The Task
For my first post, my assignment was to transform my 2600 word synthesis paper into an 800 word blog post. My initial thought: “Piece of cake! This is going to be easy!” Lets just say, boy, was I wrong.
At first, I was feeling good about my assignment. I was walking back to my dorm room from one of my classes and had been thinking of things to write. I had ideas racing into my mind; I could shorten up my synthesis essay, change a few words, take on a different tone, and BAM! A perfect blog post. I sat down at my desk, opened my laptop, created a new page, and began to type. I was off to a good start, but the more I read my writings, the more I wanted to delete them. I just wasn’t feeling it. It got to the point where every time I typed something, I would delete it a couple minutes later. After about an hour, I was staring at a blank page with only a title for my post. I then thought to myself, “well, this is not going to be easy.”
The Challenges
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One of the hardest parts of this process was changing the tone of my voice. I had a very difficult time transforming my academic wording into a more casual tone. My high school english classes taught me that speaking personally and in the form of “I” was a bad thing to do in a paper. They expected complex sentences with difficult vocabulary to make the analysis seem a little more impressive. It made the paper so boring and so lifeless.
Coming to college, my professors tell me I can absolutely speak in the “I” form. This lifted some weight off of my shoulders, since I expected the college essays to be much worse than my high school ones. I mean, come on. How hard do you think it was to take a stance on a topic and argue for it without saying “I”? I’ll tell you: very hard. How else do they expect you to voice your opinion?
Writing my first post made me remember what it was like to be a personal writer again. I liked the feeling of being able to express myself from my point of view, and stating that I was the one who said it. I wanted to make sure that I didn’t use “I” all the time either. I realized its effectiveness, but wanted to keep somewhat of an academic tone too. After all, this post was designed for an english class. I made sure that there was a balance of academic and informal writing in my blog post to please both my readers and my professor.
Another challenge that I faced was condensing my 8 page synthesis paper down to only a couple hundred words. I had so much to say on my topic, but could only fit a small handful of it into my post. I tried to identify the big main points of my paper and threw them together to make something shorter but understandable. I kept some of my analysis and metacommentary in my post to add a little extra support to the claims I was making.
The Perks of Blogging
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One of the things I love about blogging so far is the use of images and graphics. I feel like it creates a lighter mood while at the same time drawing in the reader’s attention. No one wants to read a long boring essay, word after word. The pictures and funny GIFs help to break up the text and refocus the reader on the next topic up for discussion (while at the same time, making the reading fun!)
I also think that the bolding, italicizing, and (parenthesis) help to draw the reader’s focus to the points you’re trying to emphasize the most. It shifts the attention in ways you never could with a formal academic paper.
The Experience
Overall, I think that this blogging experience has been great for me. It allowed me to reconnect with the creative writer inside of me that I long forgot about.
Thanks for reading!