It's the beginning of a new semester and with that comes the stress of delegating classes, studying, tests, maybe work, family, friends, personal and fun time along with trying to be successful in all areas. Have you ever really thought about how you manage everything in your life? Really thought about it; broken it down sort of thing? Maybe you don't have time to really think about how you manage your everyday life, and maybe it isn't that important to you to think about it. But if you're not thinking about how you manage your life and just going with the flow, chances are you probably don't really think about other issues.
And it's more than just thinking about issues, it's about challenging, questioning, analyzing and exploring issues. Breaking them down into pieces and examining each piece and how they work together to make a whole. Just like a business person or accountant would do with numbers, or how a biologist/chemist would do with cells/atoms and elements.
If this is your first time writing in a blog I challenge you to examine, question and analyze this idea of writing your thoughts or opinions on an internet blog as a journal. How does this make you feel? Uneasy, excited? Consider the fact that you have security settings that you can manipulate and that you are being required to do this for a class rather than a decision you have made on your own. Consider its purpose and who your audience is. Do you want for the whole world, or just for your teacher? What kind of style should you write in depending on that audience? Will you write in first or 3rd person, will you speak directly to an audience or not?Will you put up a picture of yourself? Your interests? Your email address? How much information do you want people to have access to about you? What did you name your own URL? How does it make you feel to have a URL?
This isn't your first time blogging??
If you have had a blog in the past, your own, for my class or for another class, then I challenge you to examine, question and analyze your experience with having a blog. Consider why you had one, how it made you feel, and how you manipulated the security settings for your own sense of security. Consider changes you may make now that you have grown and developed as a writer/blogger. Consider how writing a blog may have helped or hindered your writing ability. Will you continue writing in the same style, tone and voice or are you going to change? Who will be your audience?
So, this is your very first blog prompt/journal entry for the semester!! Are you excited? LOL! Probably not, but that's ok. Maybe, hopefully, eventually, you will begin to actually enjoy this process. Just remember: Always think outside the box!
4 comments:
Writing in a blog is akin to having a journal. It is a method of expressing personal ideas, self reflection and evaluation. the only difference between a blog and a journal is the medium,the fact that the author is well aware that he has an audience, and that said audience fluctuates instead of falling to a target demographic as conventional printed journals tend to do.
A blog, due to that said audience, can be restrictive at times.After all, there are some personal issues that would be better of staying personal.That issue aside, what a blog can offer is "concrete thought."
Thoughts are not physical, you can't physically "hold" a thought. This provides a glaring limitation when considering that thought, your brain cannot consider many things at once. It cannot provide simultaneous structure to all the tid-bits running through your head.
It be like trying to visualize 1000 people, each a different color, in your head alone. You can clearly visualize 4-5, but already by 10 people, things start to get hazy. How much easier do things become if you where to draw 1000 differently colored stick figures in a big sheet of paper? Its much easier to visualize then.
This is making that thought "concrete."
A blog makes your thoughts concrete, should you choose to write it as such. It enables you to look at your own train of thought and deconstruct/rearrange/add/subtract/and embellish with out skipping a beat. Since you mind is now free of holding that thought, you can continue to think about other factors that clarify or modify that thought.
One of the most peculiar experience of blogging(or keeping a journal, or any frequent writing) is that at any point in time you can take a gander at earlier entries and thus you can examine what you used to think and how your thoughts have progressed. You'd be surprised how things can change in few years. This would not be possible if those thoughts would have not been made concrete.
[Funny story, last week, while cleaning out the closet for the new coming semester, I found an old essay (Written in ENC actually) about sagging pants. Not realizing it was mine, I was looking it over and thinking: "What the hell is this guy doing?"]
Writing is a way of expressing thought; it's usually "casual" compositions that reveal your views on the world. A blog is just that, a casual composition. Blogging allows you to learn about yourself even on topics that have nothing to do with you because inherently when ever you write(not plagiarize, even thought that ALSO says something about you) they are your thoughts. In this view, there is no way writing more can hinder your ability as a writer.
Addressing the security issue, if I was to close my thoughts to the rest of the world, I should never give an opinion. My words are attributed to me, I take full responsibility for my words and ideas. I put forth my thoughts ready for criticism. The same way I can analyze my own thoughts, now, someone else can too. They can evaluate its validity and challenge me to reconsider. They can open lines of thinking that I had never traveled through before and that by extension I will now be able to travel as well.Lets not be sheeps here. If you claim that you can think, and that your reasoning are valid but never open them to criticism, then you will never grow as a writer, as a thinker, or as a capable individual.
-Ruben (a.k.a that guy that still visits his old classes' blog.)
"If you claim that you can think, and that your reasoning are valid but never open them to criticism, then you will never grow as a writer, as a thinker, or as a capable individual."
Lovely to hear from you again Ruben, and I can see that your thoughts and rhetoric has only strengthened over the years since I last had the pleasure of reading your words. Sounds like you've been digging philosophy and theory.
Please keep in touch! I hope all is well. I've added twitter to the class as well, you can follow us there at www.twitter.com/tashasrhetoric and perhaps engage in some lively debate? :)
Hello, my name is Matt Marinelli and i'm in your ENC 1101 class. I am confused on what to write about and where to write it. I have tried E-mailing you but neither of your E-mail account on your syllabus are active. Please get back to me as I do not want to fall behind even further then I fell I already have. Thank you very much.
..."feel* I already have."
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