Final Blog

It's been a long semester, with lots of work. I tried to remember it all and fit it in, but yet know there's no way I could have. I came into E-Comm with a sense of arrogance almost. I felt as if I had the cyber-world on a string and had a pretty good jist of what was going on. WRONG! This class has opened my eyes to so many things along the semester that there is almost too much to name. My habits of CMC are not nearly what I thought them to be, I thought I was internet saavy, but when push came to shove I was just an internet idiot. I learned about why people are addicted to the internet and what cyber anonomity is. Two things that I'd never understand without taking this course.
This course brought many "Oh Wow" moments for me...The most prevelant being the fact of how easy I thought it would be to take an online class. There is so much reading, so many different deadlines, and for some reason I have an incredibly hard time keeping up with that. I loved having the instructor blog to refer to for deadlines, but for some reason they never registered the way they do when I physically hear them spoken in class.
I find myself sometimes breaking down what people say on AIM to what we learn in class. I laugh when I see ROFL or LOL's because I know why people use them, and understand how many truly rediculous contractions there are out there for everything.
I feel that CMC will be an aid in the help of my personal career, it actually already has. I've been talking to a WC alum through e-mail for about a year, we've become good friends, and hopefully he'll help me land a pretty prestigious job upon graduation. However, without e-mail it would be incredibly hard to reach him to talk and get to know each other. Also with my career e-mail is often used in one of two ways...an ice breaker, or a deal maker. Ice-breaker meaning it helps people start relationships, or conversations when they are busy, nervous, or even sometimes lazy. A deal maker because it's a form of writing without having to stamp anything. Once you make a deal through e-mail, it has the potential to be a binding contract for whatever the subject.
I now look at CMC with a different light, one of respect, and better understanding. I came into the class searching for answers to things about blogs, the internet in general, and AIM users. I leave the class with a developed knowledge base of how people think and react online, and to the use of CMC.
This course was way more than I expected, being that I've never had Mr. Corso as a professor before I really wasn't sure what to expect. However, I appreciated the fact that he let us learn on our own, he gave a desired outline of what he wanted us to do, but made sure that we learned CMC from using CMC, and not what is told about CMC. It was obvi0us that all the students will have different issues, opinions, and he was OK with that. This class will ultimately help me in the understanding of why, how, and when people do things that invlove CMC.