Blogging Reflection

Before this class, creating a blog may have crossed my mind once or twice, but I had no intentions of ever following through on it. If anything, it would have been a blog about sports because that is what I know the most about. The main reason I did not follow through with it was because I would only be able to do it during my free time and, being a college student, I did not want to spend my free time doing something that would seem like more schoolwork to me. I guess once writing a blog becomes part of a class grade, though, I am obligated to do it.

The most difficult thing for me about writing these blogs was that I am most definitely not a huge fan of TV, which is the exact opposite of most of the people in this class. Sure, I have a couple go-to things I watch, like The Amazing Race or, most of all, sports on TV; other than that, it is difficult for me to invest time in shows, especially the fiction shows that were so popular to talk about in class. This is just my opinion and maybe I am generalizing a little bit (and I do not mean to offend anyone) but I feel like a lot of the popular shows today are trash, what with all the sex, murder, drugs, and other over-used themes. So, it was difficult for me to consistently find things on TV that I could write about while at the same time being interested in the topic.

With that being said, although it was difficult for me to find shows to watch, it was enjoyable to watch TV and eventually find a show that I like. One show that I now enjoy watching is America’s Got Talent. I know the majority opinion is that sob stories are pretty cliché, but it is cool to see the human spirit displayed in some of the down-on-their-luck people who eventually make a name for themselves on the show (see New Directions Veterans Choir). I also liked showing personality in my blogs, especially throwing random jokes and links into the posts (sorry if they were only funny to me), and being sarcastic about things (see Kevin Jonas from my Minute to Win It blog).

As far as revisions, I definitely had some grammatical errors that needed work, like italicizing names of shows. Another revision that immediately comes to mind was that my first blog really didn’t have a point to it. I compared America’s Got Talent to American Idol, saying that it was pretty much the same show. However, I didn’t quite answer the “so what?” question in the original edition. When I revised, I made sure that there was a point to it. Similarly, in my blog about Pawn Stars, there was a section of the blog that I deleted about security at the shop. It pretty much came out of nowhere and had no impact on the overall point of the blog, so there was no use keeping it. While grammatical revisions are certainly necessary, I think it is most important to concentrate on the meat of the blog, making sure everything ties together, and those were the type of revisions I focused on.

As mentioned earlier, I enjoyed implementing jokes, links, and sarcasm into my blogs. This hits on how writing blogs most differs from normal academic writing—blogs are extremely informal compared to the academic writing that I am used to. First of all, blogs don’t have to be as long as the writing that I am used to doing. While it is still important to craft a strong argument, I usually wrote my blogs by forming a few scattered thoughts about shows into an argument. I guess that sounds similar to writing a paper, but it was solely my opinion—I didn’t have to find sources that backed it up like I do for other writing. For example, there were a lot of reasons that I didn’t like Minute to Win It, but I wasn’t quite sure how to pull them together until I thought that it was a reflection of where American society is headed as a whole. As long as I believed it and could make a convincing case, that is all I needed to write a blog. The basic part (making a strong argument) of blogging and other academic writing are the same, but how you make those arguments are quite different.

My engagement with television has changed. For me, TV watching used to be a mindless activity because I was definitely not engaging as much as I could be (if at all) with the medium. I pretty much just sat on the couch and absorbed everything at face value. After reading a few of the chapters in the textbook and listening to class discussions, I learned there are many aspects of TV that make it quite complex. I now look for subtle meanings shown through camerawork or lighting. I think about the effort and timing that goes in to implementing graphics. While I am not taking notes on what I am watching and I don’t go to discussion boards to talk about what was meant by the book on the chair, it is neat to realize that everything you see on the screen is portrayed the way it is for a reason.

I think TV gets a bad rap. Watch too much of it and people call you lazy. Get emotional from what you are watching and people call you emotionally unstable. But that is what TV and TV shows are supposed to do—engage the viewer strongly enough so they come back for more next week. Many people are supposedly foretelling the demise of TV, but I don’t see it. Before this class, I took the same position as the naysayers, wondering how some people could invest so much emotion in TV. The passion people in class have shown for their specific must-see shows has changed my mind. We all have our passions, so who am I to shoot theirs down? TV is going as strong as ever, and it is nowhere close to dying.