...

So. I know we're supposed to state our first impressions of the class and then dive into what worked for us and what didn't, but I feel almost bad stating my first impressions as they don't reflect my current thoughts regarding this course. I'm going to try to tie everything up nicely by going back to my original theme of explanation through lists.

Reasons why I was enthused about this class:
1. I was excited to take an English class to mix up my courses a bit; I rarely write simply for the sake of writing.
2. I wanted to get my UWP requirement out of the way so that I wouldn't have to take it during the regular school year.

Reasons why I was less than enthused about this class:
1. My counselor had told me that I could "not under any circumstances test out of the class," and I needed it as a requirement for graduation (I don't usually go into required classes feeling juiced about the subject matter).
2. I didn't like the original idea about blogging; it seemed quite unfamiliar to me and I couldn't figure out how it could effectively be incorporated into a writing course.
3. I like structure and direction most of the time.
4. Um, it's summer, duh.

I guess what I'm trying to say is that my initial impressions of this course were quite mixed; I also had this weird connotation regarding blogs due to my few experiences reading others' posts outside of this class. I remembered back to freshman year of college when some of my friends had Livejournal pages and would write things about "how Josh hasn't called me, and I don't know what to do because I saw him at that party last weekend with Andrea and I can't tell if he likes me and I'm so stressed out and I have a paper due in five hours and I just don't have any time to do it and my mom is mad at me and blah blah blabbity blah..."

This, of course, is an exaggeration which is in no way representative of all blogs (or bloggers), but it shows how I felt about the medium of writing in this class; I didn't want to be associated with the noise of personal analysis so often stumbled upon online.

Then something changed.

I don't know what it was exactly, but something happened that made me begin to truly enjoy blogging, at least in an academic sense. It may have been that this class allowed us to read the writing of our peers, something I have never had the opportunity to do outside of editing groups. Or perhaps it was that we were writing according to prompts, and not just vomiting internal monologues into cyberspace. Whatever it was, it greatly influenced the way I ultimately felt about this class.

And the way I still feel about this class.

I don't know if everyone had as recondite an experience as I believe I did; I think that the lack of structure and direction was, for some, scary and oppressive. I'll admit that I too like some sort of framework most of the time. But ultimately I think the fluidity of the course and the flexibility of Chris regarding subject matter resulted in more profound and meaningful discussions, which in turn lead to more thoughtful and expressive posts.

I think I'm actually going to keep my blog post UWP 101. I don't quite know what I'll use it for, but I hope that others may keep theirs as well so that we can continue to read each others' work and provide a forum for feedback. Wouldn't it be hilarious and wonderful if someday we were able to read each others' dissertations or articles or books before they were officially published?

I think so.