Blog Post #8- Closing Remarks

Closing Remarks

I've reflected a lot on my blogging experience this past semester, and I just wanted to close out my blog with a few remarks and to thank those who have read this far. I think one of the components I really underestimated with this blogging experience was how much I was able to write and the variety of topics that inspired me. While reading other students' posts, I would always think about how that linked to politics or how that was a relevant issues in my regional focus. For example, my post on Women and Development was entirely inspired by reading all of the gender and development blogs my peers worked on. It was an aspect I didn't really expect to write on, but realized that it was not just cultural norms but that government and law also had so much to do with how women are treated in terms of rights to land. I also felt like I learned so much about my region. I originally picked Southern Africa because of my personal experience working in Zimbabwe with local women's' organizations a few years back. I had since then done research on Zimbabwe, particularly its economic history and a bit of political history. Last year I was able to expand my knowledge of the entire region a bit by rearching environmentalist and explorer David Livingstone, whose statue I saw while hiking around Victoria Falls and led me to want to learn more. But my scope on this blog broadened. I learned more about South Africa outside of apartheid and about Angola, a country I hadn't studied at all.

The only regrets I have about my blog are that I didn't have time to talk about everything I wanted to. I had originally planned on doing a lengthy post on NGOs and their investment and development initiatives, as this is a huge emerging topic in the realm of water and politics, but I had gone down rabbit holes of new things to research, and realized too late that I would not have time. The other regret is my occasional lack of focus on water itself. I think I centered most around water, however, there were some topics that it was a bit of a stretch to really center around water. I was able to connect it in every blog, but if I had more time, I would have definitely added more depth about water itself rather than land usage that was affected by water. My final regret is about regularity. I found myself not able to write as often as I would have liked and being an affiliate, I had to post my final three blogs in quick succession because of my due date. If in another time I weren't under these constraints, I would have liked to schedule the last three to post once a week rather than two in a week. However overall I am very happy with how I have grown not only as a researcher of this topic, but as a writer. I found myself towards the end writing more and more and I feel, engaging with more aspects of each issue. But now my blog is complete, but I am definitely inspired to continue reading and learning more.

Thanks for reading!

Viator