countries/territories. Now this is really really surprsiing to me because I have no idea how anybody would ever find my blog out of all the blogs out there. Besides having it linked to my Tumblr, I cannot think of any other way people would be exposed to it. I've had visits from places like, Saudi Arabia, Malaysia, Germany, Brazil, Pakistan, Russia, India, Belgium and Norway. These countries are all around the world so it's not like only a certain region of the world has viewed my blog. These kinds of statistics simply amaze me. The power of a blog can be limitless as long as you have valuable feedback and good content. I've learned that people will find your blog and it gives me a kind of grateful feeling. It's cool to know that all the effort I put into this blog isn't all for waste and people are actually reading it. Thank you to my followers especially! 

2. How do you like having a blog? How has blogging changed the way you write, the way you think, or the way you think about writing?
• Has blogging had any other effects on your life beyond strictly your "school life"? If so, explain.
• For the second semester only: Do you plan on continuing to publish writing on your blog this summer, next year, or beyond? If so, what are your writing goals and how will you use your blog in the future?

    Well, blogging for me hasn't ever been a new thing unlike a lot of other people. I was first exposed to blogs back in 2006-2007. During that period of time I didn't write much and it was pretty boring writing. I would just write about my thoughts or my day, like a type of online journal because I knew nobody who I knew would really be reading it. Since then, I've had numerous other blogs made simply out of boredom and as time progressed I started to post more and more frequently. I would actually get to the point where I started to feel kind of bad because I didn't post anything in a long period of time. For my blog before this one (which will remain anonymous), I actually managed to produce 66 different posts spanning from 4/26/09 - 8/22/09, so a little under 4 months. That's pretty crazy now that I think about it. Now this blog that I have now is very different compared to the past ones. 

   

    I feel like it's this one that has been the most changed compared to the previous. First of all, the thing that helped develop my blog was that a post was due every week for a grade, requirements were set and I got to work. I wanted this blog to be something meaningful. When Mr. Sutherland first introduced the whole blogging process I know that I could have just BSed everything and created pointless posts, but then I wouldn't get anything out of this whole thing. The key to having a successful blog in my mind is dedication. You cannot get lazy on your posts, or skimp out on the content of it. Knowing my peers/friends could read what I was publishing, I wanted to write better. I tried to make this blog more formal than others and tried to treat each post as an actual writing assignment.

    I would say that my blogging style has evolved into a combination of daily life posts, along with content filled posts that others can relate to. This has all come together in my latest blog. I don't think blogging has has much effect on my "school life". The one thing I would say however, would be that it has helped me produce writing much quicker and more efficiently. I'm not sure if this is because of blogging itself, or the quickwrites that we do in class, but either way it's helped my writing. 

    As of now, I'm not quite sure if I plan to continue with this blogspot account. Tumblr's user interface is just set-up so much better and has made it easier to get exposed to different blogs and have contact with others. Also, since a lot of people have Tumblr accounts nowadays, (because there was some trend about it apparently....) it's a lot easier to network with a wide number of people that I know. I might occasionally return to blogspot to make a post, but I doubt I'll post more than once a month. As for my plans for blogging in general, I hope to achieve a wider audience, while writing about posts relevant to my life, and not just posting pictures and videos. As said in my statement of purpose I still hope to improve my writing and vocabulary. I plan to also create more posts that are meaningful and post them more frequently. As for now, I think I'm just going to blog when I feel like it. Summer is around the corner and it's been a long long year. Blogging has definitely changed the way I think of writing nowadays, as well as the process I go through with coming up with a piece of writing. 

I hope that this will not be the last post on this blog, but who knows?

Thank you for an amazing school year and I wish you well on your future endeavors. 

                                                                  
                                                        With love,

                                                                Alvin Lee 

Senior Prom

So Senior Prom has come and past over the weekend and it has been the main factor to why I was so busy. The day started off early because I had to go and get my haircut. My dad drove me to Oakland, I got my haircut, he ended up getting a haircut and we drove back home after making a quick stop to the bank. By the time I finished showering and eating lunch it was around 1PM. I was supposed to meet the group at school around 3:30 so I had plenty of time to kill. I wasted most of it on the computer doing pointless things, or talking to my mom. I never seem to be able to do school work when there is still light outside, I don't know what it is, but it just doesn't feel right to me. Anywho, by the time it was 3:00 I started to get ready by getting dressed and everything. And then, the problem happened.

I knew that something was bound to go wrong today, but I was not expecting it. So apparently I lost my 2009-2010 school ID. I started to freakout for a good 10mins and spent the next half hour trying to find it. My dad had to resort to driving to the bank to get my passport so we could have some sort of identification on me. This really taught me a lesson. Instead of spending those wasted minutes just on the computer before, I could have been double checking everything. Also, it's important to check everything more than once, well ahead of the scheduled date to make sure everything will go smoothly and accordingly. So, to make a long, overstretched ordeal short: I went to school to meet up with the group bringing my school ID from last year and my passport with me, unsure about if I was allowed into prom.

So at school I took pictures, etc. and talked to people. It felt pretty unorganized since there were so many people in the group to keep track of. I ended up being one of the first people to Megan's house (the site where the party bus will be picking us up) and so people started arriving more overtime and a lot of pictures were taken during this time period. I was actually surprised about the size of the party bus, it was a lot bigger than I had imagined and it was nicely furnished on the interior also. So after an immense amount of picture taking, we all piled into the bus and headed off to Pier 29 (I think it was) to have dinner. On the ride there, we blasted music and just started having fun on the bus.  It was a pretty nice ride there and I started to feel more comfortable, considering I didn't know more than half of the people.

So dinner was pretty good, I had prime rib along with potatoes and vegetables. It was a pretty interesting experience eating with people you don't know that well, but it was still fun nevertheless. After the dinner, we all got back onto the bus and started heading for San Francisco. Another round of blasting music and people going crazy on the bus. There was even a pole on there! hahaa. Well, when we arrived I was able to get in and the dance had already started. I saw a lot of crazy people 'dancing' and was pretty surprised when soem teachers didn't seem to mind. The dance overall was fun, they had refreshments and even two chocolate fondue fountains. So I got home around 1AM, crashed in bed and slept the day away.

Friendship.

Friendship, one of the really major things that I value in life. It's a relationship with a person that you regard with affection and trust. I would much rather have a close knit group of friends compared to knowing every person in the school. Another thing is that I like to keep long term relationships with friends, meaning that I would go out of my way to stay in contact with a person who I feel like is drifting away from me. I value my friends a lot and would pretty much do anything for them. There's just this sort of energy when I'm around them that makes me feel safe and secure. I know most of their habits and how they act, and they pretty much know mine. I honestly can tell them anything about me without having to worry about being embarrassed. I'm really glad that I have the kind of friends that I do because there's people out there with just acquaintances rather than friends.

There's also those types of people who act like they're you're friends one minute and ditch you the next. That's why I'm so hesitant on making new friends or meeting new people. I mean sure, it's a great thing to get to know others, but you can't really tell what a person is like just after a few encounters. Also, there are those who have a misunderstanding of who their friends are. I'm not trying to sound harsh or selective or anything, but it's true. For example, if you're constantly hanging out with the same group of friends and suddenly one day someone just decides to randomly go with your group and act like they've been there the whole time. Like honestly, what are they thinking? Are they just trying to be a part of a new group or just have nothing better do? Either way it just annoying to me. There's just a lot of risks in meeting new people I suppose. You can't be too sure on what kind of information to tell them, and depending on the type of person you are, the trust factor has a big determination in how close you make friends.

The bond between friends is a very strong one. To me, they're basically the family that is there for you when your real family isn't. I treat them basically the same way as my real family, with the exception of being overly polite at times to my family. I guess a better word for them would be an extended family. I'm just really grateful towards all of my friends and everything that they've done to me. This weeks been pretty stressful for me and if it wasn't for my friends I would be in a mess right now. Like there's just something that I don't tell ym family either because I feel like they wouldnt understand or it would make matters worse and so that's when my friends are there for me, they cheer me up and help me through all the rough moments that I have.