Increased My Skills by ONE Point! - Day 30 of 30

Field Research Report:

My decision to blog for 30 days revolved around many interests of mine. I am pursuing a Public Relations major; within Public Relations, one must have an impeccable writing style. In high school I was the Chief Editor of my school’s newspaper and I really loved working producing articles and stories. Throughout my journalism classes through high school, I was constantly being taught that blogs were becoming a huge part of journalism. So when my family and I took a trip to Vietnam this summer, I started a blog that I would continue to write in every single day that I was there. For two weeks, I blogged about all the new sights that I was seeing, the different culture and new experiences that happened to my family and I while we were touring Vietnam. During that time, I looked forward to blogging, it was a channel for me to share to family and friends back at home, what I was experiencing. I found that I instinctively used my writing skills from English and Journalism classes acquired during my high school years. My own personal interest in blogging has pinpointed my desire to learn how to be a better writer.

I started my 30 day research project towards the beginning of my second semester at Anderson University. During this time period I had to familiarize myself with my schedule of classes, as well as time to do my homework and find time to blog. To gather data for my project, I took a practice editing in context SAT test. After I completed the test, I recorded which questions were asked, and my score. For the next 30 days I blogged at: http://losesightoftheshoree.blogspot.com/ . After the 30 days are completed, I will take another editing in context SAT test with different questions. Once I have completed the test, I will compare the pre- blogging score and the post- blogging score. From there, I will see if I have increased my writing skills, based on that test. I wanted to research if blogging can contribute to writing and communicating more effectively. I chose to blog for 30 days because I was curious to see if writing every day without any limitations, could improve my writing skills.

I can tell that I have become a more effective writer. Based on my SAT context and editing results post- blogging, I have improved by one point. When I write, I am more intentional to write in a way that people can understand. One problem that I hadn’t thought about before starting me research was finding time to blog. Blogging usually takes up two hours of my day from brainstorming about what I want to write about, writing my blog, editing it, adding pictures, and then posting and sharing it on social media. When I originally had the idea to start blogging for 30 days, I had no idea that it would require so much time. Especially during the week days, I had to spend a lot more time doing school work then I was used to. I think that the more I write, the more I can improve. I found that blogging has increased my love for writing, and I have received many positive comments towards my writing.

After blogging for 30 days, I will take a break from posting blogs every day. However, based on my own observations and people’s comments, I will probably blog a lot more. Blogging not only has given me a way to express what is on my mind, but at the same time it also has improved my communication skills. In the future, if other researchers would choose to enhance the research that I had done, I would suggest taking a more extensive test before and after blogging.