With
yet another wave of midterms rolling in, I decided to use this week’s blog post
to review a fellow student’s blog post. Just like before, I chose to comment on
a blog that was incredibly well done, but with a small opportunity for
improvement. This way, I can still provide constructive criticism without
having to completely tear up and redo the blog post. For this week’s review, I
chose to review a very unique blog post by a fellow student. This student chose
to visit, observe and post about the city of Pacoima. What makes this blog post
unique, however, is the way the student compared the city he was visiting to
the city he grew up in, in this case, the city of Watts. Beyond that, the
student also double dipped in a sense by visiting a new area of the town he
grew up in, in this case, the Watts Towers. This is the comment left on the
student’s blog post:
Let
me start this review off by saying that I think it was genius the way you
compared the area you now live in with your original hometown. Furthermore, I
think it was a nice touch the way you visited an area of your hometown that you
have never been to. On a related side note, I also was connected to your blog
as I too recently visited the Watts Towers. Anyways, back to your trip. I was
also impressed that you essentially double-dipped, visiting two different areas
for the same blog post, sacrificing ease, as you could have made them two
different blog posts, for the sake of quality.
On
to the blog post itself. I thought that your descriptive language did a
wonderful job illustrating the area for the readers who have not visited either
area, while simultaneously connecting the two areas in such a way that readers
who have visited one of the two areas, like me, could connect to the area that
they have not visited. Most importantly, I absolutely loved the way you
connected both areas you have visited to yourself in a very personal way. This
allows readers to be truly drawn into your writing and, in a crude sense,
connect to the area vicariously through you as well.
Now,
on to the meat of the blog post, its connection with class concepts. I thought
you did a wonderful job of not only relating your locations with class
concepts, but more than that, you actually based your entire blog post off of a
class concept, an idea I found to be as unique as it was impressive. It is
clear from your blog that you have a true mastery of class concepts, or at
least a mastery of the class concepts of the restriction of physical and social
access to cities in order to keep what David Sibley would call the “uncivilized
other” out of the area. You demonstrated this directly in the way that you do
not feel welcome in your new home, despite its compatibility to your former
hometown. It was also a nice touch to include a few “sample” areas that you would
not expect yourself to be comfortable in, areas where the restriction of
physical and social access are most prominent, such as, as you stated, Beverly
Hills, Brentwood and Signal Hill. If there is one suggestion I could recommend for
this blog post and any other future blog posts would be to elaborate just a bit
more on the class concepts. Taking this blog post for example, it may have been
wise to differentiate whether you do not feel welcomed in your new home due to the
restriction of social access or the restriction of physical access. While I
assumed while reading, and rightfully so, that you were referring to social
access, as further illustrated in your use of heavily restrictive social access
areas such as Beverly Hills and Brentwood, it would make it easier on the
reader if you specified it more directly.
Overall,
this was a very well done blog post and I look forward to reading more of your
posts in the near future.
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