My ethical opposition to blogging stems from my apprehension of the blogger's mindset. What kind of person thinks, "Oh, wow, my life and ideas are so damn interesting! I'll put myself online and get everyone I know--and even everyone I don't--to read about my boring quotidian experiences and/or political opinions!"?
A jackass. That's what kind of person.
That said, if I'm going to be joining the jackasses, I might as well be the best jackass I can be. So, if you found yourself stumbling onto this site from my Facebook profile, that's the explanation. To loosely paraphrase Stewie Griffin, I may have a blog, but I have it ironically.
By the way--does anyone know if I should be censoring myself? Obviously, everything that gets put up here lives forever on the Internet, but I'm not really concerned about future employers. I'm more worried that I might be violating some Light Fellowship bloggers' standards for decency. If so, a heads-up would be nice.
3 comments:
Black background is for losers. You aren't in high school anymore. Let's see a bacon colored background.
It's a sad reflection on my life that I know far too many people who are obsessed with bacon to narrow down who that commenter might be.
Okay, I'm switching to Google/Blogger and OpenID commenters only! :P
I see a few utilitarian differences between a typical jackass blog (yes, there are many!) and what you are doing.
1. This blog is one way to meet a mandatory fellowship requirement (and it probably beats the end of year report option, as you noted).
2. The study abroad field has many studies showing that blogging/journaling while you study abroad helps to cement some of the life's lessons that usually go with the experience.
3. Current and future Light Fellows will find everybody's blogs helpful...sometimes they are the difference between a student deciding to study abroad or not. In that sense, good blogs are a primary way of giving back to the fellowship.
In my view, then, there is nothing jackass about Light Fellows' blogs, though I understand the initial bias against the medium. Give it time. You'll see.
As for decency, like I pointed out in pre-departure, you should always just ask yourself: "Do I want this post to show up x years later when I'm applying for a job?" Or whatever. Within the Light Fellowship itself, we only ask for common courtesy when talking about programs, etc. We are NOT, however, interested in vapid, sterilized writing.
Sometimes this means venting or waxing poetic, etc.
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