On Posts, Poetry and Prose
This is it.
This is the last day of the March Slice of Life challenge, as one could probably surmise from the influx of posts with titles along the lines of “A Bittersweet Goodbye to SOL” or “Thank God It’s Over: I Have Bio Objectives Due Soon and I Don’t Need Any More of This”. I have to disagree with my peers who resonate with the latter statement. Throughout this entire month — with all its highs and lows — I was able to get an unprecedented glimpse inside the fascinating (and occasionally, surprising) thoughts of my classmates, learn about new and interesting topics, and, most importantly, improve my writing.
At first, I was averse to the idea of writing a blog post every day. But Slice of Life allowed me to write about experiences that I normally would not have reflected upon, and focus on conventional, ephemeral moments of my life in acute detail. Every day of blogging felt liberating, like I was able to spew word salad and write in a relaxing stream-of-consciousness style (though admittedly, I got lazier towards the end and started writing shorter poems). Also, since Tumblr was more isolated from the rest of the SOL blogs, I felt like I was writing only for myself, and that was really enjoyable.
Writing in verse was the best part. Aside from the advantage of using up more white space to look more productive, writing poetry allowed me to take in those details of my life verse by verse, stanza by stanza. Most would complain about having to meet the deadline of 11:59, but I thought it was refreshing, calming even, to write a poem each day.
Most importantly, SOL enabled me to explore my thoughts about the world and my experiences in a single verse. Through quiet introspection, I was able to look at details in my life with a sharper eye.
This has been great, really. Thank you, Mrs. Gross.
