Exploring, compiling, reshaping and understanding different concepts through the lens of structure and design with my blog has been a rich journey this past semester. Hours of browsing different blogs and websites, dozens and dozens of open tabs, and several fortuitous insights resulted in seven separate posts, each discussing unique and intriguing topics. However, it has not been an easy or smooth journey. Through the experience of blogging, I have learned many things about the strengths and weaknesses of my own thinking as well as how to fit into the intellectual fabric of other thinkers.
Two of my strongest posts were “One Dollar Social Experiment” and “Stories vs. Statistics: The Structure of Our Worldview”. By examining the former, some of my greatest strengths as a blogger become evident. In this post, I shared a beautifully-crafted and thought-provoking video about the artist Mark Wagner who creates intricate collages with individual one dollar bills. I used this video as a basis for a discussion on controversial design and its effect on viewers, tying in our class discussions about the role of museums in our understanding of the world. Towards the end of the post I wrote,
“Wagner's design choice of using dollar bills in his collages is akin to him simply taking a dollar bill and sealing it in a display case for viewers to ponder. By breaking the connections we viewers have to that piece of money, he is allowing us to not only analyze the story his assemblages narrate, but also analyze the relationship we have with the most basic unit of wealth in the world.”
This quote illustrates my strength in connecting classroom material to outside ideas in order to create deep insights. One of my other strengths is to cover a wide spectrum of topics in my blog, which is demonstrated by how different the latter post, “Stories vs. Statistics: The Structure of Our Worldview” is from the previous one. In this post, I expanded on our class activity on statistics about global demographics and attempted to generate a debate about how people should best interpret the world around them and their place in it: through narratives or through isolated, cold facts. In addition to delving into a topic much different from other topics I had already covered, this post also succeeded in the task of attracting debate, as evidenced by a comment by my classmate, Nina:
“You need to belief in something, and yes that thing, whether it be a country, an idea, a person, or whatever, will have factual flaws. Only from a narrative perspective do goals become meaningful and worthwhile.”
Although she mostly agreed with my premise that a happy medium is necessary between stories and statistics, she refuted my point by claiming that ultimately narratives are more valuable to individual lives. After reading this, I felt a great sense of satisfaction that I had chosen and written about a subject rich and raw enough to have such a conversation.
However, not all of my posts were this successful. I encountered many problems along the way, including links to outside blogs and articles relevant to my writing, and making extensive use of my lens in analyzing the topics I chose. A blog which accomplishes both these tasks, “The Teenage Interpreter” by my friend Julia, is one admire tremendously. She seamlessly weaves different bits of news and information into her blog posts while keeping her lens of adolescent perspective at the forefront of her writing.
If I am able to improve in these two areas in particular, my blog will not only become more cohesive, tied together through my lens, but it will also become more accessible to the public. I plan to achieve these goals by staying more up to date with the blogs of my peers as well as those of experts in structure and design, and planning out my posts a bit more so as to ensure they are properly captured through my lens.
Writing my blog has provided me with the unique opportunity to extrapolate the ideas discussed in class to things I see and hear everyday outside the classroom, and develop my personal voice in the process. If I can improve my writing sufficiently to attract the voices of my classmates and even complete strangers, I blog will finally occupy the right space and thrive even as I leave my high school English class behind.
Word Count: 734
I really enjoyed the last line of this post: "Word Count: 734." It really speaks to me. The last digit plus the second digit is equal to the first digit. What felicity! And how remarkable! You couldn't have chosen a more pulchritudinous number that is an element of the set ℝ, except for e^6.559. Alack, decisions like that sometimes necessitate sacrifice. However, you do save face a bit, as the first digit minus the second digit is, in fact, equivalent to the third digit. Good work overall, though. I enjoy your writing but am disconcerted with your blithe disregard for the Oxford comma.
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