Coming to Understand TNE, Blogs, and Me

Whew! It's been a long time since the TNE blog published anything. Tom and I have both been busy, but not completely out of the loop. If I know Tom, he has been right in the action and probably has a pretty good pool of ideas just waiting to be molded in some tasty way.

I've been reading my daily online news sources, trying to make sense of this topic that is so immense, and I've struggled to come to grips with the essence of blogging itself. I thought I would break the silence by just noting a few impressions that I've had so far about the blogs in general, and then we'll get back to the topic at hand.

First, as a beginner in this field, I have struggled to understand how everything fits together. Wandering out into the land of transnational ed and GATS reminds me very much of my first few days in Seoul, Korea. It seemed like everyone around me knew what was going on and where everything was going and I just stood in the middle trying to figure out what everything meant. The only difference was I made no attempts to document the scene and made no pretense of understanding it.

Tom's challenge to try to keep up on TNE and its influence in Europe has left me feeling woefully inadequate. But more than that, I've come to respect those who can write their thoughts day in and day out in a clear, succinct manner. Some of the most widely read bloggers do this and it amazes me. Carefully crafting a post that is interesting and informative is a mammoth task, moreso when I feel like such a novice in this area.

The amount of information available is only increasing, and documenting (or just trying to making sense of) it all could well be a full-time job. The only way Tom and others like him can be so successful at writing intriguing things so often is that they live and breathe the subject matter. I'm working towards that and I hope my writing improves in course of time to reflect not only how much I have been in the subject matter, but how much it has become a part of me.