WetFeet University Benchmark Study

Georgia Tech career services asked me to complete a benchmark study about my university career services, potential employers, etc. It's quite interesting because at the end they give you a list of employers you may want to look at based on your responses and statistics about potential salary and GPA compared with national stats and your university. If you participate, you can get two free ebooks that could be helpful for post graduation job hunting. Check it out here! or if the link isn't working properly, visit http://wfsurv.com/refusss14?reid=10099187.

Poetry, what is that stuff??

I've been writing a lot lately, almost everyday actually. If I'm not writing something new, I'm revising something old. I joined the Google+ poetry community and I'm trying to get myself involved, especially  with the critique requested category. I figure that if I can offer another poet a question about their work to get them to think about how to make their work better or a bit of advice, then that means I've learned something. 

I must admit that one user posted under this said category and I happened to find his poem, and I politely offered feedback, acknowledging what I liked about his poem too. It wasn't negative feedback, just good old fashioned constructive criticism. After all it was in this category. He didn't respond harshly to my comments, but he did attempt a discussion with other community members about the role of feedback. 

Basically, he stated that feedback was not necessary to make one's work better because it would no longer be your work. If other people gave you feedback, to change this or that, add this, get rid of this, it would no longer be your individual creation, it would be a collaborative piece that wouldn't look like your style. Actually 'you,' your voice, would be replaced by other non-you voices. 

I have to say that I was kind of pissed off by this, especially about the part that feedback from others won't improve your work. I think that's complete bullshit. I said it. I took a class that was set up like workshop and I've never gained so much knowledge or improved so much before. Taking that class, where we all sat in a circle, sharing our work, reading it aloud, talking about it, blatantly discussing, critiquing and ripping apart one another's work (not worrying about how the author would take it because we were there to learn from one another), was the best thing I could have done to become a better writer. I find what he said to be pure ignorance; it's a refusal to learn from other people who have had more experience writing, and how could you choose to refuse learning from others? 

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This is what I saw before I went to sleep. I promise she's not a rodent. 

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JELLIES 0_0