It’s finally time for me to bite the bullet and pull together an answer to Heidi Cool’s practical question: how has blogging impacted your work? When she tagged me in May, andydesoto.com was merely two months old, and, to be honest, I didn’t know what to say. Over the last few months, though, my familiarity with and respect for the medium has grown by leaps and bounds. Reading .eduGuru Kyle James’ own response to the meme was the push I needed to respond to this question myself. Here’s my answer.
Meme: How has blogging impacted your work?
First off, I should start with a quick disclaimer: as a full-time college student, I really have no “work” to speak of; that is, work for which I’m paid a liveable salary or wage. In order to be able to answer this question meaningfully, though, I’m just going to translate the word work into ‘responsibility,’ a domain that includes:
- becoming better-educated both in my own academic domain of interest and generally-speaking
- networking, befriending, and collaborating with my peers
- fulfilling expectations as a member of a family, etc.
If I look at the question in this context, I’m able to provide the best answer.
Blogging makes me a better consumer of information
I’ll be honest: I can’t stand reading textbooks. As I’ve gotten older, I feel as if my ability to focus on a single sheet of paper or book has diminished, rather than strengthened. Blogging has helped reverse this trend as it’s critical that I monitor a variety of news sources daily in order to stay on top of industry and other news. My Google Reader feed, for instance, averages about 100 or more read items per day; that’s a lot of info to keep up with. Although I don’t feel as well-educated as I would if I were able to keep up with, say, some of the hard-hitting political blogs out there, I learn a lot more per day than I would without these inputs.
Fortunately, the more you read, the better you write, and I feel as if my writing abilities have improved somewhat since beginning this project, at the very least within this specific medium. A few months ago, I wouldn’t be able to keep my thoughts straight within a 200-word article, but now, my focus is headed in the right direction.
Blogging has provided me with unique opportunities
In just a few weeks, I’ll be featured on the redesigned College of William & Mary homepage as a Student Blogger. Before long, if you visit that page, you’ll have about a 15% chance of seeing my name, my face, and a recent excerpt about recent happenings on campus, a personal story, or so forth. I’d like to think that if I didn’t have the experience I did with andydesoto.com (and other personal pages I’ve had in the past), I would either not have been given this wonderful opportunity to begin with or wouldn’t have the technical ability to fulfill my role to the best of my ability.
As a student blogger for W&M, my reach will be extended further as I utilize my individual perspective to produce content for the school I attend and admire. It wouldn’t surprise me if traffic to this new, unpublished site greatly exceeds that of this blog (but don’t worry, I’m here to stay regardless). Extra press and a chance to make new and current students feel welcome? Thanks, blogging!
Tag! You’re it
The final part of this meme is to tag three or more bloggers who I think should also participate. Maybe the following folks could add some insights:
Be sure to check out the original post here: http://blog.case.edu/webdev/2008/05/28/workblogmeme.html
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