Farewells

So, this is my last post in this blog. It’s been an interesting time and I’ve actually enjoyed a fair chunk of the material we’ve gone over in the class. It has broadened my reading choices and actually caused me to examine the lyrics of some of my favorite songs. I was never a big fan of poetry before. I can’t say I was into the non-traditional short stories though. While they were interesting, I think I would just as soon stick with your stereotypical rising action and narratives. But that’s just my personal writing choice.

Looking at some of my posts from earlier in the quarter, I noticed that my poetry posts were a lot of paraphrasing. Later, I started to elaborate on some of philosophical meanings of the writings, but I did not examine the structure as often and how that might have affected how I read poems. I probably could have stood to do that more.

You might say I did the same thing with the stories when we first started reading them. I felt a bit more comfortable examining them at first though because I’d taken classes already in examining fiction. Over time, it was easier to pick apart symbolism and metaphors as I learned how to distinguish between the two and see the deeper meanings of the texts. Finding out that stories had their own rhythm like poems was a bit of a surprise as well. I think I might try to incorporate that into some of my own writing

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The fact that my blog was written more for a class than the general public, unlike some of my others, did significantly affect more of my writing. I decided it was better to keep out some of my humor and more radical opinions in order to try to keep a kind of professionalism considering the purpose of the blog was academic. The audience I envisioned actually reading the posts were most likely going to be my classmates and professor.

When commenting on others’ blogs, I attempted to draw them to alternate ways in viewing a character’s motivation or possibly the symbolism represented in a certain object. I’ve always enjoyed playing devil’s advocate and the majority of my comments involved a question and not so much statements.

In all honesty, I cannot say I received a lot of comments on my writing. The few that I did either agreed with what I was saying or mentioned something that we covered in class later that day.

In general, I liked most of my blog writing. The few blogs that I didn’t like were the ones I admittedly rushed through, but the others I felt confident with. The best, by far, were the ones that I discussed over with some of my friends as at times they find the need to read the same things I read…strangely enough. I think my best posts had to do with the stories “Girls” and “School.”

As far as whether or not I think the blog postings helped in the class, I would have to say yes. It’s nice to be able to spit out your ideas before the discussion so you have an idea of what you want to say instead of being stuck in the class without a real thought. I think the things that I like to discuss the most are probably metaphors and symbols as I often like looking at philosophical meanings of stories.

Anyway, I hope you all have a great spring break. Maybe I’ll see you again around campus. Take care.