Connecting the Dots

Look over my blog posts, I notice patterns in my writing style and in the content that I write. I've noticed that I like to draw from personal experiences a lot. I've also noticed that my writing style is somewhat story-like. Since this class is about learning the different components, structures, and systems of an organization, I find that I learn best when I can connect these concepts to my own experiences to find associations and relations. Because I've never worked a full time job, my experience in organizations is limited to extracurricular activities, which are often school related. I'm also still a college student, so I'm constantly interacting with peers inside and outside a school environment, be it class, group projects, clubs, roommates, or friends. Involving myself in these different type of organizational structures also gives me experience in learning how best to interact in different organizational setups.

A common theme in the blog posts is structure. Understanding the structure of an organization is crucial to the success of that organization. In my blog posts titled "My Experience Creating an Organization" and "Temptasian", I talk about the structure of the two groups I was involved in, Temptasian and Illini Women in Economics", and how understanding the structure and roles each person is to make the structure is important to the success of the groups.

I also now can recognize motivation being a not-so-obvious theme in my blog posts. I say that motivation isn't obvious because it is easy to notice patterns of what makes up an organization structurally when talking about organizations, but it may not be obvious that motivation is an intrinsic factor in why organizations behave the way they do. In "My Experience Creating an Organization", I talked about how it's important that everyone's priorities be on the same page when working together on a team. We weren't working as efficiently together because one member's motivation and priorities were elsewhere. In "Is Opportunism Bad Karma?", I talk about being opportunistic (obviously the prompt) but also gave my specific motivations and reasonings on why I thought the way I did or why I acted the way I did. One could call the setup of my dorm room an organization: how two roommates interact and structure a successful living arrangement setup. In "Temptasian", I discussed how we were all motivated to conduct a successful show that was smooth. I also discussed struggling with members who weren't as motivated as other because they would skip practice or come late since they had other priorities. Lastly, in the Illinibucks blog post, the prompt is about finding uses for Illinibucks and discussing how students would be motivated to use it for different purposes. I talk about how because you can save time from standing in lines, people might be motivated to use the time they save on pursuing more productive activities. Motivation is a theme that is more obvious now that I reflect over my blog posts and what we've learned in class. Motivation drives everything.

My process for writing these blog posts has evolved somewhat. Like I said before, I like to draw from personal experiences when writing my blog posts because I learn much better when I can relate the concepts we learn in class to personal experiences. By making these associations in my blog posts, I can better recognize them in the future when they appear again. When I've already talked about a specific experience, I like to find different experiences for newer blog posts so my content isn't redundant or boring from reusing the same examples. Doing this, I can recognize systems and patterns that I wouldn't have otherwise recognized as organizations before. For example, I wouldn't have recognized a system of roommates trying to peacefully coexist as an organization, but I do now because my writing process has evolved for me to think more critically. I previously said my writing process has evolved "somewhat" because I still think there are areas for improvement in my writing process. I should probably learn how to draw conclusions from ideas outside from my personal experience. I actually found the Illinibucks prompt a little more difficult to do because it was the first prompt where we didn't have to talk about a personal experience. In the end, I still related that prompt to a few personal experiences such as waiting in line for food or waiting to use a shower stall.

I also hope that my writing reads easily to viewers. I try to write like how people write in newspaper op-eds, but I now realize to improve my writing, I'll probably need to learn how to write from the third person and how to write not using personal experiences. My writing tends to be wordy too. I always catch myself using passive voice when I could make the same point in active voice using a lot less words. I also go from not knowing what to write, to potentially writing way too much and being to wordy in these prompts. I hope to polish my writing as the semester moves on. I remember what Professor Arvan said towards the beginning of the semester about reading other publications such as NYT or the Times Magazine to learn the writing styles of professional journalists. That is also a tip my dad gave me when I was young and studying for the SATs. Because English wasn't his first language, so he told me he learned how to improve his writing style by reading professional publications. (I just noticed I related a point to a personal experience after saying I need to learn not to do that).

If I were to put myself in the place of writing the prompt, I would create prompts that draw on personal experiences. I realize I'm contradicting what I said in the previous paragraph, but if the writing prompts are for the purpose of further enrichment in the class, like I said before, I learn best when I can relate class concepts to personal experiences. I'm constantly making associations with concepts taught in class and patterns I recognize in my own world. For example, when Professor Arvan talk about collegiality in the beginning of the semester, I related that to growing up when my father would always say "be collegiate". So for the purpose of learning,  I would create prompts that draw on specific life experiences where we can relate to a concept taught in class, like the opportunism prompt. For example, I've never really thought about the concept of opportunism until it was brought up in class. I knew it existed but I never really thought much of it. The prompt given about opportunism forced me to put myself in the place of being opportunistic and allowed me to understand what opportunism was. Now, I can easily recognize opportunism when it shows up in the real world and I catch myself using the word "opportunistic" and make small mental associations back to class.