The Downward Spiral of Academic Blogging as a College Student

For reference, these are my sources: Dr. Burton's post on the Spiral and his post on Academic Blogging

As a college student, I have many identities. For instance, I am a wife, a Sunday School teacher, a pet owner, a secretary, writer, a chef/domestic slave amongst other roles I adopt daily. "Blogger" is new to the list, and now add the adjective "Academic" to Blogger. Dr. Burton's three phases of academic blogging, Exploration, Development and Launch, are the equivalent of a Wiki how-to but for a (perhaps) more specialized audience. Clearly, I am still in phase one of Exploration. I love my iPhone, but that's about as technological as I get and the habit of sharing my thoughts virtually on a regular basis is new (and difficult) for me. Nevertheless, the topic of digital culture and academic blogging is extremely relevant in our time. As I look for jobs, it is not enough to have experience with MS Word...instead companies are looking for skills in Wordpress and other social media platforms. Imagine being able to showcase several of your highly intellectual blog posts, reviewed by members of other academic circles.

In the paragraph about Development, I was most impacted by the concept of discipline. This not only applies to blogging consistently, but maintaining discipline in what you write. Nobody's going to want to read a heavy analysis of Moby Dick if it is a paragraph of a hundred lines or random musings that are not connected by a broader theme (guilty!). Development as an academic blogger requires discipline to attract readers and commentary. Dr. Burton stated that even short posts can be "academic" as long as they are clear, concise and thorough. All the facets of discipline and development are going to be the most challenging for me, as I juggle my schedule and priorities. Inevitably, when I research a topic, I want to develop it into a full-length essay of a post which conflicts with other constraints of my identity ("Play with me!"-my chocolate lab).

Thus, the downward spiral of research, discipline, blogging...Dr. Burton used the metaphor of a spiral to represent several things, yet I interpret it as a metaphor the writing (blogging) process, which he touched on. For example, when we write, we start with a vague topic and continue downward until we narrowly define our conclusion and that's it! He suggests going back up through the spiral and analyzing all our steps on that slippery slide we so excitedly jump on when writing. Often when blogging I flesh out a topic I find interesting and then consider myself done, without fully projecting myself onto/into it. As an academic blogger, we should draw on others' ideas, but ultimately, our goal is to make each post a spark of inspiration that we personally have and if I can do that, by the end of the semester, I will hopefully be able to add "Academic Blogger" to my identity list.