From the 9 Circles of Hell to the 7 Cycles of Blog

Everyone is welcome to read this final posting.

Reading over my blogs, I feel that my movement has been mostly consistent. I seem to mix humor, personal experience, and examples from Dante into a nice warm cup of alphabet soup. Sometimes I wrote about something mentioned in class that sparked an interest and other times I took the starter one step farther and added another 10 minutes or so to the idea. Close to the middle, I wrote a blog labeled “Addressing Other Postings” which was my attempt to calm down the bickering. I noticed a few miscommunications and some personal stabs and didn’t want to be den mother. I wanted to offer an example of discussing others’ comments, whether I agreed or not, allowing the team to see how you can be nice even if you don’t completely agree by simply commenting or taking someone’s thoughts and running with them. They’re not scissors after all. My themes seem to be based on ideas and symbolism that I gathered through allegorical reading. In the beginning, I wasn’t quite getting the allegorical part as much as towards the end of the term, but I think I finally caught on to the concept.

When I glance back over the entire blog, I see a roller coaster ride of ideas and emotions. Everyone started off on friendly terms, which turned to bitterness, then back to friendly terms. This particular roller coaster has a loop de loop of themes. Some wrote different views of the same themes while others took a whole different route. All in all, I think this group pulled together pretty good at the end. Basic reading turned more allegorical; thoughts began to run deeper and more personal.

My free-writing journal seems to be more personal than the blog. I wonder if I subconsciously felt better at writing the more personal information in a more private journal. I see more of a progress in my journal writings than the roller coaster. The journal seems to be more like a winding road of deep thoughts and random conclusions, if any at all. My two favorite blog postings were “I am Geryon, hear me ROAR!” and “My Personal ‘Heaven on Earth’ Experience.” I think the reason is that these have a more laid back view of a specific thing that I know will more than likely be a completely different view from others so I just put it out there for everyone to see, which kind of sounds like my own personal way of mooning the team (sorry guys, close your eyes). These free-writing samples and blog postings have helped most of us to open our minds a little more and see things from different angles, to read allegorically, and to expand our knowledge with some deep thought or personal experience. If we could keep our open minds and apply deep thought to things we don’t understand, won’t that make life more pleasant? To some, ignorance is bliss; to others, ignorance is a barrier that stands in the way of learning.