Blogging

By Anna Koval =)

 

I wish to speak a word about Blogging, about its absolute freedom and wildness. I wish to make an extreme statement, for there are enough champions of hand-written and type-written assignments: the Superintendent, the Principal, your teachers, and every one of you can attest to that.

 

I have met but one or two persons in the course of my life who understood the art of Blogging -- of posting blogs -- who had a genius, so to speak, for Blogging, which term is beautifully derived from "web-log" or online journaling. For journaling and journeying is the secret of successful Blogging. He who pens his thoughts in a notebook may be the greatest vagrant of all; but the Blogger is no more vagrant than a text message which is all the while sedulously seeking the shortest course to a cell phone.

 

It is true, we are but faint-hearted crusaders, the Bloggers, nowadays. Our online expeditions are but blips on the screen. But if you are ready to leave dittos and handouts, PowerPoints and posterboards -- if you have done all your homework, studied for exams, reconciled your GPA, and are a free man -- then you are ready for a Blog.

 

To come to my own experience, my fellow Bloggers and I, for there are many of us online, take pleasure in fancying ourselves knights of a new order -- not columnists or journalists, but Bloggers, a still more honorable class, we think. We are a sort of fourth estate, outside of District and School and Classroom.

 

I think that I cannot preserve my health and spirits, unless I spend four hours a day at least -- and it is commonly more than that -- Blogging through the Blogosphere, absolutely free from all worldly engagements.

 

When sometimesI amr eminded that the teachers and students stay on the printed page, not only all the forenoon, but all the afternoon too -- I think that they deserve some credit for not having all committed suicide long ago.

 

I, who cannot stay off-line for a single day without some rust -- confess that I am astonished at the power of endurance, to say nothing of the moral insensibility, of teachers and students who confine themselves to lined paper, PowerPoint, and Microsoft Word the whole day, for weeks and months, aye, years almost together. I know not what manner of stuff they are of.

 

The Blogging of which I speak has nothing in it akin to an essay, as it is called. Think of a student writing an essay, when there are Blogs blinking on far off screens uncommented on by him!

 

Moreover, you must Blog like a Blogger, which is said to be the only beast which ruminates while online.

 

Blogging will no doubt produce a certain roughness of character -- will cause a thicker cuticle to grow over some of the finer qualities of our nature -- but methinks that is a stuff that will fall off fast enough.

 

Some do not Blog at all, I Blog such as the old prophets and poets Blogged, according to the Blogger's Code.

 

1. Take responsibility for your own words
2. Encourage enforcement of terms of service
3. Cite (and preferrably hyperlink) any sources
4. Write nothing you wouldn't say in person
5. Think twice - post once

 

What makes it so hard to determine what we will Blog about? I believe that there is a subtle magnetism in Blogging, which if we unconsciously yield to it, will direct us aright. There is a right way to Blog; but we are very liable from heedlessness and stupidity to take the wrong one.

 

Blogging consists with wildness. The most awesome are the freest. In short, all good Blogs are wild and free.

 

Many a poor, sore-eyed student that I have heard of would grow faster, both intellectually and physically if, instead of being made to coplete the same boring assignments, he were allowed to Blog. There are other skills for the student to learn than those which Bill Gates invented.

 

So we Blog toward the future, til one day the sun shall shine more brightly than ever he has done, shall perchance shine into our minds and hearts, and light up our entire educational system with a great awakening light, as warm and serene and golden as a blinking cursor on a screen in early morning.