Before taking this class, blogging was never a part of my
life. I was never into the tumblr or reddit scene, and can attest to
never reading a blog before this class. So little old me comes into this class
excited and is exposed to the world of blogging. When I was younger, I used to
write in my journals a lot, and slowly fell out of it as my time became more
strained. So having a blog to me is like a more public diary. It has given me
an outlet for my ideas and views.
Blogging is an art. In college, we are used to writing pages
upon pages on a topic that might not interest us. Try keeping ideas that are
interesting to you between 250-500 words. That is hard. In blogging, I
have to assume the audience has no reason to read my blog, so I must draw them
in with an interesting title or personal story. Whereas in academic writing, my
professor is guaranteed to read my essay, and I know he/she is the audience.
Who is my audience in blogging? I don’t know! People could just stumble along
my blog by accident.
Amanda Quick, a tech journalist for "Tech Cocktail," entrepreneur of “The Next Zuck” and graduate student at the iSchool of Syracuse University, visited our
class this week. Her advice to us was: “Learn everything.” Amanda studied
Broadcast & Digital Journalism, which helped her launch her project “The
Next Zuck,” which is a website that highlights and interviews young
entrepreneurs in all different colleges around the U.S. She started this
because she found that entrepreneurs on college campuses had difficulty
publicizing their ideas beyond college campuses. However, to start up this
project, she needed financial, marketing, and business skills, in addition to
technology skills. Her advice to learn everything really applies to her success
because she did not only stick to communication skills; she drew from other
places as well. And now she is learning more in-depth information technology
skills through her Master’s Program.
Amanda’s advice to “learn everything” is precisely one of
the reasons I took this course. I wanted to understand how to blog. I thought
not only did it sound fun, but it also sounded like a skill that may be useful
someday. This skill may be more so useful for a communications major*, but my
thought process was that maybe it will come in handy someday. Through the other
guests we have met, I have learned even more than I could have imagined, such
as disability rights from Professor Bill Peace, a blog providing a safe place
for people to express themselves from Melissa McEwan, and about the facts
surrounding the John F. Kennedy assassination from Martin J. Kelly. These are
people who not only expanded my mind about course-related information, but also
made me draw conclusions about our society and what makes humans act certain
ways.
*I am studying International Relations and Policy Studies,
with a minor in Management
One of the things I am the most proud of in this blog is,
quite honestly, that I was able to make one. I am not a very techy person at
all and just being able to choose a format I like with a color scheme and
everything is something I consider the biggest win of all. Another thing I have
realized is that I am very into personalizing my writing. I like to connect
what I am writing about, no matter what it is, to something in my life, so I
usually begin with a story of some kind. I think this helps me relate to the
piece I am writing and I like to think it makes my writing a little more
engaging.
I like to think that I will continue my blog after this
class. As I mentioned before, I love using it as an outlet to release my
thoughts in an organized way. Sometimes I am inspired to write about something,
so I will quickly write it on a Post-It so I don’t forget it, and I feel so
excited when I get around to actually writing about it. Two of my favorite
posts to date have been “Why I Strive to be like Phoebe Buffay from Friends,” and “Married at Age 5: TheLife of a Child Bride,” for very different reasons. For the first one, the
inspiration for this struck me and I felt so strongly about writing it,
especially when a few other classmates also wrote Friends-related posts. The latter post is one of my favorites
because it really came full circle to me— I wrote about the topic of child
brides in Southeast Asia in one of my college essays and had not discussed it
in awhile, so being able to share this eye-opening issue with others was a
privilege for me.
This blog has definitely been a journey for me and I am very
grateful that I have been exposed to the world of blogging, previously unknown
territory for me. This makes me realize how right Amanda was— having experience
in other territories outside of your field of study is useful and may help you
in the future. I guess we will see where this takes me.
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