Reflexive Piece

I came to Rhodes because I wanted to pursue my dream career in journalism and media and leaving home was quite a thing to do for me, and many other students too. The theme throughout the year is ‘Surviving First Year’ which is an ideal theme; allows us to see that we are all in the same boat. Blogging opened up my eyes, it gave us the means to experiment in a sense to express oneself.

Throughout the year, there was a lot of writing, whether we had to conduct interviews, write opinion pieces or letters, we got to write. One would assume that with a lot of writing comes improvement and I feel that this years courses have been challenging yet rewarding. Personal growth is so important and one should be able to see or feel that they have grown because of the challenges met and if I were to evaluate myself I would say that a six. I have found some assignments challenging, often misunderstanding or misinterpreting.

This last term we began a genre of blogging. In the beginning I admit I was quite excited I thought that it would be fun and we would learn a lot and it was on surviving first year which was a familiar and relevant topic. Rod Amner’s course tied up well with Sim and Alette’s fourth term course. In the first term we dealt with being a first year and explored the many concerns and worries they had such as making friends, first year spread, alcohol, rape and passing the year. These were commonalities among many of the first years.

But my excitement later fizzled out at some points, I think it was because I had this idea in my head that we would do and learn more and because we had to work in groups. I understand the logic of the group work- 282 blogs would be a nightmare but personally I prefer to rely on myself. However in the end I can say that I did quite enjoy my group of Vickie, TK and Chloe. We had some pretty great ideas regarding our blog plan and each pulled our own weight, and we delegated pretty well, working well together to get what needed to be done, done. We had a lot of fun when it required us to do the photo comic for example, it was a great idea and related to the character of our blog.

One is aware that technology is playing a huge role in our lives but some of us just don’t know how to operate a computer and when it came to the idea of blogging, connotations of nerds or Goths sitting at their computers writing about themselves, when in fact that was not it at all. Blogging opened up my mind and thanks to Google Blog search engines one became aware of the millions of blogs across the world. There is so much more to blogs than sitting and writing about oneself. We are entering a world that I believe will be running on computers and robotics in the years to come and it is time, especially for our generation to get with it and not be so narrow minded. In relation to journalism, one wouldn’t have thought that blogging would have fitted into it. I think that blogging is definitely a form of journalism. It is a form of writing; it has a purpose and an audience. Most of what was written by us first years were issues that concerned all students, not just at Rhodes.

Some of the computer illiterate failed in attempting to make the new blog interesting with pictures or videos and became frustrated that some gave up and just did the assignments whilst some of the more competent groups went the extra mile and added radios, slide shows and all kinds of other fascinating applications. I would have liked to have added cool applications too and made our blog more appealing so we received comments and just personally I think a student blog is a great way in expressing ourselves in writing. I loved reading and having to reply to the other groups posts. Over all, I think there could have been more done, not that we want more work but I think regarding the lectures, there could have been more structure and teachings.

My group and I found it pretty easy to generate ideas, we knew what the audience wanted to hear and it seemed to fit in with what we wanted to base our blog on. We decided we wanted a blog that could be related to, easy to read and not be so rigid and serious. Yes there were restraints but this didn’t hinder our thought and ideas. One could look again at first term and the news values we learnt about; I know that thinking in terms of our blogs character and the genre ‘Surviving First Year’ we used relevance, interest, novelty and importance in generating our story ideas. We are aware of who the audience is and what they want to read about. It is exactly why when having to get sources we used first years who were willing, which in most cases they were. I think that I knew who I would interview, because of being aware of the character of my blog I interviewed a friend in first year, Daniel Charvat who was easy going, friendly and that was exactly the character of my blog ‘RUASURVIVOR’.

The genre and topics given were not very restricting which allowed most of the students to write about whatever topic they wanted and I enjoyed reading what they had to say, I got a feel to what they were thinking and what was bothering them. There were a lot of the same concerns which proves that we are not alone which in most cases we feel we are. I love writing and I loved that we could write from personal perspectives and write opinion pieces. It gave us a sense of control. Blogging opened up my eyes; not only to journalism but as a means of expressing oneself.

Ashleigh