Blog Discourse Essay

Maintaining a blog for a class is something I had never even thought about. When I initially found out that blogging would be a part of our grade, I must admit I was a little nervous. It is bad enough when I turn an assignment in to a professor, but to have an entire class, and potentially anyone else, read and critique my work made me a little weary. I was more careful than usual in making points and arguments clear, knowing that others with the same base of knowledge will have to understand where I am coming from. However, once I wrote my blogs and read people’s responses, I decided that the benefits from such an exercise outweighed the slight discomfort that it gave me. Knowing that people would be reading my blog also made me want to make sure that my entries were entertaining and easy to read, as well as informative and thoughtful. While it seemed frightening to have so many people critique my work, I eventually came around to appreciating its benefits.

Also, I felt that I benefited from reading and commenting on blogs from others in the classroom. It is always good to see how other people see, understand, and interpret a novel which I also have to work with. This process furthers my ability to see past my personal biases or understandings. The more points of view one comes into contact with, the broader one’s scope of understanding will be. This process of reading and commenting on other students’ work helped me apply the same standards to my work when evaluating it, making me a better proof-reader.

An example of how the blog exercises have helped me in writing and understanding the texts can be seen in my entry for Joy Harjo’s She had some horses. This poem was difficult to understand, especially for someone such as myself who is unfamiliar with this type of writing. However, since I was writing for a crowd, I made sure I studied and understood the poem to the best of my ability before writing about it. Then, in the writing process, I was able to organize my thoughts, making sure that the post was successful in communicating my points without being confusing. Once these processes were done, I felt confident in having people read my blog. I definitely think I pondered more on the organization and clarity of the entries knowing that others would be reading them, and the comments I received on the blog helped me know that I was doing well, and that my thoughts and ideas were engaging and thoughtful.

Upon reading other’s blogs, my understanding of the poem grew even more through experiencing how other people interpreted it. This is definitely an aspect that one does not often find in a college class. Being able to see how other’s understood the text really deepened my level of understanding, and helped me to gauge where I was in my own understanding of the text. Unlike a simple class discussion, the blog gives everyone a chance to experience everyone’s fully thought out opinions.

In general, I feel the blog exercises helped me in a number of ways with understanding the texts and writing about them. Not only does the larger audience make me more aware and less biased during the writing process, it also allows for open discussions and sharing information, thoughts, and ideas between students, who otherwise may not have that opportunity. Using the blog as a tool for communication and learning is a great idea, especially in this classroom setting, and helped me in a number of ways to better understand the texts that we read in the class.