The blog posts in this course did a great job of bringing outside references and materials into the class. Each of us had different, but relevant experiences that contributed to class discussion. One of my favorite aspects was learning about different ways a theme or idea had been discussed/used in real life that I might never had heard about if my classmates had not brought it up or written about it in their posts.
Writing these blog posts, I found myself reacting personally and viscerally to many of the themes we discussed in class, or different ideas I had during our discussions. Some examples:
“AGHHHHHHHHHHHH
… I should have seen the ending to Tremblay’s A Head Full of Ghosts coming.”
or…
“My first thought while reading about the rise of QR Codes in Graveyards was, “Oh I hate pulling out my phone and scanning those codes”- while my second thought was shame about how few seconds it would take to scan the memorial and do it for a deceased family member or friend”
or even…
“The characters we are attached to in the beginning not only introduce the Georgia Flu so well, but they are engaging and, just so damn human.”
Many of the topics I covered were examples from my own interests. There were many pop culture references, and discussions of television shows, video games, and examples from Wikipedia holes I had gotten sucked into. I was excited to contribute though, because I was glad to relate some of my experiences to this class.
While I enjoyed writing in a “blog style,” swearing once or twice, and generally in a less-formal manner than papers, I wish that our class blog was more engaging with one another. I felt a need to think of creative, click-bait-y titles in the hopes that other people would read and comment on them. While forcing students to comment on other people’s blogs does not work well, because then it feels like busy-work rather than genuinely exciting, it would be nice to figure out a way to keep class discussions going on the blog.
I really liked this class, in all honesty, because it was a great way to both explore topics that satisfy our morbid curiosity, and learn about topics and fields that we would otherwise never heard of. I know now the different criteria of post-modern works and enjoy finding different examples of themes we have talked about in other aspects of my life. Thanks for a great class guys!