“Cages, Ice Cream and Other Overdramatic Metaphors and Musings on Blogging and Academic Writing”

From Microsoft Office Online

When I write academic essays, I can spend hours in front of a screen. Only my own thoughts and emotions to keep me company. Sometimes my third grade English teacher, a figment of my imagination, visits to remind me to use the right “there/their/they’re”, but otherwise it’s hours of silence.

I write my paper. I delete what I wrote. I write it again. I “proofread” it. Somehow I miss the wrong “there”. I turn it in.  I go to sleep. I wake up at 4, realizing I left the wrong “there” in. I go back to sleep. The next few days, I purposefully forget my paper through Netflix therapy. Just when I’ve almost got it out my mind, the paper comes back. Back from the void. With only a grade. Maybe a paragraph of comments. Maybe.  A paragraph evaluating a 6-8 page paper.  God knows how many hours of work judged in ten minutes. It’s an evaluation, not a discussion. It can be dissatisfying and it’s the writing I’m used to doing.

However, I’ve been writing differently this semester. I’ve begun blogging, making podcasts and developing my e-portfolio. All these forms engage with an audience larger than one.  An audience that doesn’t demand an intro, thesis, body, support and conclusion. In that order or no A for you. Now I can choose my audience. I can choose what appeals to them. A blog. A podcast.  A website. My writing has become more diverse yet more focused as a result.

Traditional academic writing is a cage. And you have to make the bars.  While you’re inside the cage. To someone else’s specifications. Someone who expects you to be coherent for 6-8 pages but cannot write a clear direct prompt in half a page. You have to do it this way because they can only appreciate what you’ve captured if the container looks a certain way.  The way a bunch of old people decided a cage should look like. I’m being overdramatic.  Old people have their reasons why a cage should be built a certain way or rather why an academic essay should be composed a certain way. Sometimes you do have more freedom and there are always professors who are exceptions. But still, my point is made.

From Microsoft Office Online

Blogging is different, however.   There’s freedom in blogging. Part of that comes from the audience.  I can pick an audience that suits what I want to write.  For example, this portfolio. I initially wanted to write something for grad school so my e-portfolio would have a clear mission. But that was boring. I didn’t want to write a resume. I wanted to write about what makes a good writer and how you (and I) can maybe become one. So I picked you as an audience instead. People interested in ramblings about writing, whether my minor in writing cohorts or whoever else happens to be clicking by.

I can also pick a kind of writing that suits my audience. I wouldn’t have done a podcast for my re-mediating an argument essay if not for my target audience. The kind of people I imagined would listen to NPR, even have a tote bag. They would appreciate a podcast, I thought. I wouldn’t be writing this essay like blog if not for how much writers and want-to-be-writers did not love the internet so damn much.  (There’s no criticism there. I love it, too. Too much.)

So blogging is freer.  It’s one kind of digital media that has helped me escape the cage. Or rather build a stranger one. Because digital media gives me the opportunity to appeal to different audiences and experiment. It doesn’t have to be the classic thesis structure.  I don’t have to prove anything. I can just ponder. I can ask my readers questions (if I’m lucky enough to have any). I don’t have to pretend I know it all. The form is freer, too.  I can put in pictures, gifs, videos, music.  I can experiment. I get several cracks at appealing to the audience I want. Blogging happens fast. And it has no specified number of essays or due dates.

I can also get more cracks choosing an audience.  Like when I was originally making this e-portfolio. My “Making of an E-portfolio” posts were at first meant to say (subliminally)  “See how I think? Aren’t I so thoughtful and experienced?” However, I decided against that audience. So now I’m appealing to a different one. I’m rambling and making jokes and talking about how I never decide anything except to decide I will decide later. I can’t decide midway through a paper that Professor A would receive my paper better than Professor B, who assigned it, and give it to Professor A instead.  Even if I were appealing to academia in general, it’s one sector alone. The internet has way more potential to reach people. I don’t have to write to one person so I don’t have to write one way.

From Microsoft Office Online

I used to hate it when professors told me to write to an audience. I didn’t want to. An audience was just a group of judgmental strangers to me. If I liked my writing, it was good enough; thank you very much. However, blogging has taught me that appealing to an audience doesn’t confine you. It provides direction. It helps me make choices like whether to make a podcast or a blog. It also provides opportunity; there are more audiences than flavors at Baskin Robbins.  With blogging, I can taste test and then pick one.  All of this gives me more freedom when I write. The freedom to write different cages to my specifications. Damn. I knew that cage metaphor would get weird.

All photos are courtesy of Microsoft Office Online.  Which I can use as someone who owns Microsoft Office and thus has access through the EULA. So don’t sue me. Please.

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