Obviously, the most glaring similarity between all the blogs
posts up to date are that they all involve discussing organizations, but
specifically organizations I have been a part of and organizations I have
experienced firsthand on campus. All the posts aim to tie in my own experiences
with what the class entails so I can apply these concepts into my everyday life
and see how they apply in the real world. For example, the first post was about
my experience with organizations where I spoke on behalf of my fraternity, but
then the third post was about a successful organization where I spoke on behalf
of my soccer team; two different organizations with two different results. I am
not sure if that was one of the aims of those posts, but I thought that was an
interesting comparison I made when I was reading through my blog posts. Our
last post was about how "IlliniBucks" could be successfully allocated
on campus through different organizations, such as the library or the class
registration system, using my prior experiences with organizations, I was able
to tie in my own experiences with how I believe the bucks could be used.
Aside from addressing the prompt I believe my post on using
the "IlliniBucks" through the Undergraduate Library and even private
organizations such as campus bars connects to the economic
approach of "establishing a framework for thinking about what might be
possible for the organization and in producing well-reasoned conclusions about
what efficient structures look like". These organizations such as the
library and the private establishments need to experiment with these
"IlliniBucks" in order to see what would be the efficient price to
set them at and the efficient amount to produce. They take into account the
distribution of preferences, who should get what, and they think about
production capabilities of how many bucks they should use.
In terms of what is more obvious to me now, for the
opportunism blog post, I failed to acknowledged the essential component of
opportunism - the ethical dimension of it. It is more clear to me now, after
reading through my post and taking a sounder approach and investigating more
into the concept, I was able to more clearly see that my actions through the
soccer team had ethical consequences as well. I was actually harming myself
through playing academy, my actions were negatively effecting me during this
time when I believed they were helping me in getting a Divison 1 scholarship
for soccer. Instead of focusing on my academics and trying to earn a
scholarship that way rather than the athletics route, I would have allocated
more time to studying and focusing on collegiate placement exams. I was
spending four hours a day after school commuting to soccer when I could have
allocated that time to more productive things: ACT studying, school in general,
AP tests.
I believe my process when writing these blogs has evolved
through Professor Arvan's comments, he aims at wanting you to learn
conceptually what you are speaking on behalf and really deriving the crucial
lessons from each of his prompts. I now have a more open mind about things and
try to think about the deeper meaning behind what the prompts are trying to
entail. Additionally, I have learned to read more closely and ensure I am
correctly answering the prompt entirely and not straying too far off topic. The
driving force has been the comments though, in the past, instructors do not
always comment and just give you a grade without and real feedback. I am able
to see where I need to improve through the Professor's comments, but also my classmate’s
comments. I use their feedback to fuel and engineer my future posts.
You used the root "obvious" in a couple of different places. A different word that might convey a similar idea is "immediate." The connections you seem to be making are the ones that occur to you right at first. I wonder if you might be more deliberate with the blogging and your thought process in general. This would aim at identifying connections that are not so obvious, but may give you a richer sense of the underlying economics and how your experience ties to that.
ReplyDeleteOne way to do this going forward is to make reference to past posts and establish a connection between the current topic and something you've written before. Another way would be to bring in something you've read or something that's been posted on the class site and try to connect these things. It may not be obvious how to proceed. So there may be something of a puzzle to solve. There is learning in solving it.
Your comment reminds me of my AP English teacher, Diane Schmitz, she was an excellent teacher who went to Notre Dame and escalated our English department at my high school to one of the best in the country. She always stressed connections and trying to embed things together, your comment sparked this reminder in my head.
ReplyDeleteIn terms of the connections I believe one underlying connection could be the idea of trust in organizations. My soccer team excelled through teamwork because we worked for each other and trusted each other to succeed. It allowed the team to prosper and looking back I can now make that connection between our discussion in class and my blog post.
Robert, i also believe that the comments on the posts from both Prof Arvan and fellow students does the best help for our writing. the experience of writing is one thing, but learning how to improve on your faults is another. that i why i also believe that the weekly comments are a good check of not only your own work, but also is important because you get to see other students viewpoints on the same topic. in my post i discussed how i learn the most in the classroom setting, and i believe that that is true for curriculum, but in terms of becoming a better writer i believe that this classes blog oriented format helps a lot.
ReplyDeleteBuilding off Professor Arvan, I believe one way to effectively build upon past ideas is to recognize and correct where you made errors in past posts. In so doing, you may not only understand the concepts and ideas more thoroughly but also apply this knowledge to discussion in class. That way, you and the entire class can benefit. I look forward to seeing how your writing and analysis progresses as we get deeper into the class.
ReplyDelete