Looking back

If you were to ask me a few months ago whether I would ever write a blog one day, I would have likely said no. Blogging has always scared me a little because of the way one writes, but since submitting my first blog entry back in October, I’ve found blogging to be a very creative and rewarding experience.

I have always enjoyed conducting research on issues that interest me and having the opportunity to write up my thoughts and findings in this way has been very fulfilling. I enjoy writing as well, but I find blogging difficult because I have very little experience of writing using an active voice, but this has been an opportunity for me to learn.

Although we are choosing a topic based on a lecture we attended, we still have a lot of leeway to decide which aspect of the topic we want to focus on. I appreciate having this freedom as it allows me to learn more and broaden my interests. While this semester has been stressful and difficult, I have found writing these blog posts almost therapeutic. It has enabled me to remain productive while also taking a break from my other studies.

Working as a team

I feel this opportunity has strengthened our bond as a group as my peers and I met once every two weeks. In the early stages, we created a group chat to share precedents to decide on the look of our new blog. This also enabled us to share minutes of our blog meetings and discuss ideas we might have outside of academic hours about the layout and design of the blog and blog entries. We did not have a specific chair, as we swapped roles at every meeting, and in retrospect, I believe this was a great idea as this gave us all an equal opportunity to lead meetings and take part in decisions. We set a realistic deadline for each of our blog postings to allow our blogs to flow nicely, rather than having us all post on the same day. Looking back, I believe we should have given ourselves a bit more time as we had a lot of other work to focus on at the same time.

In terms of my blog entries, I did struggle at times with deciding what angle I wanted to focus on, as I occasionally spent a lot of time going back and forth, undecided. But I do find that, through reading my peers’ blog posts, I learnt a lot, not only about them and their interests but also about the different ways one might write a blog entry as everyone has their own structure and style of writing when blogging. Being able to comment and discuss our blog posts was interesting because we got to learn more about each other. This highlighted how this writing task is not simply an opportunity to write critically in an academic setting: it’s a discussion, and occasionally a debate.

Looking forward…

I believe I still have room to enhance my blogging skills, especially in terms of using more active voice in my writing. But I am excited to keep on blogging next semester as it helps me remember why urban design is such a passion of mine.