Anyone Can Read This

The most exciting thing about this blog is also the most terrifying: anyone can read this! (Hi Mom! Hi Dad! Thanks for sending me to college. I swear I do more than write blogs here.)

I would, for the most part, classify the results of openness as benefits rather than challenges*. Being open about our class and with my writing encourages me to take it more seriously. For example, let's say I'm making dinner. If I'm only feeding myself, 95% of the time I heat something up in the microwave. If I'm feeding the guys at my house, I choose a simple recipe and take an hour, maximum, to cook. Now if I'm suddenly trying to impress some large unknown audience with my cooking skills, I probably take the task a lot more seriously. What I mean is that I don't want someone to visit this site, start to read, stop mid-way through a post, and then cough it back up on his or her plate. Especially that last part. There's no way of my knowing if someone were to do this, but nevertheless it motivates me to try to be creative and mildly entertaining. But let's face it; if you're reading my blog for entertainment, you have larger issues to work out.

Putting this writing out in the open can also lead to a product larger than what I originally created. When you can read other people's work and comment on it, a multilogue can begin. I'm not even sure multilogue is a word. That might be a topic of debate you want to pursue through commenting on this post. This is another benefit of writing out in the open: maybe something I have to say will spark another person's thinking. Maybe we'll debate and come to a conclusion we hadn't expected. I was reading Greg's blog an hour ago, and I think he made some good points about how blogs allow people outside our class to get involved in our discourse. We could just as easily fulfill this class requirement by using the tools available to us through Compass, but that would eliminate the possibility of anyone besides the 18 of us from entering the discussion. Even though no one outside of our class has commented on any of our blogs yet, I know for a fact that at least a couple of people outside of our class read them.

Because people outside of our class can and do read our posts, we're getting the word out about what we're discussing. I have no idea if the discussion is going anywhere far beyond the 18 of us. I highly doubt it. But a benefit of openness is possibility. We are allowing others to challenge us.

Of course, it's not all peaches and cream with blogging. It's a rough world out there, and privacy is definitely an issue with this style of writing. I know one of the members of our class wants to take special care to protect his or her privacy online. That's why in my last post, I simply refer to him or her as "R—." One way to resolve this issue would be to have some sort of alias under which you write. I guess that would take care of it. Maybe privacy isn't such a major problem—I mean, challenge. A greater challenge of openness, I think, might be actually being open. I don't think we've had too much difficulty with this. The general class population seems to have no problem critiquing the course. I've also read many posts where people are willing to bring in examples from their lives.

The challenges of openness, we have dealt with nicely. The benefits of openness, we haven't fully realized. There are means by which we can make others aware of our writing and project. We can use public forums to link others to our blogs. Maybe they'll read them. I'm not sure how many people will want to contribute to our course goal, but you never know. Someone really important or influential might read what you have to write. Not that all of us aren't really important or influential!

Well, for now that's all folks.

*There are no problems; only challenges. Thank you, political correctness.**
** This used to say "politically correctness." I'm letting you know for honesty's sake, though it really wouldn't nag my conscience if I didn't add this note.