Week 8 Comments and Feedback

I did not realize until going through my comments from all of my blog posts how few I have actually received. I have read through all of the comments left for me and am grateful all of them, but the majority of my comments (all but about 2 or 3 for my project) have been solely positive remarks. That is not a bad thing by any means; it means so much to me to see that others enjoy my stories and are encouraging me, but I would also love to receive feedback or questions or constructive criticism, anything that I can use to improve my stories. Only those 2 to 3 comments that I have received on my comment wall have included feedback that may allow me to revise my stories. Specifically for the project, I want to improve in my writing and make my project the best that it can be, so having those kinds of comments with ideas for improvement is what I am hoping to receive that so that my storybook can grow. I do not want to downplay the importance of and appreciation I have for my other comments though. Especially since I don't have very many, every comment counts.

I would like to think the comments that I leave on people's pages are helpful, but I know that I can always improve on how to give feedback. What I have been doing thus far is leaving just my thoughts or reactions in my comments to the weekly stories, but for the projects I have been trying to follow the WWW/TAG approaches in which I do include constructive feedback as well as praise in my comments. Realistically, I am not going to go back and change my weekly stories (unless we have to for a future assignment, of course), so while having constructive feedback in those comments is helpful, I am likely not going use those suggestions to change my weekly stories. That is why I chose to leave short and sweet comments on stories, saving those longer, feedback-filled comments for the projects, which will be revised weekly. At least, that was my thought process. While writing this post, I realized how hypocritical it was of me to say that I want constructive feedback in my comments yet I have actively chosen not to do so for certain posts. Going forward, if I think of something that I would like to share in a comment with the author, I plan to do so, even if they are never going to read it. 

Reading and commenting on everyone's introductions is easily my favorite assignment every week. It is difficult to get to know others in an online class, so engaging with people through comments is a great way to do so! I reread my own introduction, and I do wish I covered more things about myself though. I wanted to stay on the topic of my title, which was about animals, because animals are such an integral part of my life. However, my family and CAC Scandals (that musical event that I was vague about for literally no reason) are also two very important things to me and so prevalent in my life, but I only briefly discussed the latter at the end and did not even touch on the former. As a result, it feels like I did not really convey who I am as well as I could have. So, I would definitely go back and change a good number of things in my introduction to better present who I am. I would also include more images. Many of my classmates had introduction titles that were specific like mine, but they still discussed as many facets of their life as they could think of, so I wish I had done that as well.

From Growth Mindset & Feedback Cats by Laura Gibbs. Published 3/11/17

I chose this image because of how simple yet important the captioned message is. People who choose to learn, whether actively or not, do in fact grow intellectually, emotionally, mentally, etc. And it is a continuous cycle of learning and growing, where each influences the other. This is also pertinent to my post because the feedback I receive allows me to improve on my writing, a skill that I will admit I am not great at but I am confident I can improve in thank to my peers and the suggestions they have to give.

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