Friday, October 24, 2008
reflection
Reflexive Piece
Unfortunately I am not entirely sure what to say about blogging, or how to reflect on "personal experiences" or "formative meetings" since I haven’t really been an active member of the blogging community, but I’ll give it a go. If I’m going to be honest then I will admit that blogging was always a strange and unfamiliar concept to me and it never occurred to me that it could be challenging or empowering.
When someone mentioned blogging to me I would immediately think about some girl sitting in the dark, all alone, with a box of kleenex, writing her personal memoirs down for the world to see. I didn’t see any point to it at all. However there I was, sitting in Eden Grove Blue with the words "Blogging: what is a blog and how do you go about it" staring back at me. I thought that I had come to learn about being a journalist and not about exposing myself to public humiliation.
Worse then the public humiliation was the idea of having to do group work. In my opinion when you work in groups you can be sure of two things. Firstly, that there will be people who will do nothing and who will never arrive for meetings. Secondly, that I am almost guaranteed to end up doing that person’s section of the work because I would rather pass then stand around shouting, "it’s the principle of the matter". So you can understand my lack of excitement at the prospect of been forced into another awful group work experience.
Then there was the problem of technical difficulty. I have never really been a whiz-kid of science; in fact I’m absolutely shocking when it comes to anything involving a two prong plug or, god forbid, technical jargon. So you can imagine my sudden flash of panic when people started shouting words like "widget" and "JavaScript" at me. To be perfectly honest a tiny part of me, and I emphasis that this was a mere fraction of me, wanted to spit in the lecturers’ eyes. It just sounded ridiculous, a blogging course in JMS1? I thought that kind of thing was reserved for the lucky few who made it into CompSci 2.
Added to this was the concern of genre constraint and the pressure of confining myself to one particular style of writing for the next five weeks. These challenges seemed insurmountable. This was made worse by the fact that I had to go to Cape Town for 3 weeks, which meant that I missed out on crucial information, on lectures, on group meetings and on the chance to really experience the blogging course in the same way that my peers did.
However I can say that when I did have the opportunity to sit down with my group I really enjoyed it. I know that my productivity was not what it could have been but there wasn’t much that I could do about it considering the circumstances. It was the mumps fault and had absolutely nothing to do with not enjoying the assignments or opportunities to write that blogging presented. I can say that in no way did blogging stifle my creativity. Briefs were always laid out in detail and highlighted the importance of what needed to be done and how to go about it and, although slightly stifling in the style of writing allowed, the topics of discussion were always endless.
Although I am not entirely sure what blogging has come to mean to me yet – I’ll leave that self-discovery for a time closer to my journalism exam – I will say that is a powerful form of writing. Sure it doesn’t classify as a part of the traditional media but it is still powerful and challenges its reader. A blogger is a public informant and writes to serve the reader in the same way a journalist might.
I will also say that that the lectures made this all that more bearable. Blogging really didn’t seem like such a hot idea at the start but they got me to a point where I honestly believed that it wasn’t such a bad idea at all. Hell, I even attempted to get my own private blog up and running but I soon realised the futility when step one bamboozled me. It’s okay though, I just found solace in my trusted pen and pencil.
Posted by opinionplease at 1:51 PM