After a ridiculous delay I’ve decided I would still post content referring to prior weeks of education. It feels essential in terms of progress and I’m rather anal about following processes as timely as possible even though my blogging activity thus far hasn’t reflected it. Even knowing it’s outdated and uninteresting by my fellow bloggers’ advanced standards, here is my first week of 3 upcoming week master posts:

SYMPOSIUM 1

I was left rather dazed after my first taste of this course. For starters, I walked into what i thought was a lecture and instead had my first symposium experience. I also heard what’s been on many people’s minds especially my own, spoken by one of my lecturers (or speaker? if it changes for the symposium format). It was the question ‘Why study media in university?’ This immediately brought me back to my horrid first day of my first year at RMIT after a year-long hiatus from education institutions. I found myself questioning why I quit working 9-5 and pursuing a career in sales- which provided me with affordability to not only splurge on media supplies for personal, creative days but to be able to actually attend film festivals and events, for the lost, further debt-ridden pursuit of a lecture theatre.

Adrian Miles also made a fine point of highlighting how in previous decades, university was essential for access to an editing suite, good cameras, media facilities and the know-how of using them, but not so much today where it’s all accessible on a smartphone. At this point I could practically hear my last manager’s voice yelling, ‘Get back on the phones!’ The layout and discussion within the symposium had me under the impression that I was being given real-life professional recounts of disappointing experiences that my future as a Media student will hold.

Then something changed. The words ‘thinking’ and ‘why’ were used in a non-questioning manner. It was said how today, in this technologically advanced environment, university enhances the way we think about it all, providing us for something we can’t easily come across on our smart-phone; academic-level and industry-ready critical thinking. Making stop-motions and watching provocative, Spanish art films would not prepare me for a sufficient change of career from sales to the media industry. The only way I’d probably get accredited press access to the Eurovision Song Contest, without university, is by volunteering and coming home to more debt. In that moment I felt thankful for my enrolment in this program. I left the symposium looking forward to the critical and contemporary ideas I plan on being exposed to throughout this course with the immersion of networked media in an academic, professional sense rather than talking politically about One Direction on Tumblr and Twitter.

READING 1

Miles’ ‘Blogs in Media Education’ had me thinking more on the use of blogs as professional practice. Early scientists, writers, artists and literate thinkers kept diaries and journals which we look back on today to reflect on their ‘genius’ all the time. I flicked through Sylivia Plath’s published diary once in a bookshop and her style and aesthetic was evident even in her personal, unvarnished recounts of daily life. I felt a strong sense of invasion of privacy though and didn’t read much in the end.

Blogs are more similar to journals than formal writing in terms of content and personal freedom but the important difference is that they’re made for an audience and are usually part of a network of many other bloggers. For most people though, this public eye and employer intervention impedes on how they express themselves and for this reason making a blog post to an entire network of potential readers can’t be as simple as writing freely how you feel in a diary- where the standards are set by yourself, for yourself.

Formal writing like blogging is made to be read but follows a simple structure taught in institutions but which can be interpreted by someone literate if they desire to do so. Where do bloggers learn to structure their content? The software only provides so much direction- in the chronological ordering and provision of titles. Yet most blogs follow similar structures, they’ll have their titles, meaningful sentences and imagery. People using this avenue for professional practice truly does seem to dominate it (as far as I know.) I’ve seen poetic blogs but they’re still fairly safe and structured, I wonder like in experimental film, television, radio and art, how far can the structures/formulas/conventions of blogs be tested to produce something that isn’t professional in a traditional sense but perhaps in an artistic or therapeutic sense? Reaching these blogs will be my next ongoing pursuit.