Looking back on my first blogging experience…

This is my first year in the UK and I am new to everything but also have a lot of worries about the unknown and sometimes it is hard to express my thoughts. When I was first introduced to blogging, I was a bit confused and timid about what I didn’t know, but after I really got into it and tried to publish my first blog, I found that blogging made it easier for me to express my understanding of urban design without having to be nervous about whether I used the wrong words or what was wrong with the grammar as I would be with someone face to face. I simply use the blog to share my views on urban design with people who share my interests. The freedom to choose the topics we want to discuss and to expand on what we want to learn about the topic has made it more autonomous and enjoyable for me to learn more about urban design. I also found the process of writing a blog after the lecture was a good way to refresh and review the key points of the class.

To be a team

In the early stages of creating the blog, we created a group chat on whatsapp to share our design ideas for the blog. And by rotating the role of hosting the sessions, I thought it was a great way to get everyone involved. I took each self-guided session seriously and the students were very involved. And through the blogging sessions there was more contact between the students and we started to understand how to work as a team, which will be quite important in our future work.While writing my personal blog, I also get to read my classmates’ blogs and I learn a lot about aspects I didn’t know in their posts, expanding my knowledge while understanding my own shortcomings.

Challenges

We discussed the layout of the blog with the help of our teacher and decided that there should be a relatively uniform template so that people could read better and understand what we were saying. But it is difficult to standardise the layout of everyone’s blogs and this is where I think it needs to be improved. On the other hand, I often go over the required word count when creating a blog because I want to better express my understanding. I think this is a sign that my writing skills are not good enough and that I should learn to use simpler and clearer words to get a clear point across.

Looking forward…

Looking ahead, I hope to improve my writing skills as well as learn more about case studies. In the process of blogging, I have found that it is very important to have case studies that support your arguments so that people can clearly understand what you are trying to say. In my opinion, it is not hard to find an argument that you agree with, it is learning to think and reflect on the arguments that have been made that will lead to more gains.