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Mid - Semester Blog Review

In reading back through my posts, I would say one of the themes that ties through from all my posts is my ties to the University of Illinois and those experiences. Majority of my posts revolved around student government experiences or the organization’s structure. The posts have helped me to look at my past experiences and be able to reflect on what I learned through those experiences. As a senior, I have been much more reflective as of late on what I have accomplished, learned and how I’ve grown. Student government has taught me about the person I am, but also has helped to guide me on the path of where I want to go in the future. I think that is why many of my posts have been rooted in my student government experience. It has been a big part of my life, and now seeing them through different economic lenses has been rewarding.

Aside from addressing the prompts, I think that there are additional ways to tie what I wrote about to the course themes. There are aspects in each anecdote that I gave to address the prompt, which connect more to the bigger themes. For example, transaction costs were involved in each experience I recounted. While there was only one blog post that specifically identified the transaction costs, in looking back in the posts I see how transaction costs were in each situation. In my situations with student government, there were transaction costs not only of my own but on the part of the University and other students that I have worked with. These costs, I believe, have benefited the University of Illinois and were thus worthwhile.

I would say that as time has progressed, my blog post process has evolved. I have taken more time to think about the situations in which experiences tie back to class concepts. With the blog posts, I have taken more time to think about the prompt by looking at the prompt earlier, and working hard to further describe the situations / experiences that I connect to. One thing that I have been working to improve is giving enough details so that someone who has no knowledge can understand and see the point I was trying to make. This is something that has taken some time for me to work through as I am often one who doesn’t realize what a third-party observer may not understand. Additionally, with the blog posts, I have been able to see how easily it is to connect concepts from class to the experiences I have had. This has made writing the blog posts easier and of a higher caliber as time has progressed.


If I were to be writing the prompt, I’d like to see the continuation of tying our experiences into concepts from class. I think that one thing that would be cool would be giving a little bit of a personal anecdote from the Professor’s point of view, whether it is directly tied to the prompt or not, would be a great way for us to continue to learn about your experiences. Similar to how you post on the website, I think that this would be a great way for us to see how your point of view compares to ours. Additionally, I really liked the IlliniBucks prompt, so seeing more prompts that challenge us to come up with ideas while using our personal experiences is a neat way to continue to engage with the other students. I found that reading the responses of the other students of this prompt was more interesting and that I ended up learning more about how other students felt than in previous prompts.

Comments

  1. Professor ArvanOctober 14, 2017 at 12:13 PM

    Let me take on your penultimate paragraph and what you said about providing detail. I was very glad to see that. So far, you are the only student who as written about that need, though many students do have to improve in that dimension. I am glad there is some recognition about the need for such improvement. You are right that it is time consuming to do. However, as with any skill, as you master it more, it won't take as much time and eventually you'll find you can do it with little effort, though you may need more practice than what you can get in my class before you reach that point.

    I didn't quite understand what your suggestion was in the last paragraph about my point of view. Were you asking me to reconsider your experiences from my perspective? Or were you wanting me to relate my own experiences as they relate to the prompt? I wasn't sure. As to the latter, I do try from time to time to include such experiences in class discussion.

    In years past, I've written a post on the class site each week that would be a reaction to the blog posts of the class. One of my open issues teaching a class like this is when giving students more than I'm currently doing would be a good thing versus when what I'm already providing is overwhelming. (And that might vary from one student to the next.) The use statistics that I see are a bit discouraging on this front. So I stopped doing this some time ago. But it is an interesting thought to possibly resume the activity.

    Finally, let me get at what you said at the outset, that your posts concerned your experience with student government. Even if it wasn't in any of the prompts, it would help to explore what drove that interest. (As pure speculation as to motive meant to illustrate what you might say, perhaps you have some interest in a career in government after you graduate, and this was a way to practice that in a comparatively safe environment.) Over the years I've been in a variety of governance/committee situations that have varied from being outright painful to merely being necessary evils, and for the most part this was with people I enjoyed interacting with. It is just that I much prefer discussions with one or two people over coffee or a meal than larger group discussion, especially when in the larger group we have to come to some decision of importance. I hope your experience has been better than that. In any event, it would be good to include why you got involved in future posts, especially if that is relevant to the current topic.

    ReplyDelete
    Replies
    1. Christina RomerOctober 17, 2017 at 8:31 AM

      Professor,

      Thank you for your response. I think that constructive criticism and improvement is crucial in all aspects, not just class work. What I was getting at with your experiences, I was thinking more in terms of your experiences with the prompts. I know that you do that in class through discussion, but I was thinking possibly after the posts have been finished, that you would post your response to the prompt as well. I think that part of learning is learning from other's experiences and I appreciate your insight.

      Thanks!

      Delete
  2. HanOctober 14, 2017 at 8:09 PM

    It's always good to read what you wrote about your student government experience, which help me know more about how this group works since I haven't got chance to join this kind of group back in my university. After reading your posts, I think you were talking much more than just transaction costs. You had some great examples such as volunteers who acted opportunistic, how you dealt with that situation could be a problem that organizations have to deal with everyday. I would like to see you connect your experience with more materials of this class.

    In your second paragraph, you mentioned that what you did benefited the school and makes your effort worthwhile. That sounds so altruistic which makes me wonder what have you learned from those experience. You must learned something which not only helped the school but can help you in the future such as working places. It would be great if you could share how you strengthened your own abilities through those experience.

    ReplyDelete
    Replies
    1. Christina RomerOctober 17, 2017 at 8:32 AM

      Thanks for your response! I think that one area that I could improve on is connecting back to class material so I will be sure to work on that for future posts.

      In terms of my experiences, I have learned a great ton about organizations, working with people, as well as a lot about myself. I was worried about sharing too much about my personal gain because as you mentioned, much of the work that I have done was for the greater good.

      Thanks!

      Delete

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