While I enjoy continuing conversations from in class, I realized that I have a few different ways to do that. If I feel very strongly about a topic, I might be tempted to rant about it. Normally that entails a long post with lots of facts about the subject. One example that is leaning towards ranting is my post entitled, "The Big Move." My point is, "Even though there are these differences, I would argue that Bloomingdale is still more similar to the North Shore than Belmont, where the truck logistic center is, or most of the other stops along Mr. Bolos's route." However, it took a lot of time to set up my argument so that the reader would be informed and this makes it seem like I was rambling a bit. It doesn't help that my thesis comes in the last paragraph either.
Another type of post that I am more proud of is my research type of post. In class, sometimes a topic is brought up very briefly that holds my attention, but that we don't have a lot of time to discuss in depth. My most outstanding post like this was the one entitled, "Debt and America's Consumerism." I researched the topic online, then wrote an informative post that expressed my opinion but left room for discussion.
My favorite type of post is one that I will call the spontaneous post. I enjoy writing these kinds of posts more than any other because they deal with what is going on in my life and then connect it to what we were talking about in class. These are the majority of my posts, including, "Why So Strict" and "Dishwasher Blues." In the first, I speak about an event that happens at school, and in the second, I connected an event that happened in my home to our in-class discussion. I also enjoyed writing about my junior theme because I enjoyed learning about my topic. I put this under the spontaneous post category because it is a kind of "slice" of where I was in the writing and researching process at that point.
I found that over the course of the semester, my writing changed from a style that asked a lot of questions to one that stated the information, an opinion, and maybe a question or two. I found that this allowed the reader to formulate their own opinion and have a directed comment, rather than trying to address multiple questions at once or not having a clear idea about what to comment on. I also tried to bring up more controversial topics, instead of re-using topics that have a socially "right" answer, that would elicit very little creativity from the readers.
I found that over the course of the year, I enjoyed blogging more than writing in a different medium. I felt that this was best suited for me and gave me freedom but also some basic guidelines. The only problem was that I wish the comments could have flown a little more "fast and furious" between us students. It also would have been nice to have outside readers comment, but I found it very difficult to attract hits from outside our class (I still don't have a substantial comment from anyone that I don't know well).
