Semester Final: My Experience Blogging

In what ways have you surprised yourself this semester on your blog?

   Having homework be blog posts completely re-envisioned my thoughts of school and showed I had more potential than I could ever imagine. In my previous school years, I was never much of a student who worked at home, my concentration so much of the time just didn't allow me to do much of anything. Often times when I would get home I would start working and the only productivity that resulted was one or two finished questions, and end up with a lot of lost time staring at the table, some days it would be hours lost. Now when I blog I have zero worry of completing an assignment. I was able to get A's by being stress free about English during the first half of school and would purposely procrastinate until a few hours before the deadline because I knew I had the capacity to write a fairly quality article in less than half an hour. With all honesty, near all these posts were a product of waiting until Friday night and spending an hour at the most typing something up in one sitting. The previous midterm final, the monthly review for "Lies My Teacher Told Me", all done with a relative degree of laziness. I never enjoyed English anywhere near as much as this in a long time, and found out I could do something like this for a career, possibly even being a journalist.

   Back on my midterm final I explained how I enjoy looking up articles on websites focusing on the entertainment industry, whether it be reviews or announcements based on Music, Movies, and Gaming. I wanted to see myself working as a journalist for one of these sites, but I was always put off by the length of certain articles. Not anymore. I am coming to realize that I can have the capacity to write at the high standards I find in the articles I read online. A few weeks ago I went into detail about the Halo: Reach Multiplayer Beta in a fashion similar to that of a preview on Gamespot or IGN, and as much as I have a ways to go before I'm at their level, I feel I am already on that road. That ten paragraph behemoth too, was a product of just sitting down and writing out all the necessary details I could, since when your talking about a video game, its not hard to go into detail.

   Outside of experience, I am limited by a few things that keep me from writing the quality I want. The biggest problem is since it takes out of my personal life, there are other things I want to do on my spare time. For the most part I'm just sitting down, and typing up something with relative clarity and meets the required number of words. I am not merely sitting at an office where I have some pressure on me and must focus on a single article, in other words a controlled situation. At home it's a different beast, I procrastinate until the last minute to create pressure and type something up with relative clarity and meets the required number of words. As much as that works to get credit as a school assignment, it doesn't exactly help create a review that is 100% professional and credible. My Bioshock 2 review for instance was very rushed since I had more thoughts than I had allowed myself time to include in my review effectively. I wanted to go into great detail about the story, gameplay, and multiplayer, but it ended up about a single paragraph for each of those three elements. In the end I tried cramming in as much detail as possible and sounded sloppy reading it over because I had so many thoughts about it. I find it crazy that I actually believe I could write at that quality I want in a more professional environment.

   Finally, reviewing music specifically and making that sound credible was harder than I sometimes say it is. Trying to say what it was I liked about an album ends up with me putting words onto the paper whether it sounds good or below average. Try listening to an album and try explaining what it is you like about it. Getting around explaining thoughts on an album must be more detailed than just saying "This album is amazing!", "Meh it's ok", "Man, I love this album, it puts me in a good mood" or, "Its so angry, and that's what makes it awesome!" The irony about reviewing is that on some level, opinion is arguably out of the question, you must say it has this, it has that, what it's like. This is made more difficult because there isn't a good enough way to explain what it sounds like. Think about it, you can hum the rhythm to the main riff of Black Sabbath's Iron Man, but there's no way to type that and not seem like an idiot. I do my best of saying what makes the album what it is but explaining how a certain album has more or less of an impact on the culture requires being a really good writer, the writing must be spot on with the limited amount of space to type with to make the comments interesting and more understandable.

   You can see this with the two allmusic.com reviews of Black Sabbath albums. I have only reviewed an artist's latest album, and since these rock acts aren't exactly in their prime I haven't been able to give them major praise, so my writing has been closer to the second link.

Review of Black Sabbath's "Paranoid"

Review of Black Sabbath's "Never Say Die!"

   Just thinking about my posts critically like this is may be the biggest surprise this over the school year. I have been told on many occasions that my writing is almost professional and my parents have said they weren't anywhere near as good at my age but those kind of comments detract from my what I think of all of this, a work in progress. Maybe it's pessimistic but I find it's a great reflection on my maturity. Sure, in reality this is just tedious homework to get a weekly grade on, but mentally I've found that some may find it a little more worthwhile being on the internet, but I find it relatable on a level beyond the fact it's just happens to be on a computer.

Final Score: 5/5