Reflexive piece

Reflexive piece

This term was quite difficult compared to the first term, the group work mad things even more difficult because you would find that when you are free and want to do some work, your group members will be busy. I had to sacrifice most of my nights to make sure that the work is done and walking alone in the dark was quite frightening for me, since I don’t have a laptop I am the one who always had to go to other people’s places in order to do group work. It was not always easy to try and link things to certain genres but at the end I had to do my best because I had no other choice. Nothing really encouraged me to be more productive, everything I did was because I wanted to pass this course but the examples that were given at the beginning of every assignment really helped me produce the best that I could.

I developed my stories within the scopes that were given and I think that really worked well for me but it wasn’t easy and it took a lot of thinking. The meetings that I had with my group went well most of the times, whenever we had contradictions we voted and we used the majority voted idea. Trying to follow my blog character really made things difficult for me at certain times because you would find that I didn’t really want to follow my blog character but I had to. This in some way limited me to what I was writing and I know that if I wasn’t so limited I would have done so much better. On a scale of one to ten I would give this course seven out of ten for my personal growth. I was able to go through a lot of challenges in this course especially the technical side of things, I am so not computer friendly and struggled to the very much to do the technical staff.

Things changed a lot in this course because whatever I was writing, I did not really have control of who reads it or who doesn’t so I had to be really careful and try to be professional at all times. It was not like the other assignments that we did before which were just between the tutor and the writer. Linking genre to every piece of writing was quite a hassle but eventually I did what was expected of me. I think that blogging is journalism especially because you are free to post any issue that you feel need to be raised and most journalists do blogging to improve their skills and get feed back from the audience about how they are doing. Blogging also allows other people to engage in discussing things and raise their concerns and opinions. I think blogging takes you further than just a journalist working for a newspaper, radio or TV by allowing you to just express yourself with no sharp eye looking over what you are doing and trying to make changes or even suggest your story is not good enough.

The strengths for the theme given were, we could come up with good stories about first year because we are currently in first year and are experiencing what the future first years might go through. We were able to advice better and I am sure that the future first years would rather hear from the recent first years about what is going on in first year than being told by people who have been in first year quite some time ago. The weaknesses were, at times it was difficult to stick to the theme because I would have totally different ideas and stories that I would have loved to post in my blog but I couldn’t because I was limited. I also found it very difficult to focus on blogging at all times since we were given so many assignments because journ is not the only subject that I am doing and yet all my time was used up while I was trying to keep up with it. Blogging is a great course and it would make better sense if first years did it at the beginning of the year where there is less work because fourth term is a short term and there is already a lot to do and blogging made things worse.

Knowing that anyone could be reading my blog made me want to check each and every fact of my stories before publishing them to my blog and I had to use the best information that I had at all times. The research has taught me to use accurate information at all times. I was lucky to have reliable sources with the stories I wrote and it wasn’t really a problem to find these people because I used students from this university, I just had to pick the right people not just anyone. I tried my best to express myself in genre terms and I think that it worked well. My main concern about blogging is the time if it is given at a good time it is a good course but please don’t ever make it in fourth term again. Overall I am proud of myself because I was able to come this far and my blogging experience was successful.

REFLEXIVE PIECE

Over the last four weeks there has been a large amount of growth from my side. Having said this however it has not been and easy time and this has been so due to the course requirements, as it probed us to be more practical in our publications. By the time we reached the halfway bench mark of JMS1 I was already very much tired of stories and assignment content that had anything to do with the topic of a “first year at Rhodes University”. I thought I had escaped this once cute theme at first that eventually turned sour when we reached fourth term, even more so when I heard that we were going to work on a blogging course which would prove to be different.

This theme has seriously become a nightmare. I was expecting a more social networking platform where first years were allowed to write about any experiences and where not just focused on being first years or better yet any content that had to do with university. During the course there were many challenges such as having to work in a group, here we had to tolerate each other and try to generate as much patience as possible. This took me out of my comfort zone as I had to consult the rest of my group members with regards to how we were going to set up our group when setting up our blog as well as the writing bit. Our course dealt with a new form of journalism that is still fast growing and expanding to the masses.

People are still able to comment on their opinions with regards to the topics that are discussed on our blogs. I do also believe that we are however were restricted to writing content that we have allocated in terms of the types of genre as well as bearing in mind the nature of our groups content, but I do acknowledge that there had to be some guidelines to be followed as blogging is comprised of course work.

The nature of writing is also a very essential way of addressing a certain key issue and managing to stick to this constraint throughout shows a broad level of writing skills that one possesses.

Although assignments were very much set out in terms of guidelines to be followed, this was at times very much frustrating because one felt restricted in what they would have wanted to make known at that point in time. At the same time I am very much for blogging because here ordinary citizens are given the platform of being able to publically state their views by commenting on the topics and stories that are present on the blog spot or they might feel is important.

In tutorials we were allowed to express ourselves in terms of how we perceived our tasks and assignments as well as getting help for blogging issues such as setting up templates for our dashboards. When it however come down to tackling questions posed about the course, such as why are we restricted in our writing, there were possible answers but not to its fullest possible form. Fortunately our group members understood that the nature of our blog was essential and we that we had to always stick to in order to prevent us drifting off. There was an immense growth that I gained for being part of this course in terms of gaining more exposure about the world of citizen based Journalism. Seeing as blogging was a new experience for me, I would then rate myself as 6 out of 10. I would give myself this score because I have had some immense growth in terms of my writing ability, being prone to using genre and narrative forms as well as discovering a new way of communication that I wouldn’t have been likely to use currently.

Blogging is a valid form of Journalism because it consists of articles and the same news values that any piece of journalism should possess, the difference and advantage of this form of journalism is that anyone can take part in it by commenting and expressing their opinions and views. With the evolution of the world wide web, blogspots can be very easily accessed by via the internet. The only disadvantage is that not everyone has access to the internet, in fact majority of people are not able to access it, let alone to know how to use it.

Blogging gives rise to a rapidly growing industry of Citizen Journalism, which encompasses the ability of ordinary citizens who have a say on any issues that affect them.

In this course even with the restrictions, we were still able to use our own imaginative ideas when compiling comic strips, writing to our younger selves and our opinion pieces even though we were following guidelines.

This course also taught me the importance of conducting accurate research at all times and this was made clear at the beginning of the year and I have always made it a point to be accurate in my articles, so this course was still a learning process and a continuation of what I have learnt in Journalism and Media Studies course throughout first year.

OPINION PIECE...

When it comes to complaining this is done best at Rhodes University. Towards the end of second term there was a huge uncertainty and disapproval about journalism and media studies courses by most first years. This was said to be brought about by not being able or rather not being given the chance to do practical assignments rather than conducting mediocre interviews and constructing articles with no depth. Second semester, blogging is the practical game here, this is fun, exciting and unprecedented for most of us. Instead of taking this opportunity and making means to try and get to know this a bit more and view it as a learning, we argue against this and this only makes life more difficult for us. After all we are intertwined in the South African culture and so it goes without saying that the struggle continues. Now we are hanging at the last straws of JMS1 and we have all come a long way, this is meant at its literal self. The saddest part is that only a select few will make into the JMS 2 class.
Rhodes University is not what its made out be, I say this in terms of its notorious reputations for alcohol consumption, language barriers, the work that never gets done and about being a tight knit family. Those who force themselves to act a certain way will behave in that way. The big query here is re we really forced to speak English at all times instead of our mother tongue languages? This is supposedly so but I think that this is shameful because we have the right to express ourselves which ever way that suits us best, this to me is just another form of showing struggles that we bring upon ourselves. The truth is that one becomes what they are if they want to be, for instance I have been surrounded by friends that drink and have not been compelled to do so at any point in time, until that time comes it will be a choice that I will chose to take.
You might see people going to the pubs and clubs from Wednesday to Sunday, this is not a true indication of what is being produced work wise. It is called being able to manage your time correctly, it may so happen that those people who go out at night are the ones most likely to finish their work on time. Instead of watching an episode of Isidingo or Generations, some people are busy working so that when it hits 22:30 they get ready to take a break and chill out at a pub instead of downloading the entire world of movies on DC. Before coming to Rhodes I was always told that it was like a family and not like any other university. I am here no and have been wondering about the tight knit family that I always hear about? I shall tell you where it is, there is no tight knit family around here, it doesn’t kill to acknowledge that everyone does things for themselves, we can take something so simple as residence, there all I care and worry about the most is the well being of those i know, better yet those who are close friends. So there is no tight knit family here, Rhodes is as big as you want it to be. At times I want to kick myself for making the choice of coming to Grahamstown. There are just so many faults that I keep finding but to be honest enough it would rather be here than anywhere else. This is called conforming at its simplest form, which I must add is practiced very much here at Rhodes.

reflexive piece

Reflexive piece

The JMS1 curriculum has drawn on facts that are not always related to the method of journalistic writing but also to interesting controversial current affairs and phenomenon. The blogging course which is coming to an end has been eye opening as there were very few regulations and taboos on the content. Having never really paid any attention to blogs in the past I now realise how informative or humorous they can be. Once being familiar with blogs I would visit ones that had particularly caught my eye. On days when I felt bored beyond comprehension I would visit a site and laugh for minutes on end and I’m still convinced that I have stronger stomach muscles after a regular chuckle.

Working within a genre was fantastic as I learnt a great deal about a particular topic instead of acquiring surface knowledge with creative freedom. This section gave me an opportunity to be creative, innovative and to create my own identity as a writer. Members within our group didn’t have conflicting ideas very often as we all allowed each other to express ourselves individually but in the end our work came together in unison.

Despite having minor disagreements with my lap-top I now have more of a desire to write than I did before as this section was so different. Positive feedback on my writing from the parents of the girl I wrote a profile piece on motivated me to write to the best of my ability. Team work in this section was easier than I thought it would be, we were able to generate interesting story ideas within seconds and the tasks seemed less tedious. We all chose our blog character and wrote about an aspect of Rhodes which we knew most about. We were well aware of our target audience’s needs and reached a concession about the aim of our blog. The fact that our blogs were self directed and being published for readers around the globe inspired me to engage with the audience and put greater effort into my writing. Our target audience was apart of our same age group; in a sense we were members of our target market as each member of our group enjoyed reading their own and each others writing and therefore, writing came naturally to us.

The theme of the blog enabled us to write from our own experiences and as I had learnt throughout the year, people were not lying when they said that it was always best to write from experience. The constraints created by our theme gave us a taste of what it would be like to work at a news paper or magazine once we have graduated as most publications that we I am likely to work for will take a common stance, character and style in which I would have to work within.

The limitations that were placed on my writing style were not limitations in the slightest because my style of writing is generally quite expressive but contains very little slang. Blogging is time consuming but satisfying, after this term I now consider it as a genre of informal or modern journalism, depending on its agenda and aim. My researching techniques became more careful as I used many perspectives, interviewed more people and avoided making sweeping generalisations because there was a broad audience. This never made me nervous but merely made me take a more mature approach to my writing.

My sources were far from resisting interviewing, as they all had an urge to participate, voice their opinion and strangely enough have their ten seconds of fame. The character of our blog was one of a family of personalities who share advice and experiences about first year, this allowed us to create a multi-faceted character; therefore no issue was too dramatic or inappropriate to be written on. The hero in the night profile contrasts greatly with the other light hearted posts which shows the degree of how multi-faceted our character is this lead to a lot of well deserved experimentation.
I had encountered ethical issues during the process of the making the photo comic strip named G-Town nightmare in reality, as we had to decide how to deal with such a sensitive topic like rape but this was overcome as the comic strip didn’t desensitise the matter because of it’s layout and expressive quality. It never occurred to me before, that writing within a blog genre would be so rewarding and would extend my abilities so that my writing would improve. Reading other peoples’ blogs really did improve my writing and expand my general knowledge.

Reflex action

This last term of my first year was possibly the busiest one out of the whole year. The amount of work exceeded far beyond that of the first term despite having to work with in a genre. That is that not only did I feel the pressure of managing to get all my work in ion time I had to make sure that it fitted with in the expectations of the genre of my blog, however I feel that in some way we were also confined to a type of genre in the first term, that is the genre of the newspaper which is a lot more constrained to grammar and formalities.

Despite that the genre of a blog allows one to be more personal and less specific, I was not as productive as I would of thought I would have been. The fact that the genre of the blog is relaxed should have encouraged me to write more, but because of the work load and this includes more than, as well as, deadlines for journalism, I found that I did not always have enough time to do extra work. I am sure that everyone will agree with me that one cannot work 24 hours a day, that is one need to maintain a balance in their life between work and me time or otherwise known as play. Other than that, nothing else seemed to hold me back.

The imagined audience was of very little concern to me because in first term we had to use a similar tactic, except that there was no potential for our stories to be read outside of the class room, that is by a global audience. Yet when it came to writing the stories the imagined and potential audience became important.

That is that I needed to meet the expectations and ideals of the audience as well as that of my blog character. This meant that all the stories I wrote where determined by the audience, so that the tone and what I said and put into my stories would be easily relatable to them. I did not find this restrictive though, as it requires a certain fare of creativity to be able to meet the demands of an audience without boring them with clichéd stories.

Having meetings concerning our blogs with members in the group and the tutor also helped produce creative stories, that was not clichéd. Thankfully my group did not experience any problems with each other and we worked well together. This meant that we were able to make decisions quickly and with little fuss and were able to sort out any last minute problems out in a matter of seconds.

Working in groups perhaps was the best way to learn some important real life people skills. Thus professionally, growth happened within the paradigm of group work. However I feel that no personal growth can happen within this paradigm other than learning or trying to master patience and rationality.

Working in groups also played a part in confining me to the genre of a blog, although as I mentioned before that since the genre is more relaxed I did not feel as restricted. But the question remains, does blogging equal up to the same as journalism.
Fundamentally, both are concerned with writing about events, but what those events differ on a continuous scale. Some might say that blogging is just commentary on what the newspapers have already commented on. Yet I believe that perhaps blogging could be the start of journalism or a hybrid of free range journalism. That is it is not constrained to the professionalism experience within the journalism world.

Somehow I experienced this constraint, but in a different form. That is I had to write within the theme of Surviving First Year. I had to keep in mind that I could not just merely comment on what others had to say, but I also had to give my own opinion within that theme, since future students need a firsthand experience more than a know it all comment.

The genre of the blog allowed me that bit more freedom to experiment with the production of my opinion because I was not restricted by the professional limitations of the newspaper genre. Yet unlike any ethical concerns I might have experienced in the first term, I did not experience any ethical problems with the blog. Perhaps this was because I did not deal with anything extremely controversial, but this does not mean that a blog does not have the potential to be controversial. Quiet on the contrary, since a blog is about opinion that is not constrained by any laws or professionalism, it therefore has more potential to go against the grain than what any news story would.

Opinion piece

Stress and depression towards the end of year
The last term of the year is filled with so much stress and depression. The demands from lecturers are unbearable. How can one squeeze all these demands in such a small space of time? It is at times like these when some students feel that they can’t take it anymore and even commit suicide.
It is so hard to focus since there is so much to do. Essays, assignments, tests, you name it, all crumbling in such a small pair of hands. Sleepless nights don’t help either because you won’t be able to focus in lectures the next day. It is a difficult situation because as much as we are scared and nervous about the final exams, we still need to go through the trauma of submitting essay and assignments and writing all those tests. Why do all these things have to be fit in such a small space of time? If it was not for the counselling centre (http://www.ru.ac.za/counsellingcentre) lots of lives would be lost and futures would be shattered. Yes at the end we do cross the bridge if we are lucky enough to escape from all those sharks and crocodiles.
No-one is expecting things to be an easy ride otherwise it won’t be worth doing but at the same one can only handle a certain amount of pressure. Is feeling overloaded unacceptable for a first year student in University? I think it’s not after all this all new and before people make big decisions like leaving the University or anything else, they should give it some time and see where it leads. We all want to be successful in life but is fair to have to suffer so much for success. It would be so good if one could just fly free like a bird, unfortunately we are humans and we just have to deal with whatever that comes our way.
We salute all those heroes that we see out there who have finally reached their goals but believe me when I say “it was not easy to get there”. Perseverance is a good step to success as hard as it is we have to pull through. I thought matric was hard and I will never be able to pull through but look at me now, I am in University. I am stronger than stress and depression and so is everyone else. Soon we will be looking back and saying things were not so bad after all. To all those who couldn’t take it anymore, may their souls rest in peace and to the rest of us we still have along way to go, we just need to hang in there. The way to success may be steep and tough but because everyone is living in order to fulfil certain dreams we will cope with everything that comes on the way. Some things are just meant to be the way they are and they will never change, eventually we will get used to these pressure.

work ethic oppinion piece

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Opinion piece: assignment 3

From the opinion of a Union and Rat resident, many first year students’ work ethic seems to run away down the blue route or through Cotch Creak and with that I am no exception. It’s a sad truth which is one which people fail acknowledge. It’s a phenomenon that sprawled across many universities all over the world but has formed its reputation at Rhodes.

For many first year students it the excitement of leaving the nest of discipline that becomes exhilarating. This provokes students to rebel and push life to its absolute boundaries. The influential psychologist (Piaget) named this tendency the invincibility myth which explains young individuals desire to discover the boundaries in which they live. These boundaries are often met by tempting fate and it can be characterised by irresponsible behaviour. Therefore abuse of freedom, and priorities become different from the original ones. There also often seems to be little balance between work and play. This is a problem which I have managed to control; you will find me out until the early hours of the morning no less than three times per week, but each morning you will find me sitting in the lecture hall promising myself to only sleep once I have finished attending all my lectures.

While studying at Rhodes I have noticed that rebelling against many parents’ expectations is a trend and ideology which students conform to. An educational institution has the aim to educate and produce a group of hard working people ready for the career fields. Shaw (1930) created the subculture theory, suggested that people who defy others in order to conform to delinquency, do this to conform and gain acceptance. The blaze` attitude that first years often have is actively encouraged by those around them. Minimal lecture attendance and losing a DP has become the new achievement which is followed by the pesky task of pleading the departments for mercy instead of going to pigs’ night.
Through all the fog of warped perceptions, students who excell should inspire all students ; however, this isnt the case. While researching and interviewing students it became clear that many first year students lack ambition to exploit all the academic opportunities that are given to them. While waiting to write a test, I over heard a few students bragging about how little they studied, which supports the oppinion that many first year students belong to a “right off” subculture. In contrast to what people believe this isnt “hard core,” its merely exercising the right to waste their parents money.
Sheehy (1990) discovered while researching in America that varsity students are either unaware of how hard it is to find a job (even with a degree or qualification) or have unrealistic ideas of the work place. Which can also be applied to a university phenomenon at rhodes. Students tend to forget that its not simply a degree which makes you good at what you do but the skills and added knowledge you learn while being here. www.collegevalues.com. Statistically 40% of the South African population is unemployed and many of those people have degrees. This woke me up to the fact that I may have earned my PHD in drinking but where will that leave me in the future.