Blog Assignment 3

In Seth Godwin’s article Brainwashed he points out several ways in which our society has essentially conditioned us into following all the rules at the risk of being ostracized or humiliated by our peers. One of the seven ways to reinvent one’s self against socialization that Godwin mentions is called “acknowledging the lizard”, which he explains as the internal resistance present within us all that represents our fear of skepticism and being mocked. Seth goes on to say that the key to overcoming this hesitance is simply to recognize and ignore it.  Being able to connect with others through the internet is also another valuable skill because it allows for a greater circle of networking which happens to be drastically important in every aspect of modern business. Godwin’s last way to reinvent one’s self is to learn new things by experiencing difficult challenges and meeting them head on.

In my opinion, these exercises are a worthless waste of time because I feel there are more interesting things that my peers and I could be learning about while we are instead focusing on these mundane blogs. Especially considering how much material that has been crammed into this course it’s expected that students can study several an entire majors a week at a time. As a Digital Media major I am much more interested in projects on our syllabus that are relative to me, such as; game design, character animation, and video production. Every every second spent on these blogs is one that could be used to help me learn something that could better prepare me for my future career.  For example if perhaps if the class did not have blogs we could focus more time and energy into our creative assignments which would lead to better quality and instead of having to keep track of my blog like a burden the class could simply use this time to study and actually keep pace with the online readings. I know that other activities like in-class character analyses and much more time utilizing basic animation would be more worthwhile to my scholastic experience. I would also be very interested in learning about more advanced game design, 3-D modeling, and other video techniques/effects however because of course issues like limited time, overwhelming material, and wasted energy spent on assignments such as these blogs that these things are impossible. Although I found reading Seth Godwin’s blog about ways to reinvent yourself mildly interesting, I don’t particularly enjoy having to publish my summary of his article onto the internet when I could have just as easily turned it in class, which I feel makes the blog unnecessary to the course. Nobody dislikes wasting class time like a student who is paying for their own classes. Learning about the physical anatomy of a camera and various lens would be more useful to many students in my line of study as well. In fact students may have an advantage in future assignments with more time for creative activities when more challenging projects that require group work. As a non-journalism major, It is my opinion to conclude that there are many other more creative and interesting activities/projects that we students could be experiencing rather than a list of online essays that would support our learning of advanced media techniques. It is these reasons why I feel the many blog exercises are a waste of time.