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Are you a student who blogs? I’m putting together a piece – or maybe a series – on student bloggers, and I’d love to hear from you. Whether you’re just starting one to document your uni life, you’ve been airing your opinions online throughout your teenage years, you’re trying to build up experience for going into journalism, or you have an anonymous ranting site, I’d like to know how you blog and what your blog means to you. I’d really appreciate input from absolutely anyone who’s currently a university student (or has just left) and who writes a blog – I’ve put some questions below to spark thought, but please feel free to ignore them and simply tell me about your experience of blogging – my email address is jem dot bloomfield at hotmail dot co dot uk, or you can leave shorter responses in the comments below.
How long have you been blogging? Why did you start? Do you write under your own name, or a pseudonym? What sort of topics do you cover? What blogs (or other sites) do you read, and did any of them inspire your approach or your style? Do you write for any other sites or publications?
Why do you write online? What do you get out of it? What sort of style do you adopt? Do you think you’ve got better at it over the time you’ve been doing it? Who is your imagined audience? Are there any pieces which got dramatically more or fewer readers than you’d expected?
How does your blogging relate to being a student? Do you write about uni life, or the academic subject you’re studying? Do you read other students’ blogs, or other blogs about studenty topics? Do you write for the student papers as well?
What sort of feedback have you got on your pieces? Are you intending to go into a field where writing will be important, and is there a “professional development” angle to your blogging? Does your blog act as a professional profile? Are there any concerns you have about your blog and your offline life colliding?
quiteirregular 
I have been blogging for a few months. I wanted to write a blog for my family and friends because I study abroad 🙂 I do write in my own name and I write about everything that comes to my mind: Updates of what’s happening or sometimes just my own opinions. I don’t follow many blogs and mainly only the once from my friends because I don’t find it that interesting or I get easily distracted when I read online. I rather read books.
I write online because I got tired to tell everyone at home how im doing so it’s easier if I just write it in my blog and besides it is alot if fun. If feel like I write alot about Uni.
I get very good feedback especially for my english altho it’s only my 3rd language. I like to practise my english this way and I believe it has a positive effect on my future because english is a very important business language. I’m sometimes worried of course about my privecy but I feel like I can leave the personal things out of my blog so the reader never knows everything.
I hope the answeres helped you 🙂
Merry christamas
Laura
Thanks very much, Laura – that was immensely helpful and much appreciated! A really interesting angle on the topic. Merry Christmas to you too.
I have just started a blog – http://phdbabyandme.wordpress.com – as I wanted to get writing again, and hoped that forcing myself to write anything at all would get the ball rolling and help me start writing towards my thesis!
At first I thought I wouldn’t have time and it would just become a procrastination tool, so I didn’t risk setting it up, but when one of my supervisors actually posited the idea I decided to give it a go.
I’m still trying to work out how to balance the personal stuff, the ‘how I am working’ stuff, and the actual ‘contents of my research’ stuff. I have to be really aware that it is public so anyone can read it (my friends, family, peers, supervisors, funders…) so that is tough, though mostly I think my audience will be real-life friends referred via Facebook/Twitter. I blogged/ranted as a teenager semi-anonymously (on Diary-X and Livejournal) so I’ve always been keen on the medium!
Hey Jem, just dropping a comment here to let you know that I emailed you! Let me know if there’s anything more I can help with!
I have been blogging for a little over 6 years now and I started because my mother kept being nosy and reading my diaries haha. I once adopted an initial as opposed to my name, but that didn’t last long… It was mostly personal things, so health related things, day to day occurrences, rants about school/college/uni work.. just a diary really. I read blogs similar to my own, blogs about culture/ feminism/ politics/ current affairs/ theatre, a vast array really. I loved the writing style of one blogger and for a small period I felt my style morphing into hers… although rather inadequately. Haha. I have blogged for mental health charities/ websites and for the university publication (but just once).
Initially, I started blogging for privacy, haha. But, as I gained readership I found it really great to read other blogs from people with similar interests/ lifestyles etc. I have gained a few, lasting friendships by blogging (ok, by few I mean the majority of my friends.. I suck at making friends in real life…). I have most certainly not gotten better at it. At first I tried to be coherent and interesting to get all the followers!! But then overtime I just lost interest and used it only to write occasional rants or for procrastination. Also moving blogging platforms (from blogger to tumblr) meant that kind of approach of lazy blogging~ was acceptable. I find the posts that are more woe is me life sucks get more readers…
Um, for me I guess stress relief as it’s a place to rant and stuff and complain with no one really telling me to shut up… I do write about uni, quite a bit, and juggling ill health with uni. I do read other students’ blogs too.
Um, well when I started, and tried to make my blogs a little creative, I got comments saying people liked my writing style. I didn’t agree- it was literal word vomit but praise is always good.. ish. Well. Kind of. I also get a lot of people relating to what I post. And no professional development planned etc … god help me if anyone employing me read my blog. I did make a cult film/ theatre review blog but noone read it and that made me sad. Kind of- I don’t want my friends to read my blog, and they don’t, well, any more. But I do have several friends I meet up with who I met via. Blogging.
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Student bloggers? Share your story!
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Well, I am glad I’m not the only student that writes a blog. Mind you I only started blogging over a year ago so I am still new to this awesome blogging world.
I write a blog to keep myself writing and actually manage to have fun on the side of attending college. Plus it keeps my friends and family in the loop since I am really bad at telling my friends and family of what I have done.
I mainly write what I got up to do over the past month so I remember what I done over a that month and it keeps my relatives and friends a good idea of what I been doing as I always reply back saying ‘”nothing much just assignments.” When they ask about what have I been up to? Though last year at Christmas time I wrote my own advent which I am very surprised many people actually read it. I am also surprised by how many read my blog post called Chocolate and what cake?
If you got a spare a minute you should definitely check it out http://she-learns-she-goes.blogspot.co.uk/search/label/Cake