Becoming a Blogger

          This was honestly the most fun I've ever had in an English class, and this blog assignment actually made me enjoy writing for the first time in high school. I would much rather have the freedom to write about something that interests me like I got to do in my blogs, than be forced to write about a certain book or event in history. I also think that writing on a topic of my choice actually improved my quality of writing.
          I've learned a lot about how poetry has changed over time, from poems that make no sense to me at all, to music I listen to everyday. Both types are different, but at the core, it is all poetry. From Tennyson to Ice T, poetry has evolved so much, which the blog assignment has really emphasized for me. It gave me a chance to delve into learning about the time periods that affected the poets, and how the poets affected their time periods. This cycle is what allowed poetry to evolve over time.
          I also thought it was so interesting how so many of the poets we learned about were so active in a cause and stood for something they believed in, from African American pride to intense social criticism.
          Before this class, I always thought of poets as old people who used a lot of symbolism to express life lessons which young people like me probably wouldn't care about. Now I know that these old poetry legends are much more that I thought. I learned that the subject matter is less important than the way the poets are able to formulate their thoughts and get it down on paper in a way that readers can relate to. It does really take a true genius to get a thought, a sentence, a word, or a letter to come out the right way. How well poets convey what they want to say it what makes them so amazing.
          I can also now look at rap with a lot more appreciation. It takes rappers just as much skill as it does poets, if not more, as they have to mesh their words with music.
          Without you guiding us through this whole process, I would never have learned to write blogs and I probably would not have ever considered writing a blog. I really liked how you gave us ideas to write about at first, and then gave us the freedom to choose our own topics.
          A blog is like a blank piece of paper. It is really hard to know what to do with it, but once you get the first few words down, I learned that the rest will flow a lot easier.