Week 8 Comments and Feedback

Feedback In

Overall, I think the quality of comments I've gotten from my classmates has been very good. On most of my stories, someone has commented with a way to make my story better. On the comment wall, I got some very good suggestions that I think have really improved my storybook. I definitely find critical comments the most useful. I know I am not a great creative writer, and getting any critical feedback helps me improve my creative writing.

Feedback Out

I think I have left good feedback for my classmates, but sometimes I do struggle to leave feedback. Sometimes I read stories and cannot think of any way to improve upon what the original author had already written. I've found the WWW strategy for feedback to be the most useful for me. Using the WWW strategy, I have a good method to lay out the positives of each story and then mention what I think could be good potential revisions. Through reading other people's stories, I've found some interesting ideas for future stories, and I hope to get to try these ideas in one of the coming weeks.

Blog Comments

I think that I have some sense of getting to know some people in the class, but I do not feel like I know anyone super well. It seems that the blog comment randomizer typically sends me to the same blogs over and over again, so I am trying to start branching out more without the randomizer to visit more people's blogs. I do think that my introduction was a pretty good introduction to me - it summarized me pretty well. I've gotten some good comments back on my introduction.

Looking Forward

I'm not sure what I could do to improve my future feedback for others and myself. I think that the more stories I give feedback on, the better I'll get at offering feedback. For now, I think it is best to focus on the content within each comment and maybe check back to see if authors accepted the advice or not as a sense of whether my feedback was good or not.

Image

I've chosen the following image because I think listening skills are some of the most important professional skills there are. Without being capable of listening well, you cannot possibly grow as a professional or grow your skills.

Image by Tanmay Vora

Week 8 Reading and Writing

Looking Back

Overall, I think I have learned a ton about Indian mythology this semester. Two months ago, I couldn't have named any gods/goddesses, and I definitely could not have told anyone anything about the Indian epics. I think the writing assignments force me to critically review the reading assignments I've completed so that I can adapt the story from its original story. At this point in time, I am very happy with my project. I feel like I have a topic I am interested in and a plan that is solid. I am learning a lot as I research for my stories. I am mostly happy with my blog, but I feel that I struggle with stories quite a bit. Most times, I have problems thinking of stories to write for my blog. I want to write something interesting, but I am not a good creative writer. I tend to like highly technical papers; I typically only read and write technical reports. On that note, I think my biggest accomplishment to date is my WWE Mahabharata story. I was able to make a creative story without any problems, which is not typical for me. I do think my reading notes are the only reason I'm able to come up with stories. If I took worse notes, writing a story would be nearly impossible. I think my favorite reading strategy that I've found is researching as I read. If I'm interested in something, sometimes I'll hop over to Wikipedia and get more information about the topic. My favorite reading so far has definitely been the Ramayana. It was super interesting to start learning so much about Indian mythology so fast and I enjoyed the plot more than I enjoyed the plot of the Mahabharata. I can recall a lot more information from the Ramayana as well.

This picture of a temple in Vijayanagara has been my favorite picture from
any of my reading notes. I was amazed at the beauty of the architecture and
stone-working in the temple. Image from Wikimedia

Looking Forward

Going into the future, I think I need to take more time to digest stories and research the background information so that I can get more out of the readings. If I get more out of the readings, writing will be easier and I will learn more about each topic. I also should experiment with more note-taking strategies going forward with the class.