Time Management - Haiku?

Studying, working, going crazy
Shining ideas managing your time
Seeing you smile now in peace

The Blog Assignment

The assignment of creating a personal blog was quite interesting and helpful in many ways.

First of all, it gave me a chance to do something I would never think about. If this were not a homework assignment, I would have been the last person to write journals and put my pictures on the web. However, three month later, I now have my own blog and feel comfortable managing it. What a change!

Another advantage of having a blog was to better understand materials we learned in class by writing my opinions about certain topics. Since I had to know about the topics and related information well enough to write in my own words, I went through Powerpoint slides again and had an opportunity to think about what I did not realize in class. Most blog assignments were given right after in-class activities, which were carefully chosen and related to them. As a result, there was a synergy effect in terms of the effectiveness of understanding what we had done and learned.

Creating a blog was also an effective channel for expressing my opinions and seeing others’ ideas. Depending on personalities, some people tend not to speak out in class(I am one of them). That is not because they do not have any thoughts about the topics we discussed in class, but because it is just the way they are. However, thanks to the blogs, we shared in this course, I could read others’ points of view to see things differently. For example, I know some people who never spoke in class, but I found that they had excellent opinions which were interesting to me. Furthermore, since we had to write about personal management problems and visions, it was a pleasant surprise to see the different aspects of some classmates.

As for one of the roles of the blog assignments which let us manage and control 20% of our grade by responding on a timely basis to the 8 assignments given, I think it can be harder than taking one more test for some students. Especially if they are not native speakers or do not enjoy writing, it can be really hard and takes time. Personally, writing in English always gives me a lot of stress. I love to write, but since English is not my first language, it did not offset my test anxieties by appropriate attention to my blog, which was unfortunate.

Additionally, I doubt if the blog was a good communication tool in this course. It definitely provided a way to see how others think about certain topics, but in most cases, it was only one-way communication rather than interacting with each other. As you know, a lot of Baruch students come to school while working either full time or part time. As a result of it, I do not think most of us had enough time to check others’ blogs and post new blog entries on a regular basis.

Overall, the assignment of creating a personal blog was a wonderful idea. Though it was not easy for me to do, it definitely gave me a chance to learn something new. From my perspective, the blog assignment should be remained for this course. That is because it is a good way of sharing our perspectives on various issues with others, getting to know classmates better, and understanding class materials effectively.

However, I am not sure about using my blog to post my thoughts and ideas after this class. Though I loved the idea, it took too much time for me to write something. Since I am a full time student while working full time now, I want to focus more on preparing for my future career for the time being.