Transition

We've talked about how blog writing is different from academic writing and why that is both a good and bad thing. In Dr. Burton's blog post The Three Phases of Academic Blogging, he talks about how to best transition from regular, thought blog posts to better researched topics, until finally we reach the full blown academic paper. Hopefully this final stage will help to produce an even better, more well thought out, and clear paper than anything we (as academics) would have been able to produce otherwise. That's the idea anyway.

This past midterm was definitely a learning experience for me. During the midterm interview I confessed that, "I'm good at blogging because I'm very opinionated. It's the next step that I'm worried about." I could tell that that was NOT what they wanted to hear. It's easy to be opinionated, it's much more difficult to do sound research and talk through things clearly. It's even more difficult to make an argument that is respected by an academic community that reads hundreds of arguments from undergraduates every single day. The entire point of these blogging exercises is to practice writing and to get better at it. The point is not to simply state your opinion and walk away.

This transition from "opinion" to "scholarly" is difficult for me. It's much easier (which is why it isn't as valued) to just state your views and move on with your life. That's why comments are so rampant these days. But making something really worth reading, something that people can credit as knowledgeable and reliable, now that's a really interesting feat.

That's not to say that blogs and bloggers don't have credibility. They do. As we've discussed in class, sometimes bloggers are more highly valued than journalists and especially academics. Most everyday, casual readers looking for information would much rather read an interesting blog post on a subject than read a scholarly article on it. There's a reason for this. Mainly because reading a scholarly article can confuse you rather than help you understand, and because scholarly articles expect you to try to follow them. The article that we read for class today, about Digital Humanities, had a lot of German and French words thrown in that were never explained. It also gave references to a lot of events that the average reader wouldn't automatically pick up on. It's extremely easy to find out this information: Just google it. But something (rebellious, uncaring, stubborn) inside me just wasn't interested enough in looking for the information. This is 100% a problem with my reading ability, but at the same time I can't help but feel like the writer should be doing what he or she can to keep the reader interested. Then again, it's very possible that I simply wasn't the audience he was aiming for.

That's the good thing about quick, easy, opinionated blogging. It doesn't take any effort to follow and you can agree or disagree without there being any emotional trauma. This isn't the case with academic writing. Academic writing seems to involve a whole other sphere of understanding. When I read an peer reviewed article, I'm way more careful about simply dismissing their opinion. This is the strength of it. But there has to be a way of combining the readability and ease of blogging with the respect and concise writing of the academic paper.

This is what I have to learn.

The midterm paper was tough for me. I don't think I've ever gotten as bad a grade on a paper since I've come to BYU. This was my fault, because I didn't learn to use the mediums to my full ability. I have the writing skills to do the paper justice, but I was too enthralled with the ease of blogging. I added in some sources that I found interesting, but I talked with my reader in the simple, loose language of a blog post, rather than the precise, prestigious language of a scholar. And because of that, my paper did not carry the weight that I wanted it to. It wasn't persuasive and I lost credibility. I'm irritated with myself because I know that I could have done better. I know how to write a good academic paper. This isn't a medium I'm foreign too. I'm a senior here at BYU with my degree in English. I know how to do this. What I'm upset about is that I didn't use what I know of academic blogging to mix with the flow of an academic paper in order to make it be better than my papers have been in the past -- instead of worse.

I'm hoping that with practice, I'll be able to really transition between the two mediums and come up with a mix that I'll use with my remaining English classes. I'm with Dr. Burton and Kristen on not being satisfied with the usual research paper. I want to do better, write better, and be both entertaining and informative. The trick is just figuring out how. But I think this class is a pretty good way to start. ;)