Opinions Count

Self-evaluation is never the easiest exercise to complete. Aside from the obvious bias, the act of looking at oneself from the outside in can be difficult because we are our worst critic. No one ever thinks they sound “right” when they hear themselves in an audio recording. Seldom do you hear someone say: “hey, that’s a great picture of me!” Finally, when was the last time the camera really took off 10 pounds? That’s right, never! So, evaluating the blog creations of my fellow classmates was easy; evaluating my own is akin to cheating. In any event, the course requires us to take a peek at our blog creations and explain why we did what we did, so the following paragraphs will do just that.

The purpose of the blog was a difficult part for me. Understanding that it was a class requirement that we establish a professional presence on the web, I have to admit that I had to play around, a bit, with the style and content. What I ultimately settled on was a combination of lightheartedness and seriousness. Looking back, I could have devoted a little more time to the original title, which was “My 40 Year Degree.” The title was a reflection of (or tribute to, if you will) the fact that it took me almost 40 years of my life to achieve a college degree. Not that I’m ashamed of it because I have often questioned the value or necessity of a college degree. However, I wanted to say to the reader that, yes it took me 40 years, but I’ve made it. I’m only 37 years old, so it is not a literal 40 years of attempting to achieve a degree, but I think that, in a way, I wanted to reveal a bit of sarcasm towards the fact that after being alive for nearly 40 years, and being successful without one, that I’m finally going to officially be recognized by the world as a college graduate. As the class moved along, my contributions have reflected more closely the mood and intent of the class, even though I did make a deliberate attempt to keep the contributions informal.

The design of my blog was simple to achieve. I have a long time experience designing web sites, so choosing how my blog was going to look was not difficult. My approach wasn’t so much how I wanted my blog to look, but how I didn’t want it to look, so I made it a point to stay away from anything one of my other classmates had designed. The book rack background was appropriate since the blog was a class assignment. I also felt compelled to include a picture of myself so that my audience could put a face to the name. By the way, this is something I have always felt was a drawback of the online classroom environment. I think Ashford should include a picture of each student’s face along with their name, especially in the online discussion posts. Hopefully, future improvements will allow for pictures. In regards to the picture I picked to post on the blog, I wanted something that reflected who I am, and that was a significant moment in my life. I’m sure many of the readers don’t realize the irony of the picture, but if you notice closely, the caption says that it was taken as Hurricane Katrina was making landfall. It was still early, and many of the news reports were saying that New Orleans had escaped the worst of the storm. At that point in time, everyone figured that Katrina would come and go, and we would all be returning home, as in years past. This is evident in our smiles. How wrong we were.

As I stated in the previous paragraphs, I attempted to maintain an informal atmosphere to my blog. Informal certainly does not mean crude, so the contributions were professional, but were also easy to read and entertaining. And this played well to my audience: my classmates. The folks who were kind enough to evaluate my blog were very encouraging and complimentary. Their comments reassured me that I had accomplished my goal of recognizing my audience, getting their attention, and successfully conveying my message. One of my critics did recommend that I spread out my writing a little more; that the large paragraphs were a slight distraction. I will certainly heed the advice in the future.

Without a doubt, this course has been one of the most innovative of all. The content and goal of this course indicates to me that higher education recognizes the current wave of technology as being legitimate and necessary to success in future careers. This is especially true of the communications field, where communicating effectively can be achieved in so many different ways. Some of the new mediums were not even conceivable a few years ago. The need to be able to adapt quickly to new technologies is crucial to success in our careers as communicators.