I feel that this semester my idea of what a blog is has changed into a broad view of the uses. Before, I thought blogs were taken over by immature people as a way to vent their rage and to talk about every little thing in their lives. After three months of working with blogs, I realize that blogs are more of a way to have a private forum, you can state something and have someone reply to you in an open environment. Still, many people do use blogs to vent their rage and gossip about anything and everything, which is something that I get annoyed at hearing about all the time. I still feel that blogs need to be censored, as anyone, for the most part, can view a blog and then if someone stated that they wanted this person dead, someone may take that as an offer. I also still feel that blogs are currently a fad, but as with cell phones, some people will become addicted to them and be unable to exist without their blogs should they ever go away.
This semester has been a fun and educational experience, for the most part. I really did not like the blogging aspect of the class, as it is harder for me to concentrate and type something out at the computer, unless it is a paper or something that I am interested in. To have to read something and then figure out a way to explain what you read, I find, is more difficult for some than for others. I, myself, have trouble with this at times, especially if I did not understand the reading that well. This class has also helped me expand my writing skills out to different genre than I am used to. I generally write fiction and argument papers, so having to shift into a paper that I have no stance or opinion of my own into was rather difficult.
One thing I did find rather annoying was the Writer’s Resource we had to buy at the beginning of the semester. The citation section didn’t have some of the MLA citation formats I needed, and some I used were marked as incorrect, even though I modeled after the books examples, such as with T.V. interviews. It also lacked several citation formats such as those for government documents and laws. I didn’t enjoy the scavenger hunt assignment that much because the Cline Library’s website was very difficult to navigate through.
I really did like the fact that for both of the argument papers, WE chose the topics rather than being assigned them. This made it much easier to write the paper since we actually had a stance on the topic, and, in my case, can be very passionate about it. The problem I ran into with both papers is that some of the necessary information I need come from indirect sources, I have seen them cited dozens of times but have not been able to actually find the information, and internet websites. I do look forward to the group presentation. Even though there will only be two people in my group, we are both very knowledgeable with the topic, and thus understand both sides even though we are on the same one.
Overall this was a very enjoyable semester and I have learned some skills that I will be able to use in the future.
