The end is here

good or bad, this was our creation 😀

We are made of tiny little stories

One of the first things I asked Professor Gilbert in one of our earlier class sessions was concerning the kind of tone with which we were supposed to express ourselves in the blog. Of course, blogs are not newspapers or magazines – they support a different, more informal and at the same time real, tone of journalism that allows a more in-depth exploration of the subject. On the other hand, we want blogs to be taken seriously – bloggers do engage in serious interviewing and fact checking. So, this was sort of my first lesson in MMJ this semester: take your blog very seriously, but don’t spare coloring it with an individual touch. Oh, and first person doesn’t work that well.

Well, I tried following this rule as much as possible this semester. This was sort of my personal guiding lesson: ‘make it about the subject’. This often includes tolerance towards the interviewee, even when the interviewee is not helping your cause of enriching the virtual world with inspired stories about human nature. So maneuvering through the semester while trying to discover interesting answers to the question ‘How did you step out of your comfort zone?’, I tried for the focus of the blog to be as far away from the blogger – namely I – as possible.
I am obviously breaking this rule of literary altruism today. It is after all the last post, and a first person perspective is the only way to go at this point in the semester. After all, how is the new found love for twitter supposed to be relevant, if you (whoever it is that’s reading) didn’t know that I hated Twitter before this class? Lesson #2. Twitter is awesome.

So, I’m going back to my ‘About’ writing style for this post, just so that I can describe a few of all the things we did this semester.

In my first post, I wanted, through one simple picture, to express what diversifying meant for me, so I posted this Allen Ginsberg quote about not hiding the madness. Then, through a lot of motivation and hard work, prof. Gilbert taught all of us how not to hide our madness, how to pursue our interests and talents, and how to be the best of what we can in video and sound editing, interviewing, writing and, most importantly, fighting time!

However, the most important lessons came from my interviewees throughout the semester. I asked one question: “how do you step out of your comfort zone?” I got numerous, diverse answers that made the blog worth having and this class worth taking. I met people – both in the real world and online – and adapted some of their advice in my life. And, honestly, what’s better than a place where you can go, learn life lessons, and get credit for it? Not many have the pleasure.

In this context, my work here is done. Don’t fret however – in case you ever did. This is not goodbye…next semester I will be hopefully getting some answers from people in Holland and sharing some of the Netherlands wisdom.

Until then, live well. Live differently…and don’t forget to step out of your comfort zone, every once in a while. 😉

Diversity inside the classroom.

There is nothing better than having to do something creative for once, instead of something common.

That has been the case with this MMJ class from the beginning. Starting from the interesting in-class assignments, to the creative style of journalistic writing we get taught, and continuing with the midterm and this final project of bliss.

I will try to talk about this without giving out too many details.

For this week, we need to construct a video (a story, clip, trailer, news package etc). The only criteria is that the video is made out of the blogs created this semester.

We called our project ‘Playland’.