Reflection

Well, this semester is just about over. It seems to me that this year has gone by both extremely fast and slow. When I think about this semester I feel like it has gone by so fast, like we started a month ago, but then I think about last semester and it feels like it was forever ago. This semester in English has been a fun time. I have enjoyed the class as a whole and from what I hear from my friends in other English classes this was by far the best one. I feel that through out the semester we have all been able to grow as a physical community. When we first started I felt like I wouldn’t get to know very many people but I feel like we have a very wide variety of people in our class but all of us were able to connect in one way or another. In the essay written by Barlow, he writes, “the necessary elements of community include a culture, a religion sorts, a sense of necessity, and most importantly shared adversity.” I think that the most applicable part of that sentence is the part about shared adversity. There were probably times, situations, and assignments where some of us felt more comfortable than others, but that enabled us to know each other better as the year went on. I know for a fact that there were times that I was put outside of my comfort zone and forced to make something of it. I felt that way a lot when it came to the blogging assignment. I went back and forth a lot throughout the assignment constantly changing my mind on whether or not I enjoyed the assignment. Today’s society is SO centered on technology and cyberspace but I however do not feel like I completely fit with the cyberspace (mainly because half the time I don’t know how to work the computers). Being on cyberspace allows you to be either yourself more comfortably, or to be somebody you wish you were. Although, that may make you feel more comfortable in yourself, it is creating in you a false sense of security. I know that in the beginning of the blogging assignment I was uncomfortable. I thought “I don’t want people to read what I have to say…. and I don’t even know what I want to say, nobody will care what I have to say.” When I originally started the assignment I was planning to talk about what I wanted to do in the future, and what my goals and aspirations were. However, I soon ran out of things to say and started using it as almost a weekly reflection about the past week of school and life in general. At times that made me uncomfortable, the fact that I was telling the whole class about what went on in my life the past week, because I am not one to freely express what I am feeling to every and any one. I usually only express my emotions to those close to me. The blogging assignment ended up going okay and I eventually became a little more comfortable with it, mainly because as I read other peoples I found that although we are all so different many of us had similar things to say or at least things that we could relate to. The blogging community was so different than any other cyber community I have experienced. I felt that it was exposing more of you to people that you may not know all that well, whereas in another cyber community such as facebook it feels more normal and comfortable because you have friendships and because it is so popular it makes you think that only those really close to you actually look at your profile. I felt that the blogging community and then physical class community were two completely different communities. It seemed that what happened within blogs usually stayed solely on the blog spot and didn’t really affect the physical community of the classroom. I realize that my thoughts are a little bit scattered but that is really how I feel about cyber communities, they cause a mix of feelings and emotions. I feel that it is not very normal to feel uncomfortable in a cyber community these days because they are slowly taking over the world. ☺ It is more common to send an email and keep in touch with people through the Internet than to use snail mail. However I really feel that the fact that cyber communities are growing so fast means that it is taking away the formality and importance of physical communities. I guess in short, depending on the situation and the mood I am in affects the comfortableness I feel within the cyber community.