Saturday, October 8, 2016

Blogging Overview

Over the course of this class, we have written several blog posts.  Taking the time to reflect now, I am able to see what has been successful and what has not been as successful.  Certain blog posts have been more interesting to me, while others have left me struggling to think of what to write.  I will now reflect on my posts over the past few weeks. 
So far, my favorite blogs, and the ones I feel have been the easiest to write about, have been the ones where we find a personal connection to the topics discussed in class.  For example, when we wrote about our own experiences with organizations or about our experience with opportunism, I had a lot to say on the topic.  It also was a good way to understand the lesson from a personal stand point and really see how these economic issues are present in the every day.  It is also easy for me to write about my life experiences over a fictitious hypothetical.  I find that a common theme in my writings have been tying together my work experiences with what we are learning in class at the time.  This would make sense, as most of my connections to organizations have been in a work setting.  Looking back now, some students chose to write about teams as a form of organizations.  This never occurred to me when writing because the only sports I did in school were solo sports, such as swimming and track.  While I was part of a team, there is a different mentality to these types of activities versus sports such as basketball or football.  In those activities, the success and failure is of the group, and if the group as a whole is unsuccessful, it does not really matter if there is an outstanding player because his accomplishments are overshadowed.  This can be seen vice versa as well where a poor player is hidden by a good team.   Whereas with a sport such as swimming, the team as a whole can be bad and not win in meets or competition, but if an individual is outstanding, they are able to prove that themselves and have the opportunity to individually place and go on to regionals and state.

Over the course of the semester so far, I find that I am trying to look at the prompts a little more in depth than before.  I am really trying to get past simply answering the prompt and getting to the fundamental root of what will tie in to what we learned.  I am also trying to think more creatively when answering the prompts.  I am trying to think outside of the box when it comes to my experiences and what connections I make.  Some prompts that I have found successful for myself personally, was the one about opportunism.  I had an experience that I think tied in really well for the prompt.  I recall in class that others may have struggled with this concept.  For me however, I enjoyed this post.  The post that I found difficult and least enjoyable was the one about transfer pricing.  The concept of Illinibucks took me a little while to understand.  I also felt that it was difficult to find uses for an Illinibuck that I personally found relevant.  As I got further into the post, it was harder to think of more things to say on the topic as well, which made the post more of a challenge.  All in all though, I have enjoyed the blog posts and find it a unique way to express our understanding of the concepts.

3 comments:

  1. Here is a suggestion moving forward. If you find the prompt easily accessible to you go with it. If the prompt leaves you a bit cold - modify the prompt or write about something else entirely, which you are entitled to do as long as you tie what you write about to course themes. Do continue to try to extend your experience to the general subject matter of the class that is the the way to have the greatest take away after the course is over.

    One other suggestion is to continue to reflect on past posts and see if your are tying into those. It's good that you enjoyed the post on opportunism. Have you leveraged that in subsequent posts? Think how you might do that. It will improve the quality of the individual post and make the posts more important to you overall.

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  2. This is good advice. I was not sure before how much liberty we were allowed to take with the posts. I am happy to hear that if I find myself struggling with a specific prompt, I can try to tie in the lesson in an easier way. Moving forward I will definitely work to tie in previous posts. I am beginning to see that our lessons are building on one another.

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  3. I agree with you in that it's easier to connect to the ideas mentioned in class rather than trying to think of something hypothetical or fictitious. Being able to connect our own experiences allows the concepts that we discussed in class to be more memorable and personal.

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