Class Learning Outcomes

Now that the term is nearly over, I have the opportunity to look back on the class and see how well I achieved the learning outcomes:

1. Learn and Follow the BYU-Idaho Learning Model (prepare, teach one another, ponder and prove)

Preparing was definitely important in this class. I'll be honest--in the past I've been more of a finish-it-right-before-class kind of girl, and that definitely showed in the beginning of this course. As the term progressed, however, I learned the importance of preparing in advance so that I could then be taught by my peers. It helped SO MUCH when I did that. Then I was also able to help my peers more with theirs and, in my own small way, teach them. I think as far as teaching one another, I had a great experience with my cohort, Holly and Whitney. The three of us got very involved in each other's research and were able to help each other a lot. I also got very into self-directed learning. I wasn't just learning the exact amount that I needed to; I went beyond and found out a lot of things that maybe weren't even necessarily the exact right quote or whatever, but were just interesting things that were indirectly related, even if they didn't necessarily make it into the paper. I think that helped me focus the paper a lot more and round it out. 

2. Write Substantially and Publicly About Literature

Writing the blog definitely helped me to meet this learning outcome. I invited my friends on Facebook to read the blog quite often and sometimes they did--many of them mentioned the blog to me. Blogging, I think, actually helped me to write a lot more substantially than I would have if I had just written the paper. 

3. Develop Research Skills

I definitely developed a LOT of research skills in this class! Visiting the library helped a lot as far as scholarly research--I learned to use a lot of different databases whereas before I didn't necessarily use a lot of different resources. I also learned to do more informal, less traditional research that helped a lot in clarifying my topic and my points in the research paper. 

Welcome Back to Myself

As I was anticipating what I would write in this blog post reflecting on the differences between traditional research papers and the kind I've been doing on this blog, I felt a sense of relief. I found myself thinking, I'm so glad I'll get to be myself on the blog again. 

Then I wondered why exactly this kind of writing is more me than my research paper and drafts. I mean, I put my blood, sweat, and tears into that research paper (figuratively, of course...). And I really believed in it, too. I may have cared more about that research paper and felt like it was more relevant to others and to me than any other research paper I've ever written. So why doesn't it feel more like me?

For me, that's the heart of the difference between traditional research papers and the non-traditional methods I've been using for my research. The element of the personal in blogging is so important. It gets me excited and it keeps others interested. I'm allowed to be a person, not just a cool, collected, objective third party. I don't have to have the entire thing mapped out, the organization completely precise, and my sentences completely logical.

That's not to say that that kind of writing isn't useful. Sometimes it's very important to be formal and impersonal. Sometimes people don't care about who I am and what I think; they just want to see well-presented facts. So, of course, being able to write that way is valuable. However, in our world, most people don't have any interest in logically presented facts unless there is a strong element of the personal. If I don't seem personally invested in the subject matter, then why should they be invested in it? And if they don't know who I am, why should they care about the things I care about?

After I had come to really appreciate the power of the personal in research methods, it was hard to go back to the cold formality of the traditional research paper. In some ways, though, it was sort of nice to go back. I'm the sort of person who appreciates a well-constructed sentence and organization that makes sense. I like to have a product to look back on and admire.

But I also missed being able to put myself more into what I was writing. I hope that my passion for the topic carried through in the final draft of the paper, but I know that even if it did it certainly wasn't at the same level it was in my previous blog posts.

I'm excited to apply what I've learned about new research methods to my future writing. I honestly don't think I'll ever be able to completely go back to doing it the way I used to. I hope I don't.

Social Discovery!

As I'm getting more into my topic, I'm realizing that I really can't understand it without social proof. I can't understand women's personal experiences online without hearing what they have to say.

Here are the people I've contacted so far.

A while back I commented on a review of Gone With the Wind by Jillian, a book blogger, on A Room of One's Own. She responded pretty quickly with some great insights on Scarlett's character (I quoted her in a previous blog post). I want to talk to Jillian more now that I have some more concrete claims. I think (well, I hope) that Jillian might be interested in linking GWTW and women's experience online, since she loves GWTW (she's currently doing a reading project on Margaret Mitchell) and she's a blogger herself.

I emailed some professors who had courses that included GWTW. Professor Luesebrink, a teacher of a Popular Literature class, emailed me back!...But she didn't have much to say in response to my questions. I had asked her about the popularity of GWTW and she said that she didn't really know much about it. I asked her how she thought the 1939 film influenced the way people viewed the story (the question I was most interested in hearing the answer to) and she said she thought it influenced people, but she couldn't really say how. Ironically, she suggested that I do a web search...which is how I found her syllabus! It was cool to get a response from her, though.

This week, I decided to contact some women that I already know who have used the Internet as a force for good. I sent a Facebook message to Susan Taylor, who is changing lives through her business, Living Equilibrium. She got back to me right away with some AWESOME responses on both the good and the bad of the Internet. She also gave me permission to share her responses here, so I'll have a blog post about that soon!

Being Melanie in the Digital Age: A Practical How-To Guide

As I wrote in my last post, Melanie from Gone With the Wind is a great example of using external change--even difficult external change--to broaden her horizons and to reach her potential as a woman. Women, much more than men, are using the Internet as a social place, to help, support, and encourage one another.

Check out this diagram:

(Click here for the original diagram.)

Take a look at the different websites that men and women are involved in. Women dominate not only in some of the most extremely popular social networking sites--Facebook, Twitter, and Myspace--but also in websites that are devoted to helping each other create, like Pinterest and Instagram. And when it comes right down to it, there are 99 million more female visitors monthly to social networking sites than there are male visitors.

Women are naturally good at using the Internet for social purposes. Due to the current efforts of many remarkable women, technology is shifting away from being a traditionally masculine, male-dominated area of interest and work. Melanie used the circumstances involved in the Civil War as an opportunity to reach out and do different things and talk to different people than would have been possible in the society that existed before the war. We, as women in the new millennium, can treat the transition into the digital age with the same kind of optimism and innovation. Here's how...

Is the Author Dead?

Writing About Literature in the Digital Age, an e-Book written by my professor and his students from a previous section of the same class I'm taking right now, has been an interesting read because it's articulated many of the ideas that have been germinating in my brain about blogging. I've tried blogging a few times, actually. Blogging is exciting for me, but at the same time, it often leaves me feeling bewildered and overwhelmed. What if I write something but the readers don't like it? What if it's not interesting? Funny? Clever? Intelligent? Will people quit reading? Will they even start?

Chapters 5 and 6 address the ways in which authors connect with their readers. In Chapter 5, Alyssa Rutter writes about Harper Lee and her unwillingness to connect to her audience. Shortly after To Kill a Mockingbird was published, Lee practically disappeared off the face of the earth after becoming overwhelmed by the popularity of her first novel. I admit I've occasionally daydreamed about being a mysterious author who never talks about her books and leaves the readers to discern the meaning without my influence. But that's hardly been the effect of Harper Lee's silence. Some people actually believe that Lee didn't even write her famous novel. Lee wrote a bestselling novel, but she failed to create an authorial presence. Meanwhile, Toni Morrison is connecting with her audience on all kinds of levels, as Andrea Ostler writes in Chapter 6. Morrison is able to help her readers to understand her book Song of Solomon. Morrison's ability to connect with her audience is producing only positive results, while Lee's readers are left puzzled by her disappearance--if not worse.

Blogging is a great way to take creation of an authorial presence into your own hands. As Rutter points out, if an author doesn't create his or her own online personality, then someone else will. I really enjoy blogging as opposed to other kinds of writing because it's so personal. On blogs, we get to use "I." We get to project our opinions even if they're not perfectly articulated and supported, as Dr. Burton wrote. We get to put our own voice into our writing and sound the way we like to sound. Using Alyssa Rutter's words, we create ourselves online. Blogging is all about creating a relationship between author and reader, a relationship which is becoming not only valuable, but critical in today's literary world. Contrary to Roland Barthes' opinions, the author is not dead, as Andrea Ostler points out. The author is not only alive and well, but being sought after by the readers of literature in the digital age.