Reflexive Piece

2008 was a year which produced many new challenges and experiences, especially for those of us studying first year journalism at Rhodes University. 2008 was the second year your truly studied first year journalism at Rhodes, giving addage to the old expression "if at first you don't succeed try again". Although i studied jms1 again, that is not to say it was all the same. In fact, the 4th term presented a whole new course: blogging. My lecturers would argue that due to the fact that blogging is a genre in itself, the work produced for this section would have to have been planned within the constraints of the genre as opposed to the first term in which most of the processes were individual. I tend to disagree somewhat with this evaluation. Although we were made to work in groups for this course, i still believe that a majority of our processes were individual. With the exception of coming up with a name for the blog and deciding on the other admin details such as what we would like the homepage to look like, the only other piece of real "group work" was the photo comic. Other than that all blog posts were individual processes and we were given the individual freedom to construct them. With every single piece of academic work at University there are assesment criteria, blogging was no different. We were required to write in a certain style and had to include aspects of the genre into our posts. This was no different to the first term when we did newswriting and had to follow criteria for our writing, such as what onstitutes a hard news story and how to structure one.

Story ideas were not too hard to come up with. The fact that we were students writing posts for a student blog made our jobs much easier. If we were perhaps lecturers in the department of journalism the task would have been much more difficult because as lecturers we would have been less in touch with student issues and thus content material would have been a little harder to come by. So to an extent my writing was supported by the character of my group's blog. The character was very much true to the overall theme of journalism this year - a first year at Rhodes.

As the first year journ clas of 2008 were the first ever class to participate in a blogging course at Rhodes we could be viewed as Guinea pigs. As such there was always something to discuss in tutorials. The tutors were new to the material, as were the lecturers so communication on all fronts was vital. In all honesty though i feel that tutorials were a waste of this time for this course. Anyone attending lectures would be familiar with the subject material and as such our tutors were not responsible for teaching us but rather served as mediators while we engaged in discussion with our group members. Tutorials did present a good forum for us to express our individual ideas and thoughts and allowed us to brainstorm and make decisions as to what we would do for our various assignments. At the same time this is something i did not enjoy fully, bcause as a group member one is forced to go with the majority decision and that decision may sometimes be one that is completely opposite to ideas that you yourself may have had.

On a scale of 1-10 in terms of personal and proffesional goals i would give this course a 7 out of 10. The Internet is an ever-growing commodity and as such this foray into the world of blogging is a wise one as it opens up many new doors for aspiring journalists. At the same time i believe i would have been capable of running a blog whether i had done this course or not. A lot of the skills we were "taught" could be seen as basic computer literacy and common sense skills. So in that aspect i did not learn much.

Blogging is most definitely a form of journalism and that is one vital aspect of this course i will take away with me. It is a form of what i would call "public journalism" and perhaps that is the best kind as the general public to not have corporate agendas to adhere to. Obviously individuals will never be completely objective but by examining a number of posts by various members of the general public one is allowed to form their own opinions. Reserach and sourcing was very much the same. Ethics were not a concern and i don't believe my writing changed too much.

On the whole i enjoyed this section and would definetly recoomned the journ department continue with this next year.

To be or not to be? That is the question...

For many people going to University presents an opportunity for change, an opportunity to be whoever you want to be, or an opportunity to remain the same. You can fix the aspects of your lives you didn't enjoy during high school. You will be exposed to unprecedented freedom. You can more freely choose who you spend your time with. You can choose to drink or to remain sober. You can choose to party or you can choose to study. You can choose to find long lasting love or you can choose to find that one night stand. You can choose to do well or you can choose to fail miserably. You can choose to smoke that joint or you can choose to have your brain function at its optimal speed. You can choose to make friends of different races, religions and creeds or you can stick to your comfort zones, stick with your own, and remain in your bubble. You can choose to try new things you never thought you'd have the opportunity to experience or you can shy away from the adventurous and stick to the familiar norms. You can do whatever you want to do, that is the beauty of CHOICE. Some choices have life-long consequences, others do not. Some will make you happy beyond your wildest dreams; others will bring heavy rain and clouds to your usually pleasant surroundings. At the end of the day you go into University as a blank canvass. You have the potential to come out as either a masterpiece or a series of disorganised scribbles. So I say take this experience and make the most of it. I have just one piece of advice for you: Remain true to yourself. At the end of the day the most important thing is to be able to look into a mirror and to recognise and like the person you see. Don't fall into the trap of trying to meet other people's expectations and standards, rather meet your own. In the spirit of this advice here is a poem I wrote in 2006:



Pretender

Pretence is the only thing that you know,
the flawed system in control of your soul.
Mean not what you say but say what you mean,
live in reality not in false dreams.
But your words are meaningless illusions of hope,
a method designed to allow you to cope.
See the shadows my eyes know so well,
melt in the reality of this living hell.
You choose to accept what you do not know,
belief in lunacy because "they" told you so.
Who is this "they" you refer to so often?
"They" could be me or people in coffins.
Yet you are no better than those false people,
you sit down, shut up, accepting their evil.
You expect the support of those you call friends,
yet for those who betray...your mind still bends.
Blind to reality, deaf to their lies,
yet I mention these things and you seem surprised.
Surprise is for people who are not aware,
sympathy for people who previously cared.
Previously means I felt in the past,
emotions are meaningless and only momentarily last.
But this is the end so dry all your tears,
succumb to the darkness, realize all your fears.
The fears that leave you trapped in a cage,
the cage by people rattled in rage,
a rage I dare not write on this page,
this page that will last though doomed by age.
This doom I welcome and death I accept,
for I do not judge, I do not expect.
Expect from people unreasonable things,
gifts of love, such as diamond rings.
Love is untouchable, its pain is terrible,
at the best of times, simply unbareable.
If love is a mountain I dare not climb,
if true love is possible I dare not rhyme.
If love is a touch I dare not feel,
in a wise man's eyes love is surreal.
Who am i you ask? I'm nothing but real,
have a heart of gold and nerves of steel.
For all those who dare call me naive,
who stupidly think their lies I believe.
Think again you will find you are wrong,
I patiently wait in this line so long.
To tell you I'm ready, ready to fight,
I bring light to day and darkness to night.
But I am not the topic of choice,
no more than a reason, merely a voice.
So think what you want and do what you will,
your life has no purpose, blood waiting to spill.
So with these last few lines I say no more,
theres no one to listen or to write for.
You mean nothing to me as I do to you,
saying goodbye is nothing new.
So goodbye I say and this is my word,
my feelings you know, my thoughts you have heard.
Some people say that you reap what you sew,
yet pretense is the only thing that you know.
I mean what I say and say what I mean,
I refuse to live in this false dream.

(Picture is from the television series The Pretender)

Let's not be so hot-headed...

I have been an avid reader of one of my fellow JMS1 student’s blog and have found it engaging and well thought out.
However I now feel I might need to rethink my interest in the blog after reading the opinion of an author’s experience with a police man.

Firstly to acknowledge and apologize for the “over-emotional and heated writing” and also to realize “that the above is inductive, generalized, simply based on one personal experience” doesn’t really justify the piece in any way. A murderer telling his soon to be victim that “I know this is wrong” and then apologizing afterwards doesn’t make what was done justified in any way. It is said that the event showed her that our country is not near the democratic, peaceful society we all believe it to be. Firstly it is the kind of generalizations this author makes, and the hot-headed manner in which she goes about making them, that will hold back our country from making the advances it needs. Secondly to say that we have not come far in the last decade is ignorant of all the positive advances that have most definitely occurred. The opinion might have some kind of substance to it, in that yes the policeman did seem to mistreat the author; however this probably needed to be more thought out and structured before hastily throwing it onto the blog for all to see!

Reflexive Piece

With the start of the new term also came the start of a new genre for the JMS 1 students, blogging. We were required to work in groups to create this foreign media and the task seemed daunting at first. However, as the process developed, I found that my group and I created a masterpiece that I could never have conceived of had I been working alone. This is one of the few times that I have found working in a group beneficial as we all had different strengths to bring to the table and we ended up getting along famously.

Besides a group environment offering support and guidance while working with a genre I knew nothing about, I also found that I was encouraged to be more productive during this term. My group was passionate about our blog especially Pieter who updated daily. This inspired me to be more creative with our assignments and incorporate the character of our blog into my writing. Another factor that made me want to be productive and put effort into my writing was the fact that I knew people from all over the world could be reading my work and that naturally made me want to write better content.

Our group generated most story ideas during our weekly tutorials where we had time to interact as a group and discuss what we did and did not want to be on our blog. I generated the story ideas for our compulsory assignments by myself, drawing inspiration from what was happening in my immediate surroundings and from other JMS 1 blogs. I do not feel that my ideas were stifled in any way and felt free to write about what I thought was important. As I have said, I found tutorials beneficial in terms of generating story ideas, but I also found them helpful in clarifying exactly what was expected of me and my group as lectures were at times vague. I felt comfortable at these meetings and confident enough to raise any concerns that my group and I were having. During group meetings I felt excited about our project and the ideas that kept coming up; during every meeting some improvement was made to the task at hand, especially when we were producing our photo comic.

This experience has allowed me to grow as a person and as a journalist. I have found that working with a cooperative and intelligent group of people can be highly beneficial and that I can learn a lot from my peers. I would rate my personal and professional growth at a 7 on a scale of 1 to 10. This experience has also allowed me to accept blogging as a form of journalism and also found that working on a real publication that anyone could read caused me to think about what I am writing a lot more carefully. The character my group assigned our blog was not confining as allowed a broad scope of discussion and issues to be brought up. The fact that I was writing for fellow first years allowed me to be honest and down to earth in my writing and not include any academic flourishes that one normally used to impress professors.

I do believe that blogging is journalism as it is a platform for writers of all ages and from all backgrounds to voice their opinions and concerns. Blogging is one of the only forms of journalism that is not censored by corporations and it epitomises freedom of speech. For example, our blogging group would not have been able to write about issues that affect first years in any other publication as our views were subjective. Blogging is the only media platform that allows subjective reporting. I do not feel that we were “confined” to the theme of surviving first year, but that it was more of a guideline that gave our blog focus. I feel that even if we had not been given this theme, most of our posts would have been about first year and our experiences thus far, because that is what is directly affecting our lives at the moment.

As I have mentioned before, I did take more care with my work knowing that there would be a public audience reading it, and the same applies to research. Even though the blogs were written with a personal style I still found it necessary to check facts, as a wide audience would be reading our material and therefore there was a greater chance that someone would find fault with something we had written on our blog. The research that I conducted while working on our blog was checking with other first years whether they agreed with what was being written or if our content was too generalised. It was important to make sure all first years could relate to our blog and that it did not only appeal to the members of our group.

I did not find my dealings with sources different from previous journalism genre assignments. Sources were willing to appear on our blog as they understood that our blog character was light hearted and not to be taken too seriously. I did not have to deal with an angry source but I did find it challenging interviewing a good friend of mine because of the familiarity. I feel that a stranger might have taken the task more seriously, but I feel that the piece ultimately benefited because I was able to give insight and depth to my writing because I knew the interviewee very well. I definitely learned to experiment while working on our blog as there was more freedom to be creative and address issues that I felt were important without having to be concerned with academic register, referencing and so on. I did not deal with any ethical issues personally but our group always had to make sure that our content was not generalised or defamatory in any way. We wanted our blog to be free, creative and daring but also fair.

In conclusion, I have found creating a blog within a group to be a valuable experience that taught me a lot about writing, ethics, technology and productivity and I am sure the knowledge I have gained will stand me in good stead in the future.

Dismantling Opinion

I strongly disagree with the fact that we are essentially being asked to analyse someone's opinion piece and to tear it apart piece by piece. Firstly the fact that an opinion piece counts for marks is ludicrous because if we have; stated our opinion and backed up the reasons for us having those opinions, our lecturers should not be giving us any less than 100% on principle because you can't mark based on content when the content is our opinion.

In the spirit of keeping my DP however, I will have to partake.

This is a reply to an opinion piece posted on http://outtaurspace.blogspot.com/.

You say, "Looking at other universities students still die because they are scared of what other people might say to them about their sexual status." I can't recall the last time I came across an article in a newspaper (if ever) which said that someone had died because they were scared of what other people said about their sexual status. Maybe you did not mean "die" in a literal sense, but that’s what it comes off as so you might want to look at rephrasing that.

You go on to say that people walk around campus and call themselves lesbians but when they go home they are not. That commented is purely unadulterated speculation. What are you basing this assumption on? If you have a friend who did this and you could back up your argument by explaining the situation with your friend it might give some credibility to your argument. As you do not do this, you fail to convince your audience that this actually happens thus this comes across as a weak argument.

The rest of your opinion piece follows this same trend. Your argument is based on assumptions which you have provide no evidence for and as such does not hold up. This means that you do not establish authority as a speaker, your argument i laced with assumption and your argument is often illogical.

This is your opinion and as such it should be respected, but if you want others to share your opinion you will have to come up with much stronger an argument.

Degrees: Invaluable or Insignificant?

The following is a response to a comment left on my last post:

In my personal opinion education is definitely overvalued. Not in terms of personal growth, but in terms of the job market. I joined Rhodes Music Radio this year, and to be honest I have learned more about journalism by being on radio than I have all year sitting in lectures. Hands-on experience is invaluable in the work place today. Chances are I could apply to a popular radio station 2 years from now and would be more likely to get the job than someone with honours in journalism who does not have the experience I have.

To a degree education is unfair in this country, in part due to what the apartheid regime left behind, but also in part due to the structure of education in the country. In both the United States and Canada primary education is free, only once people start attending university do people have to concern themselves with paying for education. That is the gap between a developing country and a first world country. How can the playing fields ever be level when one person can go to St. Johns and pay R120 000 a year in fees and someone else goes to a school in the township that costs R2000 a year.

Like you said, emphasis is placed on degrees, but only those with some wealth (or those who work really hard to overcome their circumstances to win bursaries or scholarships) are able to get these degrees. Personally I have a problem with any system that limits personal growth simply because the financial backing is not there.

Rhodes: Education VS Exploitation?

We all go to university to get a degree and with the exception of the limited number of students on scholarships; we pay through the roof to be here. Tuition costs in the region of R21 400 and R27 600 depending on your degree. Residence will cost somewhere in the same region. Thus before one has even set foot in a lecture, parents/guardians/we have already spent somewhere in the region of R50 000 and that’s before we even take things such as stationary or textbooks into account. This is the price of education – or is it?

Rhodes may not differ drastically from other universities in terms of fees but in personal experience I can say that various departments and societies at Rhodes will do their most to make a buck off of you. At the University of Cape Town students pay their fees for residence and their rooms belong to them for the duration of the year. They can come and go as they please with no need to pack up, no need to worry about getting in and out of residence before certain dates. Rhodes however is not like this. At Rhodes it seems the university will take every opportunity whatsoever to make some money. This basically means you have to pack up your room almost every vacation so that your residence may be used as accommodation for people attending conferences such as Highway Africa. If one wished to remain in one’s room during such a vacation, one would still be required to pack up their belongings and they would then be forced to pay an exuberant fee per night. It is my understanding that all the money made goes back to the university and its students. However I fail to see this. I currently live in a residence located on the hill and as such it is quite a bit away from any computer labs on campus. At the beginning of the year residences were told by the university that residences would be receiving their own printers, these would be distributed starting with female residences and then based on how far away one’s residence is from campus. Strange thing though, my residence still has no printer and residences right next to or across from computer labs do.

While we are on the printing issue let me just say that as a journalism student it is a big mission to have to finish an assignment; go down campus to print; and come back up to submit when the Journalism Department is right across the road. It wastes a good thirty minutes of valuable time that we as students can’t afford to lose. And while I’m talking about the Africa Media Matrix the Journalism Department is yet another department who makes the most of fees paid by students. The department accepts roughly 270 students into first year, and then accepts only 130 or so into second year because competition is fierce and apparently they do not have the resources to accommodate more students. Ironic then that in 2008 they added electronic ticker tape to the outside of the AMM which probably cost hundreds of thousands to do. Also ironic then that there are 4 huge flat-screen televisions embedded in the wall in the foyer. For a department that has limited resources they have rather curious spending habits.

Moving away from the university and the academic departments, even your fellow students will try to exploit your wallet. I present to you: Societies Evening; mega money drain madness. A hundred different societies will “convince” (and by convince I mean pester/harass/persuade) you that you need to sign up and join for a small fee, usually in the region of R100 – R150. What they fail to tell you is that after signing your money away, you are not likely to participate, you are not likely to attend functions, and if you wish to cancel your membership you will only receive a certain portion of your money back.

So if I have some advice for you it is this: Buyer Beware. The degree trade is a cut-throat industry and one will need their wits to come out with wallet still in hand.

(The picture is a little something i came up with by using Zapiro's Zuma comic as inspiration and borrowing Zapiro's art)

Opinion Piece

Let’s Get Wasted?

There is one statement in life that one can make at any time and remain undisputed. Rhodents love to drink. It doesn’t matter what the weather’s like, what time of year it is, or if a tornado has just ripped through Grahamstown, the Rat and Parrot will be bursting with students out to get their hands on the cheapest draft they can find. The thing is, this is all very well until the reality of upcoming exams sets in. How are the loyal patrons of Grahamstown’s watering- holes supposed to go ‘cold turkey’ and give up there thrice- weekly debauchery? This is a question that many first year partygoers are asking themselves at this very moment. Finals are looming and the pressure to go out and drink themselves into oblivion remains.

I just want to make it clear that I am not preaching here, I happened to be one of the guilty parties myself, but I like to think I have it in me to curb my habit during exam fever. Exam- time is all about moderation, a moderate amount of studying, a moderate amount of procrastination and a moderate amount of letting loose at Friars on a Friday night. The problem arises when students begin to use revelry as a form of procrastination, as this is when the situation gets out of hand, and you end up with a panicking, hung-over undergraduate, cramming for an accounting exam which is due to take place in a mere 12 hours. This is, of course, the said undergraduate’s own fault and he or she should therefore deal with the consequences. However, I do believe the “pressure to party” at Rhodes does have a large role to play. One might argue that students should not give in to peer- pressure and make the conscious decision to stay in and study, but the pressure is not only from peers, it is also from the ethos of Rhodes University as a whole. One of the first things I heard about Rhodes before my arrival at this splendid institution, was that I would drink more than I ever have in my life and that there was a 1 in 5 chance I would get my stomach pumped in first year. I am proud to announce that the latter event has not taken place, but I have felt the pressure from the reputation that Rhodents have, to party harder than any other students in the country (and possibly even the world).

I guess the crux of this argument is that if you are an outgoing, adventurous, party loving student, the chances are that the drinking culture at Rhodes will take advantage of these brilliant traits and turn you into a hard-core “joller” in every sense of the word. The fact is that it is difficult to break this cycle when it comes to exams and other important academic issues. Rhodents need to exercise caution during the term so that their partying habits do not get out of hand. In this way, they will be able to cut down on their visits to the Rat during Swot Week and exams and manage to live up to the reputation of a true Rhodent, which is someone who can handle the intensity of the social scene at Rhodes but also work hard when it counts.

In support of Blog Action Day

Do we all honestly believe that somehow, by being a student here at Rhodes University, we are exempt from worrying about the national crisis that is poverty in South Africa? Every day passes and another dining hall meal is taken for granted as the food is wasted. Money is needlessly spent on pointless items and alcohol as 2 meters outside the door of the Rat a young, hungry child waits for his next 5 rand to put towards bread.

The assumption is that most middle income teenagers will move on to a tertiary education and the lucky few will make it to Rhodes, yet when the acceptance letter arrives there seems to set in an attitude of keeping our eyes closed. Is the point of going to university not that we are supposed to open our eyes? First year is treated as a baptism of fire into the culture of university; however this culture is being confused with a constant mood of ignorance, arrogance and lack of responsibility. When the topic of most conversations at the Kaif is about what’s going on that night and “who was so drunk” the night before while we eat copious amounts of junk food and throw it in the bin, while not a kilometer away families are not sure when the next meal will come.

However who can be to blame for the lack of caring on the students’ part about the poverty around us and in the country? The students themselves might have taken a oblivious attitude towards the situation and palmed off and feeling of responsibility to someone else with the phrase “oh, someone else will do it.” Commonly thrown around without any thought or conscientiousness, the blame must lie with students; we can no longer live by the idea that somebody else will tell us what to do or where to go. If we are old enough to consume alcohol and deeming ourselves responsible enough to live our own way, then surely it is on us as the “future leaders” to take a stand and actually pay attention to the world around us. No parent, teacher, lecturer or any person for that matter can truly take any responsibility for us as young adults not fulfilling a service we owe to the poverty stricken of our country. An example of the lack of responsibility felt by students is the lack of response by JMS 1 students to the blog action day. This action towards showing solidarity did not take any special effort and in fact can be labeled as an easy task; yet uninterested 1st years palmed it off and didn’t think twice about contributing towards the action. This points out in general the lack of acute awareness we as students are personifying and allowing to creep into out demographic description.

It is never too late for us to finally make our mark on the problem of poverty, we are a powerful demographic and know that in numbers we can change the world, so we’ve changed it for ourselves; it’s about time we change it for someone else.

Our comic strip...

So for our JMS 1 course, we were required to create a comic strip....So here is the saga of a poor misguided princess, waking up where she shouldn't, so heed the warning young future first years... This is an example of what people call... Seal Clubbing...