Blogger Recognition Award

My thanks go out to Jim at trying to get faster as I get older. Now that I’m living adult people life too, I find it difficult to write a post outside of what I’m used to or inspired to write. However, with grading to procrastinate on and the windows open (in south Florida, turning off the air conditioning in fall is akin to you northerners turning off the heater in spring), I’m inspired to respond to my award. I’m a recognized blogger! That’s worth a lot to me, even if the number of readers varies between 1 and 2 on average.

How my blog got started:

This is an easy one to answer. I received a scholarship to study abroad in Hamburg, Germany for a year. That inspired me to do a study-abroad blog, since I felt having a space to update my parents (hi, Papa), study-abroad coordinators at my school, and coordinators over in Germany a chance to see my experiences was a three birds with one stone kind of setup. Plus, I had the idea that my experiences would be informative to other people studying abroad or wanting to study abroad. So far, I have a few people who have had their questions answered here. I have a lot more people who find my blog opens more questions about studying abroad and living abroad in general than answers. That’s why I continue writing. Now I write with the idea that even if I’m back in the States, I am still connected with Hamburg and Germany and therefore respond to things going on there or how I see the U.S. differently.

At the same time of starting this blog, I also started a reading log blog (to keep me accountable, somehow, in keeping up with my MA reading list) and a running blog. Lately, I update the running blog the most, since (let’s be honest here) I don’t need to do much critical thinking for the action I’m writing about or the writing.

In the meantime, I also started a blog for my teaching experiences. Long story short, though, I started this blog summer 2014 and am fairly happy that I’m still posting to it, even if it’s not that often. Thanks for continuing to read!

Tips for new bloggers:

I can only reiterate what Jim said. “Just write.”  If you have something you think is worth spending your time to write, chances are, there are people who think it’s worth reading. And if not, who cares? You should continue doing your thing and keep flipping that hourglass and slowly, but surely, things will fall into place. Even if blogging on the internet seems like a vortex that’s worth unplugging from before getting sucked in (this is kind of how I felt at the beginning), eventually you’ll learn to appreciate the people who read regularly and build connections that rival off-line connections. For growing writers and/or academics (I’m one), the blog is, if anything, practice in writing and expressing ideas. That’s the final reason I agree with Jim. My advice: just write.

So, in conclusion, there’s a few people I think deserve this award (there’s more than I will mention, but I’d have to hunt all their blog URls down, and I’m short on time!). I’m passing the blogger recognition award onto: 

Eilish at Eilish Eats
The author of A Pilgrim in Narnia
The author of Mice Notes
The author of Never a Dull Bling
and Kyrosmagica

I hope you go check out their blogs!