“Study the past if you would define the future”

Confucius said, “Study the past if you would define the future,” and I think that’s applicable here as well as anywhere. It’s interesting to look at the past of my blog posts and to see how blogging like this will define how I approach academic writing and other forms of discussion in the future.

This blog has been an interesting platform for discussion, and it’s definitely a lot different than anything I’ve done before. When I look back over my posts, I think they got better as I went. In the beginning, I was still treating it more academic and trying to express my thoughts without sounding too casual. Over the course of the semester, I think I began to write with a more relaxed feel, and that seems to have improved my writing on this platform.

If I were changing any posts, it would be my first one on Orlando and my one on Farewell Leicester Square. I think I could have gone a little deeper with both of these, but instead, I stayed at the surface level of analysis. Digging a little deeper might have made them better. My posts that I liked best all had that element of digging deeper. My three favorite posts of mine were titled, “Like Mother, Like Daughter,” “Nothing for anyone to whistle,” and “Seeing the Unseen.” “Like Mother, Like Daughter” analyzed part of Wide Sargasso Sea, and it ended up helping out with the thought process for my Omeka project. “Nothing for anyone to whistle” was about High Fidelity, and it was on an excerpt from the book that I really enjoyed and found fascinating. That I was able to connect that to the art of writing songs and other mediums of expression only made it better. Lastly, my post on “Seeing the Unseen” connected with the larger world and my interests of politics and culture, making it really enjoyable for me as well.

Like some of the others, I didn’t realize we had a public audience, so it didn’t really change how I wrote. I think what most helped develop my blog writing was just taking a more relaxed approach to it and realizing that it was okay to express my opinion!