Blog #5 (Emblem)

Emblem remixed from:

http://www.craftsmanspace.com/free-patterns/celtic-repeating-geometric-pattern.html

This emblem represents various aspects of my writing. Going back through my blog posts, three common themes reoccur. My tennis, my education, and my family. The three branches in each design represent this, and therefor represent the most important and defining aspects of my life. The colors represent my writing style. My writing is factual, but not completely lacking creativity. The black and gray represent my matter of fact style. The black represents the factualness, and the gray represents the "gray areas" in writing. The shape of the emblem, a circle, represents the complete thoughts that compose my writing. Every time I introduce a new thought in writing, or even in my own personal life, I fully complete it, or at least do my best to do so. The emblem is relatively simple, and in my personal opinion is focused. This displays my own mindset towards both my education and my athletic participation. I do my best to work hard and stay focused on whatever it is that will help me to be the most successful person I can be in the future. I try to do my best in everything I do, and I feel as though a quote from Abraham Lincoln accurately sums up my priorities and mindset towards life, writing, and my future: 

"Whatever you are, be a good one."

Check-in #3

In this course, I have become familiar with a new subculture, one that I did not even recognize as a subculture prior to taking this class. When I first had to write about hip-hop, I was entirely lost. I viewed hip-hop as nothing but a musical genre, and had no real interest in it. However, upon writing my first paper, the rhetorical analysis, I realized that hip-hop was so much more than music. On a superficial level, hip-hop is music, a style of dress, perhaps a certain "swagger" that people carry themselves with. But hip-hop goes deeper than that. Hip-hop is an expression of individuality, an art form. Hip-hop is also a bridge that brings people from different backgrounds together and gives them something to unite under. Hip-hop is hope, as it gives underprivileged children an icon to look up to that could very likely have come from the same humble beginnings as them, such as Eminem. I have come to thoroughly enjoy writing about hip-hop. Writing about hip-hop culture gives me a chance to understand new concepts, and forces me to look through the eyes of others. It has helped me grow in so many ways, both as a writer and a person. My first paper, my mindset was not in the right place. I couldn't help but think, "I don't want to write about hip-hop, I know nothing about it." Now that I have written about it, and enjoyed it, my attitude towards writing about new things has changed. I have come to embrace new challenges as a chance to expand my mind and my writing abilities. Hip-hop culture has helped me to grow, and part of this growth was a true understanding of what hip-hop culture really is.