Survival of the Fresher

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Reflexive piece.
For the whole of this year, my life has been spinning, one moment I was up and the next l was down, but l learned great deal which l am going to share with you in a while, hold on tightly.
For the first term it was very bad because l arrived late for registration and a lot of work was already waiting for me. Rod’s lectures were fascinating but the fact that we had to write almost every week and sometimes twice a week made it difficult for me settle down. I was not used to that kind of setting, having written compositions only in high school, it was very difficult to adjust. Although we were not limited in our writing, it proved to be tedious .However the big difference between first term and the fourth term is that this term we were allowed to play around a little with technology and genre whilst first term emphasised writing and just generating story ideas sometimes from our own heads. This term has its ups and downs but was even more exciting than first term. Working in groups is not something that l enjoy because it usually strain me and forces me to perfect everything so that my group members would be pleased. Believe me, pleasing someone is very difficult and one thing about groups is that you are not allowed to go your own way without being criticised. We were always at each other’s throats for deciding which template to use, what is going to be the character of our blog and who to interview. It was like living in a big house with a lot of kids, always fighting and trying to please everyone. All the same it taught me that I don’t win always and that I had to accept other people’s views and be accommodative as possible. It was an unforgettable experience that enhanced my people skills.
Working within the confines of genre taught me to be disciplined in my way of reporting and writing. I found blogging as a genre very interesting and it actually opened a new window to me that l did not know that it existed before. I used to think that blogging is for people who are just writing for fun and that they are always writing nonsense. While I was proved wrong this term, thanks to Allete and Sim. I have discovered an emerging type of journalism which is fast growing in the world as people’s lives are becoming busier; they are increasingly turning to blogs for information of what happening in the world rather than sitting down and reading a newspaper. Blogging as a type of journalism is even more attractive than print media because it allows us to air out our views in a more interesting manner. It provides for expansion as we learn from the comments we receive from other people. In short it has provided a debating platform that was never there before. Personally l have learned to write to a global audience rather than to a small group of people and my reporting skills have sharpened a bit. The reason why l am saying a bit is because the term was so short and there is a lot to learn within that short period of time. Surely I would advise the department to start this course a little bit earlier, maybe in the third term so that students are given enough time to engage with the new genre and the techniques of blogging.
There is one thing that I found to be of concern to a whole lot of people. Our lecturers gave us a limited theme to work with, which is good but l think they should make it a little bit broader next time. The difficulty of working with one theme is that we are forced to look for the right people and it is boring really because I had to work with the same people over and over again and their experiences tend to drive towards one thing. However it taught me to go out there and look for the right sources and people all the time. On the other hand it had its own advantages that is I was forced to think and produce something meaningful, that can help those without such information, rather than gather information which is meaningless to people. It also controlled my reporting and writing style and contributed to unravelling some of the myths about first years at university.
On the whole l have found this term to be more exciting and at the same time challenging. I would rate myself on level 6 because l still have some things to perfect about my writing. I learned a lot this term and this includes gathering information by interviews and just talking generally to different people. Considering that l was a bit shy to talk to people that l did not know, this course was a wake-up call in life, to be more open and to express my own ideas and how I feel about certain things. Therefore l say thumbs up to our lecturers for this year.

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