Bad Karma - I do reflect...

This year has been a tough one and I do not pretend specifically that karma chose me out of all first year students to mess with. Although I must admit that when I found out we would all be required to construct a blog, I secretly smiled to myself. Finally, we were all being picked out by karma silmultaniously. Living proof that I am not the only one to experience bad karma. This year I have developed an interesting and new bad habit... everything that goes wrong, i will, without a doubt, find a way to somehow link it back to bad karma. Spilt soda, a disgusting zit, bad break-up or even a severe case of "dronk-verdriet" or as they call it here; "a mare". All of my life and everything in it has happened because I am a bad person. But okay, seeing as this is a reflective piece, I shall reflect and admit that maybe my "bad-karma vibe" has kind of become my excuse of choice when it in all actuality boilied down to the bad choices that I have made in life.

Missing the first few lectures on blogging was another one of those bad choices which resulted in me spending countless hours trying to figure out how to do this, also known as "bad karma 101". When I eventually figured out how to accept the invite from my diligent group members and actually join the blog, I looked like a little wooly sheep surrounded by hungry wolves. Everyone had a plan on how to do this and formulate that, I personally had no clue what so ever. Countless hours spent trying to find common place ground and time for all of us was not so great and the "bad karma" our group had to endure when two of our members were unfortunately no longer able to participate in the blogging process due to family matters, made it all the worse.

Overall, I am very proud of all of us. We were productive when the pressure was felt and our team turned out to be very creative. Our technicalities was mostly handled by Meez, a Microsoft genius in the making while Missl'tee and myself tried to come up with a few ideas here and there. We had established early on that we would treat our audiences as friends and siblings rather than isolating them, this had a definite impact on our writing style and story ideas and impacted a few ethical issues such as how exactly to handle issues of alcohol abuse etc. Our meetings were often brief due to mostly unforeseen circumstances, ie. everyone is too busy and different and simultanious times to always meet for an efficient period, but we got through somehow. Personally, I can reflect that ultimately this course has been a productive one. A course which requires participation and zest and creativity as well. I have been afforded the opportunity to be myself and enjoy my writing. My initial thought of how blogging can be perceived as journalism has completely changed. I enjoy the fact that no longer does journalism have to be confined to writing informative news paper articles, the world around us is changing and it is part of the duty of journalism to adapt to that change constantly.

I found that because of the type of journalism we were dealing with, people were more than willing to talk to us and read about us. When something is handled on a much larger scale such as this, there is a lot more pressure not to sound like an uneducated and challenged human being which I found can be rather difficult considering my rants. Ultimately I can admit that ths has been my favourite course the whole year. I truly enjoy practical participation in a course, something which has formed the back bone of this term.

As exams approach, I say a cheery "goodbye" to bad karma and hello to karma about to be made.