Jason Hang

Cadet Name

Prof. Manley, EN 102

A Blast in the Past

From my first few set of blogs, I remember having a hard time getting in the habit of typing 300-500 words for an assignment so often. I had such a hard time, in fact, that I missed some deadlines of some of the blogs, resulting in me writing this final blog synthesis. The very first blog I wrote about, where we talked about researching in general, was very vague and I wrote it just to check the box. This was true for the first few blogs I wrote. As we kept doing the blogs, however, I started to see a point to doing them besides just being a meaningless assignment. The blogs actually were to help with our research essays. Because of that, I found that the more effort I gave into doing a blog, the less effort I had to do on a research essay, since the blogs did a really good job of helping me answer my own questions on what I should be doing with the research essays. In terms of becoming a better writer, I have learned that I get sidetracked way too often. I would be typing up a research essay but pull up social media just to check, and that checking would last for about 15 minutes before I realize I was in the middle of typing an essay. As far as researching goes, I have found that I either get really bored if Im given something Im not interested to research in and be really lazy, or I can become very proactive and motivated to do more research if I get to pick a topic I actually want to learn more about. I did not really use the LASC that much this semester to assist me in writing my research essays, simply because I felt that doing the in-class peer reviews and checkups with Prof. Manley were enough to keep me on the right path and write my essay with confidence. I learned that when Im even the slightest bit confused, I can misinterpret directions as shown when I wrote my outline completely incorrectly. What I felt was really helpful about EN 102 was teaching me different types of research methods. When I first started conducted research to type my essay, I found a healthy dose of information to use. As time went on however, since my topic was fairly new, there were a bunch of changes and different ideas and execution strategies being thrown around. This forced me to constantly change parts of my essay, and add in new parts. After discussing this with my friends doing the same assignment, I learned that no matter what topic you pick, whether its 50 years old or 1 year old, there will always be new information put out for it because new discoveries happen very often and facts change. This English class was also one of the first English classes Ive taken that actually taught me how to improve my writing by showing me different styles and methods to use. I also liked how there was a balance of learning days and work days, because that actually gave us 50 minutes to sit down and write our essays, with help of the professor nearby if needed. There really wasnt much to change about the way the class went, as I felt it ran smoothly and was fair in terms of grading, classroom instruction, work days, and work assigned.

Works Cited

"Valley Forge Military College Online." Valley Forge Military College Online. N.p., n.d. Web. 06 May 2015.