Super Honest Post; This Is What Was Happening In Me
So far, to be honest, I have not done a great job. I took this course to improve my writing. I never expected this course to be like this. At first, I was frustrated. I had to choose a project that I have to work on for the next 5 months…or even more. Mr.B told us to choose a project that we are interested in. The thing that interests me the most is basketball so I had to choose basketball. However, I wasn’t that excited. I’ve been a bit slacking off during class. I sometimes ended up surfing the browser.
Now I realized why I wasn’t really excited. I just couldn’t see any way in front of me. I didn’t really know what I was doing. A site about basketball…am I writing articles? What is the topic going to be? How are the people all around the world going to be interested in our site? These were the questions that I could not answer, and therefore made me hate the project.
But I feel much different now. I like the idea Mr.B gave us about contacting high school basketball coaches in the US. This one idea changed my attitude toward the project. This could be interesting, because if I were the audience, I would love to watch some videos of great high school players. I actually thing many people will be interested in it. And If we’re lucky, we might attract some of the college basketball scouts out there. I do feel a bit excited about the project.
And this is what was happening in my head so far. Now, I’m going to try ti give myself a grade.
So far, I’ve made a project-sportswriting.mp3
I wanted to play around a bit with the background music. As a result, it is crappy.
According to Jaeho, he has contacted and arranged so many interviews with so many great people. I don’t really know how he did that, but it would be great to be able to interview them.
I wrote that I’m looking for high school coaches in the states on Twitter, but I haven’t checked any replies yet.
I’ve found some good blogs about basketball. The site we will be making will include many of our opinions, and we’d like to be as critical and effective in writing as him.
So…so far I haven’t done much because of the confusions in the beginning, so I don’t deserve an A for sure. I deserve…B…yeah…it is hard…to choose your own grade you know…
January 31st, 2008 at 10:05 am
Good response - you reflected on your problems and found your own clarity and motivation.
You WILL be improving your writing - by writing articles about whatever you decide. If you can’t find players to interview yet, you can have Jaeho interview YOU, Younsuk, about your own highlights as a sophomore. You can make your own highlights video from your games.
You’ll get the hang of podcasting. This one was just practice. You said yourself that the music was crap, and well, it was
Use the music loops in Garageband to do better next time. And listen to the ones I made about our class on my own blog for TECHNICAL examples of how to do intro’s, musical interludes, and so forth.
You can also write a post about WHY THIS GUY YOU LINKED TO IS A GOOD WRITER. Focus on his writing, explain what you notice that makes his writing strong, and use him as a model to imitate. That’s how you teach YOURSELF what good writing is. Imitate the pro’s.
It’s early. It’s okay. No more doinking around from now on. Your scout site CAN be interesting to the world. It could even turn into a side business, if you have any vision. It really is possible. And it’s exciting to think big - but also thing long-term. Because it’s not going to happen overnight.
Good reflection
January 31st, 2008 at 1:02 pm
Two more things:
The NBA site you linked to is great. And it’s a blog. NOTICE his linkage, formatting, etc.
Twitter won’t work if you’re not present. And if you help people out there, they’re more likely to help you out too. (And it’s sort of cool to communicate in 140 characters - it literally improves your writing - and is fun at the same time.)
January 31st, 2008 at 8:15 pm
I liked the way you analyzed why you gave yourself this grade. I notice you realized that you weren’t being focused and why, which is the first step to becoming focused. Maybe you could find blogs from other basketball coaches and players so you can compare them to what you want to do. You would be able to see what you liked about them and what you didn’t like. I hope to see you more on Twitter, because I’m just beginning at it and it would be nice to hear how your project is going.
March 8th, 2008 at 3:10 pm
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