Serial Project Reflection
I started the semester intending for my serial project to be a blog about The Mindy Project and New Girl. I'm a big fan of both shows and thought it would be interesting to compare the two and their respective narrative structures. My blog (@whenmindymeetsjess) was pretty successful and I garnered a lot of followers and notes pretty quickly. However, I quickly realized that this was a less interesting project than I had expected. Though the two shows definitely have a lot in common, a lot for the similarities and comparisons I was making were pretty superficial and, within two weeks, I was already finding my analyses getting pretty repetitive. So, I decided pretty quickly to switch projects.
I've always enjoyed reading lifestyle and food blogs and thought it would be fun to create my own. I'm a regular reader of the blog, The Londoner, and have also been following a couple student bloggers who are on the study abroad program I'm doing next fall. In addition, I had been intending to make a blog while studying abroad anyways and liked the idea of having a project that I could continue after the semester ended.
In terms of seriality, I was interested in looking at how blogs created narratives, not just within individual posts but also over the course of many posts or a long period of time. Though I have never personally interacted with or met the author of The Londoner, I have followed her blog since high school and, through this experience, have created a "character" and storyline that I implicitly associate with her. Even if it is not mentioned explicitly, I (and the rest of her readers) are able to follow her life, travels, romances, personal triumphs and failings. It's fascinating to see how real people and their lives can be serialized, and how we project our own experiences and thoughts onto them through these mediums.
My goal was to post weekly about my life at Duke, my travels, and other experiences worth sharing. Through this process, I also hoped to gain some insight about the world of non-fiction serialization and what it was like to have my life serialized.
In terms of the content and regularity of my posts, I definitely met my goals. I posted roughly once and week (if not more). Not surprisingly, many of my posts ended up being about food. Both Durham and Birmingham (my hometown) have really vibrant food scenes so I loved having an excuse to explore them (and brag about them). However, I also included several posts about my future plans, family and friends, and travel.
In terms of serialization, though, I don't think I gained much insight into what it would be like to have my life serialized. For starters, I think I would need to have a much larger following in order to really experience what this would be like. I only have a handful of people who follow my blog and none of them have left any comments on any of my posts. Meanwhile, the author of The Londoner and other popular real-world series (for example, The Bachelor) are under constant scrutiny by outsiders, readers, and viewers. I definitely think this a huge part of the experience and completely changes the name of the game. In addition, I don't think I have enough posts to have really captured my life fully or accurately. In order to have the full experience of serialization, I think I would need to post more regularly and/or over a longer period of time. This would create a much fuller narrative, rather than just the individual posts strung together.
However, I definitely plan on continuing this blog as I study abroad and travel in the next year. As I post more (and hopefully gain more followers), I expect to gain a better sense of what this kind of serialization is like. In any case, I have really enjoyed blogging and using it as a way to communicate with others and chronicle my own experiences for future reference. I'm really glad I took on this project and am exciting about continuing it indefinitely.
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