Class of bloggers?
In looking through my classmates’ blogs (as well as re-reading my own) I had mixed feelings. I tried to especially pay attention to the papers that we all posted. Some of us came with a lot of writing experience and skill already under our belts. Others started a little more from scratch. But overall, I was impressed with the progression from the first paper to the last. Many of our first papers were a little raw since we were experimenting with the whole “voice” thing for the first time. But by the end of the semester we were still experimenting and putting our voices into our works, but to a whole new level. We were able to really put that voice into academic discourse. I was impressed.
I also thought it was really interesting to read all three papers in progression as a lot of people referred back to their past papers in the later ones. Brandon’s struck me especially. Reading the three papers in isolation would have left me missing some of the references in his final paper. I really liked how the works were integrated together. Since the blogs are meant to be a portfolio of sorts it would be interesting to see if we would group the papers in such a way that series like Brandon’s would be put together for the purpose of the portfolio (assuming that it would be kept over the course of the major, not just the semester).
A few of the blogs were disappointing because there was not a lot there. Even a few didn’t have paper 3 posted. But I did enjoy some of the ones with extra stuff. Ashley M’s blog was nice because she is just an excellent writer and I was in the group to read the first drafts of the last paper and it was nice to see the finished product and she had some nice reflections posted.
Another thing that struck me was the blunt honesty in some of the papers that I read. This is more of a comment on the way the class was run rather than the blogs themselves, but we really poured our hearts out, didn’t we? I think of David and his memior especially. I know Dr. Allen mentioned it in class, but reading it was completely different. I appreciated the honesty and especially liked how he added the inspiration at the end, that way we got to see his work (which was really good in my opinion) but we weren’t influenced by it in any way while reading the paper. I think there may have been preconcieved notions if the exerpt was before the content of the paper. It was a smart move.
I wish that there had been more interaction among the blogs. As I read things that I really liked or disliked I looked to see if there were comments to go along with them, and there never was. :( I guess I could have commented, but it just didn’t seem like that was something we used this space for as much as we could have.