Semester 2 Final

1. Explain one or two ways your writing has improved (or not) over the semester. Include a few examples from your posts over time, with analysis and links to the original posts, to illustrate how the improvement(s) happened.
For the second semester only: If you want, you can reflect on improvements you've noticed over just the second semester, the entire year, or even multiple years if you have examples of your writing from the more distant past.

3. 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...

8. 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?

1. I looked over my blog recently for this assignment, which took a really really long time, and what I noticed was that my writing doesn't sound too terribly different from how it sounded at the beginning of the year. And when I read some of the stuff I had written in my portfolio, it sounded pretty much the same. The only difference I could really tell over the years is that when I was a freshman, I wrote very rigor mortis. I had no style, it felt like I was following a formula, and I'm pretty sure that's actually what I was doing at the time, but I was following it to the letter. My writing just seemed so constricted. Now, I have broken those chains. I don't follow a formula, I have a blog, who needs it (the formula)? Because of this blog I have a developed an independence, a style, and for that I thank you Mr. Sutherland. I can't really show any specific examples because it was a very slow process and it was very subtle as well. The only way I noticed was from looking at a paper from an important time. For example, looking at something from freshman year, then sophomore year, at the beginning of this year then at the end and only then can you see a difference.
That first post was short, and reminded me of the stuff I wrote when I was a freshman, it was a little boring, and didn't really show me I guess would be the best way to describe it. Now my last free blog post, I think it had character, it had a lot of writing in it, even if it wasn't exactly 500 words, and I believe that all of this is because of the blog and the amount of writing in it.

3. I can not say that I have gotten much audience feedback, and I can't say that the feedback I've gotten has helped me grow, but I can say Google analytics is really interesting. It has told me a lot about my site, even some ethically questionable things. It's told me what site's people are visiting my site from. What color they are viewing it in, what their operating system is. It's told me how long they've stayed on my site, what country they live in. It can tell you if they have visited it before, what post they look at. Pretty much the only thing it won't tell you is who they are. My audience mostly consists of people from the bay area and random places in the U.S., but I've gotten a few views from Great Britain, Russia, Turkey, and Sweden. Google analytics could probably tell me how many hairs each person has on their left index finger but that would be morally wrong so it doesn't include it in the report.
It said that my skateboarding vs. cops post was my most popular one. I'm not completely sure why this is, maybe because I have a lot of friends that skate, maybe someone saw it and thought it was a relevant issue and spread the word. I don't know, but I do really like that post, maybe that's why it's the most popular. One of the cool things about that post is that someone that I did not know commented on it, which is always nice. Just to know that someone reads these things always feels pretty good, it doesn't really affect my writing but it gives me more of a sense of purpose, and that motivation is a very good thing, it's probably why I will end up keeping this blog.

8. I still really like having a blog, even though not many people read it. For some reason my myspace music page has almost three times more views and it's only been up for a few months. I guess there's just more traffic on myspace, which is weird because myspace died like a year ago. Blogging has definitely changed the fluidity of my writing, or so I've been told. It would make sense that it has improved in that nature. I've written a ton of stuff this year. I think this will be my 40th post and they've all been at least 300 words, a lot of them are over 300. Even if you don't learn anything, your writing should still improve if you write close to 20,000.
I think now, I think a lot more openly about writing. I can just write, I mean, after writing a few hundred words a bunch of times, it gets easier. I'm also not as scared of writing. I used to hate doing big writing projects and stuff, but now it's a lot easier so I don't stress as much.
My blog hasn't had much of an impact on my life outside of school. I'm thinking over the summer I will put some more time into it, maybe to raise awareness around the music I make sometimes. But it's whatevs, I learned that there are a couple people at school that read my blog sometimes, I found that pretty cool, but it doesn't really affect my life much. But I am going to keep the blog, maybe not this one because, as analytics shows me, I don't get much traffic on this one, but I do have a tumblr with some of my favorite posts on it. And tumblr is geared more towards my age group. Lots of people have been able to make a living off of blogs, hopefully I can kickstart my music career, or I could just have fun with a blog that has no limits.