Actually, I have no freaking clue. If someone could let me know that would be pretty helpful. Thanks.

On that note, my finals are finally over. I actually found them slightly easier than I expected, given my level of studying. However, I still hope to do better next semester, as I do not expect to receive stellar grades for my courses this semester. I'll get decent grades, sure--I don't plan on ever failing a course--but I really would, at least in one class one day, do a seriously kick ass job.

I also need to practice writing more often. I wrote a grand total of 8 essays this semester, totaling 25 pages (yeah, most were pretty short), which was pretty much all the writing I did for the past few months. I'm taking some more writing intensive courses this semester, so hopefully I'll get more practice.

tl;dr: The below concerns Internet posting and my thoughts on how it might improve actual writing abilities in an academic setting. If you are not interested, feel free to skip.

Also, I actually give credit to Newgrounds (or, forums in general) for providing a medium that allowed me to improve my writing back when I frequently posted while in high school. I've looked over my past posts, and the change in quality over time is clear. Now, this is probably more the result of school and process of becoming more educated, but I think making thousands of forum posts also helped my writing a good deal.

Since I came to Newgrounds daily, I would usually write every day, which was certainly good practice. Sure, some posts were just links or only a few words long, but on many occasions I would break a paragraph or so, or even go all out and write an essay-length post, especially in the heat of an Internet argument. So, while you might claim arguing on the Internet is "like running in the special olympics" or "akin to pissing in an ocean of piss," I find Internet arguing leads to good old fashioned persuasive writing practice.

I don't think that's a stretch either, as I know I would frequently proof-read some of my longer posts, making sure they were coherent and logical, with as few grammatical mistakes as possible. Now, typos would certainly creep into my posts at a greater rate than in an academic essay, and I might have been more prone to rambling on without a clear thesis in mind (aka: this post you are reading right now), but for the most part, making argumentative posts were good ways to get some writing in.

If you've been posting here a while, or even on the Internet in general, do you agree? Even if you don't really pay much attention to what you post, has constant posting helped you organize your thoughts more quickly when responding to writing prompts? Because in a way, if you respond to a thread and stay on topic and are constructive, you could think of the opening post as the jumping off point for your post (or essay).

To provide an example, I know I found the essay on the SAT to be very easy. In case you're not familiar with it, the SAT has a section in which students must write an essay in 25 minutes, responding to a vague prompt using evidence from literature, history, or one's own personal life. When posting on the forum, you essentially reply to threads the same way, generally spending no more than a few minutes on your posts, using evidence from your personal life, or from related news or readings. It would be interesting to see if there was actually a correlation between the quality of short, timed essays and frequent forum posting.

I will say, though, that reading BBS posts doesn't seem to help too much in terms of reading/critical thinking ability. Most posts aren't very high quality, and the BBS seems to attract a younger, less literate crowd as well. You probably won't be too challenged by the material posted on the BBS, and as a result, will likely not improve your reading ability. In my opinion, while faster reading at a low level is a possibly, better reading is unlikely (unless you only read Tremour's posts).

Anyway, those are my thoughts on the matter at the moment. What do you think?