reflective essay

During this quarter, I have written many blog posts. There were many available ways for writing it, yet thinking of ideas and what the blog posts lead to writer’s block. Writer’s block is so common among students and it can be frustrating. My struggles with writer’s block are an inspiration to help get new ideas for my blog posts.

In the beginning of writing my posts, many ideas come to me. It was so hard trying to organize these ideas and trying to make sure it is written on paper just in case I forget it. Writer’s block can happen at any moment without warning and it sucks because it makes me lose my motivation to write and my mind goes blank. Writer’s block is defined as a usually temporary condition in which a writer finds it impossible to proceed with the writing of a novel, play, or other work by dictionary.com. It is the most frustrating moment in writing because it makes me want to rewrite everything and makes me think that my ideas are stupid.

I have writer’s block every time I try to type all my ideas down too quick. I would forget some of my ideas and my ideas get mixed up with one another that it got too confusing to me. My mistake that got me stuck while typing is rushing. Rushing got me stuck on my ideas and

One pattern that I realize about my writer’s block is that I have the feeling that I need to write the blog immediately without revision. This leads to forgetting my ideas and creating confusion. Once I forgot even one of my ideas, my whole mind went blank, making me forgetting more and more. This was the beginning of my writer’s block where my mind goes completely blank and I had no idea what I’m writing and the purpose of writing it.

            Writer’s block helps me think of new ideas. My response posts are all agreements and disagreement on other people’s posts. This led me to writer’s block because it repeats ideas and my blog would become a repetitive blog with almost the same ideas as the post that I am trying to respond to. An example would be my response to Amber Chan’s post:

"This is basically the definition for asking questions in class. Asking questions in class means clarification as well as helping classmates clear their confusion. It is also another way to practice talking in a group of people except not in front of them. It builds confidence in talking and it benefits the person who's asking because it means that they will do well with whatever they asked a question about."

This is one of the many struggles I had with writer’s block. I was basically agreeing with Amber and rewording some ideas and adding only a few ideas in. This builds my frustration and when I don’t want to look at my post over, I would give up to writer’s block and wait a while before continuing my post. This gets annoying sometimes because I wanted to immediately finish my post and do something else. Rushing, in the end, made my blog post repetitive and very confusing for people to understand while reading.

            One way to rid myself of writer’s block is to reread what I have typed. This gives me new ideas because not all of my blogs are response posts. Revising my blogs, even if I am not finished with it, it gives me a sense of what my ideas are, what I forgot, and add new ideas that I have never thought of before. It wasn’t so hard forming new ideas because while reading the sentence, there’s always an idea that links to another topic and this helps me continue writing and getting past writer’s block.

            One example would be the video game response. I was planning on disagreeing with the movie but then I had writer’s block and ended up writing about the obstacles that the games create will face:

"Moreover, because Mr. Sutherland explained one of the games from the video, I have an understanding that the game only requires focus rather than moving the mouse or clicking which doesn't sound really fun. The only result from the game was our experience from pretending a scenario. The prime factor that causes gamers to continue playing games is the fighting or challenge in the games. In video games, we would become motivated to finish playing a part of it because of the challenge to defeat an opponent or to finish a quest. From how I see it, the game's challenge is to only continue living in the given scenario in real life."

            This has some opinions and it doesn’t go the normal format as “I agree” and then rewording main ideas. It brings in bigger issues and relates to what the majority of people’s perspective on video games.

To improve myself as a writer, I will organize my ideas first my jotting down my ideas on a piece of paper and trying to not get new ideas every time I wrote one down. While writing down ideas, new ideas would mix into the one I am writing down which cause weird sentence to form and confusion in my ideas. After writing down my ideas, I can take notes on the description and organization I might use for the blogs. Being more organize can help me prevent writer’s block because I won’t have any rushing feeling and I would be able to think straight.

My goals for next semester it to revise my blogs more and for my response post, I want to get an idea and then link it to a really unexpected idea. This would stop the repetitiveness and create new ideas for me to write. Although overcoming writer’s block can help me get new ideas, I want to be able to write without having to experience writer’s block. It would be so helpful for me because I wouldn’t have to delete two paragraphs to write a blog post on my new idea.

Night essay

When one suddenly faces reality, one’s belief would waver. Night by Elie Wiesel is a memoir which describes Eliezer’s experience during the holocaust and his meeting with reality. Eliezer is mainly conflicted between believing his God and blaming God due to his cowardice.

            Praying to God as a kid was his everyday life. As a Jews, he believed in God without knowing why. He was influenced by his parents who were also Jews. He describes his childhood daily life as: “During the day I studied the Talmud, and at night I ran to the synagogue to weep over the destruction of the Temple” (1). He was a religious as kid and he always wanted to learn more about his religion and about God. He didn’t have to worry a lot during his childhood so he was able to learn and spend his life peacefully. During his talk to Moshe the Beadle, he starts to think about stuff that he hasn’t thought about before:  “Why did I pray? A strange question. Why did I live? Why did I breathe?”(2). His faith in God was something that he did without knowing any of the reasons to. Praying to God is a habit that he can easily do everyday just like breathing and living. He had no explanations for it. This shows his loyalty to God and his religious belief.

            While moving from camp to camp, Eliezer’s God slowly died as he began to see the muders and deaths in front of him. While he and his father were walking toward death, Eliezer heard his father recited a prayer. In the moments of death, the feeling of anger engulfed Eliezer: “For the first time, I felt revolt rise up in me. Why should I bless His name? ... Never shall I forget those moments which murdered my God” (31-32). Eliezer believes that his God is dead because He never helped them during their moments of sufferings. His frustration from people still having full faith in God caused him to develop a negative feeling for God. He thought that this feeling was the feeling of his God dying but instead, it holds a much deeper meaning. After living in Auschwitz for a while, his feeling started growing more. He still acknowledge God but in a different way:  “I did not deny God’s existence, but I doubted His absolute justice” (42). God’s existence had not disappeared from Eliezer but he began to doubt God. When he didn’t know much stuff, he believes his God died, in contrast to him after while in the camp, his God never died. He doesn’t believe in God; his hatred slowly increases as he sees more suffering.

            Facing crueler events, Eliezer’s hatred changes into anger meant to blame God. He released his anger in his mind whenever he thinks that God doesn’t deserve people’s faith in him. Facing death and fear everyday, Eliezer’s anger rose and vents it on God: “The Eternal, Lord of the Universe, the All-powerful and Terrible, was silent. What had I to thank Him for?”(31). Eliezer’s faith in God was wilting away and doesn’t believe that God deserves anything when He lets all the Jews suffer and die. Every time he hears someone bless God or pray for God, his hatred took over his thought: “‘Blessed art Thou, Eternal, Master of the Universe, Who chose us from among the races to be tortured day and night, to see our fathers, our mothers, our brothers, end in the crematory?’” (64). After seeing so many deaths, his eyes opened to the real world and his reliance upon God had disappear. Even though it is gone, he used God as another way to vent his anger on the life he had to live through. Elie’s denial in God’s power led to his hatred and his cowardice for blaming God.

            Facing the cruelest of reality during wartime, Eliezer faith turned into another use of venting anger. He knew deep inside that there is no use venting it on a person so he blamed God on everything. 

ShiYun's blog response

Well, after reading from Shi Yun's blog about Jealousy, I began to think of the questions that she posted. She describes being jealous as a bad thing because it makes us do the things that we would not do and create a wall between us and that person:

 "Being jealous at someone is not a very good feeling. I felt very bad and trapped inside like I could not do anything else. When this happened, I started to develop the feeling of hatred and started to hate he/she. Jealousy just does not lead to good things and I think that we should be happy of what we have. We don't all have to have things sufficient to what others have. Having the feeling of jealousy just makes you look down at yourself and think that you are not as good."

 I agree with the fact that being jealous tends to create hatred. We envy people and jealousy develops. Jealousy is a common thing since everyone possess different things. We can look at someone's clothes and get jealous of that person. However, there are different levels of jealousy. If it's a friend jealousy, we can't completely hate them. It also depends on the person that we are jealous of. If we are jealous about some of their possession, and they kept on bragging about it and is acting very annoying in front of you even if they knew that you are jealous, of course extreme hatred can be developed.
          Most jealousy are more like a 5 minute jealousy. It doesn't lead to hatred unless the person is really unfortunate and is jealous of an extreme rich person. Another thing that ShiYun said was:

"I think we should just feel happy for what they have. Everyone is different and there are other problems that we have to worry about in life. We can't always face with these little problems that we have because if we don't learn how to over come them we can not face life problems that we have in life later on. We can not let the feeling of jealousy take over our minds and bother our everyday lives."

 I disagree with what she said right here. We are jealous because we aren't satisfied with what we have. Also, no one lets jealousy bother their daily life. They probably would say "I'm so jealous...." and then move on with their lives. That is what I usually do. Jealousy doesn't really take over our minds unless it cause us to steal things.

Freewrite: Evil

          Since this topic of being evil had been the topic of discussion between my friends, I decided to write about it and Amber agreed.
          So, the topic of evil and the core of it had been argued between me and Amber. It all started when one of us started poking the other. It became a war and Kim, Shi Yun, Crystal, Kristine, and Tiffany was caught in it. We would poke each other and then suddenly, one day, it was divided into two groups and sometimes we gang up on one person and started poking them. The reason I brought this up was because the word 'evil' was involved in it. We call those who poked us evil yet we don't know who the real evil person is.
          To start of, the definition of evil (which I got from Dictionary.com) is harm; mischief; misfortune; the wicked or immoral part of someone or something; the force in nature that governs and gives rise to wickedness and sin. In my definition, the word evil in a person is similar to that of a sadist. Within  my friends, evil is when we poke each other.
          In one of my comment with Amber Chan, since she poked me the day before, I called her evil:

Sure.... U just poked me today. EVIL!!!!!!

          Of course we were messing around with each other but the topic of who's evil was debated for so long that we started saying that it was contagious and that the aura around the person made others evil. After the debate, Kim was brought up into the topic. She was the source of our evil debate and the source of everyone turning evil.
          I told her that on Thursday and she actually agreed to it. She, the source of evil, admitted that she was evil. I also found another way to prove her evil as well: today, during history, Julie Law was giving us our family color, and Kim just so happen to have the color black. When we were told to get our notebook out to take notes, Kim 'coincidentally' have a black notebook. This proves her evil because her aura turned everything evil around her.
          I'm not writing this to make Kim feel bad, but as a warning to everyone to be beware of Kim. You need to be cautious around her. She is so evil that Amber said that there's no way to turn her nice. This whole blog may be confusing because my ideas are jumping around too much. Hopefully, I THINK those who are involved in this might be able to understand a bit of what I'm talking about.

Response to Amber's Post

          I really agree with what Amber said. Although I'm not a person who was told the things Amber was told, I can still understand Amber's frustration.

 "By asking more questions, I started to finally understand the things that I didn’t understand before, and was able to use that new knowledge for other things that were influenced by it." 

          This is basically the definition for asking questions in class. Asking questions in class means clarification as well as helping classmates clear their confusion. It is also another way to practice talking in a group of people except not in front of them. It builds confidence in talking and it benefits the person who's asking because it means that they will do well with whatever they asked a question about. Furthermore, when a student ask question, teachers shouldn't even question why such as what happened with Amber:

"He/she responded by saying to me 'I don’t even know why you asked that question.' It was seriously insulting to hear a teacher say that to me."

          This is really offensive because it's like saying "Are you stupid?" Not only does it makes students feel like they shouldn't ask questions anymore in that certain class, it also make them feel as if all the questions they ask in class are stupid. Asking questions aren't stupid unless the student asked the same question that another student had asked due to not paying attention. Also, a question is not stupid if a student is seriously confused about it:

 "I was honestly confused and unsure about how to answer the question he/she put up.  I wasn’t the only person who didn’t understand it either.  I asked the classmates around me if they understood, and the people around me did not."

          Amber asked students around her if they understand the problem or not. She and those around her were confused so she stepped up and asked. She was helping her classmates and herself. There are no reasons for a teacher to question student's confusion. A teacher's job is to help students learn without having them confused. It is not right for a teacher to insult a student in front of the class.

video game response

          So during sixth period, we were given a quick write about video games. My first response was that I didn't feel like writing since I have no interest in it. It was also a vague topic because there are various video games. There are educational games in which it educate its gamers whereas the games involved violence can hurt its gamers mentally. When the quick write was finally over, we had to watch a video of a woman talking about how playing video games can save the world.
        
          She was talking about how we play 3 billion hours and that we need to increase it. The moment she said that by increasing the time playing video games can save the world, I immediately disagree with her. Playing video games use too much energy. The television and the lights (to keep the room bright) require electricity. It also damages the gamers' eyes. If we expand our time of playing games, we would be in a century with every single one of us either wearing glasses or contacts. It would then be rare for people to have 20/20 vision.
        
         Prior to our vision getting worse, the games that she introduced in the video aren't really attractive. No one would want to play a video game that requires it to be part of a daily life habit and have to post a blog about it later on. It sounds more like homework than a game for people to play. Moreover, because Mr. Sutherland explained one of the games from the video, I have an understanding that the game only requires focus rather than moving the mouse or clicking which doesn't sound really fun. The only result from the game was our experience from pretending a scenario.
        
         The prime factor that causes gamers to continue playing games is the fighting or challenge in the games. In video games, we would become motivated to finish playing a part of it because of the challenge to defeat an opponent or to finish a quest. From how I see it, the game's challenge is to only continue living in the given scenario in real life. It doesn't really sound like fun to me.