Saturday, October 22, 2011

The Act of Blogging

 
This year in my Advanced Placement Language and Composition class, we are required to write blogs. We are on a term schedule at my high school, and we are required to have thirty blogs by the end of the term. My first response to this number was, “THIRTY BLOGS?! Is that a joke?!” Thirty seemed like a very high number, when in reality, it isn’t that high. My main worry was/still is coming up with enough ideas to blog about. A lot of the time I come up with an excellent idea when I am driving, but I can’t write it down right then, and I forget! Blogging started off as a chore, but now it is actually becoming quite fun.

My classmates would beg to differ. Only about six of us out of twenty-one enjoy blogging. For me, it is a way to express my feelings toward certain topics. It is a way for me to voice my opinion for people who are actually interested in hearing/reading it. Here are some of the things my classmates have to say about blogging:

Bailey: “I don’t really like it. I mean, once I find a good topic, I like doing it. However, I am so busy that I don’t have time to do it and therefore it becomes more like a chore.”

Maddy: “I don’t mind blogging, but I just wish we didn’t have a certain number we had to reach in order to get a good grade.”

Rachel: “I don’t like having to be forced to write something. When we have essays due, that is okay because it is once a week. But with blogs, we have to do so many of them and they aren’t very significant topics; therefore I am not very interested in them and it is hard to write a lot about them.”

Allie: “I like it because it is a way for me to put all of my thoughts in writing, and have a place to express my opinions that people would otherwise not hear.”

Diamond: “I like blogging because this class is not a creative writing course and therefore we can write about whatever we want in our blogs.”

Many people don’t like blogging because of the set number that is needed by the end of the term. I took another poll in my class and asked my peers if they would enjoy blogging more if the number was lower, or if we had a set number per week (like two or so a week). Many people said that they would prefer this to the set number we have by the end of the term. Not checking up on us regularly leaves us to procrastinate. I also asked my peers if they would blog at all if we didn’t have a set number of blogs we had to accomplish. Ninety percent of them said, NO.

Blogging can be a good way for us to feel like we have an outlet for our opinions. However, when there is too much pressure on us to reach the maximum number, we get stressed and it causes us to become frustrated. I can honestly say that I am not sure I would blog if there weren’t a set number we had to have. But the more and more I blog, the more I find it to be fun. I know it is a place I can be myself; somewhere I know I can share my opinion freely. If people don’t like what I have to say, they can just move right on to the next blog. Blogging doesn’t have to feel like a chore as long as you find something worth sharing.







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