Connections- My first connection was found right off the bat. It was when he mentioned slow drivers in the fast lane. One of my biggest pet peeves, especially when I left late and now I have to follow your slow butt on my way to work?! I think that was a good tool too, as the author tried to relate to each reader right away to get our attention, because that’s how I basically decided if I was going to like this article or not and I’m sure other people are the same way. The next connection I made was when the author was talking about anticipating nit picking, they had said “…the more effectively you anticipate that pickiness, the more likely it is that readers will interpret your quotations in the way you want them to..” I related this to the ‘Reading like a Writer’ article because one of the author’s main points in that book was to know your audience beforehand, think ahead to what might please them, what will get their attention, what can you say to make them never forget it? Both of these authors put their audience on the pedestal, thinking ahead of themselves, and in different places than themselves.

Commentary- Talking about the driving connection again, I really liked how the author didn’t stop with only one comparison, they played it out throughout the article to keep that connection there, so they didn’t lose the reader. Here is a little snippet I took to give as an example. “These readers might completely ignore the merits of your insightful, stylistically beautiful, or revolutionarily important language – just as my anger at another driver makes me fail to admire his custom paint job.” It’s kind of like putting words into simpler forms, and I think that was a really good strategy they used. Another thing he said on page 243 was that “people are often unreasonably picky.” I think that’s an incredible understatement because in today’s world, people are beyond unreasonably picky I can’t even explain.

Main ideas/ Key points- I think what I get from this article is that if you’re going to write, or especially quote someone, source them correctly, or else some people will skin you alive. I think also on a serious note, both this author and the author of “Reading like a Writer” both start by having their targeted audience in mind. As long as you know who you’re talking to, who’s attention you’re trying to reach, who may come across your work, and what all those people like and dislike, you should for some mostly positive feedback.

Connections- My first connection came forth after I read this quote by Georges Gusdorf, “The very first man who set out to speak and write his name inaugurated a new mode of human presence in the world.”(4) In my mind, I connected that to self-actualization. That’s when humans became aware of themselves as people, and took another bold step after that and gave themselves names, individualized themselves and went on from there. It was a very prominent thing to do and I think this quote is very strong. Another connection I made was a simple text to self one when they spoke about taking outfit of the day pictures or maybe just responding to someone with a captioned gif. I think that’s just another example of the new world, and how everything is changing. My last connection was a text to movie if you will. When the author brought up Cindy Sherman saying that her doing slightly different poses for photographs was not self portraits, but in fact acting in photographs. That reminded me of my favorite movie, Coraline, which was made by using clay models as “actors” and moving them ever so slightly while taking pictures of every small movement, so when you place all the photographs together, it essentially shows a photo by photo movie.

Commentary- In one instance, Rettberg stated, “The data we track is displayed back to us as graphs, maps, progress charts and timelines.”(2) I’m not sure what triggered me to think this, but to put it simply, this made us humans sounds less like humans, and more like objects used to get numbers, or to see how many numbers we can get onto ourselves. Another comment I wanted to make was I found it cool and somewhat surprising that diary style writing came to as a spiritual thing and religious self-examination thing, not just teenage girls talking about boys. Though just now typing this, I have been reminded of Anne Frank. Oops.

Main ideas/ Key points- This article was honestly all over the place, so I struggled to even pin point main ideas but I caught a few. I think one thing the author wants us to realize is that waaaay back when autobiographies started to first come out, the majority of them were by people like priests and nuns, those of whom had at least some education, and were held to a higher standard then the rest of the people. The priests and nuns were able to read and write not a whole lot, but definitely more than the rest of the people, therefore most of the early autobiography type writings were done by priests and nuns. Another key point I sort of got from this was that basically, we track ourselves by numbers. We digitalize ourselves. Our bodies have slightly just turned into vessels, and machines to power up our numbers.

Connections- My first connection I made was a text to self connection. The reason I chose text to self is because the author had mentioned how the theater was a hard place to read, and he had to reread many sentences over and over again to finally understand them, I felt that because some days, reading is so difficult. Yeah, I see the words, and can say them but actually understanding the context, and taking something away from the article can be extremely challenging, therefore I made that connection. The other connection I made was when he mentioned how knowing ahead of time what kind of writing you will be doing can really help you read a certain way, and I picked up on that because that’s exactly what I’m doing for this assignment, that’s what I’m doing right now. When Bonnie gives us articles, we know what to look for while reading. I’m looking for connections, and main ideas while others are looking to summarize the article, so we all read things a different way depending on what we’re doing.

Commentary- When the author first mentioned dropping the idea of reading for content, or deeper understanding of a subject, and instead said to read the words to understand how it was written, made me a little worried because it sounds somewhat complex, and on a whole different level of reading I have no idea how to doso that stuck out to me. Another comment I have is about when he went on with his rant of questions, it made me think he was analyzing the purpose, but again on a different level. I say this because usually, when we analyze something so strictly, we kind of say “ok what does this writer want US to get from the reading?” But it’s the opposite here, we’re questioning how they did it, how they formed this piece, why did they do what they did? etc. and it’s kind of backwards thinking in my opinion.

Main idea/ Key points- One big overall thing I took away from this is when the author said something along the lines of “reading word-for-word may be how the author wrote the article”(72) and that kind of puts things into perspective, and putting it into those terms may help students, or just people in general understand what RLW means so I put that down as a key point. Another statement that caught my eye wasn’t exactly a key word, but rather a main idea in question form. “Would you want to try this technique in your own writing?”(73) I picked that because it kind of sums up the idea of did what this author do intrigue you? Did it work for you the way they intended it to work? Because that’s simply how you know if this play on words per say has accomplished what it needed to accomplish. One last main idea was always keeping your audience in mind. I feel as long as its not creative, personal writing, it’s a good idea to keep your audience in the back of your head, put yourself in their shoes, and just target them like crazy. Get them going, see what like and strongly dislike, learn about them and study them, because that way, you can write to their satisfaction, and keep them coming back for more.

Connections- The first connection I made was actually a text to text connection and the other text was the “Why blog?” article. When reading the blogosphere one, it read “blogs above the waterline-those which are frequently updated, widely read and consistently linked- may represent the conception of blogs in the public mind, but they are not representatives of blogs in general” this reminded me of “why blog?”(1) because in that article it gave a list of popular blogs that I didn’t even know were blogs, I thought they were some type of actual news sources, like the Huffington post, or TMZ. The second connection I made was the author said “the sense of community is coaxed into existence within the minds of it’s members in a style that stems from the instant publishing medium itself to create a discursive, transnational, online and imagined community.”(3) I connected that to myself because I don’t like too much human interaction and not too many do, so I figured it could double as a text to world connection for other people like me. The last thing I connected it to was the “why blog?” article again because they both talked about how 9/11 somewhat opened up the world to blogging because so many people were able to give unedited experiences not filtered by news outlets.

Commentary- Something I agreed with right off the bat was how the author said that blogs are generally publicly viewed as a personal diary for people because that’s definitely what I thought they were before I read these articles, and came into this class. One thing I thought was kind of weird was that the author basically said blog communities were non-existent solely because there was no face-to-face interaction which I don’t agree with, but will go more into depth with in my essay. The last thing the author had kind of said was how uncredible and unreliable blogs were, that they weren’t backed up by facts and were just written by common everyday people but… that’s literally the point of a blog. It’s an opinionated platform to spew your beliefs, ideas, or anything you want basically because that’s exactly what they were made for. They aren’t news outlets and there’s obvious differences.

Key terms/ Main ideas– One-day wonders: blogs posted once and never touched again. I liked this as a main idea because it made me think about how one day my blog will be a one-month wonder. Nano-audience(s): basically audience of a blog who have a certain relation to the author (Relative, friend, classmate) rather than random people following for news or updates. Community: A feeling of fellowship with others, as a result of sharing the same attitudes, interests, and goals. I just wanted to define this because of the simple fact the author mentioned how the blog community is only imagined because people are not talking/meeting face-to-face.

Making connections- I related this passage with multiple things in my life. The first quote I caught onto was when the author said "there are always new challenges, there is always room for improvement" (303). When I read this, it immediately reminded me of my CNA class teacher saying something along the lines of "everything in the medical field is changing, you will always be learning" because the basic CNA skills you test on literally get modified every year so there is no moment you stop soaking up new and improved knowledge. So that's always stuck with me because everything is evolving, research is becoming more prominent, hence that quote sticking out to me. The second text to self and possibly world, is when he mentioned "students confronted with a syllabus or an assignment can find it difficult to get beyond the mindset of "what do I need to do to get an A?"" (303) I found this a little funny because while looking at my classes with Jamie she said first things first lets print out your syllabus' because that's basically the key to passing classes, follow that page of loosely written hints and instructions. I also connected it to world because I know that's also how majority of other students handle classes you know? No one really tries to be unique or different or tries to express themselves on their terms, they just kind of do what needs to be done to get that good grade.

Key terms/Main ideas- Extrinsic motivation(s): A reward or inducement by an external person or entity to compel a person to act. This to me is basically just like saying outside influences are influencing your goals and standards while making you not care as much about your own best interests. Examples are good, grades, lots of money, a good job, marriage, things that maybe you don't value as much as the next person but still have them as goals because of some type of outside forces.
Audience: The assembled spectators or listeners at a public event. The author talks a lot about finding a specific audience you want to write to instead or finding out your own interests and openly writing about them with no regards to who comes with the same interests.
Purpose- The reason for which something is done or created or for which something exists. Not only does this relate to the title but it makes me think the basic questions about purpose. Things like what are you trying to accomplish by writing this? What do you want readers to gain from it? and what makes it worth your time? I think when writing personal statements you should always ask those questions before typing to see what comes to mind.
Autonomy: Freedom from external control or influence; independence. For our class. we only have majority control over a couple elements and he talks about more of having complete control, which I think is weird. 
Connections:  A relationship in which a person, thing, or idea is linked to or associated with something else. When he talks about building up your blog, he mentions connections, but not like famous people, he talks more in the sense of building a community, or safe space that your connect to or are truly interested in and that's how your blogging grows, instead of just following popular blogs or going with what's new.

Commentary- "To make things potentially worse, being an expert isn't necessarily all that it would seems to be. As one discovers with almost anything one dedicates ones time to, there is no ceiling, no final destination, on the path of mastery"- I definitely don't think all people want to defeat or conquer the thing they enjoy doing or finish pursing it, I think a lot of people enjoy the rush or enjoy the chase of getting at it. Its not where you're going its how you get there. I also wanted to go back and cover the moment where he mentioned autonomy because I didn't really explain the weird aspect I found. I don't understand why he went on a huge shpeel about autonomy when he clearly stated himself this is probably for students to read and youre going to have to blog about it. So why talk about all this freedom in writing when the audience really doesn't have the freedom your assuming we do? That bugged me.

source: "Why blog?"