Survival of the Fresher

Reflection Piece ________________________________________________________________

By Ramosamo Sam Raboroko

As exciting as blogging is, it is very problematic. Blogging requires a person to know the nature of their blog and to work with that topic forever. It is hard to be creative when you are not supposed to deviate from the nature of your blog. You are confined to one topic which you have to stick with for the rest of the blogging duration. I personally found blogging problematic because it is a group effort. A person’s ideas have to be accepted by their group members, and then they have to accommodate the ideas of the other group members. Individuals have different ideas and different topics and this is also problematic. My idea had to be accepted not only by me but by other people also, who had their own ideas. We spent most of the time trying to convince each other that our ideas were better than the other person’s idea. By the time we dealt with problems facing us, we had created new obstacles. Some people felt obliged to present university as a good place, while others wanted to tell the truth about universities. I for one wanted my group to bring about a balance between the negative aspects of university and the positive effects. But of course this was contradictory to my blog’s agenda. We initially agreed that we were going to highlight the positive attributes of university. This problem for one made me change my whole set of thinking. I was confined by my blog’s agenda and my group mates’ ideas.

A blog also as a genre has its own characteristics. These were also confining. I did not get the chance to express my opinion on the topics that I hold dear to my heart because the genre we were working with was very specific. I had to deal with topics that related to first years and as most people know, university is not only about difficulties and challenges facing first year students. There are also underlying issues that senior students have that I thought would have been worthwhile to blog about. I am not mentioning any here because they were not part and parcel of this year’s blogs.
Of course the fact I had to stick to one specific topic had its own advantages. I got the chance to explore different avenues of a topic and to look at it from different angles. This required me to be observant as well as critical. What is most important is that I got to improve on skills that I lacked in. for instance playing around with one topic and presenting it in many ways. I got the chance to understand my fellow first years better and I got to know the problems that they are facing. I got to see that I’m not the only first year who has got problems. I even got to experience first year through the eyes of other people.
One other problem was the fact that we were writing to an unknown audience. We could not make a survey and ask our perspective readers what they expected from us. Our lectures were also the producers. The fact that we were writing to an unknown audience meant that we had to use our imagination as a group most of the times. This meant that we had to write stories that we will find interesting and worth a minute of our time. This was problematic in that not everybody sees things the way we see things and they do not appreciate everything that we find worth appreciating, so this also presented obstacles. The fact that our lectures acted as our producers also brought constraints because they had their own agendas and ideologies. They represented a whole range of people. They have their own idea of how things should be done. They also refrained us from writing freely to our target audience because we had to go by their rules. The fact also remains that they did their first year a long time ago and they are not keeping up with the times. What might have been a very controversial issue in their time does not necessarily stand as an issue now. So this acted as an extra constrain. They also did not know what our target group expected from them and from us.

As I’ve stated not everybody feels particularly keen on working in a group. We tend to look at what the other person is going to say then bring their point down instead of bringing our ideas forward. This term was different in that we had a lot of work and on top of that we had to do a group work. I have no problem in working in groups but working in groups presents more problems than solutions. Working in groups for me meant that my productivity was slowed. It meant trying to impress other people and selling my ideas to people who also want to sell their ideas and people who were not particularly interested in making room for development and thinking out of the box. I had to ensure that I do not offend other people with my own ideas. Bringing story ideas was also difficult because I had to make sure that my stories did not only make me happy but that they made other people happy. I had to ensure that the stories also relate to my blog agenda.

My performance was not very good in meetings because some people just swallowed my voice. I only spoke when I was directly talked to and also when it was my turn to say something. I felt nervous through out these meetings because there were so many people with many ideas. I think personally I have grown due to this blogging experience. It has made me improve on my writing abilities and helped to boost my confidence in that when I was directly talked to, I had to swallow my fear and present my story idea without any reservations.
I believe that blogging is journalism because all the processes involved in journalism are there. It also gives a message to the people and informs them about the relevant news. To do blogging also requires a person to do research and to have sources. For instance when I was doing my blogging assignments I had to research my stories and interview people, not to mention the fact that I had to find reliable sources.

Over all this term was very hectic for me, but I still enjoyed it.

posted by Sam at 11:18 PM >0 comments

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