It's the end of the world!
Well, not really, but it's the end of my blog. Finally. Why do I say finally? Do you ever have one of those days where nothing seems to go right? Yeah. That was last Monday. And Tuesday. And Wednesday. Allow me to elaborate. So over the weekend (last weekend, before finals), I'm writing this entry (well, the part that's under this paragraph anyway), and I realize that I'm short a few entries. Can't write a summary when I don't have much to summarize, right? So I spend a very large part of the entire weekend catching up. Yes, catching up completely. Even did two more extra for good measure. Good thing I didn't have a final on Monday or else I wouldn't have had time to study for it, because I spent nearly my entire weekend working on it. Why? Because I know the portfolio is worth 15% of my final grade, and there's no way I'm going to just not do it, even if I don't get any points for content of the blog. This isn't the only blog I have to do, because I also have to complete the group blog. So arrive Monday morning, way too early in the morning, I'm happily satisfied with completing both the group blog and my individual blog. I post the group blog. Wait a minute, what's this??? My post has turned to gibberish! I have no clue what is going on. So I decide to email blogger with what happened and go to sleep. I wake up a little before noon and find that apparently, Viruscan has detected 12 viruses on my hard drive. How they got there? I don't have a clue. I think possibly this may have affected my post, so I get ready to email Chuck explaining that I had a virus. But first, I check my mail, and apparently blogger knows about the problem that happened with my post, so it wasn't my problem at all. So I send that to Chuck instead. Then I try to post my individual entries. Problem. LiveJournal won't let me post anything!!! Why not? Check their front page. Apparently, they decided to take off the invite codes so now anyone can register for an account. Which incidentally increases their traffic 5x and causes me not to be able to post. I keep trying off and on all day and I think I get a couple in, but I can't get them all. Then the rest of the week I have four finals to do and so I occasionally try to post some more entries and I get a few more in. Then Friday, I come home, and when I turn on my computer it doesn't work! Well, it sorta boots, but then it just kinda freezes at the login screen. So I've been working on it all weekend and I finally was able to figure out that something (probably one of the viruses) had corrupted a boot file for Windows and was preventing it from booting up correctly, so I had to boot up in safe mode and then transfer all my files to my backup hard drive and then reinstall windows. So now my computer is up and now I can post on LJ. (I saved a screenshot of the virus notice and the blogger email if you want to see them). So here, at last, is my final entry, I'm glad I'm finally able to post it. Even if I get no points for it.
At the beginning of the Fall 2003 Semester, when I was informed that I would be keeping a blog in my English class, my first reaction was to laugh. Actually, it was to roll my eyes, because I didn't believe that keeping a blog for English would help me to learn anything, as I had been keeping a blog for years and the only thing it had helped me accomplish was refine my teen angst whinings, as many in the community call it. However, as I had to write blogs to reflect on specific prompts, I found that the informal writing helped me to collect my thoughts on a subject and express them, but in a different way than if I had to write a whole essay, because I didn't feel as obligated to spending more time researching and revising the writing. In addition, I learned a lot about how blogs are used in the world community, outside the small community of bloggers that my friends and I comprise. Of the many blogs I wrote, there were a few that stood out more than the rest, and a few that I felt I had trouble writing.
Coincidentally, the first half of my blog is really my favorite. I'm not sure why. I think the subjects we discussed were just easier to blog about than the rest. My favorite blog is actually my first blog, the one in which I talk about myself. I'm not sure if I'm allowed to pick this one as my favorite, but for now I'll just say it is. Why? For this entry, we had to introduce ourselves. Having blogged before, all my blogs before this were basically about myself, so I felt I had a lot of experience describing myself in the context of a blog, so I was quite comfortable writing this entry. After I finished it, I was very satisfied with what I had written, because I felt it reflected me well, both in what it was about and the style in which I wrote it. In fact, I was actually surprised at the insight I was able to provide into myself, yet happy that I was able to do it.
Another entry I particularly enjoyed was the museum entry. First of all, I enjoy museums, especially art museums, so I was delighted to visit the High Museum of Art. Also, we didn't have to go to class that day! I hope that by reading the entry, the reader can get a feel for my appreciation of visual art. I really liked writing this entry because it was easy to write, since I was writing about an experience I had, as well as a topic with which I was thoroughly familiar. As I said about my first entry, I felt at ease writing this entry because I was comfortable with the topic. In my regular blog, I often write about experiences I have, whether it be places I go or things I do, so writing this entry was just another regular entry for me.
Ah, the Tom Daschle entry. I feel I was successful with this entry because I was criticizing Daschle's blog. In my regular blog, I often criticize things I don't agree with, like Tom Daschle writing a blog, for instance. I know I'm not alone in doing this, because Rachel Lucas spends a good time in her blog criticizing everything from asshatted celebrities to the US government (I wrote my paper on her). I find criticizing comes easily to me because every time I see something with which I disagree, I want to make clear my views on why I disagree and why it's wrong and bad and evil. Ok, maybe evil's going a little far. In any case, I didn't have to do much analyzing, just criticizing, which is, in my view, a far stronger point to start from than analyzing.
Let's skip through the blog a little. E-Topia! I was very happy with this entry because the reading was much easier than Camera Lucida or Reload. I'm kidding! But I did feel that I was able to connect with topic much better than the other readings, mainly because the topic probably affected me more than any other entry, except maybe Reload. Although I did agree with the author, I also had a lot of opinions that I wanted to express on the topic. I believe that because I had a lot of personal opinions to express on the issue, I was able to write a complete and well-written blog with which I was very satisfied.
The next entry might be surprising. I'm not going to state the obvious, which was that I struggled with the Camera Lucida entry (ok well I just stated it, get over it). The fact is, I really struggled with the LT Smash entry. It seems strange that I would have struggled with this entry, because it was very straightforward and easy. Read this blog and comment on it, especially about the war. The reading part was easy. Too easy. I started reading the blog and became enthralled by it, reading entry after entry, on and on, finding it very interesting. It was very easy to read, too, the language very simple. So what was the problem? It was too easy. Smash was too agreeable. I agreed with practically everything he said! So the only thing I could blog about was basically, "yeah, Smash is a cool dude, I like him, blah blah blah." I was very dissapointed with how that entry turned out, given that I really liked Smash and his blog.
I feel that I really learned a lot this semester. At the beginning, I felt it would be a big waste of time, but I thoroghly enjoyed the class discussions and blogging about various issues pertaining to blogging and memory and new technologies. I enjoyed learning about historical technologies and how they impacted and related to new technologies, and I think that by blogging, I have gained further insight into many of these topics because it forces me to think about the issues without having to think too hard about it. In the future, I of course intend to continue blogging personally, but now I might think twice about the things I will say.
At the beginning of the Fall 2003 Semester, when I was informed that I would be keeping a blog in my English class, my first reaction was to laugh. Actually, it was to roll my eyes, because I didn't believe that keeping a blog for English would help me to learn anything, as I had been keeping a blog for years and the only thing it had helped me accomplish was refine my teen angst whinings, as many in the community call it. However, as I had to write blogs to reflect on specific prompts, I found that the informal writing helped me to collect my thoughts on a subject and express them, but in a different way than if I had to write a whole essay, because I didn't feel as obligated to spending more time researching and revising the writing. In addition, I learned a lot about how blogs are used in the world community, outside the small community of bloggers that my friends and I comprise. Of the many blogs I wrote, there were a few that stood out more than the rest, and a few that I felt I had trouble writing.
Coincidentally, the first half of my blog is really my favorite. I'm not sure why. I think the subjects we discussed were just easier to blog about than the rest. My favorite blog is actually my first blog, the one in which I talk about myself. I'm not sure if I'm allowed to pick this one as my favorite, but for now I'll just say it is. Why? For this entry, we had to introduce ourselves. Having blogged before, all my blogs before this were basically about myself, so I felt I had a lot of experience describing myself in the context of a blog, so I was quite comfortable writing this entry. After I finished it, I was very satisfied with what I had written, because I felt it reflected me well, both in what it was about and the style in which I wrote it. In fact, I was actually surprised at the insight I was able to provide into myself, yet happy that I was able to do it.
Another entry I particularly enjoyed was the museum entry. First of all, I enjoy museums, especially art museums, so I was delighted to visit the High Museum of Art. Also, we didn't have to go to class that day! I hope that by reading the entry, the reader can get a feel for my appreciation of visual art. I really liked writing this entry because it was easy to write, since I was writing about an experience I had, as well as a topic with which I was thoroughly familiar. As I said about my first entry, I felt at ease writing this entry because I was comfortable with the topic. In my regular blog, I often write about experiences I have, whether it be places I go or things I do, so writing this entry was just another regular entry for me.
Ah, the Tom Daschle entry. I feel I was successful with this entry because I was criticizing Daschle's blog. In my regular blog, I often criticize things I don't agree with, like Tom Daschle writing a blog, for instance. I know I'm not alone in doing this, because Rachel Lucas spends a good time in her blog criticizing everything from asshatted celebrities to the US government (I wrote my paper on her). I find criticizing comes easily to me because every time I see something with which I disagree, I want to make clear my views on why I disagree and why it's wrong and bad and evil. Ok, maybe evil's going a little far. In any case, I didn't have to do much analyzing, just criticizing, which is, in my view, a far stronger point to start from than analyzing.
Let's skip through the blog a little. E-Topia! I was very happy with this entry because the reading was much easier than Camera Lucida or Reload. I'm kidding! But I did feel that I was able to connect with topic much better than the other readings, mainly because the topic probably affected me more than any other entry, except maybe Reload. Although I did agree with the author, I also had a lot of opinions that I wanted to express on the topic. I believe that because I had a lot of personal opinions to express on the issue, I was able to write a complete and well-written blog with which I was very satisfied.
The next entry might be surprising. I'm not going to state the obvious, which was that I struggled with the Camera Lucida entry (ok well I just stated it, get over it). The fact is, I really struggled with the LT Smash entry. It seems strange that I would have struggled with this entry, because it was very straightforward and easy. Read this blog and comment on it, especially about the war. The reading part was easy. Too easy. I started reading the blog and became enthralled by it, reading entry after entry, on and on, finding it very interesting. It was very easy to read, too, the language very simple. So what was the problem? It was too easy. Smash was too agreeable. I agreed with practically everything he said! So the only thing I could blog about was basically, "yeah, Smash is a cool dude, I like him, blah blah blah." I was very dissapointed with how that entry turned out, given that I really liked Smash and his blog.
I feel that I really learned a lot this semester. At the beginning, I felt it would be a big waste of time, but I thoroghly enjoyed the class discussions and blogging about various issues pertaining to blogging and memory and new technologies. I enjoyed learning about historical technologies and how they impacted and related to new technologies, and I think that by blogging, I have gained further insight into many of these topics because it forces me to think about the issues without having to think too hard about it. In the future, I of course intend to continue blogging personally, but now I might think twice about the things I will say.