It has been an interesting semester for blogging! To start off, I'd like to address the themes of my blogging. This semester I found myself writing a lot about fairness in one way or another and being fortunate. I wrote a blog about how overweight people are misrepresented, how African Americans are misrepresented, and how world disasters do not get the attention they deserve when it's all said and done. Twice I found myself comparing New Trier to inner city schools and writing about how lucky I am to go to New Trier: once about our unlimited library resources and once comparing cafeterias.
My posts have become increasingly longer throughout the semester and I attribute this to Junior Theme. The process of writing a post became much longer because I found myself doing much more research behind my posts than I did before (this says a lot because before I usually did about 30 mins). For some reason I now read so much more on a topic before I blog about it as if each blog post is a mini junior theme. For example in order to write my latest post I ended up listening to 20 stories on storycorps to find the best ones to use. And for this post, I first found the article about the new Dove deodorant, then researched cellulite, then flipped through a bunch of Seventeen magazines(guilty) in order to have everything I needed to write the blog. Looking back at many of my blogs like that one I realize that they could have been split into two blogs or even three sometimes.
I remember the first week of blogging. I texted Emma Murray because I was excited that I had found the perfect topic for my blog. I used a topic from class, had some research, made a personal connection, etc but rereading it I find myself liking my most recent work the best even if the posts don't have all the criteria the very first one had. One thing I said I'd work on this semester in my second quarter meta post was that of not asking questions but instead writing in a manner that begs a question without saying so. Most of my blogs now either ask a leading question in the beginning and then explore the possible answers or do not ask a question at all. American Dream, Upper or Lower class?, Dying Rich, Dying Alone, Bringing Lunch to School: a privilege? . None of these posts end with a question. The other change to my blogging is that the writing comes much more effortlessly. At the beginning of the year I was so self conscious I would think hard about what exactly I was writing. Now it is easy and I feel like my blogs flow so much better and the writing is so much better.
I'm sorry for another super long post! But one last thing...I would've never guessed that blogging would become so comfortable. The thought of having to put my work on the internet for others to see practically scared me half to death at the beginning of the year. This whole experience has really opened me up and I am now considering making a new blog for fun. If you had told me sophomore year that I would want to write for fun I would've thought you were kidding. I've never written for fun before creating this blog and I think that the enjoyment is what made my posts so good and why I am so proud of them.
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