Reflection Paper - Final Exam
After taking six years of English through high school, two from a local college, I didn’t think I could ever be surprised by what is essentially a writing class, this class proved that wrong in more than one way. I would start by saying that I don’t believe this class made me a better overall, a better blogger perhaps but I don’t think my writing knowledge has “increased”. I do however think that this class has expanded my mind to blogging and has brought me from a skeptical skeptic to a skeptical believer.
Coming into the class I wasn’t expecting to be insanely engaged, after having the class selected to me by my adviser and being one of the two only guys in the class I was just hoping to finish up my last UCOR for module one. Yet this class managed to turn me around and is my favorite writing class in recent memory. This class started strong immediately after hearing that not only would we be making our own blog but one within our major (loosely) and that focusing on our blog was 90% of the class intrigued me. Knowing that as we were reading other people’s blogs or studying what made blogs so relevant allowed me to think about what I wanted to do for my OWN blog instead of trying to think in the head of those we were studying. I felt this throughout most of the class, I was doing online readings and seeing different bloggers approach to things like criticism and creating a community and applied the ideas directly to my blog. We did research on what made a blog pleasing from aesthetics to writing style and it only served to improve our own creations. There are few classes that use guest speakers and online information in a way that comes together in such a satisfying end result and this class had that payout. As stated earlier I do not believe this class helped me improve on my writing skills as a whole. …show more content…
While it is nothing I am worried about, especially with my major focusing on mathematics and programming, it is something I noticed was not challenged throughout the class. I found that the lack of hard writing assignments helped me to focus once again on what was most important, the blog. I think that having interviews early with people in our discipline and the blogosphere helped for me to see what people from the outside where looking for and learning from their past experiences and probably helped the most when I was figuring out how to “shape” my blog. I found from those in my discipline that an ordinary Computer Science blog wouldn’t interest people (even though I didn’t want to write about that regardless). And through this I found how to create a blog that not only can reach a larger audience but can still gave me enjoyment while writing. The second most important factor I found in writing my own blog was using the academic papers as they provided the most knowledgeable outlook on blogs in things like popular culture and what was expected from more professional level sites like news blogs. I found that juxtaposing my blog with the blogs of those who are respected and have a thriving blog community helped me to understand what can cause blogs to be successful and what people are looking for in their blogs. I hope that, similar to our readings, I can
After taking six years of English through high school, two from a local college, I didn’t think I could ever be surprised by what is essentially a writing class, this class proved that wrong in more than one way. I would start by saying that I don’t believe this class made me a better overall, a better blogger perhaps but I don’t think my writing knowledge has “increased”. I do however think that this class has expanded my mind to blogging and has brought me from a skeptical skeptic to a skeptical believer.
Coming into the class I wasn’t expecting to be insanely engaged, after having the class selected to me by my adviser and being one of the two only guys in the class I was just hoping to finish up my last UCOR for module one. Yet this class managed to turn me around and is my favorite writing class in recent memory. This class started strong immediately after hearing that not only would we be making our own blog but one within our major (loosely) and that focusing on our blog was 90% of the class intrigued me. Knowing that as we were reading other people’s blogs or studying what made blogs so relevant allowed me to think about what I wanted to do for my OWN blog instead of trying to think in the head of those we were studying. I felt this throughout most of the class, I was doing online readings and seeing different bloggers approach to things like criticism and creating a community and applied the ideas directly to my blog. We did research on what made a blog pleasing from aesthetics to writing style and it only served to improve our own creations. There are few classes that use guest speakers and online information in a way that comes together in such a satisfying end result and this class had that payout. As stated earlier I do not believe this class helped me improve on my writing skills as a whole. …show more content…
While it is nothing I am worried about, especially with my major focusing on mathematics and programming, it is something I noticed was not challenged throughout the class. I found that the lack of hard writing assignments helped me to focus once again on what was most important, the blog. I think that having interviews early with people in our discipline and the blogosphere helped for me to see what people from the outside where looking for and learning from their past experiences and probably helped the most when I was figuring out how to “shape” my blog. I found from those in my discipline that an ordinary Computer Science blog wouldn’t interest people (even though I didn’t want to write about that regardless). And through this I found how to create a blog that not only can reach a larger audience but can still gave me enjoyment while writing. The second most important factor I found in writing my own blog was using the academic papers as they provided the most knowledgeable outlook on blogs in things like popular culture and what was expected from more professional level sites like news blogs. I found that juxtaposing my blog with the blogs of those who are respected and have a thriving blog community helped me to understand what can cause blogs to be successful and what people are looking for in their blogs. I hope that, similar to our readings, I can