Ashley Edmonds

Thursday, April 26, 2012

Improvement


Over this past semester my focus as a writer has been organizing thoughts, procrastination, and entertaining an audience. At the beginning of the semester my blogs consisted of choppy word jumble and obvious and procrastinated assignments. However, being able to have peer comments and constructive feedback I realized it was time to step up my game and put forth a little effort.

Only a few writings into the course and it was obvious my lack of efforts and organization had been improving. Starting with the essential post of Organizing Thoughts where I asked for advice on how to improve the flow of my writings, and was suggested to use the free writing method, with each posts to follow I showed more and more improvement. I also found with free writing my post increased in length every time. Although each post built off one another in improvement, by the very next post I Have to get This Done!...Tomorrow showed immediate improvement. Finally, after several post to practice Shitaintclear and Into the Future showed the most improvement. With each post it is apparent that I had also improved on procrastination. Each showed improvement on length and value to suggest more thought and time had been put into the assignments.

After improving and the two main issues of presenting my ideas and giving my writings more thought and value I really wanted to turn my focus to entertainment. In several of my posts I wanted to capture my readers and keep them coming back each week. Shitaintclear and Into the Future again are the two best examples of fun and interesting posts. I would also add One for One as a great post even though it was a picture assignment. In this particular post there may not be a written story however, I believe to layout and contrast of the photos make the post a fun and vivid post.

With all the positives I have gained in each writing I am still falling victim of poor editing and proof reading skills. For example, there is probably evidence of this problem in this very post. I do proof read and edit each writing, but my brain knows what I thought I wrote and I am oblivious to the mistakes each time. Although, I have tried proof reading after taking a break and that has helped a little I still have miss used commas and silly mistakes. I would like to keep working on this problem by practicing with commas more. However, proof reading I feel I will always need the extra read through by a peer.

Wednesday, April 11, 2012

One for One




Today I was inspired to go the day without shoes to raise awareness and money for Toms. Toms is a company that would match every pair of shoes purchased with a pair of new shoes given to a child in need. One for One. Today April 10, 2012 Jacksonville State University held a campus wide awareness down for One for One. This event consisted of walking around everywhere barefoot to obtain a better understanding of what children without a way to protect their feet have to endure on a daily basis. As the day of fun and festivities ended it was time for the long walk around University/Trusties Circle, barefoot of course. This is when the reality kicked in. With the asphalt almost unbearable and the rough rocks rubbing blisters on the balls of feet, it was a real challenge to make it to the finish line.

This picture was inspired by today’s events. I used Photoshop.com (online version) to increase the contrast, brush the toenail polish glair, and made the blues really pop. I found this assignment exciting and what a great way to involve my experiences of today in my blog.
 
 Yes those are blisters.