Paperless Serious-less Writing

One day, I check out the MyUCDavis tab for an upcoming UWP 101 summer course to see if there was any announcements I needed to read before the class started only to be linked to this. After reading about this concept of a paperless writing class, I couldn't help but think that this class was going to be a waste of time. “Great,” I thought to myself. “Some prick is trying to be 'hip' with his students by making us blog for six weeks. I wonder if he even knows what he's doing.” With those doubts, I spent the week before the first summer session pondering about the ridiculousness of this class with my friends, usually as a way of steering the conversation away from my weight problem.

As I entered the classroom for the first time, my suspicions of this contemporary teacher grew. Here was this guy who seemed a bit too skeptic of this paperless idea himself, and furthermore, seemed to not hold much authority around the classroom. Is this paperless writing idea really going to improve my university level writing? It didn't seem like it to me, so I responded to the whole blog writing concept with very little seriousness. As I wrote my first few posts, I decided to add a grain of humor into my writing for fun. After all, the class didn't give a very formal feel to it, so I might as well be a bit liberal with what I write.

The class went on, and I found myself actually enjoying writing on my blog. Writing without the constraint of absolute seriousness allowed me to find a new perspective on formal writing. Before I knew it, I was putting quite a bit of effort in each post, trying to find a balance between formality and obscenity. I was enjoying this writing class. The discussions during class time were always interesting; the students were quite bold with controversial topics, yet showing an appropriate amount of conservation so nothing got out of hand. It was nice to see other students openly state their opinions, some more than others... Danielle more than others. After class ended I would look forward to writing my post with enthusiasm.

Okay, that was a bit of bullshit. After class I would look forward to eating lunch and watching anime. But I wasn't lying when I said I enjoy this class. The posts are lively and unique, the students are supportive and provide very constructive criticism, the teacher works hard to keep this class interesting, and the textbook doubles as a nice paperweight... which isn't really useful now that I think about it because this is a paperless class.

When I wrote papers for other classes, I was always so strict in my writing. This class is different, I still put a lot of effort and thinking in my posts as I would for any other essay, but not the same amount of seriousness. Perhaps it's because of the blogging concept acting as a medium between my thoughts and what gets written, but when I write for this class I lose the seriousness and I start to have fun. Because I'm having fun when I write, I put that much more heart into it. In a way, I have never written so seriously as I have for this class. Of course, this class is not over as there is one final post after this one. Because my next post is technically the class's final, it should encompass everything that I've done in this course. Thus, in my final post, it would only be appropriate if I did away with seriousness completely.

By the way, serious-less isn't really a word.