This semester has gone by so quickly but after looking at my portfolio and all of the writing it contains, I've

written quite a bit. The easiest place to see where I've grown would be my blogs. My writing at the beginning of the semester looks different than my more recent posts. On the first day of class, after reviewing the syllabus and learning what ma or assignments I would have, I was e!cited that the two main pro ects would give me a lot of freedom to choose what I wanted to write about. My ""#" teacher had a similar philosophy. $ll throughout grades "%"&, teachers were very strict and specific about what I had to write about, but in college, the freedom allows me to write more solid papers. If I'm generally interested in the sub ect, naturally my writing will be more interesting. In my This I Believe essay, I discuss creativity, which I admit is kind of vague. I do not have very much confidence in my personal writing, so I had to come up with a concept that isn't too specific. I wanted to talk about an idea rather than a tangible thing because I can apply ideas in different ways to my life. 'reativity is also a universal concept, meaning that anyone who reads my paper would know what creativity is and be able to apply the message to their lives. It certainly isn't my best writing, but for what the assignment was, I feel like I did a pretty good ob. I feel like I grow as a writer with every piece I write, whether it be personal or not. I ust grow in different ways. (or e!ample, with my This I Believe essay, I had to do some introspection to produce a solid personal paper. I spent time thinking about myself which is actually something I don't do very often. This final reflection is also difficult for me to write. I am much better at going through e!isting information that is e!ternal to me, and sorting it into an informative format. In my inquiry, I en oyed going out and finding information from a variety of sources, and conducting a survey. There were so many different sources to choose from. This surprised me a bit because artificial intelligence is still a relatively new field. The most important part when determining if I was going to use a source was the date. )ou may think it would be the credentials of the author, and that does matter if I'm looking up some important facts, but when I was looking for how the media portrayed artificial intelligence to the public, I actually think the lack of credentials the source has

makes my point for me. It reinforced my initial belief that no matter how uneducated someone is about a topic, if there's money at stake, they will become an *e!pert+ on the sub ect and write sensationally. I did not mention this in any of my past blogs, but my ""#& inquiry reminds me a bit of my ""#" paper where I had to e!amine a community of practice. I chose to investigate the ,ames -andi .ducational (oundation /,-.(0. This organi1ation encourages people to be skeptical and to do some research yourself, rather than being spoon fed all of your information. I really wanted to incorporate this into my ""#& inquiry somehow, so I did it by showing how the media shapes peoples' views on artificial intelligence. In my primary research, which was a survey on 2urvey Monkey, a lot of people said the images that come to mind when they hear the words *artificial intelligence+ were of The Terminator and other movies with humanoid robots. This clearly illustrates that the movies stick in their minds. It is no surprise that movies do this because they are overdone ust to attract viewers. I questioned the biweekly blog posts at first, but I'm actually glad I had to write those now. 3oing through my posts, I can remember the state of mind I was in while writing each blog. It's almost like a diary. I thought the prompts of the blogs were relevant and easy to write about. One of the challenges I had with writing the blogs was not wanting to sound too repetitive between each blog. I wanted each response to be unique and meaningful. 4hen selecting which blog posts I wanted to feature on my day book5blog posts page, I had to read each one again to find the best fit for each category. The easiest ones to sort were the inquiry proposal for the time I was questioning something, and the in%class collaborative day book activity for the time I collaborated with someone. 2orting through my writing like this allowed me to identify certain trends. Most of the writing I selected to be featured was related to the two ma or assignments. This is because I had to do a lot of brainstorming in order to produce good writing. I'm not someone who can ust sit down and produce a masterpiece in one sitting. (or me to create a piece of writing that I would call good, I have to think carefully about my audience and structure of the piece. 2ometimes I have struggled with clarity in my writing because of structural issues and sudden umps. 2ometimes I will have a break in my paper that confuses the

reader as it looks like broken thoughts to them. 4hen I'm writing, sometimes I will complete a thought in my head, but not accurately describe it on paper. I have been getting better with avoiding this though with practice. Overall, I am pleased with the way my .nglish ""#& class progressed. I felt accomplished when finishing my pieces of writing, and I am proud of the grades I have made. My classmates have also been very supportive of my writing choices, especially during workshop. I en oyed being a part of my class, and can only hope I can grow even more as a writer in future classes.