I Learned I have some Fabulous Colleagues... and more. Amy's Blog Portfolio

What Did I Get Myself Into....

My semester of blogging was a lot of fun and very educational. I did not expect to engage in the class through blogging so when I heard this would shape the majority of the class I was skeptical. How could we truly engage in the current issues of our field through an online forum? I have written my own personal blog. It is a forum where I can practice my writing and share my thoughts, feelings, and fun experiences with my friends and family. However, what I express in that blog is read by people who know me and know me well. This class was a good challenge for me to expand my written communication skills through blogging. I really had to think about my wording, expressions, and how I was communicating my viewpoints.

For me, blogging is more personal in nature making it less technical, grammatically correct, and academic. I was challenged at first as to how I would write academically. I appreciate the creative ways I can electronically express myself in my own blog and wanted to do so appropriately in our class blogs. It took a little bit of time and I really had to write carefully to express myself. It was a good challenge for my writing and pushed me to write differently.

Because of this, I was nervous at first to comment because I only knew a few people in the class. How would I be able to represent my thoughts, respectfully disagree, and engage in an academic environment online? I believe so much of what we communicate comes through tone, context, and body language. I chose my comments carefully at first, but soon realized commenting online was much like commenting in meetings and discussions. I tried to preface and state where I was coming from, state my thoughts, and leave it open to discussion. This experience made me excited for future class engagement online and potentially using it myself as a professor in the future.

The Red Carpet of Blogs

•    Character Education- because the topic is of great interest of me
•      Classroom Management- because it sparked the most conversation
•       Business as Higher Education-  because I finally let myself be passionate through writing without worrying about offending anyone

I also want to link to a comment I wrote because it was a heartfelt comment and reaction.

On Blogging....

I believe the blogging experience was critical to the class. Having everyone contributing posts helped bring more attention to lots of issues that may not have been possible without the blogging. I also learned so much through others blog posts. All the classmates contributions helped bring many different issues to my attention. It was helpful as well, to have classmates write about the same topics. It showed the different perspectives possible on an issues and created great discussions. I truly believe the blogging was an enriching part of this class that made great discussion possible. Without that, I do not know if the class would have been as impactful as it was for me.

The other thing about current issues, they can be subjective and values oriented. What I may feel is an important current issue may not be to someone else. The blogging experience allowed me as a student to bring to my peers what I felt was important and also gave me the ability to read what was important to them. I do not feel this is something we do often enough as professionals and to have the space and time to do so was a great learning experience.

I also feel by reading other’s posting, I had time to reflect on what each current issue meant to me or how it might impact my work. Again, this is not something I get to do enough as a professional in my day-to-day work. While I am the one in my office and with my peers that asks for reflective discussions in our work, it is always around decisions and actions we need to take to run our programs. While that is important, never do we consider current issues, best practices, or outside sources that could help inform or shape our discussions. This class allowed me to participate in a format, both though class and the blogs, which I might be able to implement in my day-to-day work. (Yeah!- sorry I had to digress from the academic thought mode for a minute)

Oh where do I begin… 

I’ve learned a lot this semester through this class.

First and foremost, I learned I have some fabulous colleagues who are passionate about students and the field of student affairs. I was just so honored to learn from and be in the presence of my colleagues in this class. I appreciated our discussions and each person really made me think about my opinions and experiences. I also felt in my class there was this tone of accepting people for where they are at in their development. In other groups and classes I have been in, there would not have been the honesty and open nature of discussion because of lack of acceptance of opinions. I wish all my classes could have the tone and acceptance this class did.

Now back to the topic, I learned it is important to be aware of current issues going on in higher education. I think at a time before in my career, I defined being aware of issues as spending hours a day reading new sources. While I hope someday to have the time to read, I typically do not. So in the class I learned how to be aware of issues within the time frame I have to dedicate to it. I used to think I had to be all knowing and now I believe I just need to be aware enough to stay abreast of what’s happening in higher education at the state level, nationally, and internationally.

One other thing I learned and hope to implement someday, is using this idea of bringing current events to the table for professional development. I am going to propose the idea to my boss, however, it is just the two of us so the multiple voice discussion idea is not there currently. But someday (hopefully) I will advance to a position where I will supervise multiple professionals and would use this to keep us all up to date on issues happening around higher education. In support of this idea, I learned discussions about current issues are not only important to stay up to date but also to help voice opinions, ideas, and build community around common discussions. I see this as a huge benefit to a departmental or division team.

This was one of the best classes I have taken in the HESAL program. This is for three reasons. One, it challenged me to write and express my opinions and thoughts in different ways. Two, it brought great discussion about important topics. Finally, it showed me how important it is to stay on top of current issues and to engage in discussions about current issues with great colleagues. Blogging really enhanced our topic of current issues and our discussions. I think this class impacted me professionally in ways I do not even know yet.

And I’m sad to see it come to an end….