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When it came time for us to write the "Analyzing a Visual" essay, I had to leave for vacation. To stay at the same pace as the rest of the class I had to write while I was gone. I had lots of downtime while driving to and from Colorado, whether I was on a plane or in a car. While writing, I struggled with the first body paragraph and I had to rewrite it more than once before I got it to include everything I wanted it to say. By using persistence I was able to get the first body paragraph just right so that I had enough content.

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The habits of mind are exactly what they sound like, good habits to have while thinking. Following the habits of mind will help a person be more productive, as well as helping with writing. I have used 8 of the 16 habits of mind over the course of this semester. The habits I used are persisting, managing impulsivity, listening and understanding with empathy, thinking flexibly, thinking about thinking, striving for accuracy, questioning and posing problems, and applying past problems to new situations. While using these habits of mind my writing has improved. I can write essays that flow better and have better composition.

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The habits of mind are important assets when it comes to almost anything in life. I believe that persistence, striving for accuracy, and applying past knowledge in present situations are the most important of the 8 habits we discussed here. I think that with persistence, striving for accuracy becomes easier and this is a great habit to keep in day to day life. When you use past knowledge to help, you can make it easer to do simple everyday tasks efficiently. I think that thinking about your thinking is the hardest habit to understand. It takes practice to set a mindset and continue to use it. In the future I would focus more on persistence to keep me on track to complete my homework in college.

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Managing impulsivity is about keeping calm and taking your time while thinking things through. I had to think calmly and clearly when I started my analyzing a visual essay. I needed to take my time when I was selecting a visual to write about. This was important because it would set me up with enough material for when it came time to write the essay. I needed to have a certain amount of content, so picking a visual with enough detail was crucial for my essay. I had many different visuals selected but eventually narrowed it down to one.

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Listening and understanding with empathy requires a person to devote mental energy to another persons thoughts and ideas. While writing the literacy narrative essay, I had many of my peers along with my teacher review my essay. They read what I had wrote and gave me advice of how to change my writing to make it sound and flow better. One instance if this is when my peer had told me to change the first sentence of my conclusion to make it sound better.

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When thinking flexibly a person looks at something from a different perspective or angle. This habit was very important when it came to writing my analyzing a visual essay. I used this habit to write my counterargument. I needed to be flexible when looking at the visual so it would allow me to see different perspectives, which would allow me to come up with possible interpretations.

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While writing my I-search essay I had to keep my mind thinking about the right things. I used metacognition or "thinking about your thinking" to do this. Metacognition is all about being aware of your own thoughts and feelings and how they effect others. While writing my I-search essay I talked about pole vault using words that only pole vaulters know. I said heavier because it is how a pole vaulter would describe a pole. When my teacher looked over it she didn't understand what I was talking about. I had to be aware of my thinking to change this to something others could understand.

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Striving for accuracy is one of the most important of the 8 habits we learned about this semester. When striving for accuracy you set high standards and always look for ways to improve. When writing the I-search essay I knew that I needed a good grade to keep a B in the class. I set my standards high when writing this essay to get the grade I needed. While I was writing I made sure to think ahead of what I was going to write to make sure it sounded good. I double checked all of my paragraphs after writing to make sure they flowed good. All this lead to me getting a perfect score on the style section of my essay and ultimately leading to the grade to wanted.

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Questioning and problem posing is knowing what data is needed and developing questioning strategies to produce the data needed. When I wrote my I-search essay earlier in the semester I was required to find a question and answer it. Once I had found the question that I needed to answer I broke the question down into 5 different questions that would all help answer the main question. Using this strategy for my question was very helpful in finding the right information.

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Applying past knowledge to present situations is very self explanatory. Using prior knowledge and transferring to a different situation. When writing my I-search essay I used some of my past knowledge to guide my research and to help me write the paper. My essay was about improving at pole vault. Part of improving is about selecting the right pole. I already knew the basics so I used what I knew to guide me to find more about the subject. I also used past knowledge when searching for sources. I knew that I needed sources with enough information for my topic so I read over the sources I had and only used the ones that had the information I needed.