Arthur Jacobs: Researching Writing Lives

Writing Lives module and its collaborative research project has been an educational and worthwhile experience. It has given me the chance to learn about another persons life in a very personal way, with my blog being the doorway via the internet where others can learn about Jacob’s life. Although I feel i chose the right memoir for me, each memoir in the Burnett Archive is filled with fascinating memories and experiences of working class people.

After reading Arthur Jacob’s, ‘Just Take a Look At These!‘ , i feel I have a better understanding about what it was like to grow up in the 20th century as apart of a working class family. I have learnt more about aspects of history from London in a state of war, to how ration books work and feel I just have a much wider knowledge of History than that of what I had before. Not only have I learnt from this, but my blog is now there for the public to learn from – an advantage to our work being based on WordPress. I feel that instead of writing an assignment which is just between me and a lecturer, my work is there to be enjoyed by many and for a long time too. 

Being a collaborative project, I have really enjoyed interacting with my fellow researchers – gaining help from each other whilst enjoying each others blog posts. I feel if I would have just worked alone, my blog posts would not be as refined and not as many people would have read them. I also grew close to the people in my group and have made great friendships. Because of this, I would love to take part in another collaborative project being in University or after.

Social media, like Prison Voices has made a huge impact on the outcome of my author blog. I found it a great help to be included in my groups Facebook group where we could ask each other questions about the module and share our new posts with each other. Also, Twitter has been the main platform where I have advertised my posts to the public. With the Writing Lives own twitter page being able to share my posts with its many followers, this has enlightened a much wider group of people to read my blogs which I feel has been extremely useful. With us experiencing University during such a technological age, I feel it is right to include social media within our work and use it to our advantage.

Finally, Writing Lives has further solidified my enjoyment of blogging and its style of writing. Being a huge fan of reading blogs in my spare time, it has been great to complete my own using a topic which I never would have thought to write about. I feel that after the module concludes, I would love to m=work more collaboratively with others and maybe even start a blog of my own which I have wanted to do for many years. I have no regrets with chasing Writing Lives as a module, and think it has been a brilliant way of me broading my mind to literature in a very unique way.