I am DONE.

I am DONE. I am going on my fifth year of college and I am DONE with writing the traditional research paper for every single English class! I am DONE with only using "scholarly" sources even when a "non-scholarly" source would be better. And I am DONE with trying to figure out what the teacher wants me to say in order to get a good grade. I am DONE not being able to write in my own voice.

I want to talk about what I want to talk about the way I want to talk about it. I want to write my thoughts down, and not my professors' or the thoughts of their favorite scholars. Heck, I don't really want to be a scholar. Why? Because what they have to say is boring. Actually...that's not fair. What they have to say is not boring, but the way in which they present their stuff is boring. And I do not want to be boring. I went to school to become more interesting. I am DONE being shaped into something I am not.

The traditional research paper has begun to feel unnatural to me. It's begun to feel painful. I love to write, but I don't love writing them. In fact, I don't even like writing them--not even a little--unless I get to write about a topic that I am genuinely interested in. And how often does that happen in school? Even in a class where the subject matter is interesting? It may be an interesting class, but too often I find myself forced to write about a particular aspect I am not interested in. I'd like to be given the freedom to explore another idea, but that rarely happens.Sometimes you do get to choose what you write your analysis on, but there is still almost always a word-count our page requirement.  Too often, I could say something in a paragraph that I am required to write a page about and so concision gets thrown away. Or, I could say a lot more but am limited by page numbers and so depth gets thrown away. Wouldn't it be better if we got rid of those boundaries?

Dr. Burton seems to think so. At the risk of sounding like a kiss-up, I want to say that I am so grateful that there is a teacher out there who is interested in what I have to say and is willing to teach me how to say it well. I just finished reading the second chapter of Writing about Literature in the Digital Age, a book written by Dr. Burton and his students in a collaborative effort to produce something different. I appreciated reading a well-written chapter that was both academic and informal. Not only did it prove that those two motifs can work together well, but what he had to say was very persuasive and encouraging to someone like me who is DONE with traditionalism.

Of those teachers who persist in teaching students to write in the traditional manner (alone, about a particular subject, formal), Dr. Burton says that they are "endangering the literacy of their students. Rather than preparing them to communicate well within society, they actually prevent them from doing so at a time when it is both practical and profitable to interact with others." The more I have blogged the more I have begun to come into contact with the absolute wealth of information from others in sources other than the traditional scholarly article. Twitter and Google + alone are great information providers and they are way more exciting and current than any database I have ever encountered. I've been able to explore in ways never permitted to me before. It's been fun, exciting, and educational.

Furthermore, as we have not been told exactly what to write about but have been given complete freedom to explore whatever interests us as it pertains to the class, the more I have learned and retained. Not only that, but I have discovered more about myself than I have in any other literature class. Being forced to write two blogs each week has forced me to say, "Okay. What interested me about this class this week? What could I write about?"

Usually, I've found that I am not so interested in the traditional English stuff (the symbolism, forms, linguistics, writing styles of Moby Dick or even doing an analysis of social media sites). Rather, I am interested in how things work. I started off exploring how things work by blogging about the difference between XML and HTML. Then I went on to write about why people create things and then post them online free and then finally I wrote about how computers learn. That last one I'm particularly proud of because at the end of that post, I wrote about why it matters. And I wrote about the why because I actually wanted to write about the why! Furthermore, it's the first post that I wrote that actually felt academic, even though I didn't use one scholarly source.I have noticed that theme popping up again and again in my blog posts of trying to get inside the minds of people who create things: how they create them and why. And even though "how things work" has not been directly discussed in class, it's been okay for me to go off and explore it. I appreciate that.

It sounds like Dr. Burton is gearing up for blogging to get more challenging. When he first told us that he wanted our blogs to become more academic, I thought, "Oh great. Here goes the fun of this class." But after reading the second chapter of his book, I am excited for what he has to teach us. It sounds truly valuable. It sounds like I'm going to learn skills I'll actually walk away from this class with. It sounds like I'll be able to write about what I'm interested in. And it sounds like I'll be allowed to make my writing interesting: and that he'll help me make my writing more interesting. In other words, he'll help me make it better in a way that actually matters.

That's not to say blogging is the perfect medium for research or academic writing. It too has it's flaws--something Dr. Burton readily acknowledges in Chapter 2. But, it's the change necessary in this evolving age of digital culture.

So, thanks Dr. Burton. Thanks for being an Ishmael: for achieving "communion through communication" and for being willing to teach me, and others, to be Ishmael's as well. This class looks like it will be a challenge, but a useful, personal challenge. Thanks for that. I'm not DONE just yet.

Change "resume" to "essay." Wouldn't it be great if all that searching could actually be productive in every class?