Well, I think it’s fair to say that BlogSpot has treated me well this semester. There were often times that I would be confused about a poem, story, or essay and turn to the blogs for extra help. As I looked back at my earlier posts, I noticed that I was a bit more humorous than I was later in the semester. In all honesty, I’d occasionally use humor to take up space in the blog I was working on. It wasn’t the best way to complete an assignment, but I think that it ultimately caused me to enjoy the blogs a lot more. As the course progressed, I noticed that I began to keep a professional tone through my blog posts. I centered my focus on analyzing the works, rather than using humor to fill gaps. I think that in the end, it had a much better impact on my comprehension level of a select work.

It was initially weird for me at first to grasp the idea that all of my blog posts were public to the internet. I think because of that, I began the course with blog posts that contained a bit of sarcasm or humor. For me, I imagined that the situation was as if the whole internet was reading my posts, so I wanted to come across as funny or witty. That’s obviously an absurd generalization, but it made me enjoy my blog posts much more knowing that somebody sitting behind an internet connection may read my post and emit a laugh. As previously stated, I eventually shifted the tone of my blog posts from comedic to serious. I think the reason for this is that I didn’t want people to look at my posts and think “oh, great, a clown. Make me laugh, clown.” This was especially one of my concerns when I finally thought “what is Dr. Rouzie thinking when he reads these?” I didn’t want to sacrifice my grade on the blogs, so, like I said, I altered the tone of my writing. The last paragraph makes it sound like I took the first part of the blog posts as a joke, but I assure you that that is not what I meant. I just wrote in a more personal style that made me enjoy posting.

I had always liked the part of class where we go downstairs and read/comment on people’s posts. At times, it was extremely insightful and helped me understand things about the poems or stories that I was originally blind to. I made a fair amount of comments on others’ posts because I loved to respond and help with someone’s feelings of confusion over a notion or whatever else in the story. This works the same way when it came to others commenting on my posts. I was sometimes confused about the stories as well and it always helped to have someone post a comment that allowed me to understand things. I loved the idea of people commenting on my posts. It helped me understand things, but also felt good when somebody agreed with something I said.

I think that overall, I am pretty satisfied with my blog posts. My strongest was definitely on “Greasy Lake”, whereas my weakest was on “Catastrophe”. I would classify my post on “Greasy Lake” as my best because I can remember really understanding the story when I was reading it. I remember taking in every metaphor and then choosing to write about them in my post. I did not cover every metaphor, but I discussed the ones that I really enjoyed. My post on Pinter was one of my weakest because I did not really comprehend the story too well. This was also one of the posts that included a lot more humor.

I think it’s pretty clear that the blogs helped me in the course. As I said, I enjoyed each of the times that the class went downstairs to the computer lab to read and comment on posts. I learned something that I didn’t each time we did this, so I definitely think that it’s a great idea to continue using BlogSpot for this course.