Blog Deep Dive #1

    She finally made herself get up and do it. As she sat on a creaky chair that was just slightly too tall for her desk, her hair tied back and her eyes barely staying open, she began to read. Why did she wait until the night before the test to start the assigned reading? She wanted nothing more at that moment to be able to know all of the knowledge of the world, than to have to bring herself to pick up a 10 pound textbook and sit through a droll information dump written in what she could only assume was the smallest font size to exist. But, she wanted an A in this class, and she knew she could do it. She turned from page to page, taking in the information with a slowly growing anticipation to finish each chapter. Finally, she turned the page to reach the end of the assigned chapters. She silently rejoiced at finishing. Only soon would she realize that the information she had absorbed would disappear from her mind the moment she closed her eyes and fell asleep. After the test the next day, she made a silent promise to herself to start her homework earlier in the unit, next time.

    I think I could definitely improve in procrastination of assigned reading. I'm normally a very good time manager, but textbook reading tends to bring out the worst in me. I generally love reading novels for class, but any non-fiction or info-dump pieces I procrastinate on heavily. My goal for this semester is to improve in that field specifically.

    Percy realized by the end of his narrative that, while reading slowly may have seemed tedious and unproductive, it allowed him to analyze the works he was studying down to the writing style and punctuation use. He may not have been reading as many books as he had when he began graduate school, but he was absorbing the media with a better takeaway. To me, being the "slowest reader" means, as the term states, to not be able to read in the quickest fashion, but also to be able to close-read the text and understand the author's intent and purpose in writing it. I think that being the "slow reader" is incredibly important when reading the assigned works of this class. Every essay that we will read will have some pertinence to our current subject, but it will also open a window into the author's mind. It will show the author's intention and the effect they want it to have on their readers. Understanding these basic facts will help anyone reading these essays to begin to look deeper and read between the lines more.

    She knew that she should start this assignment early, she didn't know exactly how long it would take her and she knew that if she wasn't satisfied with her first attempt, she would keep going until she was. It was simply just the nature she had inherited from many generations of professors and academics. She opened up a blank document and sat looking at it for what felt like an eternity (more realistically, five minutes). Her eyes wandered around her desk as her mind settled on every other thing she wanted to do right now. Finally, she thought of an obscure sentence that might fit somewhere in an obscure paragraph. She typed it in, and as soon as she hit the return button, her mind was off. For the next two hours, she had a constant stream of text on her screen, the word count approaching higher and higher numbers. In the end, she took a step back and looked at the document. Wow, that was much easier than she had expected. With just a few final touches, she was complete, and, surprisingly, satisfied.

    My writing process is pretty solid, except I tend to omit the editing and revising steps. I come from a long line of professors and grammar correctors. I grew up with my father constantly monitoring my grammar usage and making sure he was able to proof-read my essay before I submitted them. Because of this, I catch myself doing the editing step while I'm writing my drafts. I aspire to separate these two steps this semester. 

    I found the third tip in Bunting's essay very useful. His tip was, "As you research, ask yourself, 'What surprises me about this subject?'". This is the tactic that, honestly, is what gets me to get up and start writing in the first place. Often, I never truly know what exactly to write about, but finding an interesting fact and expanding on it is a great way for me to just get my mind moving in the right direction. The other tip I found useful was the sixth one. This one stated, "Write the body first, the introduction second, and the conclusion last". I write in this manner almost every time I write an essay. Usually, I will figure out a thesis and then write my topic sentences. I think that writing an intro or conclusion first stunts the writing, plus, writing them last allows me to pull ideas from each other and from the body paragraphs to accentuate my points made in the thesis. Both of these tips will be very useful in writing in the future.