Fin.

Is it really that time of year already? That time of year when everyone starts to freak out about finals and maybe a bit about summer (and for the overachievers, about the next year). Ah, it's quite a bittersweet thing- growing up is. Part of us wants to be big, responsible adults, while another part wants to kick back as a little kid, with nothing in the world to worry about beside that Math quiz.

That time when everyone is wrapping up again is a good time to look back. It's recent enough that the turmoil and chaos of sophomore year are just about winding down, but not yet fading. As I look back, I see a very different person. In the beginning of the year, I was simply an "overgrown freshman" (in the words of the esteemed Lucas Sokolsky), with freshman-ey perspectives and outlooks, and that hint of naivette left as vestiges of the middle school days gone by. A hundred and a few score days of school later, there has been a transformation- a refinement, an aging (like a fine wine, if I do say so myself. Har har).

A good part of this growth in my personal awesomeness (Hah.) can be attributed to the blog. The casual, freeform nature of a blog allows for a more relaxed, "fun" writing style than homework written in "essay" voice. As such, I also have free reign to experiment with different writing styles and techniques in a relatively low-penalty environment (if I were to do this in, say, one of the very few essays given by most teachers, I would be...erm, in a sad place). Furthermore, there is something magical about writing something on the internet for a large audience of both peers and teachers, as opposed to the singular teacher who reads an essay. What can I say, I like attention.

Bringing it down to Earth a bit, I'd have to say that the most important thing I've learned this year is to be able to take information and interconnect it with other seemingly unrelated information. It has allowed me to take my thinking "out of the box", to be cliche. In previous History classes, or just previous classes in general, facts were of largest importance. World Religions, especially, is a larger perpetrator of this crime. Each test/quiz involved memorizing a glut of random facts about a religion (the name of a ritual, the meaning of an architectural feature, etcetera), which did not help in my endeavor to see the big picture. Thankfully, with the blog posts this year, analysis and drawing upon knowledge have allowed me to unconsciously make connections between informations (Yeah, I just made up a word. See, you can do stuff like this on a blog. Not in an essay.)

Overall, I think the more casual, less high-tension atmosphere of this class has been very conducive to learning to think differently. A high-tension, high stakes class causes most students to retreat to the common and the familiar in order to play it safe and maintain a good grade.

I'll miss this class.
Here's to one last post.

Kevin Y. Ji out.

Written Work over the Course of the Year

Hmmm. Last blog post. When looking back at all my other posts, and written work in general, it occurs to me what a tremendous amount of writing I did over the last nine months. Over the course of this year, I have written more than in another class, any other year. This has improved my writing; however, submitting my homework under the form of a blog has helped me even more.

Thanks to blogging, and perhaps even the very layout of the text box that I write in every night, I am able to see the sequence of my ideas more clearly. I am also able to seperate these different ideas into paragraphs, and make sure that each paragraph is coherent in itself, goes into enough depth about the idea that I want to talk about, and relates to my topic as a whole.

In addition, blogging has enabled me to start each homework with a stronger opening and closing than normal work would have. In blogs, I find it much easier to go back and correct sentences, straighten things that previously did not make any sense out, and add in more information than to do so on a sheet of paper. On paper, one has to constantly worry about running out of space, and making the document legible, when correcting ideas, but on a blog, this constraint is lifted, and freedom ensues.

Another convenient feature of the blog is my ability to see my work progress, and grow. This becomes easier as I can easily view all my previous posts at once, and identify their strengths and weaknesses, to help improve my newest posts. This feature of the blog has definitely helped accelerate my improvement as a writer over the year. 

It's funny to think that thanks to this blog, which I grew more and more familiar with over the last few months of MWH, I may be ever the more prepared for History next year. For all I know, I may even have possibly even gained skills that could be of use for the rest of my life. And on that note, I wish the blog farewell.

Progess from This Year

Throughout this year, we have been doing extrodinary amounts of writing.  From essays to op-eds, we seem to be working on our writing everyday. This has really helped me to make my writing more straight forward; I have also greatly improved on the way I phrasing things and my word choice. Looking back at the essays from the begining of the year, I can now see where it needed to be improved on, and agree with the comments.  Our homework posts on the blog also helped contribute to our progression, because it forced us to be constantly taking a stance on a certain subject.  I know this doesn't have to do with history, but I am really glad that my handwriting somewhat improved.  It looked awful on some of those inclass essays, especially when I was running out of time. Well, overall, I'm glad I took this class, because I actually learned something.