Personal Reflection

At the beginning of this class I was a little nervous about having to post weekly blogs. I had never written a blog before this class and maybe read only one only once or twice, so to say the least I felt in over my head for the first few blogs I posted. I do enjoy watching TV and relaxing, but I was extremely unsure about how to go about writing a blog. Honestly, the most difficult aspect of writing the blogs for me was analyzing a specific show. I used to normally lie on the couch, turn on the TV, and then transform into a vegetable every time because I used the TV as an aid to help me relax and unwind. I dealt with my short comings as a TV analyst by constantly reminding myself to think critically about whatever show I happened to be watching, really trying to pick out a few key points the show was trying to make while relating these points back to modern American culture. Today, the last day of class, I feel confident knowing that I am no longer the same vegetable I once was and I have conquered my initial difficulty. Now as I watch TV I can easily pick out subtle nuances of the show and readily identify how and why these shows fit into today’s society.

As the month of June rolled on I felt like I was slowly becoming a better blogger, but going back and revising the blogs has reassured this belief for me. The revisions I made on my first blog post greatly outnumbered the revisions I had to make on my final posts. My first post Somebody…Please Lie to Me contained some pretty good analysis of the show, but I realized that in no way, shape, or form did I make the blog interesting or engaging to other fans of the show. Instead I just tried to tell the reader how the show relates to American society and what the premise of the show is, so I went back and really tried to engage the reader by stating strong opinions about the show and backing up my opinions with undeniable information from the show. After the first blog Somebody…Please Lie to Me my revisions diminished with each preceding post, yet the type of revisions I made were pretty much the same for each. I noticed that most of my blogs were half summery and half analysis with a few tiny opinions thrown in the mix, so I tried to really focus on the analysis aspect while developing and maintaining a sense of voice. I came to think of the blogs like I was debating the importance of the show with a friend while convincing them to either watch the show or not watch it. By my last blog Damn…That’s a HUGE Bitch! I felt like I had finally become comfortable blogging, which I proved to myself by only having to revise small grammatical errors in the last blog.

All my life my teachers have taught me to write in an academic fashion and it was hard to ignore this urge while blogging, especially in for the first few. I remember for my fourth blog Finally I Have My Entourage Back I really had to resist this urge. While writing this particular blog I found myself spending more time on arguing my point with fancy words and proper grammar than making sure my writing had fluidity to it. I’m sure most of the people who read this blog right after I posted it thought it sucked because my ideas where choppy and unconnected, which I hopefully have fixed. This class has taught me to be more confident in my writing as a blogger and an academic because I now attempt to not only use accurate and descriptive adjectives with proper grammar, but now I also make sure to transition smoothly from one idea to the next, making sure to keep the reader engaged and able to follow my thought process.

All in all I loved this class and have already recommended it to all of my friends who still need to take an upper division writing class. Now I can watch hours of TV, which I frequently do, and not feel like I’ve wasted my time away. I recognize the clever writing techniques, timely events relatable to life outside the world of television, and great acting that accompanies many of my favorite TV shows. I started this class as a TV watching vegetable who didn’t even read blogs and didn’t notice the plethora of new shows coming out, but now I feel like I am a somewhat decent TV critic who enjoys watching any and all kinds of TV programming. My thinking about TV has changed for the better, I enjoy the complex web TV spins and which viewers get trapped, and I have only this class and you as a teacher to thank for it!