blogging for credit & satisfaction

Today's post is brought to you by Dreams from my Father: My father dreams that one day I will become an academic. Being able to say "my daughter, the English professor" would bring him great joy and happiness. The BYU graduate program was/is/can be the first step towards PhDdom, but in the midst of my current exhaustion all my greatest goals revolve around actually getting my MA and nothing more. Rest assured however, that I am working on increasing my goal longevity. If not for me, for my father. He deserves it.

Writing & Blogging in Graduate School

And now onto blogging about blogging. I started this blog yeeears ago when it was supposed to be all about art (of the visual form) and it has since evolved (devolved?) into thoughts and words of sporadic nature. The greatest joys I get from blogging these days are 1) procrastinating my homework and 2) knowing that my grandpa regularly reads my posts. However, today I am getting blogging satisfaction from a different source; today blogging is my homework.

In my 610 class "Composition & Pedagogy" we are doing a bitty-unit on new media and employing the legions of online powers (youtube, blogger, Twitter, Facebook, chat, etc.) in teaching settings. I am somewhat skeptical of this (mostly of Twitter), but employing these tools in writing class is intriguing. In fact, my own little writing class has a class blog where my students (are supposed to) post once a week. And reading those blog posts has actually become one of the most rewarding parts of teaching. Students who are stiff and uncomfortable in formal writing assignments write blog posts that are witty, humorous, and honest. I ask them to write about their own style, what they love/hate about peer review, and books they've read that use great imagery. And in this public-but-private space of blogging students tell me things that they haven't ever revealed in our classroom settings. It's fun. It humanizes my students and it humanizes me. Writing across graduate instructor and student divides. Writing across media. Writing about writing. Lovely.

Thursday's assignment (look! totally not procrastinating!) for my class (that I take not teach) was to write 500 words somewhere in the vast space of the internet and here I am. Back at my blog.

Sometimes (like when I get to write blog posts for homework) graduate school doesn't seem so daunting. Just arduous. It's exciting the things I get to do--like teach and take classes and think about new media--but I often wonder what it means to be an academic. To love research just because and analyze literature just because and spend hours in the library just because. I'm not sure I'm cut from that mold exactly. Sometimes I get stuck in rut just thinking of the hours I spend researching and writing ultimately culminate in a ten-page paper that only my professor will read/skim. Even dreaming big i.e. someday I’ll write a paper that will get published in a journal and maybe a few tens of people will read it, doesn't always do it for me.

I'm not saying writing only for me (or my professor) is purposeless. But it's also a dream of mine to write things that people want and will read. I don’t know many people who want or will read my paper on Titus Andronicus, or my pontifications on Sunset Song, but I have my blog and EVERYONE can read it. Even if they don't want to, they can.

That's kind of cool. And if I never become a serious scholar, or a published author, I have this little space that is my own and that is everyone's. Where I can write and dream and think and it's not just for me (though maybe it is). While I'm not sure how I feel about all of the new media, I love blogs and their potential and how I'm given a little space to write just because. And I like that. And I am of that mold. 

And of composition? Learning to write? Becoming a better writer? That is the ultimate blog potential: having a space to become aware of audience and voice and usage. And being able to write without spending hours in the library or hours drafting? Glorious.