Blog Audit — The End

What do you usually write about in your posts?Are there broad themes or specific concerns that reoccur in your writing?Has the nature of your posts changed since the beginning of the semester?What surprised you as you reread your work?What ideas or threads in your posts do you see as worth revisiting?What else do you notice?What aspects of the weekly blogging do you value most, and how does it show up in your posts?

This semester of organizational communication opened me up to a completely new realm of knowledge that I have never heard of or learned about before. When I first read the name of the course I had no idea what organizational communication was, but now I can say with confidence that I grasp many of the concepts behind it. I also learned a lot about the business connections to communication and how organizations come together and function. I really enjoyed how up to date the book was and the amount of examples it provided.

I took this class for my own benefit, not because it was a requirement. I was really looking for growth in my writing skills and understanding of communication. I hadn’t taken any such class ever because all my Humanity/Social Science requirements were fulfilled when I was studying abroad and those were mostly foreign language oriented. Considering the last time I took a class where I had to write a significant amount of content and read more than 5 pages a week, I think I did pretty well. I was never good at writing and reading because it always took me a very long time to do.

I would say that my style changed depending on the questions that I was to answer and also if I would relate to a concept. In many posts I tried to reel in a personal connection or opinion but in some blogs I analyzed and summarized the new vocabulary and connected it to the weekly movie.

I think I had waves in my writing throughout the weeks; it wasn’t a straight incline plane toward perfection. Based on my understanding of the topics or relevance to my life I was able to write better.

Every night it took me about 5–6hours between reading, writing, and having a cup of tea to put together my post. And no, it didn’t get any faster over time.

Looking back now at all my blog posts, I realized that starting with the first post on globalization and ending on the last one about competitive strategy, there wasn’t a post that I didn’t hold back on my opinions or personal connections. I think because the class was strictly online it allowed for openness and ability to form ideas slowly.

I wish others opened up more especially on the identity post. It’s always important to express yourself and share with others what you are and stand for. I think it makes conversations and comments on posts more interesting. Whether it was good or not regarding how much I disclosed, I think that it added character and relevance to using organizational communication in my future.

I believe starting with the documentary “The Corporation” inspired me to do so.

Beginning with globalization I realized that traveling has really aided me in understanding others of different backgrounds especially when interacting with the locals. I think that this will help me one day in the workforce because it is certain that in this day and age my co-workers will be of diverse backgrounds.

In my post on “Strategic Ambiguity and Communication” I found most of the content to fit right into my teaching experience. “The transactional-process model is a more complex model that mirrors what true communication in my opinion should look like, especially in the classroom setting. ‘All persons are engaged in sending and encoding as well as receiving and decoding messages simultaneously. Each person is constantly sharing in the processes, and each person is affecting the other’”. (Wenberg & Wilmot, 1973, p.5)

Organizational management was another interesting section that taught some history on classical management and the more modern approach: scientific management. Because the book brought up a lot of business aspects, I liked that I was able to apply my knowledge in economics and have a more critical eye but also learn new things that could challenge my understandings.

Speaking of teams and networks, a few weeks ago I was a part of a focus group for the first time. The representatives were from a private company that wanted our opinions on a new technology for home improvement that would connect many appliances in the house and give all power to the consumer on his/her phone or computer. They were also thinking of branding it at Best Buy. Clearly the representatives were a team and they brought in about 5 outsiders including myself, who were a network, to give them opinions on their product. To be honest while sitting at the big white table with these company leaders, I was thinking about some of the different characteristics of an organization I learned about in this course.

My favorite blog post by far, and one that is worth revisiting was about cultural studies of organization. Culture means a lot to me as seen in my blog post. Similarly as I am involved in the Polish community and strive to stay involved and believe in sustaining the culture for generations to come (even without immigration of new Poles). The same needs to apply to a successful business as seen in the movie Kinky Boots that we watched later in the semester. Also, looking back at my identity post clearly a lot has changed since then as well because now I has new prospective for the future (I am starting a Masters in Food Safety).

A very unique part of the class was being able to read everyone else’s blogs. In most classes you never see other people’s work but in this class everything was out on the table. I think this really created a lot of transparency and ability to mend gaps in the mind on topics of uncertainty. It also always amazed me on how different everyone approached the same concept. Clearly we had our own little organization under the great leadership of our professor and in the niche: Medium.

The main take away from this course will be how to be a successful communicator, knowing the facts to articular good discussion when prompted to do so, and analyzing difference organizations and their interconnected systems as well as hierarchical setup. I also have a special section in the book that I bookmarked on how to become a successful leader. Whether I will ever need to use it or not I think that the aspects the book describes such as: openness, supportiveness, motivation, and empowerment, are all great characteristics for a future leader.