A Retrospective on My First Blog
Who Am I?
This first entry served as an introductory piece as well as a way to get myself familiar with blogging. In this piece, I wrote about what has brought me to Whittier College and the Scholars Program as well as what my long-term goals are.
My Learning Principles
My second blog this semester was a piece regarding principles which I place a high value on in terms of learning. For these particular learning principles, I wrote about approaching learning with the right mindset as well as learning from areas around me, such as the internet and podcasts.
Learning Abilities
Yet another blog dedicated to learning skills; this time around I found myself writing about personal learning habits. I focused on writing about my surroundings and environment when it comes to learning and how each can impact my learning skills. While each person has their own ideal learning environment, there is no debate that a great learning environment can translate to success.
My Big Question
One of the more important blogs I’ve written this semester dealt with finding a way for me to turn hobbies and passions into a career. Coming into the Whittier Scholar’s Program, I struggled with the idea of writing a big question, when it turns out my big question had played a large role in me joining the Scholar’s Program. I had based my education on taking classes that interested me, so I basically turned my big question into finding a way to turn these interests into a career.
TED Talk
In response to the assignment of finding a TED Talk relating to my big question, I felt that Emilie Wapnick’s talk on “Multipotentialies” was the perfect fit. In her talk, Wapnick discusses that many people don’t have one true calling for them and introduces her audience to the idea of a “mulitpotentialite” which is a person who has many interests and excels in many different areas. As someone who identifies with this character type, I found this talk very beneficial and heartwarming.
Response to It’s Complicated
In response to a quote in “It’s Complicated” written by Danah Boyd, I wrote about my addiction to social media and the internet. Boyd writes about this specifically and I dedicated one of my blog posts writing about how social media and the internet can have a negative impact on me. While there they obviously serve a purpose in day-to-day life, there are many times where work gets put off due to distractions caused by the internet.
My Lesson Plan
For the big portion of the class where I would be teaching for half an hour, I found myself struggling with the idea of what I would teach and how it relates to my big question. As seen in this blog, I had much indecision and the topic which I ended up teaching was completely different from the one which I blogged about. In the blog however, I planned on teaching about the benefits of social media and how it can benefit my career. The idea of planning a lesson around my interests remained, as I ended up giving an informative lecture on craft beer.
This semester was my first time ever using a real blog. Sure, I’m familiar using social media accounts such as Facebook and Twitter, but Medium provided me with a great medium (see what I did there) to express myself and become engaged with the art of blogging. As a writer, I have the most experience writing essays, and writing blogs calls for a much different and more casual style of writing which is something I’ve found to be very therapeutic. I hope to continue blogging in the future using either this Medium account or a potential new one just for personal use.
