Self Assessment OR How I Learned to Stop Worrying and Love the Blog

There comes a time in every writer's life when he must take a step back and look holistically at the body of his work and decide what about it he can improve. I am no different, to the point where I would quickly offer that I could improve in every measurable metric. Self-deprecation aside, there is a quantifiable rubric available to which I can hold up my work and determine for myself if I am producing the quality of work which would merit a high mark. 

Let's take a look.

So clearly, a Level 4 product is fairly intensive. Let's run down the list and see how I fare!

My work is detailed, but not as much as I would prefer. The reason for this is twofold: lack of time and the format. Blogs are not conducive to lengthy, in depth "deep dives" of a given topic. A wiki format would suit that kind of detail much better (more on this later). Lack of time is entirely my fault, as I tend to plan in the week leading up to the due date for a post and then furiously execute the plan the day before class. I would like to believe I keep my spelling and grammatical errors to a minimum, but the odd typo does float past. 

Hyperlinks provide a visual break from the normal text and draw the eye to a topic worth taking a moment to explore, so I use them often. In the beginning, I did not cite any of my sources in the post itself, choosing to only use hyperlinks as a way to cite the actual source within the blog format. Apparently this is wrong, and blog posts require a works cited section. I have since corrected this issue.

The layout of my blog posts are good enough for government work. Blogger as a platform leaves much to be desired when formatting images and text, with few usable fonts and no image editor whatsoever. Within the confines of the platform I suppose I do as best as I can, but I won't lie and say that there isn't a bit of defeatism when I begin my formatting process. There is usually an audible sigh and then the work of maneuvering Blogger's clunky user interface to produce a quality visual design begins in earnest.

According to the rubric, I'm in a solid Level 3, or perhaps on my better posts, a weak Level 4. In case anyone was wondering, it took eight minutes to get the text to conform to the left justified formatting I set for the image to the right. Whereas in every other text editing platform available for free online allows you to merely drag an image around the page and position it wherever the user wishes while the text wraps around said image, Blogger forces you to choose the justification of the text in relation to the image before you insert the image. It is so frustrating that oftentimes I just center justify everything to avoid the hassle of doing this - which isn't even very attractive visually, but scores higher on the rubric than center justified images. 

That said, nothing confuses me about writing a blog (except that it is a wholly unappealing format to host academic research but I will get to that later), and it doesn't cause me any undue stress. Honestly, the most stressful part of writing one of these blog posts is knowing that as soon as I am done writing and editing mine, I have to go and peer-review someone else's. 

Is this my best work? No. No way. It can't be. My best work comes from a place of passion and is the result of hundreds of hours of sustained effort. I am knocking these blog posts out in about 90 minutes as a condition to pass this class. Is this above average work? Yes. If average is to be judged as a 2 or 3 on the rubric, that is. I certainly do not procrastinate, as I plan for the blog post early in the week and tweak it until I am happy with the structure. It then comes down to frantically putting my notes to work as an actual product the day before. I would love to be able to submit a completed blog post the day after class, but considering that I have a 40 hour a week job, several part time jobs recurring weekly, an 11th month old son, a wife who is a full-time student, and the normal host of familial and societal obligations there just is not enough hours in the week to accomplish it all in a 'timely' fashion. In fact, I am sitting in my study writing this. On my desk is a cup of water, a mug of coffee gone cold, and a warm beer. I am stuffing my face with cheese puffs because neither myself nor my wife had the energy to make dinner. C'est la vie. 

Like any writer worth his salt, I read and re-read my work ad nauseam and then pester my wife to read it or at least let me read it aloud to her. I tweak sentence structure and word choices based on grammar and flow (and I'm not ashamed to admit that I alter adjectives to achieve alliteration). Her response to that blurb: "you're so dumb". 

Me reading negative peer assessments about my blog

As I said in my TopHat response: I am unfazed by peer reviews. I have no issues writing publicly. I began writing in earnest on internet message boards in the late 90's. I wrote to a large audience who did not care that I was a teenager and critiqued my work with wanton disregard for my feelings. If what I wrote was bad (it often was), they told me it was bad. I credit my command of the English language now with the crude, brutal reviews of my earliest writing. To this day, I expect my writing to be read with a critical eye. Tell me if you think my work is bad because chances are high that it could be better. 

There isn't anything I need to be discussed in class regarding blog writing. I would like to discuss why this section of text has a pink background, though.

Blogs are neat little doodads to document ongoing events, discuss topics of interest, and interact with readers. They are typically informal and don't necessarily require stringent formatting. This is where the use of blogs as a research instrument becomes shaky, and my opinion of blogs as a medium for academia sours. If I am making semi-frequent posts regarding a topic that I am researching, for which I am gathering and citing sources, for which they are being assessed, should I not be creating a wiki? Wikis are web pages that look at a topic or series of topics and connect various aspects of them together to form a network of information that is easily accessed. There are wikis for everything from Star Wars trivia to military vehicles. The most famous of these is Wikipedia, a free-to-use, publicly edited encyclopedia. I am aware that Wikipedia is something of a pariah among academics, but as an information-gathering tool, it is the best bar none. A student could easily compile and format collected information and sources of his own research into a [Caribbean Island name] wiki. 

Of course, what do I know? Maybe blogs really are the research tool of the future. Maybe I should just crack on with the assignments instead of trying to rationalize everything. One thing I do know for sure: blogs certainly aren't going anywhere.